bamboo wednesday! part 15! and no new shoes required!

it's getting a little difficult to track week-to-week growth now because of it's size, but comparing against the first bamboo wednesday! post, you can definitely see how much this thing has grown



thank goodness for unmarked boxes of stuff. i managed to find the pair of vans that i bought last year that have been hiding somewhere in a box since before i moved last month. since they haven't been worn in a couple of months, they have managed to retain much of their comfort level.

which is good, because i hate the mall.

and just when i thought the tales would be over, we have a new page in the tales that were long thought to be lost about my douchebag (former) landlord. i got a phone call from her yesterday asking me if i still had the apartment keys.

what the hell? didn't i already tell her where the keys were MORE THAN A MONTH AGO?!?!?!?

and among the stupid natured comments were "oh, i thought you meant that you had them in YOUR mailbox" to which i replied "why would i put the keys in my mailbox if you don't know where i live?"

how retarded can one person get? first of all, i moved like 2 months ago, told her exactly via voicemail where the damned keys were and here we are in mid january and she's asking me stupid questions. i love it. what a retard.

actually, i shouldn't be insulting like that. calling her a retard would be giving retarded people a bad name.

retarded, maybe that's not the PC term - so does that make it alright that i call her a retard?

bamboo wednesday part 11! and the end of a condo (didn't i say that already?)!

as my bamboo continues to thrive, i'm finding it more and more difficult to figure out how so many office people can manage to kill these low maintenance plants.

friday november 30th marked the last official day in the old condo. unofficially i moved out quite some time ago, but the last day of the lease was november 30. i had spoken with my douchebag landlord the day before to make arrangements to hand over the keys, and she mentioned that she needed to do an exit inspection.

i thought to myself "you didn't do an exit inspection when the last people moved out, why are you doing one now?" - but then i decided not to care. she explained that she would call me first thing in the morning to arrange a time, and i mentioned that my time was very limited so she had better make sure to call.

the 30th came and went without a call from cuntzilla.

as did december 1st. and 2nd. and 3rd.

i decided she wasn't going to call (surprise surprise) so i dropped the keys in the mail box, called the building management people and asked them to deactivate my card, and then left a voicemail for my douchebag now former landlord to tell her that i don't have time to wait around for her call, i left the keys in the mail box and she can deal with the place as is.

i'm almost going to miss writing posts about my douchebag landlord. it's the end of an era, but an era i can very easily live without.

job number one has been insanely busy lately. heck, so busy that i didn't get my bamboo wednesday post out until it was almost over. we're nearing the end of a product release cycle, so everyone's getting retarded with their requirements and nobody's giving anyone enough time to fix all their bugs, and there's nothing more annoying than stressed out software developers and testers. thank goodness for the ol' iPod.

bamboo wednesday! part 10! and the end of a condo!

This week's bamboo picture brought to you by the colour purple.

it's still growing, albeit much less noticeably.

i got a phone call from my douchebag landlord last night. a couple of phone calls actually. she seems to be quite persistent when she wants to get a hold of me. i still need to hand over the keys to the condo, but since i'm an asshole i'm going to wait to call her back and i'm not going to give her the keys until friday. why should i wait? oh yeah, i just mentioned, i'm an asshole. she mentioned wanting to do an inspection of the place too, but i can't see how that would be logical because obviously nobody did an inspection for the last two places i moved into that were managed by cuntzilla.

the new place is coming out nice. i'm nowhere near completely unpacked. heck, i'd say that i'm max 30% unpacked (most of my clothes are still in bags), but it's still better than the old place.

work is retardedly busy right now. i have massive deadlines this week and my boss is doing everything he can to be a jackass about it. as soon as i get my annual bonus, i'm out of here. anyone in the mississauga area looking for a database analyst or report writer (righter) give me a call eh?

bamboo wednesday! part 2!

i suppose it shows how busy i've been when i notice that the last post i put up here was bamboo wendesday and so is this one?

i've noticed that it has grown when i compare the two pictures side-by-side. looks like about a centimeter of growth. hopefully i can keep this one from joining the ranks of the withered, yellowed bamboo skeletons that are popping up around corporate canada.

great news is that i've finally gotten a new dryer. the down side is that it's slightly smaller than the old one so i have to be careful aboot how much laundry i stuff into the machine. also, the lint trap is in a really stupid place - right above the door where you'd take your clean, dry laundry out of it so you either get lint on your clean clothes, or back inside the dryer. great.

work at both jobs has been insanely busy lately. at job one we've undertaken the massive task of translating our entire application (the bread and butter for my company) from english to other languages. doesn't sound like that big a deal until you realize that there are 350+ report files with thousands of labels that need to be updated - not to mention hundreds of other web pages that need to be modified. at job number two we've taken on a new massive client and are seemingly perpetually short staffed. you know it's not good when you walk in and people are saying "oh man, it's insane tonight - i'm so glad you're here. these three people didn't show up..."

but at least i can wear clean clothes to work.

when you work two jobs, your time is not your own

yesterday my douchebag landlord finally returned my call to fix the dryer.

oh, did i mention that i also called her on monday, then again on thursday this week before i got the call back from her? oh, i s'pose not. i even stated on my last voicemail to her that if she wasn't going to call me back that i'd call someone else. i think she remembers the last time i made that threat because her call came later that afternoon. it wouldn't be the first time i've had to call her boss and ask if there was a different landlord i could deal with. three weeks and three phone calls to get one problem addressed. thankfully i'll be moving out of this building in november to a bigger and better place.

in somewhat less annoying news... apparently god has responded to the guy that is trying to sue him somewhere in the states - Yahoo news for that one eh.

also this weekend i'll be in the Kitchener and Waterloo area attending the Stitch n' Kitsch show. it's a great collection of artsy and crafty people who make and sell some really cool things. the last time i went i scored some kick ass hand made coffee mugs and a hand made notebook.

oh yeah, i mentioned before that i was getting rid of windows on my home computer, using Ubuntu Linux instead. my target is to find the easiest method for the average home user to be able to do this and still undertake certain tasks so i'm chronicling my dorky adventure here. essentially the reason for doing this is that 1) i don't feel like paying for the next version of windows and 2) even if i did want to pay for it, my computer's too old to run it. have a look at the the dork-osity if you dare.

when i wrote the following pages, or rather the bulk of them...

the last week or so has proven, without doubt, that i have made the right choice in deciding to move from my current residence to somewhere that does not have a douchebag as a landlord.


on thursday of last week, my landlord finally returned my phone call about getting the pipes under the kitchen sink fixed. my count is 18 calendar days to get that one addressed. is it fixed yet? no, of course not. rather than take some sort of proactive step and make some sort of effort, my douchebag landlord just gave me the name and number of the plumber the management company hires and told me i could call him to make my own arrangements.

not even 24 hours later, and on my 30th birthday no less, i discovered that my dryer ceased to function. the load of clothes left in the dryer had been sitting in there for hours, staying wet. as i didn't really feel like taking care of any of this on my birthday long weekend, i called cuntzilla first thing tuesday morning. there wouldn't have been any point in calling her on the weekend anyways. the last time she even answered the phone was more than a year ago.

so rather than do laundry this weekend, i spent a large amount of time playing Guitar Hero 2. all i have to say is if you have a console that has a version of that game, buy it. i don't think i've had more fun playing a video game ever. it's a brilliant concept - it's packed full of fun music and is designed to be incredibly interactive. certainly a must-buy for anyone who may enjoy playing video games.

oh yeah, i turned 30 last week. now i'm old fashioned.

no really, it was the best i could do

being that it's been weeks since i called my douchebag landlord to fix my sink, i've decided that if she can't be bothered to call me back, i can't be bothered to care. it's been a couple of days since i emptied the bucket that's catching the leaking water from my kitchen sink and i expect it could be to the point of overflowing. good, let the neighbours call the condo's board of directors again. there's nothing that i can do about the sweaty ass crack that is my landlord. i suppose in theory i could fix the sink myself, but i'd much prefer to be an asshole here.

today i have my performance review at job number one. it will be the first time in ... shit, i don't even know how long... that i've had a performance review. and being that i report directly to the CEO of my company, i have absolutely no knowledge of his expectations of me. if it wasn't for the fact that my job is so easy to do and i KNOW that i do it well, i might almost be worried.

as easy as job number one is, it's been oddly busy for the last couple of weeks. i've noticed that my goal of doing nothing and getting paid for it seems to be in the "not happening" stages - everybody wants a piece of me lately. just can't get enough mundane reports i suppose.

at my home, i've been taking some baby steps in switching my home computer from running Windows XP to running Ubuntu Linux as my home operating system. a friend of mine told me that i should create a blog to tell the world about my story, so i am going to do that. just not here in the land of welfare. i'll post some links for anyone who considers themselves dorky.. er.. curious enough about it. so far, things are moving along pretty well.

anything but the kitchen sink eh?

when something goes wrong in my apartment, who you gonna call?

well, i wish it was the Ghost Busters, but unfortunately the right answer is my douchebag landlord.

sometime in recent days or weeks, i can't be sure, a leak developed in the u-shaped pipe under my kitchen sink. a brief glance showed that the pipe looked a little corroded and there was water in the bottom of the cupboard below the sink. a more thorough glance revealed that the pipe drips continuously as there is a small hole in it and there was an inch of water under my kitchen sink. according to the building manager it was leaking into the suite below ours.

as i live and rent in a condo building, this means that for fixing things i don't call the building management, i have to call the ass-wipe that is my landlord. the leak was discovered late on friday before the long weekend so the call to my douchebag landlord went first thing tuesday morning. as per usual, she did not answer her phone and i left a voicemail.

late tuesday afternoon i thought to myself "hey, i should give cunt-zilla a call to see if she's actually going to do anything about this". surprise surprise, voicemail again.

thursday i was busy, so the next follow up call went out friday afternoon.

voicemail again. holy shitting seagulls, what a surprise.

it's a good thing the damn thing doesn't leak more than a gallon per day, because that's the biggest bucket i could get underneath it.

the last time i had to deal with the drooling retard wench that is my landlord i had to call her boss and i'm going to guess that this time will not be any different. i'm going to give her until 11am tomorrow to call me at which point i'm going to put YET ANOTHER call into her office to make YET ANOTHER complaint about the arse hole.

it's also largely because of her that i'll be moving YET AGAIN this year. i hate moving. if anyone's interested in helping out, it's going to be sometime during the month of october. i'll be moving to a place that's bigger, nicer, does not have a leaking kitchen sink and hopefully will not have someone who's completely mentally incompetant as a landlord. is that so much to ask for?

got my fingers crossed

today i'm waiting patiently for the dishwasher-fixer-guy to come to my place to install the new dishwasher. the thing i can't stand is that they give you this window of time that they will arrive - kind of like the cable guy...

"I'll be there sometime between 10 and 2"

okay... so i have to take the day off for this then? great.

also, because my landlord is a total asswipe, i figured i'd call down to the front office of the building to see if she managed to summon up enough common sense to notify them that a large new appliance was going to be delievered to the building.

bet you didn't guess that she didn't call.

it shouldn't have surprised me. even though building policies are very clearly defined and somewhat logical, she still can't seem to get it right.

"i've got condos in 2 buildings i manage, so i've got a lot to do" she said to me once. i believe my response was something to the effect of "i have two jobs, work 14-16 hours a day and spend nearly 3 hours a day commuting - i know what busy is like"

somehow, i doubt she detected the sarcasm in that statement.

so keep your fingers crossed and hope that the dishwasher shows up today within the expected 4 hour window

busted ass

so i stayed home from work today eh? the dishwasher-fixer-dude was supposed to come to fix our dishwasher at some point between noon and two in the afternoon.

the dishwasher-fixer-dude did in fact come - just before 1pm - but he did not fix the dishwasher. why? because the dishwasher water pump is broken and not worth a piece of crap. he mentioned that in order to fix it he would have to dismantle the entire dishwasher and the cost of parts/labour/etc wouldn't really be worth it when you could get a new one for a little bit more and it would come with a warranty.

and now because i had high hopes of having a functional dishwasher, i must spend the rest of the afternoon washing the dishes i've been neglecting for the last several days.

so who wants to come by for a dishwashing party?

geek-tard invades

so i'm debating as to whether i should experiment with a windows to linux switch on some of my home computers. i ran some tests using Ubuntu on my laptop with somewhat favourable results, except that the wireless network card did not work. rumour has it that this may be fixed in the next release and there are workarounds, but we'll have to see. i'm also considering experimenting a dual-boot with Windows XP and some linux distribution (probably Ubuntu) on my desktop to see if i can keep rocking the massive music collection with a minimum of administrative effort. the dual boot would allow me to keep all the important info i already have, but still experiment with the dork-shit and (hopefully) not screw anything important up.

and how bad does it suck that the dishwasher in my new place isn't working properly? in theory, i could just wash all the dishes by hand but that would just be lame. i pay for a place with a dishwasher, so the bloody thing should work. now i have to phone my douche-bag landlord again to get this fixed. i called her on sunday but she still hasn't returned my calls. i'll give her another half hour before i start escalating to her boss. maybe if i don't wait and just escalate it will help in the effort to get her bitch-ass fired. we'll see.

and if you haven't yet, go see Borat. it is quite offensively funny and that's quite rare anymore. many people and movies don't have the guts to do that kind of funny. i'll do my best not to ruin anything for you other than to say that the fight scene is ... ummm ... jaw-dropping and brilliant. definitely worth seeing in the theatre. i didn't even mind too much that the place was packed, and usually that's a pretty good deterrent for me.

i hide my crack in my ass

i loves the news...

a naked man was arrested for carrying a concealed weapon. i guess when you don't have any pockets your only option is to stuff your weapon up your arse.


televangelist Ted Haggard admitted to doing meth and getting a massage from a gay male prostitute, but denies allegations of sex with him. somehow drugs and a massage must me a little less gay than sex? not that there's anything wrong with that.

totally off topic, over the last couple of days it's really occurred to me that the new place that we've moved into is actually quite smaller than our old place despite statements assuring the opposite from my landlord. but then again, my landlord is a total douche bag so i suppose it really shouldn't surprise me all that much.

and because i'm a movie and tv nerd, i love WikiQuote. look for your favourite show and quote away.