*yawn*

So I went to Canada for my yearly trip last weekend. Pictures are here (nothing you haven't seen on most postcards). I think this will probably be the last time I go the weekend before Christmas. People were driving like absolute IDIOTS on the QEW. All Canadians were tailgating over 90mph and merging and changing lanes within inches of each other (also above 90mph...). Eaton Center in Toronto was packed ungodly beyond belief, as were the surrounding streets downtown. So much for a relaxing vacation! I must say that my onboard navigation system kicked ass for getting me around Niagara and Toronto without worry. Map? Whats that? Oh yah, my car also really really likes cruising above 70mph :)

The other day I found two pretty decent BitTorrent trackers that replaced the infamous Supernova site that went down awhile back. These are the four best trackers that I know of:

• The Pirate Bay
• Mini Nova
• New Nova
• TV Torrents

Winter Sucks

So I now have a car that I actually want to keep around for awhile, which means not just leaving it the way it is for winter. $110 for four new waterproof floormats. Ching. $20 for new wiper blades/arms. Ching. $540 for four new Bridgestone Blizzak WS-50 tires, including mounting, balance, and installation. Ching. Ever driven a large rear wheel drive car with balding all weather tires in snow? Yah. I have less than a month to buy a 2005 CD set for my navigation system for my yearly trip to Canada. $200. Ching. I hope to sell the regions I'll never drive in (like California, etc) to make some money back on those.

I think in the Spring I'm going to buy new rims and performance tires so that in the future I can do a fall/spring tire swap myself (or at least save money on tire mounting charges). I bought my new tires off of tirerack.com. They were ~$15 a tire cheaper than any place around here (yes, including shipping). Is there anything you CAN'T buy on the Internet anymore?! ;)

Whoopti Dew!

Nothing cool has happened since I got my car. I think it'd be pretty hard to top that :) My new job is going ok I guess. At the end of the day, a job is a job and work is work. I think I'd like to pull an Office Space. "I'd relax, I would sit on my ass all day, I would do nothing." Actually, the Megamillions drawing was a few minutes ago... maybe I can finally do nothing! With some of my co-workers if the pool wins, or alone if my personal tickets score. One can only hope.

I finally got my paperwork to get my license plates today and had to go to the DMV. Let's just say they lived up to every cliche, every movie, every line a comedian has ever spoken. *TWO* people handling a room full of people. Average time handling each person? ~8 minutes. How do I know? Because I stared at the clock on the wall waiting with hate and angst hoping one of them would spontaneously combust and provide some entertainment. What if checkout clerks at grocery stores took as long as these people to do menial paperwork? God help us all.

Sinatra was right

"Fairy tales can come true, it can happen to you. If you’re young at heart." I took delivery on my favorite car this week: a loaded 2001 BMW 740iL. I've wanted one of these bad boys ever since I rode in one back in 1997. The best part? The price. I won't say how much I paid, but lets just say after taxes it cost less than most new Hondas or Toyotas. It also is a CPO (Certified Pre-Owned) vehicle, meaning that if I have any problems with it, I just waltz into a BMW dealership and get it fixed.

This thing has a leather interior with real wood trim, power windows/locks/trunk/mirrors, heated seats with 3 mode memory, a/c, cruise control, auto dimmed mirrors, rain sensing wipers, onboard computer, 6 CD changer, GPS navigation, power moon roof, three programmable radio transmitters, dynamic stability control, remote keyless entry, dual zone climate control, alarm system, 4.4 Liter V8, and built-in analog phone service.

Dead Tech

This week I attended the Spectrum International MultiValue Conference in Cincinnati. Basically, this conference is for a technology that is dead and should be gone. It's a database format (if you can call it that) based in technology from the 70s/80s that uses green screens. Green screens. Why am I attending a conference in 2005 about a database with a green screen interface? Because my new employer's accounting system is based on it. That's fine and all, use what works, don't fix what isn't broken.

I don't get how IT professionals can sit around for 20 years and say "this is all I know, and it's all I will ever work in". It's like FoxPro. DIE ALREADY. Since I've started in IT I've had to progress from HTML to Cold Fusion to ASP/VBScript to Visual Basic to C#.Net, and that's just programming languages. I've also had to pickup knowledge of packet routing, security, hardware troubleshooting, and systems/database administration. The fact that these grey-bearded, beer bellied guys have conferences for themselves annually to tout 20 year old technology baffles me. I walked away from the conference with only one valuable nugget of information: two vendors put out a .NET data connector to connect to their horrid "databases" since they are neither industry standard OLE DB or ODBC compliant. Praise Jesus! I don't have to learn their archaic "TCL language" to utilize their data. The IT God's have truly smiled upon me.

New Toy

I just got a new cell phone, and it's the best phone I've seen yet. It's an LG VX8100 through Verizon. It cost $200, but after rebates will be free. The thing has 1GB+ of storage capacity (I bought a separate miniSD card), an MP3 player, video player, 1.3 megapixel camera, speakerphone, dual stereo speakers, and bluetooth. I have the entire current season of Family Guy, a few Chappelle show episodes, and some MP3s on it with ~600MB to spare. I've also successfully connected my laptop to the Internet over Verizon's National Access netowrk via Bluetooth. How sweet is that? I can get on the net on my laptop anywhere my phone has a signal pretty much!

Day 1

I moved into my new office today. It's a bit cramped right now, but all of the clutter and junk will be moved into a dedicated server room over the next few weeks. Then in goes my pictures, posters, mini-fridges and other nifty swag. Some pictures:

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

This job is not about glamour anyways. It's about opportunity and advancement. The growth potential is practically limitless. All went well and everyone seems really nice there. At least at this place the boss took me to lunch the first day instead of sending me to my desk for the next three years. We'll see how things go as the weeks go on, but things look good so far!

FREEDOOOOOOOOM!

After three years of working for the most anti-employee and self centered company that I've worked for in my ten years as a professional IT/IS person, I've finally landed a new job! I will be in a similiar role to what I have always been, which is a programmer, help desk person, and all-around-IT-guy (servers, workstations, T1, VPN, firewalls, etc). The only differences will be two things:

• It involves some travel (Houston, Norfolk, UK, Ireland)
• I have the word "manager" in my title

A few words of advice for "little Napoleon's" out there running companies: don't expect quality employees to stick around when you have such draconian policies in place like no tuition/educational reimbursements, no formal reviews, no cost of living wage increases, no bonuses, nepotism taking precedence over qualified personnel, deciding to institute an all-employee uniform policy (and making the employees pay for the uniforms). This isn't 1960. Get with the times.

Zoo and stuff

This past weekend I went to the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo and snapped some shots with my digital camera. For those visually challenged, the picture on the right is of a bear. That place has changed alot since the last time I was there (which I can't even remember when that was). Monkey Island is still there! :) I thought these little guys were pretty cool (I forgot their exact name though).

I also went to the July 4th fireworks display at Tri-C this past weekend. Meh. At least the fireworks at Edgewater are synched up to music (at least they used to be?), and you know when they're actually done. At least two or three times during the Tri-C set we thought "ok, that must have been the finale". That isn't saying that what we were watching was utterly spectacular or anything, but more there'd be several fireworks going off at once, then a long pause before anything else was set off. Maybe fireworks in general just bore me anymore?

Email!

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More power to ya

So you get dumped. What to do with all your new found discretionary cash? Upgrade your computer of course! After much teeth nashing and enough four letter words to fill an encyclopedia set, I'm posting this from my new PC, composed of:

• Thermaltake VA8000 Armor Chassis
• DFI Lanparty Nforce4 Ultra-D Motherboard
• AMD Athlon 64 3000+ Processor
• ATI X800XL 256MB PCIe Video Card
• Western Digital 74GB 10000RPM SATA Raptor Drive
• Western Digital 200GB 7200RPM PATA Drive
• NEC Dual Layer DVD Burner
• Mitsumi Black Floppy Drive
• Generic MultiFormat Media Reader

New Year!

Got back from Niagara Falls a week or so ago. My advice is this: DON'T GO. The exchange rate is HORRIBLE. My hotel room bill was $380 Canadian, and when it was converted to US, it was $322. Get the picture? At least I got some cool pictures out of it, like the one on the right. p.s. we stayed at the Niagara Hilton this time. I definitely liked the Embassy Suites better. Next time we're gonna try the Marriott.

Some people have said "dude that torrent site you linked to below doesn't work. Well you're right, but there are still plenty of other torrent sites out there, like this one.