Category: life

1. Amusing sights, yesterday: a changeable message sign on a TTC bus, proclaiming, “GO LEAFS GO”, and a CIBC bank machine with the frozen image of the Windows NT Workstation splash screen on it.

2. Went out to dinner with V for the traditional Sushi Time Pizza (Fried rice crust and mayo topped with salmon and roe). He discussed how many concepts from Hinduism have been taken or distorted. For example, the dowry is supposed to be a gift from both parents given to the bride as a form of insurance in case something happens to the groom. These ideals, along with the caste system, became corrupted after years of strife in the region. I pointed out that William Gibson postulated that in the future, culture and subculture will be endangered species because all so-called exotic memes, such as Hinduism, which took thousands of years to incubate, will have been readily disseminated within a few centuries.

And when he pointed out Moulin Rouge! was “Bollywood movie with white people”, I was suddenly enlightened.

3. “If anyone’s ever promised you the sun, the moon and the stars, tell ’em you’ll settle for BPM 37093.” ‘Cuz BPM 37093 is a giant space diamond, the largest in the known galaxy, that was discovered by the Harvard-Smithsonian Center of Astrophysics. It’s actually a white dwarf star made of 10³⁴ carats of crystallized carbon. No word on when deBeers will show up with the hush money. 😛

It’s been one week since I’ve made my triumphant return to Toronto and started my new job. OK, maybe it wasn’t triumphant ala Liz Taylor’s Cleopatra entering Rome, but it’ll be nice to be able to buy char sui bao again.

The move was the smoothest one I have ever undertaken, thanks to the help of the parents, Furmac and Juice. Everything fit inside a 16 foot cube van, despite all indications that we had too much dang stuff. Furmac pointed out that his working at a geospatial mapping firm helped him optimize the space in the van.

Even the cat travelled well. She got into her carrier grudgingly, and meowed critically on occasion, but it was a far cry from the last move, where she cried like a newborn baby the entire way. She even acclimatized well to the new place; by nightfall she had reconnoitered the area, secured her possessions (the Comfy Wingback Chair and the Food Dish), and went to sleep on top of the comforter.

The new apartment is smaller than my old one, so it feels quite cramped. Or cozy, depending on your mood. We’re also no longer on the 21st floor, so gone are the high ceilings and panoramic views.

It is located in a quiet neighbourhood just west of High Park. Up north is the quasi-trendy European delis and bakeries of Bloor West Village. The disadvantage is that it is too far of a walk to the Village, so I’ll have to take the bus or streetcar if I want to go anywhere.

While “shock and awe” was the buzzword of 2003, the year 2004 will belong to “wardrobe malfunction”.

V has finally figured out who was entering his apartment, and touching his stuff. It turns out the landlord’s preteen daughter and her friend decided to play hooky from school that week and, having nowhere to hide, lifted Daddy’s master keys and helped themselves to V’s apartment. Being morons, they left shoeprints, moved his stuff around, and even turned off his PC. Maybe they should stay in school more often, since they’d make lousy criminals.

The funny thing is, V didn’t find this out with the glass of water, or his motion-tracking camera – it was through the power of MOM. The landlord’s wife discovered her daughter didn’t make attendance on the same days V reported the break-ins, and put two and two together.

I hate it. Despite all the planning you do, you always end up having make major decisions in the last minute.

• Subletter hasn’t been accepted yet do to bad credit. Heck, half the people that called regarding this apartment seemed like fruits.
• TO landlady is either unwilling or unable to find out from the current tenant when she is moving out. We suspect she is going to stay until the very last minute to exact some kind of bizarre revenge on the landlady.
• I can’t even reach the landlord to find out when I can pick up the keys.
• Haven’t decided on how to move – by uber-expensive movers, or disorganized ragtag gang of friends and family who don’t really want to do it in the first place.
• It’s bloody -30°C with the windchill right now.

I can now say it. In a Tuesday morning in late October, I was called into an abrupt meeting with my boss, and was told, due to “rightsizing” initiatives, I was being laid off.

I walked into the meeting room at 10am sharp. I was escorted out of the building by the career consultant within half an hour. I had to surrender my keys and my laptop. I was told to pack up my things, but I promised I would come back later that week to pick them up. The career consultant gave me her card and a pamphlet titled “Losing Your Job: The First 72 Hours”.

I was initially so confused I didn’t know what to think. Business was brisk, and I was even given a new account just the week before. Until that fateful meeting, I didn’t know how fragile my world was. All in all, I was part of a larger crowd of employees let go to balance the books of 2003.

I couldn’t really fault them, though. For example, they could have let us know about the layoffs in advance, but then they run the risk of disgruntled workers stealing stuff – or even stealing customers. They could have waited until after Christmas,but then they couldn’t balance their books. I was given a reasonable severance package, a career consultant, and membership in the company redeployment program. Business is business.

So, for the remainder of last year was me sitting at home, waking up late and pumping out resumes. I started forgetting what day it was; every day was a Saturday. I discovered that employment had contributed a big part to my self-esteem. After all, the first thing people ask you is, “What’s your name?”, followed by “So, what do you do for a living?” Which, at that point, was a big fat nothing.

The most frustrating part of it all, I found, was the fact I was not in control of the situation. I had planned to transfer out of London anyway in six months, and had campaigned heavily to my boss. I was also in the middle of projects and obligations; I had personally promised one client over the phone to take care of an urgent matter just a mere five minutes before The Meeting. But all that was swept aside. My position, my coworkers and customers, my world, they were now gone in less than 30 minutes.

Fortunately, being part of the redeployment program paid off, and I have been reinstated back into the Company. Not in my old position mind you – but in Intellectual Capital Management, and in Toronto. I’m glad I’ll be back at work, and to be back in my hometown.

I am proud to say my design for Silentblue.net has been finalized. I may still work on a few tweaks, and the archives have to be redone, but the final site layout you see is frozen. While I’ve been working on this design since the birth of Silentblue on June 7th, 2003, but finally bit the bullet and deployed it. It has taken me two days.

Wrangling with CSS2 and DIV tags is no fun, but fortunately I had some tools that made the ordeal a little bit painful. The awesome glish.com CSS site explains how to make those crazy floating CSS columns in plain English (something the W3C doesn’t seem well versed in). The DevEdge Netscape Sidebar Tabs provides quick access to W3C’s HTML, JavaScript, and CSS reference guides right inside the Mozilla or Netscape 7 browser.

To top it off, Chris Pederick’s Web Developer Extension for Mozilla and Mozilla Firebird gives you a plethora of excellent website tools. Want to see what the site looks like in 640×480 or without any images? Want to view the CSS file or stored cookies? It’s all there. There are even web shortcuts to HTML and CSS validators. My favourites are the Outline tools, that automatically draw borders around DIV blocks and TABLE cells; they’re a great timesaver when fiddling with margins or looking for missing /DIV and /TD tags.

Unfortunately, these tools are not useable where they’re needed the most – when the viewing the site in Internet Explorer.:rollseyes: If you’ve ever been a web designer, you’re probably nodding your head now. You probably remember, with some affection, coding a complex yet beautiful standards-compliant site, only to spend just as much time working on hacks and workarounds to try to get the damn IE to display it properly.

Here’s a fun one:

<div id="boxcanyon">
<img src="images/boxcanyon_top.jpg" width=804 height=142 alt="" border=0 vspace=0 hspace=0 />
<div id="boxcanyon_middle">
<img src="images/boxcanyon_topoverlay.jpg" width=804 height=114 alt="" border=0 vspace=0 hspace=0 />


This code should display two images, one on top of each other, flush against each other. But IE will not make the two images kiss each other, no matter how much “padding-top”s or “margin-bottom”s you try. No, it only works if you remove all hard returns and spaces from the code:

<div id="boxcanyon"><img src="images/boxcanyon_top.jpg" width=804 height=142 alt="" border=0 vspace=0 hspace=0 /><div id="boxcanyon_middle"><img src="images/boxcanyon_topoverlay.jpg" width=804 height=114 alt="" border=0 vspace=0 hspace=0 />


It took me several minutes of alternatively fiddling with CSS and tearing my hair out to figure that one out. Well, it’s done now. It’s a major improvement over the old quick and dirty “Blue Plaster” layout. I’m not still 100% satisfied with it, but then again, there comes a point where you spend so much time slaving away at something, all you see are flaws… 😉

I have a habit of being rather exact whenever I need to make a big decision. Looking for a new apartment in Toronto was no different.

Being exact means lots of research, such as checking out the local neighbourhoods – obviously descriptors such as “low-income families” or “public housing” can be red flags. Examining crime report statistics from the various police divisions may shed some more light; typically downtown TO and Scarborough get the most crime, and North York gets the least.

And then there’s location, location, location. Is there any nearby malls? How easy would it be to get to work or anywhere else by public transit?

Of course, this was all speculation compared to the real test – actually looking at the apartments themselves.

Candidate #1: Parkdale
Close to downtown core. Spacious, carpeted, and even had special debit cards for the laundry machines. Unfortunately, it was badly maintained. There was a hole the size of my fist in the kitchen. Polyfil splotches lined the walls in the hallway. I’d hate to see what the internals looked like.

Candidate #2: High Park
A quiet residential neighbourhood, hemmed in with a giant park and long parallel streets that don’t intersect. Hence, not very close to the subway or any shopping. My heart sank when the landlady pointed out the only thing available was a basement apartment, but it was only two years old, clean and had a dishwasher. It was also only half buried in the ground, so it had surprisingly large windows.

Candidate #3: Islington Village (of the Damned)
After seeing this apartment, Silverlotus wanted to clean her shoes. It was evidently rented to students, although that doesn’t fully explain the used underwear and pigeon feathers on the floor. There was a scorch mark about a foot in diameter in the middle of the living room floor, the stove and the floor around it was in a dried puddle of reddish-brown grease, and the balcony was covered in pigeon shit. Landlady smiled and said “We’ll fix all of this up!” but that only seems possible if they burn the whole place down and start from scratch.

Oh, the Wanted poster in the front lobby of an elevator rapist was a nice touch.

Candidate #4: Islington Village
A next-door building. Landlady was very friendly, and it had an indoor pool. Unfortunately we were trapped on the 32nd floor due to a busted elevator. The neighbourhood is also a bit skeezy.

Candidate #5: Parkwoods Village
Weird puke-green disco tiling in the washroom. Nicely sponged ceiling, although Silverlotus spotted some patches – possible from past water leakage?

Candidate #6: Don Mills
Too small. It was old, so it had the walls had that weird custardy look when walls get painted over too many times. Cupboards and doors don’t close right because they were caked in too much paint. Why don’t people ever strip paint off?

Candidate #7: York Mills
A basement apartment in a house. We showed up early, no one was home, and we decided to just give up and go home.

Uh, I think we’ll go for #2.

V has a bit of a problem. It appears that someone is entering his apartment…and just moving stuff around. Yesterday, he came back and his computer was off. And his door was unlocked.

The landlord doesn’t know anything about it, and nothing has apparently been taken, but he’s understandably a bit pissed.

So I ICQ’ed him and suggest using a thin piece of scotch tape and tape the door to the door frame. Silverlotus suggested giving a warning shot: getting a glass of water, and arrange it so it’s right behind the door. If someone comes in, then they’ll be a big splash.

Anyway, we wished him luck and went off to see Matrix Revolutions (taking advantage of Rockwater’s Dinner and Movie deal for perhaps the last time).

When we came back, I discovered that V has devised a plan that every geek would be proud of. He installed a keylogger on his PC and bought a cheap webcam. He then rigged the ‘cam to record when it detects motion, and upload images to his FTP server!

He promises he’ll use the glass of water trick too.

“Someone once told me,” my sister told me, “you can tell how a man will treat his wife from how he treats his mother.”

I have a a funny relationship with my parents. It’s not that I hate them, it just seems like we just tolerate each other’s existence. But I have been a bit aloof, and I could always use the advice. Apparently they are, in the end, simply concerned. I have always wanted the best in life, so they just want to make sure that I’m getting it.

“You are probably one of the most financially and emotionally stable of all your peers. Don’t f**k it up.”

In the D Drive: After Furmac bought the Red vs. Blue DVD (essentially the “Office Space” or videogaming) and showed it to me, I was excited to get my hands on Halo PC. If this is the best Xbox game, I feel sorry for people who own an Xbox. Not to say it’s a bad game, but it ain’t no Half-Life. The mentally-challenged AI and poor level design really hurts it. Most of the levels are mindless jaunts into mazes of identical-looking corridors and rooms, and to add insult to injury, the storyline often requires you to turn around and trudge back the way you come. Its saving grace are the great vehicles with great physics.

Another game I’m playing is the freeware side-scrolling RPG called The Spirit Engine. The graphics will remind you for Final Fantasy 1, but the tactics and skillsets are actually very well done. You will definitely have to read the Help to understand the nuances between each character, skill, item, and weapon.