Divide by 12. How many hours are left?

Time is a funny thing.

When you have too much of it, you complain that things are slow.
When you don't have enough of it, you complain that things are too busy.

Has there ever been a point in your life when you've had "just enough" time to do the things you want to do and not feel rushed when doing it?

At Christmas time we run through the mall at a marathoners pace to buy things for people to show them our appreciation for all that they've done. In the summer time we're running through the house to get to the car to bring our children to play outside. We never take the time to enjoy the beauty of the snow and how it crunches under our feet because its too cold outside.

When do we have time for ourselves as grown ups? When do we make time just for us? As adults and (soon-to-be) parents - your time is no longer about you. When you're at work, time is about projects, deadlines and maximizing your caffeine intake for the day. When you're home, time is about homework, chores and playtime.

I think once a day, we should make time. Make time for ourselves. Sit back at 3 in the afternoon on a Sunday and breathe, enjoy the summer air or the cool fall breeze on our face.

Time isn't something that should ever be pushed. You never know how much of your own clock is left.

Pure Wanderings

Music: Skinny Puppy - Sparkless

Did you ever have a moment in your day where it made you so incredibly angry and yet you have no idea why it even happened in the first place? 

Let me explain:

I have a friend, lets call them N, whom I have grown to admire and respect for their sure determination in life and how they manage to get everything done that they need to.  I have another "friend", whom I wouldn't call a friend any more for reasons that I will try to explain without sounding too pompus, lets call them F.

My wife at one point in time has been close to both of these people, N more recently and has developed more of a friendship than she's had with F. The problem started when F began to have her baby, which was around the same time that we were trying to have one. 

F got jealous that our doctor was more willing to help us in anyway she could without having to refer us to a specialist as the wait time in our area for a person who isn't pregnant is close to 2 years. This pissed of F to no end as they had been waiting 2 years for their appointment when they had gotten pregnant. That's the first part.

After the baby arrived things had almost come back to normal between them and they would frequently make plans to go somewhere together so that she could meet their new arrival. Weeks would go by, plans would be made, but at the last minute F would cancel saying something had come up. 

At the time, we were living about 6 houses away from where I worked. One of the days which F had cancelled on she had gone to work to show off the baby like all new mothers do, and mentioned that she would go see my wife on her way home. She never did show up. Over the next severval months F would frequently visit the office and never stop by to say hello to me, maybe F felt guilty about cancelling plans on my wife? Probably not, F is too selfious for that. 

Lets bring this back to the current issue at hand. N is getting married soon, and in light of the new friendship has designated my wife as her honorary maid of honour, since she's not having one and we had a wedding exactly like the one that she wants. 

Yesterday, it turns out that F had almost invited herself to go along wedding dress shopping. With the line, "Amanda knows me."

Who invites themselves along to something like that after knowing them for only 3 days? 

Should I tell N about this, and say that they're not really friends? Should I keep it a secret and just stew on it? I don't want to mention anything and ruin what I have already established with N. 

**My personal issue with F is that I was to go into business with Mr. F, but it turns out that he wasn't interested in sharing any of the work with me, just on using and licensing the software I was building to make his life easier. F*ck that.

Cool as...

Shit.

Google released an online API for their Charts application. You can build a chart in a URL an link to it and have a functional chart.




Here's the URL to create it: http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?cht=v&chd=t:100,60,80,10,10,10,10&chs=350x200&chdl=Value1|Value2|Value3


I must say this is the coolest thing Google's done since yesterday.

Source: Google Charts API

Seasons of Change...

Happy Holidays.

In honour of the holiday season I shall share with you this picture that i have found of Santa a-la-South Park.


In other news my tiny area of the unread web will go on a small but temporary hiatus over the holidays while I visit some family and gorge myself on Turkey and gravy... mmmmm Gravy.

In yet, more news, who knew that this would be such an exciting day?, I have accepted a position with another company less than 3 months after starting the job that I'm currently at. I'm leaving before I even finished my probationary period.

Coincidentally, its the same company that I left in the first place. They had contacted me to contract out some work for 3 or 4 months when we started talking about things that have opened up. My basic job function will still remain the same, I'll be responsible for maintaining some web servers and applications as well as providing some training and minor development, I will also get the genuinely terrifiable task of becoming the lead trainer in the Brunei project.

This would be where I'd be going. [all the way on the other side of the world, like 16,000 KM away.]

View Larger Map

Stuck in the middle of ...

Listening to: Nine Inch Nails - Closer

Were you ever left alone at work to fend for yourself?

I'm sure we all have at one point or another, most of the time its not even really much of a big deal. Sometimes it happens as a test to see how you can deal with certain situations, other times its because there isn't anyone around to assist you.

But then there are the times where you really wish there was someone around who could have been there to deal with what you just went through.

It seems weird that I was just helping a student with something that I knew nothing about, yet everything that they said made complete and total sense. It was even to the point where I knew that they had made a mistake in their calculations.

Actually, the only saving grace was that they knew exactly what they were talking about.

I didn't do a damn thing to help them.

Now, I'm going to spend the next 4 hours of my work learning what they were talking about...

Moativated...

As I sit here at work, I'm just barely noticing that I haven't written anything of half-descent quality in a while. While I have not lacked the creative prowess to write a bit of fiction, I have been lacking the time to sit down and begin to compose anything. There are a few ideas about what I have to say in the future.

I've also had the thought of splitting my blog into two parts, one for creating and writing random story ideas, while the other would be used solely for my day-to-day musings. Then I run into the dilemma of: which will get to keep this area? Would you want to see the day to day stuff here? Or the creations? Personally I like the title for creative things, while the URL for the blog would be good for day to day stuff.

I'm open to suggestions.

Fallen in a hole...

I seemed to have fallen off of the planet lately. I guess that would explain the lack of content and updates to my site as well as the lack of sleep... scratch that. That would explain the 10 hours of sleep a night and the feeling of utter exhaustion.

This past weekend we moved into our new apartment, which wasn't very far from our last place, two doors up to be exact.

I guess that explains the aching muscles and sore joints from going up and down the stairs two-hundred times or so. Though the only blessing that we had was the fact that we had our dear, little hatchback. This weekend we essentially treated it like a small pickup truck, carting boxes, odds-n-ends, and anything else that would fit in it up the road. Its getting a good rest now thats for sure.

The great thing is we managed to get our bed up the stairs (after nearly having to sell it when we moved in), as well as a few of the larger items that wouldn't fit in the car, outside and over to the new place before the rain started. Although we did start to move the last of the items as it was raining.

As the rain started my friend Stephen and I took a little break to chat and drank a beer to wait out the rain and move more things. I was even nice enough to give my landlord a beer while he was putting up some of the hardware on our cupboards. I felt bad though because Stephen wouldn't let us give him a drive home in the rain and instead wanted to bike home in the pouring rain.

The new apartment is totally amazing. I'll take some pictures to post tomorrow sometime (if my brain recovers) to share. The painter is coming back tomorrow to fix up some stuff that he screwed up the first time, now the only problem that I can see with that is I'm going to be want to sleeping when he's there and thats going to piss me off if I can't sleep. Jerk better be quick fixing up the bedroom or I'm going to be pretty peeved....