I Figured it Out

Ever since the time change last week, I've been all fucked up. Who would think that one hour time difference would wreck me so much? I used to do shift work damnit! I used to work 12-hour nights and then switch back to a regular sleep schedule. Jet lag when I come back from Asia doesn't affect me as much as this 1-frickin-hour time change did. Every night I ended up going to sleep at 2am and every morning I have to wake up at 6:30am. No wonder I've been so exhausted all week.

Quality Time

Celia often works on weekends. I could probably count on one hand how many weekends she's had off in the past year (Saturday and Sunday). What this usually means to me is that I'm home alone with the kids. I have to feed them, entertain them, clean them, and/or put them to bed. I'm not saying this is a bad thing, but it is tiring. The nice thing about this is that I can have some real quality time with them. I don't get to play with them much on weekdays because it's all business when I get home: prepare dinner, feed, clean up, bathe, bedtime. It's nice to spend the day to just play with them.

Pet Peeve

You know what I find annoying? When people say, "I use my bluetooth to talk on the phone while driving." "Bluetooth" does not refer to the device itself. "Bluetooth" is wireless protocol used to connect devices over a short distances. That thing hanging off your ear is just a wireless headset that connects to your phone using "Bluetooth". It's quite common for people to use the term this way and it drives me nuts.

The Door is Closed

When I bought my first iPod, I was a little unsure of how often I would actually want to put headphones on and drown out the world with my music. At first, I would hook it up to some portable speakers so I could still hear stuff going on around me. I'd probably still do that except now I wear my headphones at work so I can ignore people that try to talk to me. It's not that I don't want to talk to them, I just don't want to talk to them. I can still kinda hear them cuz I don't turn it up all the way, but now I have an excuse for why I completely ignored them. It's great.

I'm a Jerk

You know that comedian Russell Peters? Look him up if you've never heard of him, but I'll just say he's pretty fucking funny. Anyway, one thing he said that was funny and really really true was when he tells the white guy that he will never be as racist as someone from the minority. Like when I make all kinds of racist jokes towards white people or when I discriminate against other minorities because it's okay cuz I'm a minority too. Okay, I admit this is despicable behaviour and I'm a terrible person for doing it. In my defence, I will say that... um, okay, there's no real defence for this but he's totally right about it. Minority groups will be the most racist bastards you'll ever see and the white man can't say anything or else he'll be a racist. There was a white guy that did that to me once. I'd describe him to you but they all look the same to me...

Flirting 301

A few years ago I wrote something about how to flirt. I really hope this helped you guys out there. I hope you were able to successfully flirt with that girl you really like without coming off too creepy. I kinda realized - 4 years later - that other side of learning how to flirt is the awareness of when someone is flirting with you. Being the handsome and attractive devil that I am, I give you this information based on personal experience. With that in mind, please be aware that if you find someone flirting with you (you know this because of what I'm about to tell you) and you flirt back and end up getting rejected, well... that's what you get for taking dating advice from me. Dummy.

How to Tell She's Flirting with You:

1. She mimics your movements - if she's into you, she'll lean when you lean, she'll turn when you turn, and she'll dance like an idiot. Like you.
2. She makes an effort to touch you - when she touches your knee or touches your arm or find reasons to get you to put your arm around her, she doesn't think you're disgusting.
3. She licks her lips - no, she's not trying to be all sexually suggestive, she's trying to get you to listen to her and she's drawing attention to her mouth. Be careful with this one - she may have just eaten some chips and still thinks you're gross.
4. She makes eye contact - if her eyebrows are angled in and she gets wrinkly between her eyes, she's probably just mad at you and is giving you the evil eye. The key to this one is eye contact while smiling.
5. She asks for your number - she either wants to talk to you again or you've just crashed your car into hers and she wants to sue your ass. Please remember the context of the situation is key.

Most of these are covered in my original flirting post but since you're having trouble meeting girls, I thought I'd lay it out for you. You know, so you don't have to read between the lines.

Procrastinators Never Learn

After my computer backup issue, or lack of backup, I was going to buy an external hard drive for backing up my shit. That was in December. Now that its February, I'm seriously considering buying that external hard drive so I don't lose all our stuff again. No really, I'm going to have an external backup before my 2nd anniversary.

Change for the Sake of Change

Recently, King George Highway was renamed King George Boulevard. This just makes all the difference in the world. Imagine the possibilities! No seriously, I like the new name better but I'm not sure it makes any difference whatsoever.

Highway it is...

I don't consider myself conceited or self-centered. Generally speaking, I think I'm pretty humble and selfless. I am a nurse, after all. Anyway, with that said, I just want to make it absolutely clear: my way is better.

Transplant Surgery

About a week before Christmas we had a bit of an emergency. Nothing life-threatening, but still pretty traumatic at the time. We turned our iMac off for the night and the next day when I turned it on, the OS wouldn't start. I played around with it for about 2 days and then did some serious troubleshooting. My not-so-expert evaluation was that the hard-drive failed. This could easily be fixed by bringing it in to an Apple store and they would replace the harddrive under the AppleCare warranty. Unfortunately, at the time I bought the iMac, I chose to upgrade the RAM and HDD rather than buy the extended warranty. D'oh! So I did what any computer-geek wannabe would do: I bought a new harddrive, opened up the iMac and swapped out the harddrive by myself. Super easy to do and I doubled the storage capacity. Only problem is the data recovery part on the old failed harddrive is going to cost a lot of money. I'm putting it off until Celia really really really needs something from it.

One More Thing...

So yesterday Apple announced their new tablet device, the iPad. I realize that the name isn't great but it kinda makes sense. It shows a connection to their #1 device, the iPod and it resembles a pad (of paper). Why do people immediately think of feminine hygiene products? There are other things called pads. Do you think of a menstrual pad when you refer to protective gear in hockey? or when you're writing on a pad of paper? or if you use a heating pad? Seriously, why would you compare a tablet device to menstrual pad? Grow up. Anyway, the new iPad has taken a lot of flak for being a big letdown. People want it to multitask, they want it to make phone calls, they want it for video conferencing, and they want it to pleasure them in obscene ways. Steve Jobs never said it was meant to any of these things. Email, music, ebooks, photos, and browsing are all it is really meant to do. Okay, I agree that the browsing is a bit of a fail with out flash support but if you've ever surfed on an iPhone for any length of time, you're used to it not working anyway. Still sucks, but you get used to it. I personally like this new device. It is exactly something that I've always wanted. I don't want a laptop - you can't use it in portrait mode, you pretty much have to sit it on your lap or a table, and you have to open it to use it. The tablet turns on just as fast as your iPhone (don't even try to tell me your laptop is ready to go that fast), its a convenient size and shape, and it does exactly what it was meant to do. It is not a laptop replacement, nor a smartphone alternative. Like he said, it is something inbetween. Yes, it is missing a few things, namely a usb port and an sd card slot, but otherwise, I think it fills the role for which it was made quite well.

Where Did You Go?

I've been away for a while. It's totally not my fault though, I've been so busy with... stuff. Okay okay, it's completely my fault. My bad. Sorry. Let's just have a quick summary of the crap in my head over at the moment.

Did you know you only needed on space after a period? I mean when you're typing, not when you're handwriting, dummy. You're probably wondering "when did this change?" Well, it wasn't that long ago, it was just with the invention of the word processor on a computer. Well I still like to have 2 spaces and I'm not submitting anything to a publisher so tough shit.

Remember when Michael Jackson died last summer? What were you doing when you found out? Anyway, I got into a debate with my co-workers about this. I'm a huge fan and I think he was a musical genius. Some (most) people I work with think he was a freaky pedophile. They weren't around for the glory years so I don't blame them for not understanding. So anyway, I was watching This Is It and the whole thing is like a documentary about the making of his big concert. I'm telling you again, he was to pop music and dance what Mozart was to the piano and classical music. What Newton was to physics. What Schwarzenegger was to action movies. They changed it all and made it was it is today. Hey, I'm a fan.

Blogging is difficult in the age of Facebook. The problem is that Facebook usually gives me just enough space to make a smart ass comment without having to get into great detail. Blogging almost forces me to explain the joke because there's just so much damn space to type. I promise to try and write here more often so you can read about all the stupid shit in my life.

2009 - The Year in Review

I started creating this list in December but never got a chance to finish it. Next month: new year's resolutions.

12. Twins Starting Daycare
11. Celia Starting School
10. Financial Ruin
9. Twins Start Talking
8. Modern Warfare 2
7. Cathy's Wedding
6. Celia's Emergency Surgery
5. More Financial Ruin
4. the Big C hits close to home
3. Christmas
2. Michael Jackson dies
1. I started cooking

Someday I'll get into the details of these but not right now.

Cutest Damn Kids in the World

One of my favourite things to do with my kids is just watch them play with their toys. It's so cool to see how they are developing their imagination. You can see that they have little stories and scenarios in their head when they are playing wiu their toys. Lucas drives his toy cars around like they're in a race. Sometimes the crash or go flying but his sound effects and facial expressions are adorable. Amelia will take a stuffed animal or doll and play mommy with it. Today she had a doll wrapped up in a towel. Then she took it to the bathroom, sat it on the toilet and then brought it back and pretended to wash it and wrap it in a towel. The whole time she's talking about what she's doing. "wash wash wash. It's cold! Put your blanket on!". Damn my kids are cute.

You Can't Handle the Truth

If I get an email and then the sender tries to recall it, I read the email anyway and then I open the recall so I'm being all responsible and shit.

Try it Again

I was always interested in having my own website. My ISP even provides webspace and a few years ago I even tried it out for a bit. It was a bit tedious to make web pages and upload them and manage it all the time so I deleted all the stuff and gave up. Now don't get me wrong, I'm no quitter - I refuse to completely quit smoking, right? I'm just looking for an easier way to manage a website. Now, in 2009, I think I have my solution: iWeb. So simple, so pretty. I know, no guy should ever use the word "pretty" unless he's trying to make out with someone, but seriously, iWeb makes pretty pages. Nothing fantastic/incredible/awesome/innovative, but that might be because I don't know what I'm doing yet. I just need the space to post some pictures so it'll never be super-fancy. Check it out.

Too Bad Cuz I Think I Had a Chance

I just have to say that I am 35 years old and I have a crush on Taylor Swift. She's just so damn cute. Too young though. She falls outside the standard "half your age plus 7" rule.

The Great Debate

I'm a geek. I won't go so far as to say I'm a nerd because I don't know enough about nerdy things to be a nerd but I like nerdy things so I'm a geek. Anyway, one of the things I love is my computer. I really love my iMac but I've used Windows for years. The nice thing about Windows is that you can use just about any kind of hardware and there are millions of different little apps you can download over the net (some are bad so don't think it's a good idea to install every pop-up). It's pretty customizable and let's you have quite a bit of control over your computer. The bad thing about Windows is that it tries to support all kinds of hardware and there are millions of different little apps that you can download over the net. This increases the potential for problems and instability and bugginess. Since Windows is great for gaming and a Windows PC is pretty cheap, despite it's downfalls, it's still a good option.

The funny thing about Apple is that all the things we like about Windows PCs aren't there in a Mac. You're stuck with the hardware they give you, not a lot of software (especially games), and it's expensive. However, all these restrictions make for a very stable computer that works like a dream. I like their designs as well. It may not be for everyone, but I like the look of their stuff. What's it worth to you to have a sweet-looking computer that has very few problems?

Happy Halloween

Last night was a perfect night for Halloween. Clear skies, warm weather, scary H1N1 atmosphere... what more could you ask for? Anyway, we didn't end up taking the kids door-to-door because they still don't get it. That's fine with me, I'm a pretty lazy person anyway. The twins were pretty damn cute in their recycled Star Wars costumes. Last night was the very first time ever that I've worn face paint/makeup for halloween. I usually hate having stuff on my face like that.

There Are No Ads

You know what I just found out? I can make money off this blog. Not really off the content of the blog, but basically I can have ads added to my page and when you click on it, I get paid. There's more to it than that but that's kinda what it's about. Sounds great. Sign me up. Click on the ads.

I'm not going to sign up for this. Don't look for ads. I'm not getting paid. I'm just here for my fans.