It is 6:10am Christmas Eve and I'm just eating my breakfast before going to work. I got the call on Wednesday to work the 7-3 shift both yesterday and today. That's alright, I think today will be a fairly easy day, especially considering the annual Christmas lunch is this afternoon. We got a pretty damn decent dumping of snow yesterday, something between 8 and 12 inches. The roads were either crazy hell, or crazy fun depending on your situation and particular tastes. The plows just around overnight to doing our street, so now I'm going to have to get outside and try to do something about the three foot drift they left at the end of the driveway. So with that in mind, I'd best get moving. Only one more day until Christmas now! I hope everyone is excited and having a good holiday!

Less than four hours until the family arrives from Winnipeg! WooHoo!

Just before I went to sleep last night, I had an idea. I'm not sure where it came from, but it came and here it is. Streetcleaning. We could get vehicles that have more clearance from the ground, lets say about three feet. Then, take some people, and tape them to the bottom. Then, drive the vehicle around, and the people can pick up the garbage as it passes underneath. Bonus: Great way to make use of prisoners!

In other news, Adam and I set up a VPN last night and I'm pretty excited about it. Now we have the freedom to do a lot of kick ass multiplayer gaming. And thus armed with this knowledge, I plan on setting one up between the brother and I so we can multiplay in previously denied realms. Computers are indeed beautiful things.

I'm pretty excited right now. Wayne and I finished putting the pool table back together this afternoon!! It felt really damn good to break out my personalized cue and get playing again. It was just like old times back in Winnipeg, walking around with a rum&coke while analyzing the lay for the best shot/successive shots. I've been playing on bar tables for the last while, and I just can't stress enough how much better (and difficult) this table is. If you can master the game on this table, then going back and playing in the clubs again is like returning to the kiddy leagues with their small tables and huge pockets. That said, I learned the lesson this afternoon that I'm a little out of practice hehe. With that in mind, I'm think I'm going to go have a few games with the old man. :)

Well I had my oral surgery 2 days ago, and the healing process is coming along about as smoothly as can be expected. That is to say, there's still some pain, and there's still a large array of foods unavailable for consumption, but it's all good. The bright side is that I'm prohibited from consuming the majority of those naughty Christmastime foods that are so...counter-productive...to the time I've put in at the gym.

Only five more days until the Winnipeg family arrives in Waterloo - WooHoo I'm excited! Dan I'm taking you to Roxannes LOL ;).

K's World - Celebrating a full Year of blogging. 

Ladies and Gentlemen, my faithful readers. Today's blog marks the official first anniversary of K's World!

It almost came upon me by surprise, but I was looking through my archives recently when it suddenly hit me - It's been about a year now. I double checked, and behold - First blog was dated December 15th, 2003.

I remember well having requested a blog for the DivineQuest.net website, and being turned down in what at the time I felt was a distinctly rude manner. I took that disappointment and created my own niche in protest, vowing it would be far more interesting and last a lot longer than anything on the ill-managed DQ site. (For the record, DQ made the decision to start up player weblogs after I had begun this one, and has since trashed the section - due to lack of production or lack of interest I don't know, by then I had quit playing the game.)

K's World has been through quite a few changes since the inception. Including two or three major template changes, and a constant series of link additions, deletions, and reorganizations. Content wise though, things have stayed fairly consistent. Other than the abandoned InotD section. But I would like to think that in spite of a consistent array of themes, the delivery of said themes has improved. It is also my intention to work hard at continuing to improve.

That said, the last year has been pretty damn interesting, and I'm more than happy to have shared so much of it via this medium. I'd like to thank my readers for their perseverance through the year. I hope everyone who has chanced upon this little corner of the world wide web has enjoyed their visit, and continues to do so in the future!

~BC

People are idiots.

My first complaint for today is in relation to the car. Mom comes home from work and tells me to take a look at the rear end, so I do, and I find some fancy new cracks. That's a bit of a piss off, so I said to her 'What someone rear-ended you? How could they manage that it's not very icy out?" She says that she has no idea how it happened. In fact, the knowledge that nothing happened while either of us was driving yesterday, today or any recent days for that matter, and the damage being brand new - has led to the deduction that someone hit the car while parked. Of course, whoever did so, didn't have the common decency to wait for the unknown owner of the vehicle to arrive to inform about the mistake and damages. It's not surprising, I've seen it before. I've walked through the parking lot at Future Shop and seen an old man back right across the lot and slam into another car, only to punch it back into drive and take off.

My second complaint for the day is our idiot garbage pickup. In the past, there have been problems with helping them decide what constitutes garbage and recycle. The recycle materials are always loaded into nice blue containers whereas normal garbage isn't - an obvious difference.

Now, being the type of people we are, with lots of boxes in the house from moving, and the unpacking an ongoing process - we at times have extra boxes that need to be gotten rid of. Usually, the strategy is to use one of these boxes for garbage, and then set it out with the garbage bin. The first attempt at this was rebuffed though, as the mixed content of garbage and cardboard seemed to confuse the pickup fellows into thinking the entire box was meant to be recycle. But, since it wasn't packaged to their standards, we were left with a nice green sticker detailing the art of proper recycle packaging.

So last night, as we set out another box filled with garbage, I took the extra precaution of marking the box on all four sides with a black felt pen "GARBAGE". Not only that, I made sure to separate the garbage and recycle in the most obvious way - distance! Garbage on one side, recycle on the other - we're talking about a separating distance of feet in the double digits here. No way, I thought, they could screw this up. But I shouldn't have been so sure. I walked outside today only to find yet another helpful green sticker on our box of garbage detailing proper packaging of recycles. How nice.

It was 1 year and 5 days ago that I first started at FLR. Now, with the benefit of hindsight, I can look on it more rationally as opposed to the general dislike I had while employed.

I think it was a good experience, in the long run. It taught me that there are decidedly worse jobs out there than anything I had previously worked, and that people (Myself and coworkers being the examples here) will put up with all kinds of crap when in need of cash. I received a lot of really great training though - PCB Handling & Safety, Mercury Handling & Safety, Transportation of Hazardous Materials, Fall Protection, etc. Honestly, that's the kind of training everyone needs in life! But I'm pretty sure I inhaled entirely uncool amounts of mercury vapour in the course of my employment.

But to be honest, there were a few pretty decent people there, and we did manage to have our fun times. I have no doubt that far worse workplaces exist.

I just have no desire to go back. But that's a personal choice.

More Far Cry 

A new depth of madness?

Today I was looking at the clock on the computer. Not just the little display on the bottom right corner, but the full display when you open it and get the clock with the hands and the ticking seconds. I sat there and stared at it for probably a minute, and then I became really annoyed that there's no anti-aliasing on those tickers. The seconds kept ticking by, and I could see the pixels shifting and creating little jagged staircases. For crying out loud, couldn't they at least double the pixel count or something?

Am I losing my mind when I can't stand the jaggies on the damn time display?

I'm annoyed at the weather. It's not really cold enough to wear my winter jacket, but it's not warm enough to feel comfortable in a fleece. It keeps snowing, and then melting. It snowed the other day, then it got foggy, then it rained for most of the following day before getting really foggy again. The damn snow is all gone again, and it's still raining. This limbo is getting old quick - It's December 8th already - Where the crap is winter!?

This is me playing Far Cry. Holy crap does this game ever kick ass!! 

I got my layoff notice today. Unless orders pick up, Friday will be my final day (Along with 5 other people). It's a shame, I was hoping to squeeze out another week or two, but I'm just happy it lasted this long. There had been talk back at the start of November about a layoff, but business was good and there remained a healthy supply of work.

It's all good though, I've been saving my pennies and have quite enough saved up to last at least a little while :).

If there's anything amusing about it all though, I thought it would be the fact that Friday is the last day for 6 of us - and the Christmas party is on Saturday. Will there be any unhappy souls there that evening, drinking their unemployment woes away, and consequently unleashing their anger to the delight of all (or just me)? We shall see!