error402's little voices

I haven't used LJ in a very long time. Not sure what drove me to check it out today. Perhaps it's due to the fact the week is winding down a bit and I had a little free time on my hands while I drink a little coffee at my desk from work. Looking over my last few entries I noticed that there has been a lot of changes since those posts. Majority of them good of course. It would probably take me some time to try to get things updated, not 100% sure on whether or not I'll get around to actually make an update post. In the meantime, if there are any folks left that actually check this journal, I can leave on a note that all is well.

The European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the European Union rather than German, which was the other possibility.

As part of the negotiations, the British Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a 5- year phase-in plan that would become known as "Euro-English".

In the first year, "s" will replace the soft "c". Sertainly, this will make the sivil servants jump with joy.

The hard "c" will be dropped in favour of "k". This should klear up konfusion, and keyboards kan have one less letter.

There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year when the troublesome "ph" will be replaced with "f". This will make words like fotograf 20% shorter.

In the 3rd year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible.

Governments will enkourage the removal of double letters which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling.

Also, al wil agre that the horibl mes of the silent "e" in the languag is disgrasful and it should go away.

By the 4th yer people wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing "th" with "z" and "w" with "v".

During ze fifz yer, ze unesesary "o" kan be dropd from vords kontaining "ou" and after ziz fifz yer, ve vil hav a reil sensi bl riten styl.

Zer vil be no mor trubl or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi tu understand ech oza. Ze drem of a united urop vil finali kum tru.

Und efter ze fifz yer, ve vil al be speking German like zey vunted in ze forst plas.

If zis mad you smil, pleas pas on to oza pepl.

Make your own paper Mario characters. *laughs*

http://gotorion.com/orion/singles3.php?t1=Nintendo%20Paper%20Models&f1=miscfunny/papercraft.txt

Can't wait to get home and make a few of these. :3

Ash's birthday party is going to happen today (celebrating today rather tomorrow due to it being Sunday and all). Should be a blast, nothing beats drinking and video games. \(^-^)/

Playing around with the new LJ layouts. Kinda fun actually. Still haven't had the chance to come up with my own. One of these days...when hell freezes over I'll have enough extra time on my hands to sit down and come up with a design.

Sorry, that there wasn't much of an update today. It's been a crazy day of me trying to finish a project, giving status meetings, and meeting with other developers who created other components of the project. It will probably be like this tomorrow as well.

I did however get in contact with a realestate agent, and suppose to be calling them tomorrow afternoon to set up a time to meet. Pretty exceited about that. :)

I honestly don't have much to say today. Somehow managed to avoid a project that has been nothing but a pain in the ass to anyone who has touched it. Not even sure how I avoided it, but another office picked the project up. The only thing I could think of is they seriously had nothing to do.

I did however send out a few emails, about 401k plans, pay increase, looking at getting a house, etc...the next few months should be interesting to say the least. I think the biggest problem is only one main income is coming into the house and I would have to try to figure out if I can even afford a house. I suppose, I'll wait and see.

Crappy start to the morning. Woke up late, which in turn made me late to work.

Last night was an eventful night of playing FFXI with friends, other then that nothing happend.

My weekend was somewhat of a blur since it feels like I didn't really have one as I sit here at my desk. I had a long Thursday and Friday of last week (as shown in my previous posts). I get home on Friday and Ashley thought it was a great idea to have a Drunk Friday (or something like that). I tried to sneak in a nap but Ashley woke me up, or I should probably say, "Kept me awake". Had three friends show up and we ended up playing various video games until the weee hours of the morning. Sadly, the furthest I got was just a minor buzz from the various shots everyone took The night ended at 5am Saturday morning. Ouch. I think I'm still feeling the affects of the lack of sleep I got. Sunday rolled around and did the normal calling my mom, sister, and my oma wishing them a happy mother’s day. I had a chance to play Top Spin on the Xbox360 and have made the conclusion I suck as a tennis player. I plan on playing it a bit more to see if perhaps I pick up on what exactly I need to do.

This morning I woke up around 7am to a nightmare of sorts. Anyone who knows me I generally don't remember any of my dreams, and the few times I have remembered my dreams I was in a semi-conscious state of mind. This morning wasn’t any different; I remember my dreams(had two of them) but was aware that I was dreaming. The first dream was about the becoming a police officer and how it would solve all my problems. I was trying to convince some random unknown people around me that it was a good idea. Since I was aware I was dreaming I was thinking to myself, what in the world was my dream self trying to do? I didn’t share his same idea that becoming a police officer would solve anything. Then I opened my eyes, looked at my clock, saw it was 6am in the morning, and went back to sleep.

About an hour later I was in the same state of mind, "watching" me dream. The setting appeared to be "my" backyard. Not the backyard of the place I currently live, but in my dream I had a feeling that it belonged to me. I was walking around "my" house, when a fairly large bolder landed at my feet. I look over my shoulder and see an ape like figure yelling and screaming at me until I made eye contact with it. Then it froze in its tracks. I ran up to the chain link fence line yelling obscenities at it, when it hurled another large rock at me. That’s when the ape person turned into this viscous thing that I started to fend off, arms flailing, blood all over the place, not sure who it was from but I know I was pist off at it.

Yep. That's it. Strange.

My morning at work as been somewhat crazy, I’m still at the same desk since they don’t know where to move me. A co-worker that I enjoyed working with put in his two weeks notice, because he was tired of the bullshit he had to deal with. I can’t seem to focus on anything to long before getting distracted by something else. I still need to fill out my timesheet for last week, but don’t have all my project numbers from the project managers, and to top it off the project I’m working on had changes approved that no one bothered to tell me about. So, now I have to go back and rework a few things to stay on track.

Eh, this is going to be an interesting week.

*sips his tea*

Well, today started off not as promising as I would have hoped, since it a Friday and all. My day actually started yesterday, I was stuck at work until 9pm dealing with a project that hadn’t had a line of code written but it was due. There was huge frustration with the requirements of the project, mostly due to the fact that not all the requirements were presented to me. So, my morning starts off with having to deal with the mess that happened yesterday. My inbox is full with emails that still don’t have all the answers to the questions me and another developer had, and apparently the offices in the UK and Ireland aren’t much of a help either. We literally had one day to write, form error checking, image upload functionality, form submission process, and all the associated functions behind those, with limited information on where exactly the information was being sent to and the limitations of the standards setup by the people who will be hosting the flash file.

Needless to say I’m a bit annoyed on how this was handles. There is no project manager, only an account manager, two flash producers, two flash architects, and three creative folks. It’s a mess and me and the other flash architect are trying to clean it up seeing how it was just dumped in our laps.

It will be interesting to see how the afternoon turns out.

Not sure how many tech folks run across my blog, or for that matter keep up with the Identity 2.0 buzz, but I just wanted to share two videos of a presentation that Dick Hardt did. The way he presented the information is actually bearable and fun to watch. Personally, I wish more presentations would be handled like this. Humour, informational, easy to remember, and personal enough to allow your audience to connect with what you are trying to tell them.

Here is the first video from OSCON 2005 Keynote - Identity 2.0 and then watch the second video from this years ETech 2006 -- Who Is the Dick on My Site?.

Even if you don't follow the Identity 2.0 information, still check out the videos. The whole reason why I'm pointing them out is not so much of the content of the presentations but the way they were actually presented.

Good stuff, enjoy.

Well, for the last 4 months I've been moved from desk to desk, while the company reorganizes ever department. We have two main buildings, one located near the airport and one downtown. The airport location is a great environment to work in very relaxed, the downtown location is very stereotypical IT shop setup. I was originally located at the airport but moved to the downtown location due to a project and they wanted everyone to be in the same building. It was suppose to be a temporary seating change. Well months have gone by and I was finally informed that I would be permanently moved to the downtown location. I wasn’t too pleased about it but I finally got used to it.

The day after I start moving my stuff in (I was holding off because I wasn’t sure if I would be moved permanently here), I get informed that I would be moving back to the airport building. Alright, not a problem, just a little annoyed. Well, this morning I’m informed that the desk I’m at now (at the downtown location) is going to be used by another group, and they are moving me again…to a desk in a high traffic area of people walking by and makeshift meetings. It’s annoying, distracting, and all around just a horrid spot to be sitting at.

Hopefully it’s just temporary, but my luck so far hasn’t been so fortunate.

Nothing much to really mention today. Last night Ashley went to bed fairly early in the evening. Missed a Limbus run (an event in FFXI). I did manage to play Call of Duty 2 some more, only 4 more achievements to unlock before I move on to another game.

The Guinness project that I got wind of yesterday has turned out somewhat of a flop. Apparently, they already have flash developers working on it at the NYC office. They just need a technical resource for some of the functionality that they are trying to implement with it. Blah, I was really looking forward to building them a micro site. Oh, well maybe next time.

A co-worker and I are talking about going to a GameStop over lunch to see what they have there. He’s been playing Call of Duty 2 as well, and we’re looking at some other games that we could play over Microsoft’s Live service.

I didn't get a chance to update LiveJournal this morning due to being busy as soon as I came into the office. Today has been interesting with a mix of meetings, ending of old projects, and starting of new ones. The latest one is a flash promotional peice for Guinness. I look forward to working on it, actually looks like a fun little project.

Josh, buddy from work, brought "The book of bunny suicides" and the "Return of the bunny suicides". Quite funny little books. Basically several pages of cartoon bunnies that have a death wish. The illustrations are hilarious.

In other random news:

Ashley finally has a tired car. We got her muffler and exhaust mid-pipe fixed (replaced). It actually sounds like a normal car now. Also, managed to work on the new LiveJournal layout for my page. It's looking good so far, still needs a bit of tweaking before I tackle the code needed by LiveJournal to implement a new layout. Hopefully it won't be much of a headache. We also had a little of an upset yesterday, Ashley's cat (Smokey) has been messing with her sores. It looks like two of them got infected. She managed to talk to a vet and looks like Smokey is going to get some antibiotics, which should help.

Nabbed from love_dream_hope (was just randomly looking at other people's LiveJournal)

( 50 of the random questions )

How's everyone doing? Hopefully well and had an entertaining weekend.

My weekend was somewhat uneventful; I did however manage grab Ashley and head to the grocery store to restock the empty refrigerator and pantry. Other then that, there wasn’t much that happened that would important enough to mention. Played Call of Duty 2 on the Xbox360 a little, been going through the entire game again but this time on veteran (the hardest setting). The game play is pretty much the same but this time you just have to take your time instead of going in all guns’n blaze’n method. I also played Final Fantasy XI which shouldn’t be much of a surprise to the people who know me, especially since I’ve been playing it for over 2 years now.

Oh, that reminds me. While out getting groceries, I picked up some vitamins. I’m hoping that I manage to remember to take one each day. So far two days down and many more to go, my massage therapist recommended I take some. I figured it couldn’t hurt anything if I actually did something health once in a while. I’ve got to find something to keep my mind occupied with something other then sex; it’s been pretty bad lately. I know being male doesn’t help much with my case, but finding a distraction isn’t the easiest thing to do in the world. Ashley’s sex drive diminished greatly since she was been on Depo(birth control), which she’s wasn’t happy about, nor was I. She’s been trying different things, and finally came to the point where she’s off of birth control, which granted there might be a chance her sex drive may increase over time, but at the same time…I’m not fond of the idea of her being off of birth control. In any case only time will tell on whether or not her sex drive will come back, then maybe we can look at alternatives.

I’ve been reading about the affects of Depo, a lot of the things people say are positive and few are just down right negative. If you’re interested on reading more about it, you can check out these sites (good and the bad):

- Planned Parenthood – Is the shot right for you?
- Brown Edu. - Depo Provera
- Depo-Provera: An Injectable Contraceptive
- Depo Provera Horror Stories

If you have any comments/thoughts about it let me know. I'm interested in hearing about them.

( Sex memes )

Lately I've discovered the coffee from the shop downstairs (at work). It's fresh and tastes great. However, this morning I walk in and immediately hit with a wall of over-whelming garlic. I like garlic as much as the next person but this actually made my eye water. I purchased my coffee and went upstairs to my office, thinking I had escaped the fumes. I was mistaken; my office is right above the shop...the fumes are coming through the floors. Fun times.

I had my massage appointment yesterday, and feel a ton better. Mostly because my right shoulder blade was over tense. I was able to sleep fairly well last night, even woke up before my alarm went off (still doesn't mean I got out of bed).

I need to pay rent today, and get a hold of my car insurance to make sure my next policy term is covered. Ashley mentioned that she was looking at monster.com for a few jobs, here’s hoping she finds something she likes doing.

My LJ will probably undergo a few changes in the next month or so. Here are a list of things I want to accomplish:
- New layout (custom design)
- Clean up my friends/community list.
- Clean up my avatar selection.
- Use LJ photo gallery.

In other news the project that I said I was 99% done with for work...is still sitting at 99%. Apparently, someone forgot to mention that I'm suppose to use a installer program. What's better is no one provided me all the misc. info I need to cover everything. Fun times.

Went to bed fairly early (for me at least) last night. However, after about 30min laying in bed (watching Myth Busters), Smokey and Pixel got into it. Got up the first time to break it up, but after about another 20min they started again. At this time I was fairly tired and just grabbed Pixel into the bedroom and locked Smokey and Vanish out. Pixel of course constantly watched the door as if it were to open, but finally settled down. She used to sleep with me all the time but then Smokey took over the bedroom. I did have to listen to Vanish trying to open the door through out the night but he finally stopped after I turned off the TV to get some sleep. Then around 4am this morning Pixel started scratching at the door to be let out. I just opened the door and went back to bed; a few hisses from Smokey and Pixel, and things finally went quite.

I feel some what groggy, and ordered a large coffee from the shop downstairs from work. Have a project due this morning, it's about 99% done, just trying to get information from the co-worker who originally worked on the project on how he bundled everything together to give back to the project manager.

Been looking at going back to the gym again, have to talk to another co-worker again to see if he has any ideas. On another note, I do have a massage appointment this evening. Should help with my tense muscles, and maybe a better nights sleep.

Haven't updated in quite sometime it seems. There hasn't been much to report as things have still been going well. However in an effort to keep my friends entertained I'll try to at least start using LiveJournal a bit more. I think if I can form a habit of just making an entry every morning during the week to make a post at work, it might just help. In any case I'll just report on what's happened today to give it a start.

I finished a logo design for a consulting firm as a freelancer, was an easy design and easy pay off. It wasn’t anything to complicated, so I can't complain about some extra spending cash. I got wind of the project form a co-worker I work with at VML.

The same co-workers mentioned that yesterday one of the girls at the restaurant we go to for lunch asked where his "side kick" was (referring to me). I was at a team lunch at Jack Stacks (local BBQ place known for its good BBQ). He said she sounded somewhat disappointed. *laughs*

I still enjoy the job I have at VML, the company has been going through some changes with management, departments, etc... Over the past few days I've been in limbo on where exactly I belonged in the company, and finally found out yesterday. I'm part of the PSD (Professional Services Development) and been moved out of the creative department. Read as: a more technical inclined department when it comes to technology. I’m fine with the change because I have experience in both fields. I'm now part of the FDT group (Flash Development Team), and have a new job title of Flash Architect. I did get more leeway on what can be done with new projects, and few more responsibilities. I didn’t get a pay raise, but that’s mostly due to the fact I’m still a contractor (which I prefer).

In other news, more along the lines at home, I did get my renter’s insurances straightened out and now have all my valuables covers in an instance of damage/theft, which makes me feel fairly good due to fact I have many electronic “toys” in the house. Also setup my insurance for health/dental/vision through work…although I couldn’t add Ashley to my plan, which is a bummer.

If you are wondering how Ashley and I are doing, we are doing fine. We still play FFXI together every waking moment (especially since the new expansion came out), and eat in a lot (yes were just that lazy). Ashley’s cat Smokey still has tumors that look kind of bad on her underside which Ashley’s been trying to take care of. The overall temperament of Smokey seems to have gotten used to me (still doesn’t mean she isn’t mean, but at least I can get her to purr when I pet her). I have however been trying to get us out of the house more since we meet Darrick(Scott) and his group. We played Laser Tag with a whole bunch of people over the weekend. It left me sore, all the running around, but it was a blast.

My family hasn’t changed much, nothing really new to report on that front. Well I think that’s it for today, now lets see if I update tomorrow. :P