hwan.com

I've denied it long enough -- I am addicted to coffee. Or rather, I experience the effects of being addicted to coffee. That is, if you bother me before I've had a cup of joe I will be likely to get upset for no good reason at all. However, once I've had a few sips I'll be a right Christian again and the day's troubles will pass over me like so much wind. Since it turns out that BioShock requires Windows XP (which I do not have), I downloaded (via Steam) Psychonauts and am really enjoying it. Actually, I was inspired to do so by the entertaining review by Zero Punctuation . The fact that Tim Schafer of Day of the Tentacle (one of my all time favourite games) had a hand in it helped. Eh, I don't really feel like reviewing it myself -- the video review says it all, really. A chore-filled weekend, if you were curious.

Sleep! It evades me yet again! This time I woke up to troubling, irrational, senseless dreams. My body is humming and alive, and I want it to be quiet. I went to a karate class at a friend's school, and I worked out like I haven't in quite a while, my own school being temporarily closed for the summer. At least, I believe that's why my mind cannot sleep. I imagined that the phone was ringing, but I do think it could be so, that it was a trick of the psyche. In any case, here I am again, restless and surrounded by a thousand things undone.

I watched the rest of "The Maxx" last night. I had seen it in bits here and there back when YTV used to play alternative stuff late at night. At least, I think it was YTV. I was intrigued by the mystery of who everyone really was, of what happened to make them who they were. Turns out I had seen almost all of the series except for maybe the last hour or so, where much (but not all) is revealed. After taking it in, I looked it up and read how it differed from the graphic novel. Still, the animation and voice-acting was really well done. Do they have that kind of dramatic animation series these days? Outside of anime? I visited my parents last week when I visited the dentist and my family doctor. We had dinner on the new patio my dad had recently finished, which is actually fairly impressive. Eating outside seemed so foreign to me, something I'd never done there although apparently they do it all the time during the summer. I dunno, I thought it was neat. I was for some rea...

So actually I haven't been at home much this weekend, and when I have been it was generally sleeping off the previous night. Thursday I went out for drinks at Bar Wellington, and then at Shanghai Cowgirl where I chatted with some Book City employees, including the former owner of Bakka books! That was pretty cool. Friday night I went out with Pops for our 9-ball and Chinese food combo. The twist on the evening was the power outage on the block between Bathurst and Claremont, above Queen Street and south of Dundas. I was in a Second Cup ordering a coffee and a multi-grain bar when everything shut down, leaving us in the dark. It was much like that blackout of 2003 , with the inoperative traffic lights and people on the sidewalk, just standing and taking in all the darkness. In time the power returned, but for a good while the sense of night pervaded. I had meant to not drink at all but.. well, you know how it is. And thus I spent Saturday day in bed, cursing the brightness of the d...

Oh!!! I lost my cellphone. It either never made it back to my pocket when I used it in the cab or it fell out when I jumped out to greet my friend. Either way, I don't know where it is. Certainly, a certain pressure is lifted when you know that people cannot reach you and you in turn cannot reach them, seeing as my phone has all my contact numbers. The battery has likely died by now too. Well, I suppose I could try calling all the cab companies to see if they have a lost and found for this type of thing, which I'm sure happens all the time. Damn those good looking slacks and their tiny pockets! Then again, this could be the excuse I needed to upgrade my phone. Le big fat sigh.

I've been reasonably happy with iTunes thus far. Well, the iTunes SERVICE, as in buying albums and songs online has been great, convenient yadda yadda yadda. The iTunes APPLICATION of course, is another story, what with its frequent crashes, inexcusable memory usage, and lack of song queuing and global hotkeys give it a WinAmp 0.1 beta feel -- usable, but definitely needs improvement. So I've been using iTunes today to grab album artwork. Fun, ok yay. But then I tried to get the cover for Mount Sims and iTunes CENSORED THE IMAGE! Those self-righteous bastards!! I mean c'mon, if Amazon.com is willing to post the original artwork, why not iTunes? Bleah. Oh, and here's my peeve about the iTunes application -- there's no Undo! I mean what the hell? I discovered this glaring omission when I accidently hit Delete while I was in the Music library, when I really meant to delete the text in the search box. I then spent the next 10 minutes trying to figure out which song I h...

Ok, I'm going to see if I can't keep my comments and such to under 40 minutes. Urk, that's seems rather long.. let's try for 25 minutes. The bouts were 3 minutes, with bare feet (!) on a school soccer field. It was rather hard ground, with lots of tough brush, not the soft grass you might think. A slight breeze, no direct sunlight -- pretty good conditions. [ Fight 1: Reg vs Brian (1/3) ][ 2/3 ] [ 3/3 ] Brian has lots of pep and energy, with a pretty good, fast sidekick. I also like his footwork, and how he squares up before attacks. It's too bad I missed the takedown -- I had to switch to a lower resolution in order to get more time per clip (memory card related issue, I think). The ground fighting seemed somewhat ineffective with the gloves on. [ Fight 2: Hwan vs Brian (1/2) ] [ 2/2 ] Ok, I left my bandana at Reg's place, is why I'm using that ridiculous elastic for my long hair. At the 11s mark you can see Brian catch me with a reverse sidekick, and I was...

Hola, amigos. I was going to write about something but I've forgotten it. I do miss dancing, I wonder how that came to be. Maybe one day I'll lose my mind, or at least the part that cares about what other people think, and just dance wherever the hell I want with my iPod. Ribs are much better now, but getting into and out of bed is still a wincing chore. Today I spent much of the day in a stupor, attempting to wait out a hangover. It's damned how upset I can get sometimes, over nothing, just through thinking and replaying events in my head. I seem to always remember the things I dislike, that I regret and lament, waves of unpleasant memories drowning me, so much so that I cannot remember the good times that I've had. For whatever reason only the bad ones stick out, preventing me from enjoying any reminisces. It's an odd thing. Is it me trying to remember mistakes I've made so that I can avoid them in the future? Tortuous, these memories. Maybe that's why I t...

Dear customers who write in to support, Here are a few simple points that I, as a technical analyst, have come to appreciate when hearing from you. It makes our job a lot easier, and in turn you'll get a faster response and a quicker resolution. 1. Do not threaten us with "Tell me the answer to this, or will I go to your competitors." That's an excellent way to piss us off. We do not need business with jerks. People like you who think you're the center of the universe are generally more trouble than you're worth to us. We will not care if we lose your business. 2. If I suggest something to you, THEN YES TRY IT. I do not have the time to build an entire project based on the vague description you've provided me with. If you are too scared to try my snippet of code, go to Jail and do not collect $200, because chickenshits like you obviously have no business in this game. Life is harsh; programming, doubly so. 3. When I ask for your code, please do not send a ...

So I went and done a dumb thing and got my ribs smashed in. Er, sorry, just a little kick, you know, nothing serious -- nothing broken. I did have a terrible time sleeping, which depended a lot on me staying very still, a skill I developed in university when I used to lay out my study notes on my bed and leave a sliver of mattress for me to sleep on. Anyway, I went to the nearby hospital (St. Joseph's Health Center), which has some really nice modern facilities. Unfortunately, it also has really long wait times -- it took me over five hours in total from walking in, leaving my name, registering, waiting to see a nurse, waiting to see a doctor, waiting to give a blood and urine sample, waiting for several x-rays, and then waiting again to see a doctor about the results. Like I said, nothing broken, though it looks like my liver may have been damaged. In any case, I'm going back tomorrow/Tuesday for an ultrasound. The famous kick happened during a little sparring thing we had goi...

Hey. Uhm, well, you know, not much going on. Long weekend is here and once again I am caught without much in terms of plans. I slept in until the early afternoon, drove up with my sister through nutty Caribana traffic to get to my parent's house for our yearly extended family get-together. Korean BBQ, pictionary, good times. I'm going to try to see Bourne Ultimatum tomorrow, and then a trip to Kitchener-Waterloo for some exercise of a pugilistic nature. Kitchener-Waterloo. One of these days I'm going to resolve to not go there. Work.. well, work has been kind of busy for the past week, in a decidedly stressful kind of way. Hopefully a lot of that will cool down a little this week, although Tuesday could be nutty as a lot of customers won't realize that Monday's a holiday in Canada. I'm not exactly sure why it's been so busy. Just a string of troublesome customers, I guess. I'm on the 19th book of the Aubrey-Maturin series, and am already halfway through ...