hwan.com

In more topical news, what's the deal with "Canadian" being a code-word for, well, a racial slur ? I mean, c'mon guys, calling someone a Canadian has no negative connotations. At least, not on the scale it's being used. That is some seriously messed up word-play. For whatever reason that escapes me now, my friend pointed out that he has banned Denny's from his list of diners, and directed me to Denny's hefty list of racial discrimination lawsuits . I might just well do the same, although it seems somewhat unfair to impugn an entire restaurant chain based on the actions of a few locations, as extreme as those actions seem to be. Well, there aren't that many Denny's around here anyway. I generally go to Fran's for my Toronto diner fix. And finally, Heath Ledger is dead? Huh. I suppose I'd always figured him to be a goofy young member of the latest brat pack, to perhaps become serious with his part in The Dark Knight. Now I just... sleeping p...

Confound it! I spent a couple hours Saturday attempting to get my OLPC to work with my WPA connection. Unfortunately it very much appears that I'll have to wait until they release a patch, as my varied manual attempts garnered little success. There really does appear to be some kind of odd 10 character minimum or the like at work with the passphrase. Maybe I'll get the gumption to try again later, but for now it's pretty much a disappointment at home. So fiddling with my wireless involved re-booting my router, which I seem to always forget makes it lose its virtual settings and so that's why hwan.com wasn't available today. Sorry! Not that you missed much. I spent the weekend at home, sleeping, watching the second season of 30 Rock as well as the first season of the American The Office. A much different type of humour, but it's nice to see the translation from the original UK version. Our office has become quite the games-atorium, what with Go , backgammon, St...

Woo, 30 Rock is one funny show! Man, it really manages to tickle me all over. I just saw the Werewolf Bar Mitzvah episode (season 2, episode 2): "Boys becoming men, men becoming wolves!" Heh, good stuff. A fire alarm drill at work this week got me acting on a desire to get a good white noise mp3 or generator or the like, to drown out the annoyance and any future annoyances. I did, eventually, find one but it was MacOSX only and figuring out how to copy it into MP3 form was not obvious (though I thought it was). I also learned that you actually want pink noise , which is softer on the ears or some such thing. In any case, I ended up with (thanks to a co-worker's Google help) Aire Freshener (scroll down to download directly), an excellent charity-ware Windows application. With my new Grado's this allows me to work with minimal intrusion from the outside.. and I can pretend it's spring time, or that I'm by the fireplace, or even in the bath. The program itself ...

Why is it that I always forget how bad the cold weather can be (or rather, is) for my skin? Every winter I get all itchy and my skin breaks out and I'm pretty irritable for a few weeks. Yeah I know, why not use moisterizer? Because I hate applying salves and oils as I don't like the feeling, which just makes me want to wash it all off. Perhaps a small price to pay, but it does seem rather too late now. Oh, I watched Eastern Promises over the weekend. I liked it, but again I should have tried to see it as soon as I knew that I wanted to see it -- all those reviews and recommendations kind of ruined it for me. OH speaking of ruining a film: THANKS A LOT TORONTO STAR!! Bastards gave away the plot to Cloverfield in their Monday film section, which we had a copy of in our kitchen at work. It wasn't an article that gave it away, no, it was a damned diagram that in a glance told me too much! Hates them I do. BAH!!! So Lord of the Rings Online is still fun! I've finally gotten ...

Huminy. I've been fiddling around with my OLPC , trying to get the wireless (more specifically, my WPA connection) to work with it. Apparently this is a known issue but gadzooks if it doesn't upset me! Le great big fat sigh. I mean, yeah, otherwise I fairly content with it but it's pretty much a curio without a working WiFi connection. Here's a bit of an entry that I had started writing on the streetcar earlier this week: Oh, those crazy sad Leafs are at it again, trying to win what they have already proven that they cannot win. What a sorry lot they are, and I am one who very much enjoys watching them do well, an occasion rare. They have hit the bottom of their season, which I think, in a way, is a good thing for a) management will have all the more incentive to generate some real change (for a change), and b) I will be less inclined to watch. I do find that my mind seems cloudier, murkier, less clear than before. Have I lost certain abilities, certain mental function...

Huzzah, my OLPC arrived today. Pictures to follow soon. Initial impressions -- it's super neat! The keyboard is definitely child sized, and takes a bit getting used to, but that's more of an observation than any kind of complaint. I guess my only sore bit is that the start up is a lot longer than I had envisioned, considering that it's entirely solid state and uses Linux Fedora, or a slimmed version thereof. Well, I guess it's not that long, I just saw myself using it like a phone or whatever, without significant boot up time. Speaking of phones, after a discussion at lunch today (Thai Princess, Regular Pad Thai) I've decided to get rid of my phones. I don't need them, the carrier companies are jerks with all their "service fees" and such. So, I'll look into replacing my phones with a VOIP option or the equivalent. I mean really.. in this day and age, what's the point of being identified by a number? Is not using one's e-mail or similar st...

Can you believe it? I went to Kitchener-Waterloo this weekend, spending the night there Friday. Well, it was nice to see dear old friends -- XBox 360 and Halo 3. Well, DDR was also there, which caught me off guard, as was karaoke , whom I had decided to no longer entertain. Saturday we (Growl, Dangerman, and I) went shopping at Conestoga where I got my coveted Bodum French press and Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, which we played for pretty much the rest of the day and night. So yes, I finally got to try those coffee beans ("Around the World" from i deal coffee ) and electric kettle and the results were... well, frankly, one of the best cups of coffee I'd ever tasted! Soooo flavourful, so many layers of taste and not in the least bit bitter. Yummers.

Oh I forgot about the big news -- Babur no longer does lunch buffet!! Dude that totally rocks my (work lunch) world! It was like THE creme de la creme of places to eat on a work day. Oh this is such a major bummer. The price was very reasonable too, but I'd be willing to pay a dollar or two more if it meant they'd continue to offer the buffet. I am just so let down, so very upset by this. We take our lunchtimes very seriously at my office and this.. oh, I just can't talk about it anymore. All I can think of is that butter chicken, oh how I will miss pouring it over a bed of rice I'd laid out on those hot-out-of-the-dishwasher plates. I guess one cannot be young forever....

Geez, you let out the date of your birthday once and you hear about it the rest of your life. Still, it is nice to have a cake with your name on it, a lunch at the locale of your choice and drinks with friends after work. Gifts, I've had a few. Bicycle handlebar tape, Office (US) DVDs, coffee beans, an audio-input cassette for my car, some cash and wonder of wonders, a Magic Bullet which unfortunately did NOT have my name on it. I have yet to try it, but will do so as soon as I procure a French press.

When I first saw the commercial for it, I was somewhat skeptical, mostly surprised that someone had decided that jPod would be a good idea for a television series . But having just sat through the first episode, I must admit I enjoyed it! I guess it's just fun to see how they fleshed out all the details, what was kept and what was changed. From what I've seen it's been pretty truthful to the book, although hardly anyone (or anything) looks like what I had imagined it to look. Also, it's odd to see Alan Thicke acting without the other Seavers in tow. I went to see Juno with Dangerman and Girl on my suggestion at the Kennedy Commons AMC theatre. Disappointed! I mean, it was a smart, funny movie with touches of sweet, but I was all prepared for a non-stop, rolling-in-the-aisle, gasping-for-air laughfest. It was good, yeah, but not great in the way I had been anticipating.