hwan.com

Not my furniture Ok, yup, I bought a place . It still hasn't quite sunk in yet. I mean, I believe it to be true and am slowly (slowly) warming up to the idea but until I actually move in it's still a rather unreal thing for me. Certainly, it is nice to not have to flip through ugly, ugly housing listings. Now, paperwork and all the tedium that it brings are my daily plate. Oh, and financial strains, indeed and oh yes. Speaking of strains, my freakin' harddrive died! And it would seem I lost everything -- old photos (more recent ones are on flickr and at work), shows, movies.. and all my saved games! My personal notes on stuff. Gone. Well, not GONE gone.. presumably they're in stasis, comatose on a few drive platters, locked by a $1K key i.e. a data retrieval service. It's a frakking nightmare I tells ya! Although to be truthful I am getting more reading done at home; nearly halfway through The Crossing. Saw a couple movies recently, A Serious Man...

Well it's a fine how-do-you-do; my other memory stick died! For those keeping track, that's the second of two 1GB OCZ sticks dying. At least, I think it's the memory that's gone bad -- I suppose it's entirely possible that the motherboard sockets are gone, which would be quite the pain. On top of the cost of replacing the motherboard, there's the installation process. So yeah, I'm really hoping it's the sticks themselves that have gone. Strange, it's so quiet in my apartment when the computer is off. Is this how it must've been, back in the 19, uh, 1910s? I remember as a kid disappointed when in a house that didn't have a computer or TV. The reason for rebooting my computer, for indeed it was otherwise working fine before I turned it off, was that I'd been fiddling with the webserver and needed to update my HOSTS file. Yes, fiddling with the webserver because I'm getting familiar with MVC and in particular, Symfony, a PHP MV...

Stressed, I'm seriously stressed. I mean, it's just money, right? Who knows what the morrow may bring? I am to be dropping a deposit on a place (766 King Street West) tomorrow evening. My agent gave me the impression that my bid will be low, but I based the amount on comfort level and conservative estimates of what I can really afford (as well, to a lesser extent, what the mortgage broker said). So I guess there's not that much to be worried about. But shifting large amounts of money around does have a kind of toll on me. Not having had dinner is of little help. Positives of the place? Close to work. Great kitchen, lots of light (skylight, south-facing), high ceiling, balcony with a BBQ. Negatives: No parking spot, no indoor bicycle rack. No amenities. A separate entrance would've been nice. I am not convinced that I want to live close to my work. Sure, it's convenient being able to walk to the office, but there's something to be said about working in one neig...

A busy week it was. Firstly, big news from work -- they're outsourcing my job! But.... they are also "promoting" me into development. The quotes are there because no-one's mentioned anything regarding a pay raise. I might be getting one, I might not. A lot more work, a lot more responsibility. However it is yet to be seen. Moving from customer support to development is a major transition and I'm not sure I quite know how I feel about it. On the one hand I'll get a chance to fix all those bugs and issues I'm always having to log. On the other: meetings, schedules, and projects, oh my! Also, my days of getting into work at 10 are pretty much over. Tuesday was karate, not much to say there. Wednesday I saw Up and really enjoyed it. I've only seen a handful of Pixar films and they have all been rather excellent and Up continues that trend. I found it spoke especially to me, an old man in my own mind. Thursday was a social with some of the ...

Camp went well, I think. I am hesitant to say that I had an awesome time because I'm still digesting the experience, as it were, having returned Friday evening. Also, the kids' enthusiasm dwindled as the days passed, homesickness becoming an ever constant knell. Not sure how typical that is, or whether I played a positive or negative role there. I am glad to have done it, sure, and I feel much more ready for next time. I mean, I learned so much about the experience that I could do it again, sure. Only, not so soon -- it was draining, requiring one to be "on" from 7 AM to 10 PM every day. I will in any case definitely bring better sleeping supplies next time (ie. a pillow and a blanket). Hopefully I'll see a property or two tomorrow. The real estate market in Toronto, so it seems to me, right now is very competitive -- not a lot of properties and the good ones get snatched up within a few days. Not an ideal situation for someone like myself, who is slow ...

I got myself a realtor, yup. Looking at some properties, lofts and townhouses (Copy and paste the links and add a zero, "0", to make it work. They expire at the end of this week). I guess there's a medley of good and bad stuff out there, hope to get a closer glimpse of some this week before going to camp. I got pre-approved for a, in my opinion, redonkulous amount of money, which does broaden my options somewhat. Not that I'll use the full pre-approval amount, it being stretched to the absolute limit of what I can afford. Although already I find myself thinking about money, something I've wanted to avoid doing ever since finishing university, a time where I was constantly worried about having enough. It's just a big pain! And just the THOUGHT of having a mortgage has such an effect on me, yeesh. Tipping less, buying less, scrutinizing bills. Make it stop! I was at camp this weekend, getting ready for my time there next week. I hear all these st...

I was walking home and fiddling with my iPhone when it slipped out of my hands and bounced into a storm grate. Scrambling on the floor I tried in vain to squeeze an arm through. I continued home distraught when I ran into Sarah Silverman. I don't actually recall sleeping with her but it may have happened, I'm not sure. There was another girl in the dream, in another setting, unnamed and faceless now, a sidenote in my imagination. I do remember coming back the next day to the grate and prying it open. I lowered myself gingerly into the water and lifted my iPhone out, shaking off the excess water. I don't look at it, for fear of what I might see. I've grown rather accustomed to it. Outside of the iPod functionality I primarily use it for its WiFi though I have been more active with taking pictures and posting them to twitter. Speaking of which, I'm finding it very difficult to come up with material for hwan.com these days. It's just that there's no...