Where Dustbunnies Go To Die

It's been a busy and long week... so long that I'm almost too exhausted to think about what I want to post. I've had six straight days of four or fewer hours of sleep - I'm looking forward to going to bed shortly and not getting up until noon or so.

For those who asked in my last post (to which I haven't had a chance to respond), if it wasn't obvious, yes, I took the job that I was offered. I had a few concerns, but in the current job market I didn't feel comfortable turning down a job that I was so well qualified for after my last two years.

(Plus, I still haven't received the Record Of Employment that I was supposed to get within five days of being laid off from my old job, and without it I wouldn't have been able to collect unemployment... that's another good reason for jumping at the offer. I expect that I'll have to spend several weeks nagging them for it, along with the severance they owe me.)

Anyway, the new job is going reasonably well - apparently my work has been impressive. On one of my projects, after the first week I was already ahead of the person who had been working on it for three months (who is no longer there). And I'm enjoying what I'm doing, which is important.

The other project I was assigned to, however, was a bit of a pain. I won't go into details, but the changes I had to make added up to a grand total of roughly ten lines of code. However, the state in which the project had been left by the previous developer (who is also no longer with the company) was such that I couldn't figure out how to deploy my changes. It took a full week, and the input of five or six other people, to figure out what was going on and to get my changes into the demo system. But now that the problem has been solved, hopefully it won't happen again.

The one drawback is that the commute is roughly the same length as my previous commute (about an hour and a half each way), but they're being stricter about hours - I have to get to the office for 8:30 in the morning, which means I have to be up by about 6:30. I am sooooo not a morning person.

I spent most of evenings this week working on Polaris stuff, in preparation for today's scheduling meeting. We held it a few weeks earlier this year, in the hope of giving ourselves more time to respond to the inevitable requests from panelists for changes. As a result, there are a lot of panels in the schedule which currently don't have anyone signed up for them yet - so if you're coming to the con, please consider being a panelist. If you're not yet pre-registered, by signing up as a panelist you become eligible for a discount of $10 per panel. The panel list is here - it still contains some panels that didn't make the schedule today, but they will be removed from the list shortly.

Actually, preparing the grids was an interesting experience this year. I had ordered some paper from a company out in Brampton. Because they deliver, I had the shipment sent to my office address. I knew it would be heavy and awkward - it was a 50-pound roll, after all, four feet wide and 720 feet long. (It cost about the same as last year's roll, which was only just enough for what we needed - this, OTOH, will probably last ten years.) When it arrived, I needed help getting it to my cubicle, so I called Declan and asked if he would help me get it home. He agreed, and picked me up after work on Wednesday.

Then travellingone came over Thursday night. We put the roll on my dining room table in order to unroll it, measuring pieces as we went. We needed four pieces, each about seven or eight feet long. So each of us put our arms into the centre spindle in order to lift and rotate the roll so that the paper would unroll, then we cut off what we needed. I now have a bruise the size of a large egg on the inside of my left forearm from where I was putting pressure when lifting the roll... ouch.

Once the pieces were cut, we laid them out on my living room floor and knelt down to draw the gridlines on. Of course, neither of us owned a long ruler, so we ended up using the edge of the box the roll came in so that the lines would be straight. However, we didn't anticipate killing a Sharpie and two highlighters in the process of drawing the lines. We managed to get through it by about 12:45 or so, though.

We've added some new guests and events in the last little while:

• Claudia Black, of Stargate SG-1 and Farscape, will be appearing Friday and Saturday.


• Authors Ursula Pflug, Rob St. Martin, Kate Story and Erik Buchanan have been added (in Erik's case, we actually announced him a while ago but didn't get him on the website until this week).


• The Shadow Cats, Toronto's Repo! The Genetic Opera shadow cast, will be performing Friday evening, after Opening Ceremonies.


• The Writers' Workshop, which is being conducted this year by Eddie Schneider of JABberwocky Literary Agency (representatives for Violette Malan, Charlaine Harris, Brandon Sanderson, Tanya Huff, Simon R. Green, and Elizabeth Moon), will take place Sunday.


• In place of our usual Martial Arts workshops, we are offering a Tai Chi workshop on Saturday and a Yoga workshop on Sunday.

And we're still working on more. It's going to be a great con this year. (Well, I think it's a great con every year, but I may be biased. ;) )

Today's scheduling meeting was supposed to start at 9, but because of some changes in the way we decided to run the meeting this year, we didn't actually get to work until about 10. It didn't help that it started pouring out while I was on my way. The grids got a little damp despite my umbrella - I was walking along and thinking, "There's no way this can get any worse." And then the rain's intensity doubled. I arrived just in time to avoid the hailstorm that followed, fortunately.

I was obviously sleep-deprived because at one point whitesangria was putting Post-Its on the wall for the actor guests and I thought I heard something about David Nickle's signing. Since David is an author and is not whitesangria's responsibility (travellingone and I look after the author guests), I was confused and asked, "Why are you putting David Nickle's signing up?" Of course, she was putting up David Nykl, not David Nickle... I knew that was going to cause confusion, but I didn't think I would be the one getting confused. Once we realized my mistake, we all had a good laugh about it.

While we didn't set a speed record this year in terms of being finished early, the actual amount of time spent working on the schedule probably was less than ever before as we were working at a rather leisurely pace and even took a lunch break. And then, after we were done, whitesangria barbecued for those of us who didn't have to leave early. Overall, it was a relatively pleasant way to spend a day even if I did have to get up at 8 this morning after not getting to bed until 5:30. (My Inbox had exploded in the previous 48 hours or so, from 160 emails to well over 300, and I hadn't had time to deal with it.)

I'd like to acknowledge everyone who came today and has worked so hard on putting the schedule together: travellingone for being a voice of calm, whitesangria for hosting and cooking in addition to her scheduling duties, dx4 and his brother Nik for being our IT and data entry department, nexstarman and indefatigable42 (who took on responsibility for assetic's panels in addition to their own and who gave me a ride home afterwards), Declan, plaidlibrarian, cuteteenboy, Trevor, yellow_freshia, Monique M., kaelsu2, rockgoddes, ladygiggles and protegeboy, who dropped kaelsu2 off, then returned later and contributed to the group dinner after we were done. If I missed anyone, I apologize...

In other news from the past week, I spent a couple of very pleasant evenings online with Eric. We watched the final Dead Like Me episode last night, so that just leaves the movie. Only ten more days until he's here!

Oh, and I finally managed to get my hands on the deluxe edition of the new Pet Shop Boys album, Yes, this week. I haven't had a chance to listen to the whole thing yet, but I already have had a couple of the songs stick in my head for several hours each. (Love Etc. is particularly insidious that way. Beautiful People is pretty good, too, as is All Over The World, which incorporates music from The Nutcracker, of all things.)

I was so deliriously happy about finally getting the PSB album that I also picked up Depeche Mode's new album, Boston Legal S5 and Caprica. I haven't done anything with them yet, though - I'm saving Caprica for Eric's visit, since we watched BSG together. He's already told me that he wants our next shared viewing experience to be Lost, though, which should be interesting - I haven't gone back and rewatched the earlier episodes since the writers started peeling back some of the layers and providing explanations for some of the earlier events. I think it will be interesting to rewatch some of those earlier episodes, knowing more about what's going on.

I think it's time to go to bed now... I'm starting to have trouble keeping my eyes open, and if I have to get up around noon, that's only 11 hours away. ;)

... but I had to call Eric as soon as I got home last night so that we could watch BSG, and this is the first chance I've had to post since. *grin*

I had an interesting (as in the Chinese curse) bus ride down to Toronto last night. I got on the bus and made my way to the back, and got out my newspaper. There were two guys who looked to be about 17 sitting in the back sharing a 40-ouncer of rye. Three people got on at the same stop as me - two guys sat directly across from me, and the girl sat down on my right. All three of them - who also looked to be about 17 - greeted the two who were already on the bus and then immediately pulled cans of Molson Canadian Cold Shots out of their coats and started chugging.

For the next hour, I was regaled by stories about the people whom these five wanted to beat up, the people they wanted to kill, the people they wanted to rob (or already had), a lengthy discussion about which liquor stores were easiest to rob, the home invasions they wanted to commit, and the bar brawls they were planning on starting last night.

Given that one of the two guys sharing the bottle of rye knocked it over and spilled about half of it, I suspect that they probably didn't manage to put their plans into action last night.

At one point, one of the rye drinkers said to the beer drinkers, "Is he with you?", meaning me. The latter were so drunk that they said yes (!!!) and then the first guy asked, "So why isn't he fuckin' conversating with us?" It was then that the person who answered realized what the question was and corrected his earlier response.

A little later, I looked up from my newspaper (having managed to read maybe two whole pages in 30 minutes) and looked out the window opposite, nowhere near making eye contact with these people. On top of that, I was wearing my sunglasses as it was clear last night and the sunset was rather bright. The girl said, "What the fuck are you lookin' at?" (I wanted to say, "Oh, I'm sorry, is that your window?" but who knows what would have happened...)

I couldn't even pull out my iPod and listen to music because they had spent part of their quality time together talking about how they had beaten up some kid for his iPod... and there was also mention of pulling knives on cops. The recent news story of the young man who was murdered for his iPod on an Ottawa bus was too fresh in my mind to allow myself to give them an opportunity to try to rob me... so I had to listen to all of this for an hour.

(Normally I think I'd have been able to handle them, considering how drunk they all were... barring the use of weapons. But when I'm sitting in a corner seat in the back of the bus, in the row with the tables, wearing my winter coat and boots, I probably would have been too slow to defend myself...)

Even as glad as I am every night to get to Finch station, I was doubly glad last night.

It's a good thing the VIVA buses have cameras at the back... all five of them should be easily identifiable if the cops need to find them.

So... my bowling scores from last night: 164, 147, 202. I was getting frustrated, putting the ball right into the pocket and leaving pins anyway. And then I developed a mental block about the 4-pin, missing it three times on the left while still managing to keep the ball on the lane. Let me tell you, that's not easy... and I only deliberately aimed to the left of the 4-pin once (when I had left the 4-7-10 and was actually trying to spare it). After the second game, I turned to Lindsey and said, "Lovely. I need 205 in the third game to make average for the night." She said, "You can do it. I've seen you." Well, 202 was close enough, I guess. *grin* Pity we lost two out of three games.

I came home and, as I said above, immediately called Eric. We caught each other up on our respective days and then watched BSG together...

( Wow. Don't click if you don't want spoilers. )

I had to meet gurudata at 1pm this afternoon to go to an Aurora Awards meeting at Liana K's house. I managed to get out the door by about 12:15, so I decided to go up to Future Shop first. I wanted to pick up the new Franz Ferdinand album that came out this week, and while I was in there, I thought I'd see if they got any new copies of Doctor Who S4. No joy. I asked a sales clerk, thinking that he would just look on the computer system to see if any other stores had copies, but when he found one that did, he insisted on calling them. I told him I wouldn't be able to get there until tomorrow at the earliest, and he said, "They don't usually hold things past the end of the day, but I can ask." I said, "That's okay - I have to go to a meeting. I can just pop by there tomorrow," but he just kept calling extension after extension at the other store (nobody was picking up). Finally I managed to get through to him that I didn't really have the time to wait for him to reach someone - at this point it was about 12:40, and I almost put the Franz Ferdinand album back because I didn't want to wait for the single open cashier to process the four customers who were already in line. I figured I'd get the album tomorrow too. But I couldn't remember where I'd gotten it from (they moved everything in that store around a few months ago, and I hadn't gotten it in the regular music section - it was in the New Releases), so I decided I'd just buy it and if I was five minutes late, it wouldn't be the end of the world.

I managed to get to York Mills by 12:57... but still haven't found the time to listen to the album.

After our meeting, gurudata asked if I would be interested in dinner as kanecool wasn't going to be home tonight and so he was at a loose end. So we went to a Pickle Barrel somewhere in the Leslie/Steeles area (I think), where I had butternut squash soup and hoisin chicken stir-fry. It was quite good, though there was one vegetable in the stir-fry that I said to gurudata tasted a little like bleach. I never was able to identify what it was (the only other piece was in the very last mouthful).

Not that I actually know what bleach tastes like...

So I got home, dealt with some emails I had to send, and called Eric around 9. We wrapped up our call around 2 - he has to work a night shift tomorrow, and he's working Monday and Tuesday as well, so we won't see each other until Tuesday night at the earliest (depending on how tired he is after work).

After our call, I continued dealing with emails - I've got my Inbox down to 170 messages now. considering that it was at 180 this afternoon, that doesn't sound very good - but there were about 10 more that came in while I was talking to Eric. I still have some Anticipation emails to deal with regarding the Masquerade and Hugo Awards (my department heads are probably wondering why I haven't answered too many of their emails over the past week), and I have to follow up on an email exchange I had with someone a couple of weeks ago (this time the delay is on his end), and I have some more Polaris stuff to deal with...

I had to email Julie Czerneda about stuff for both cons, and I jokingly said, "Why do I do this to myself?" Her response: "Because you're indispensible and we love you?"

I actually take exception to the use of "indispensible" (I may have several fairly important responsibilities at the moment, but nobody is "indispensible"), but I can live with the second part of her response. *grin*

Oh, and work? I'll have to post about that tomorrow... since I have to be up in about eight hours, and I'm usually quite capable of sleeping for nine or ten hours on weekends.

Climbing that eight-foot snowbank left by the plow across the street from the office for the past couple of days has left me exhausted. My thighs are screaming in agony. Add to that, tonight was the first night back at bowling since before Christmas, and so I decided not to declare my scores even though I'm going to be away in Chattanooga in two weeks. (*bounce bounce bounce*) I figured I could declare next week, as this week was likely to be a poor outing.

Ha. 213, 173, 173.

We lost two out of the three games, unfortunately. Ironically, it was neither the game in which I bowled 213, or the game in which Mario had 212 (which was the third)... it was the second game. The first two games were very close, though - in the last frame of the first game, their anchor and I were both up at the same time. (Mario was away tonight, so I was our team's anchor... which I hate. HATE. No pressure...) We were down by 54 pins, which sounds like a lot, but I had gotten strikes in the eighth and ninth. I did the math and as I went up, said, "No problem. All I have to do is strike out and she (pointing at their team's anchor) has to get less than six." I then proceeded to get two more strikes, while she got five on her first ball...

Alas, it wasn't meant to be. She got four more on her second ball, and I left the 5-pin on my third ball, so we ended up losing by four pins. *headdesk*

(And people think there's no drama in bowling. ;) )

OTOH, the game we won, we won by four pins. The third game, OTOH, they blew us out.

---

For Canadian Battlestar Galactica fans reading this, I just caught the tail end of something on Space called "Fandom Forum: Battlestar Galactica", on which five people (including author Jo Storm) are brainstorming the identity of the final Cylon and what's to come in the final batch of episodes. It just ended, but it's repeating at 5AM and again tomorrow (Saturday) at noon. (I haven't looked to see if it's streamed on their website or not... if you want to look, it's www.spacecast.com.)

( A possible minor spoiler... )

And according to Michael Trucco (who plays Anders), the readthrough took nearly three hours, so they decided to extend the finale. Cool - now that I've gotten into the show (a little late, I know *grin*), I wouldn't want to see them cut any corners just to get the finale in under 48 minutes.

---

In other news, I did something stupid at work this morning. I don't know if it was sleep deprivation, or what, but I discovered that in the workflow application I've just finished writing, there were a number of phrases in the Help index which didn't actually point at any of the Help pages, suggesting that I had entered them originally, and then removed them as I edited the verbiage of the Help pages. So I thought I would delete those rows to clean up the table. Except that I wrote "DELETE FROM helpindexphrase WHERE id IN (SELECT phrase FROM helpindex)" instead of "DELETE FROM helpindexphrase WHERE id NOT IN (SELECT phrase from helpindex)", and deleted all the rows I'd meant to keep, and kept all the rows I'd meant to delete. *facepalm*

There were only 141 entries in the index in total (there are maybe a dozen Help pages in the application), but recreating it is going to be a royal PITA...

However, the insurance company whose website and application I support finally rebuilt their VPN, so I was able to log onto their server through Remote Desktop and fix both of the problems they reported this week. Took me roughly half an hour in total, though I probably spent about three hours on the phone with their IT guy trying to figure out why I couldn't log onto their server.

Also, it appears that we have a new client - we'll be building a website for a modeling agency using our Content Management system that I recently wrote the user manual for.

Work was kind of strange today, at least in my experience. People who have worked for ISPs or hosting companies may have experienced this before, but it was all new to me...

The company I work for, in addition to doing web development, hosts websites. One of our clients is B'nai B'rith, the world's oldest Jewish service organization. Well, what with everything that's going on at the moment with Israel, their website was overloaded today. My boss' partner thinks that it was a denial of service attack by anti-Semites, though I suppose it's also possible that they were just getting a lot of hits due to the latest events between Israel and Hamas.

Unfortunately, my development webspace is on the same server as B'Nai B'rith's website, which means that from 1pm onwards, I couldn't do any work. I couldn't save any files to the server, and I couldn't even use the website I'm working on (I'm still trying to finish the user manual for the content management system, but I found a bug in it while writing the documentation for the image gallery plugin and was trying to fix it).

Around 6:30, my boss' partner (since my boss is away all week visiting his in-laws) told me to go home and not bother coming in tomorrow. Hopefully the problem is fixed by Friday.I was awfully bored until he told me to go home.

So I got home around 8:15, made dinner, made my and Eric's hotel reservation for Chattacon (I get to see him live and in person in less than a month! *bounce* *bounce* *bounce* *grin*), and called him for our nightly chat.

With this unexpected day off, I'll be able to go to the post office (I have to mail a letter relating to Anticipation and my pre-reg form for Chattacon - they don't have online pre-registration (!!!)), watch the BSG S4 webisodes, and maybe even do some long-overdue cleaning in the bathroom.

I have an invitation to a New Year's Eve gathering, but if I were to go, I wouldn't get to spend NYE with my sweetie, so I decided to stay home tomorrow night. Though we might not make it to 12 o'clock because he has to be at work for 7AM on New Year's Day. (Ick.)

Things that made me happy today:

1. Our office email was back up today, so I found two emails today from our insurance company client which she actually sent yesterday. (When I called her, though, she said she'd been too busy to notice that I hadn't responded.) I managed to fix both issues she reported in fairly short order, as well as adding a new "forgot password?" function to the login page. Considering that this entailed using ASP.NET 2.0 functionality which I'd never used before (the education employment website used 1.0), I was pleased that it was so easy.


2. More progress on the project management tool - I got the function that allows a user to create an instance of a workflow template working, including copying file attachments from the template to the new instance.


3. My boss' partner was meeting with clients today, and they brought all kinds of food with them, so I didn't have to pay for lunch. *grin*


4. I spent the last four hours online with Eric, watching and talking about two BSG episodes. (Come on, you knew that would be in there. ;))


5. Eric got official notification today that he got the job with Georgia State University that he'd interviewed for after being laid off from his previous job a few months ago, and he'll be starting January 4. He really wanted this job badly, so I'm really happy for him! :)

Off to bed now... *yawn*

First, the bowling scores: 168, 135, 177. Those first and third games sound all right, but they were a struggle (as indicated by my second game score). In fact, in the third game I needed 104 over the last five frames to get there.

I think that most of the problem stemmed from the fact that my feet are really sore from climbing the hill of ice to get over the railroad tracks on my way to work. I was finding that I was clenching my toes as though I were trying to use them to hold my grip on the ground, and my left arch in particular is sore right now. This led to a bit of a balance problem this evening.

Work has been productive this week - I fixed a problem with the insurance company's website that was caused by their IT guy changing the way he implemented my previous changes. He had told me that he was copying the files over individually, so I had excluded the configuration file when I uploaded it to the FTP server, not wanting to mess up their database connection or their Crystal Reports. However, this time he copied the whole thing over at the directory level, which deleted the existing configuration file, which meant that nobody could access the website and their administrative person, who does the data entry into the Windows application, couldn't connect to the proper database. In fact, when I first re-uploaded the full version (including the incorrect configuration file), because I was logged onto their system over a virtual network, her data entry was updating my local database instead of their live database. *facepalm* But after a couple of hours (mostly spent playing phone tag), I got a correct version to them and they uploaded it, and all of the problems went away.

I then went back to the process management tool I'd been working on - my boss had asked me to add the capability to register users as belonging to organizations so that users who belong to an organization have the capability of seeing all of that organization's workflow processes. I also changed the way users register for the site, added the ability to create a new workflow that's modelled on an existing one (with the ability to choose which steps the user wants to include), and updated the online documentation. I still have a bit of that left, plus I have to update the user manual to reflect the new sections I added this week.

Regarding my headache - it's still there occasionally. I got a phone call this afternoon from the clinic, and I have an appointment for a CT scan on December 10. Unfortunately, it's at St. Michael's Hospital, which is the hospital in which I spent a night a few years ago when I fainted at the bridge club after my blood pressure fell to 80/40 (or lower - that's where it was when I regained consciousness). Fortunately, this time I won't be lying in a bed in the Emergency Room next to a drunk woman who'd just been hit by a streetcar.

On to the hot topic of the moment - the prorogation of Parliament by the Governor-General. Personally, I'm disappointed - not because I didn't want the Conservatives to win the election in the first place (though that's true), but because I thought Harper cowardly. When Parliament decides to hold a vote of non-confidence in the government, the Prime Minister's reaction should not be to run to the head of state (or her representative, in this case) and request that Parliament be suspended for a month and a half. Furthermore, Harper's address to the country (which I didn't see live, because I was still on my way home from work) was inflammatory. Like it or not, a majority of people in Quebec voted for the Bloc Quebecois. To call them separatists may be accurate, but traitors? That's over the line. (They're not the FLQ, for gods' sakes.) To then use the less inflammatory word "soverigntists" in the French version of his address was mealy-mouthed. (And it's not as though there aren't people in Quebec who would be watching the English version, or that the media wouldn't report that his English address was different.) And the behaviour of the other Conservative MPs, throwing around words like "coup" and "sedition" is just ridiculous. We've had governments fall on votes of non-confidence before, and the world didn't end, and the country didn't destroy itself. This is one of the costs of having a minority government - if you don't work with the Opposition, you run the risk that the government will be thrown out of office.

Even more distressing to me is the number of Canadians who have bought into the Conservatives' cry of "Treason!" Do they not know that the process currently underway is perfectly legal and constitutional, and has precedents in history? (Probably not, I know...) There are people out there writing on websites and to the newspapers that "we" voted in a Conservative government and that "we" should let them govern. Well, more people voted for the Liberals, NDP, Bloc, Green Party and other minor parties than voted for the Conservatives. Again, when you have a minority, you can't govern as though you had a majority and try to steamroll legislation through Parliament - that's what Joe Clark did in 1979, and what happened? There was an election (less than a year after the previous one), and Pierre Trudeau became PM again. Now, I'm not saying that we should have another election less than 50 days after the last one, but that's why the alternative, allowing the G-G to appoint the other party or parties as the government, exists.

In short: the proposition that a coalition of Liberals and NDP with the support of the Bloc is perfectly legal and constitutional. Get over it. And Mr. Harper - grow a pair. This is still a democracy, not a dictatorship.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go and email Eric the recipe for the meal we're having together tomorrow night. :)

I improved on last week's scores to set a new high for this season: 169, 229, 180. I started the second game with five consecutive strikes, and had momentary visions of a perfect game. I guess I jinxed myself. :( (My record to start a game is eight consecutive strikes, and I'd finished the previous game with three in a row - a perfect game requires 12.)

Even better, we won all three games against a very dangerous team. The best bowler in the league, who routinely wins the high average award every year (he's usually well above 200, and in fact, tonight all three of his games were over 200) is their anchor, and the other four are almost as good. Against most teams, we have a bit of a deficit at the beginning of each game because our handicaps are fairly low, as Mario and I have high averages. Tonight, we started each game 169 pins ahead, which should give some idea of how good they are. And even so, the first game was pretty close - they almost caught us from the seventh frame on.

We were still fourth in the league going into tonight, but I hope that we've overtaken at least one of the teams ahead of us, as we were only four points out of first.

I had a bit of a frustrating day at work today - I sent the executable files for the client's website to them by FTP last night as I couldn't log onto their network remotely. Today, they uploaded and installed them, but we still can't get a database connection. I went through all of the settings, as well as everything in both configuration files, but couldn't see anything wrong, and neither could Zak. We're at a loss to explain why their web application can't connect to their database. Meanwhile, everything works just peachy on my local machine.

I have quite a few errands to run this weekend - I'm hoping to get those books that I packed up a couple of weeks ago over to the used bookstore, I desperately need to buy a new shower curtain (the one I have is dangling from just one of the rings), I could stand to do laundry (only two loads instead of my usual six or seven, mind you), and the floors still need to be mopped. And I only have tomorrow to do it. Meanwhile, I have some Polaris work and some Anticipation work that needs doing, plus there's a tentative plan that I have yet to confirm to get together for coffee or something with cuteteenboy, since we haven't managed to get together over the last couple of weekends. It's probably a good thing that Eric is going to a theme park tomorrow afternoon, so I should have time for some of that stuff, but I don't think I'll get it all done, and I have a meeting Sunday afternoon.

We need more hours in the day. Maybe if everyone would jump two feet to the west simultaneously, we could shake the earth enough to slow it down a bit and add more hours to the day. ;)

This has been a rather intense week, and I'm really looking forward to this weekend.

My boss started giving me a hard time about coming in late, so I've been going into work for about 10 every day this week so far, except for Tuesday, when I overslept a bit and my boss chewed me out... just what I need, another boss who thinks that I can snap my fingers and adjust my body clock by three hours instantly. (He suggested that I should give up my extra-curricular activities... not bloody likely.) As it is, because of the commute I only have about half the time in the evenings that most people have... I've been feeling like crap all week trying to keep up this schedule, too. Not fun.

I've just heard from two different sources that Forrest J. Ackerman has passed away. Forry was probably the best-known science fiction fan in the world, having been active in the community since 1930, and was responsible for coining the term "sci-fi". (Many of my local friends know what I think of that term, but I have to admit that it's quite pervasive.)

I first met Forry at the 1989 Worldcon in Boston, and even though I'd only been active in fandom for about three years at that point, I knew who he was and knew a fair bit of the history of his contribution to the community, so it was quite a thrill. Over on one of my bookshelves, I still have the programme book that he autographed for me.

The only other time that I recall seeing him was at the 2006 Worldcon in Los Angeles, and it was a bit of a shock to see him in a wheelchair. He'd been such a larger-than-life presence in 1989 (physically as well as metaphorically - he was a very tall man, or at least I remember him as such), that it was painful to see him so frail. And then when I heard that he'd had to sell much of his memorabilia collection because he was losing his house, it was truly heartbreaking.

Rest in peace, Forry.

To end this post on a high note (cue Cloris Leachman's Madame DeFarge), Eric and I have been spending a lot of time video-chatting via Skype. (I was amused the other night when he had to leave for a minute but he left his laptop in the dining room while evil_admiral was in the kitchen, so we chatted for a minute or two. He said, "This is weird. There's nobody here, but there is!" :) )

This is the first night since last Friday that we haven't talked, actually (though we did exchange Facebook messages). And each of those conversations has lasted a minimum of four hours. :) Earlier this week he suggested that we have a romantic dinner, so Saturday night, I'll move the laptop into the dining room (I still can't get the router working despite talking to Brian from work and Rogers tech support tonight. :( ).

I don't know if he realized it until I mentioned it, but Saturday will mark one month since the official beginning of our relationship. So the timing is perfect. I just have to see if I have any candles. :)

I should be off to bed now, I suppose, if I'm going to be up by 7:30. *yawn*

First things first - tonight's scores: 157, 192, 156. I thought I was bowling decently until I got my scorecard out to record my scores at the end of the night, and discovered that this was actually my second-worst week of the season so far. I lost a fraction of a pin off my average, but it's still holding at 170. And we lost two games, including being pummeled in the last game by over 160 pins thanks to three people on the opposing team bowling 50+ above their averages and Mario being about 50 pins below his. (Though it's rather ludicrous that someone on the other team had a 123 handicap - that means his average is about 85.)

Scores across the league are still tending to be much higher than usual - a former teammate of mine who was bowling on the lane to my left had a 245 and a 230, and during the break when they drew for the mystery score pot - where if anyone bowled the selected score in their first game, they win money - and they drew 240, someone actually won it. (Someone who has about a 150 average, if memory serves.) Everyone at my end of the alley almost fainted in shock when we heard the score and, a moment later, heard the VP announce, "Please see the Treasurer for your $80."

The arm is a little sore, but I had no severe twinges tonight like I often do - that probably means that my technique was consistently good, and that it's just tired. (I'm still having trouble picking up spares on the right-hand side of the lane, though - I must have left three 6-10s tonight. Those used to be really easy. :( )

In non-bowling news, the Viva strike is still going on, so I worked from home again today. At least, that was the theory - I actually spent all day (I'm not exaggerating) waiting for the software I needed to download and install. If anyone saw me on MSN and tried to contact me, I was actually on there to communicate with my boss, so please don't be offended if you said hi and I didn't respond. (And I didn't disconnect before I left for bowling - plaidlibrarian, I noticed that you had messaged me, but I wasn't here.)

Yesterday's commute was the worst ever - there seemed to have been an accident on Yonge Street, as the entrance/exit to the bus terminal was blocked by yellow caution tape, though I didn't see any evidence of an accident. So the buses had to use the taxi entrance on the south side of the terminal, turn north onto a side street, and go north to Cummer Avenue (yes, that's really the name of the street) - which on Yonge, is only one block - then turn west and go back to Yonge. That process alone took 30 minutes. Then, on the way home, the #98 bus was about 10 minutes late (as usual) and as a result, when I got to Bernard, the #99 wasn't there, and I had to wait 28 minutes for the next one. Total commuting time yesterday: five hours. No wonder I'm so tired all the time - I almost fell asleep this afternoon while waiting for the software to download.

I want to go out tonight - I haven't been out in over a month, I don't think - but I have an email backlog I need to take care of, and I have stuff going on tomorrow and Sunday. So if I don't do it now, it probably won't happen until next weekend. Argh.

I had a decent, though not spectacular night tonight: 155, 168, 167. That would have been around average last year, but since I've had such a good start to the year, I never actually hit my average all night. :( Three splits in the first five frames of the first game will do that...

We won two of the three games, but lost on total pinfall so we only got two out of a possible four points. We had been second going into tonight, but will likely drop. Not that that's terribly meaningful after three weeks.

I managed to get into work a bit earlier than I have been today, but still not early enough to catch the bus up Industrial Parkway. My hips are not pleased with the amount of walking I've had to do. My boss suggested that we petition the city to extend one of the side streets that runs off of Yonge over to Industrial. I don't think they would do that just for me (as nice as that would be ;) ), but there does seem to be a lot of development going on in that area so they may consider it worthwhile. I'm sure it wouldn't happen immediately, though, despite the relatively short distance they would have to pave. Also, I'll have to remember on Monday to check out the place in the next building down - it's an organic grocery, IIRC. I wonder if they sell sandwiches and stuff there - it would be good to save myself the long walk over to Yonge Street every day (and back) at lunchtime. Otherwise, I may just have to cave and start taking a lunch to work with me, or maybe grabbing a sub or something on my way into work in the morning to put in the fridge. I hate eating at my desk, though - I consider it healthy to get outside for some air. I just don't consider it healthy to feel like I've run a marathon. Especially on days like today, where it's too cool for a light jacket, but not really cool enough for my leather jacket. I probably made a poor impression on our clients this morning, who were visiting for a meeting when I arrived.

The other weird thing about that area is that there are at least three martial arts dojos within about 100 metres of each other.

I am glad, however, that the bus back over to Yonge is running again when I leave work. Both last night and tonight, however, the driver almost didn't stop for me. Last night, when I got on the bus, I was the only passenger, and the driver said, "I don't think I've ever picked anyone up at that stop before." Which explains, I suppose, why there's no bus service between 9am and 3pm.

I have a whole whack of things that I need to get done tomorrow (and they have to be done tomorrow due to my not being home for most of Sunday morning/afternoon), so this may end up being an early night. (Gasp! The horror!) One of them is that I've been meaning to call about an appointment for a haircut - it's getting rather desperate - but I never remember when I'm actually at a computer and can look up the phone number. Or if I do, it's at a time like this, when it's nearly 11:30 at night. But that's nothing new - I'm constantly remembering about things I need to do when I'm in no position to actually do them. (I wonder if this is a symptom of early senility...) Sometimes I put a reminder in my PDA and set the alarm, but half the time when I do that, I'm still not in a position to be able to get whatever it is done when the alarm goes off. I wonder how common that is.