Thursday, April 3, 2008

Bling Bling!

One of the things I remember most from reading Rich Dad, Poor Dad is the part he says along the lines of "people with money tend to talk more about money than those without". I've come to agree with his implications to that statement. That is, the more you talk about money, the more you learn, and the more money you can make (and keep!). Even just chatting with friends, you will doubtlessly learn something from each other, increasing your financial knowledge.

There is a bit of a Taboo in western culture in regards to discussing personal finances. Because money is the root of all evil, and personal finances should be just that. Chinese culture is slightly different, it always seems like everyone knows what everyone else is making and your hourly wage is open to conversation during morning tea. But I think that's sometimes more gossip and yardsticking than anything else.

Personally, I dont mind at all if my friends know the details of my finances...what does it change? (remember that year where I posted detailed spreadsheets of my monthly expenses?) I remember asking a friend how much his house cost because I was interested in how much houses in that neighbourhood were, but he refused to answer. What would have changed had he told me, though? It's a nice house in a nice area, so its obvious he's making good money. Knowing the cost of the house would not have changed anything except to increase my knowledge.

Posted by Long @ 01:47 PM EST [Karma: 11 (+/-)] [5 comments]

Friday, March 28, 2008

No End in Sight
What I most have problem with, it seems, is my ability to follow through on things to completion. There's just a whole litany of things I've started and dropped off somewhere. I'd like to know why I let so many things go undone. Maybe I get bored? Frustrated? Fear of failure?

Posted by Long @ 10:23 AM EST [Karma: 19 (+/-)] [2 comments]

Thursday, March 20, 2008

sheisse
So they blocked neoGAF at work last Friday. Since then, I've been more productive than I've been in a long time! I may have actually spent 3 full days coding this week already. Who knew that the time wasting powers of GAF were so strong? There's just way too much to read on that forum, too many wonderful conversations and topics to keep up with. There've been times that I'd spend the whole morning just browsing through different threads, the ones on politics, intelligent design, and girls are always way more entertaining than code.

This does bring up one thorny issue though, did the content filter block neoGAF on its own, or did someone do it? And if someone did do it, did they see how many times a day I actually hit that page? Cuz if they did...

Posted by Long @ 09:05 AM EST [Karma: 28 (+/-)] [1 Comment]

Thursday, March 13, 2008

To Infinity
Of all the superpowers I would want, number two on the list is Immortality. Two reasons. The first is that there is so much to do, see, and learn in the world and time is the limiting factor in accomplishing all that. I want to learn Cantonese, Mandarin, Vietnamese, Japanese. I want to be able to play the piano, the guitar, the drums. Write my book! I'd like to live a year in all the major cities of the world! And there are SO many awesome video games to be experienced right now. And so many wonderful people to meat and know.

Of course, time isn't the only limiting reagent. All we have to decide, is what to do with the time that is given to us. And sometimes, I just decide to veg in front of the computer. Certainly there are people out there who can speak multiple languages, play a handful of instruments, and have travelled the world. Were I a productive individual even 8 hours a day, I'm sure I could achieve all that too. But I'm not. Yet.

If time is the fire in which we mortals burn, for an immortal, it'd be more of a slow roast. Can you imagine how easy you'd take things if you knew that you, literally, had all the time in the world? Potentially, I'd get nothing done decades at a time.

Reason number two for immortality: I want to see the future! It is the year 2008, where are the flying cars? I want my flying cars! I want to see us go to Mars, help colonize other planets, I want to be here for FIRST CONTACT. I want to be like Emperor Leto and have plans that would take generations to achieve.

Alas, everyday I look in the mirror and notice new creases in my skin, or deeper lines around my eyes and mouth. I wear more layers of clothing than I used to, get sick more often. All signs that I haven't stopped ageing.

But hope is not lost, my body may yet stop ageing and just has yet to achieve my point of no-more-ageing.

Posted by Long @ 08:29 AM EST [Karma: 7 (+/-)] [6 comments]

Thursday, March 6, 2008

Guilt trips!
So I went to a free seminar on real-estate investment that was advertised in the free local newspaper (I'm so cheap!). I didn't really expect to get TOO much out of it, with a fair understanding that they're not putting on a free seminar to teach you everything you need to know about investing. But still, I had nothing else planned on this Monday night. Attendance was surprisingly sparse, about 25 people from many different walks of life.

What struck me the most was how NEGATIVE the whole thing was. The first question asked was what does the Institute benefit from giving these free seminars. I dont remember the exact answer, but it was very condescending and very indirect. The purpose is to sell us on a 3-day 4000$ course; but that was never said outright. That very much set the tone for the rest of the 90 minutes. In fact, I think I would have appreciated the "seminar" more had the guy been more forthcoming right out of the bat and said "This is a 90 minute preview of the things you can learn if you sign up for our seminar". Instead, it was 90 minutes of the guy talking down to us, saying "you can't compete against professionals", "you're not taking care of your family if you don't sign up", "look at the cool toys you could have". The tactic of guilting us for not following his path in life left me quite unimpressed.

In the end, I didn't sign up for anything, it just wasn't for me. The speaker kept insisting that he would take the two most ambitious on the crowd under his wing personnally to ensure their success ("a couple of you" is what he kept saying). Most ambitious being those who would sign up then and there for the course. I didn't stick around to see if anyone was going to sign up, but man, I hope they didn't sign up out of guilt.

Posted by Long @ 01:57 PM EST [Karma: 9 (+/-)] [4 comments]

Tuesday, March 4, 2008

I think my phone may be retarded.
It has no survival instinct at all. When its battery is going low, instead of turning everything off and trying to stay alive as long as possible, it decides that it's going to start beeping every 10 seconds. Sure, it's a cry for help "feed me! feed me!" it says, but there's no way to shut it up when I'm not home and don't have anything to feed it with. I mean, at this point, it might as well start flashing its light, hook up with the nearest bluetooth device, and vibrate till enthropy and there wouldn't be much I could do for it.

I know you need to be charged, you dumb fuck, stop beeping at me!

Posted by Long @ 10:46 AM EST [Karma: -1 (+/-)] [5 comments]

Friday, February 22, 2008

Elvis' Return
My imagination was sparked in 1992 when I learnt of Elvis Stojko, a world champion figure skater AND martial artist. "Shit," my 12-year old self told himself, "he's be unbeatable in a fight on the ice". This thought resurfaced the other day when my coworkers spoke about the Clint Malarchuk throat slitting. Here, then, is a plot-outline I came up with for an Elvis Stojko action film.

The film begins as an intimate, intense character study of Stojko. It is the year 2010, Stojko, now an ageing athlete, is unsure of what is left to him after having conquered the world of figure skating. He's left it all behind to younger, faster, nimbler, men to raise a family. But somehow, he still feels a little unsatisfied. The life of a suburban dad just isn't for him. Through his connections, he has been able to get a spot on the Canadian Olympic team. Vancouver 2010 will be his last chance to pull off the one move that has haunted him all his life - the quintuple axle.

But the world of figure skating is not what it once was. Skaters will now sell their routines to the latest pop hit for millions of dollars, a champion figure skater's endorsement means millions of skates sold a year. Souless capitalism has made it's way into the last refuge of artistic sports. The worst of this new breed of skaters is a product of the West's two greatest enemies - hardened from the arid deserts of the middle east to the frigid isolation of the Siberian mountains, he does not know doubt, does not feel the cold, and can perfectly execute a quadruple/quadruple on demand. His name is Vladimir Bin Laden, and he is the figure skater to end all figure skaters.

Bin Laden has just signed a tentative agreement with a skate manufacturer that could be worth up to 300 Million$ should he be victorious in the Vancouver games, but news of Stojko's return threatens to overshadow his own popularity and diminish his powers of endorsement. To ensure the value of his star power, Vladimir has hired the Italian mafia to capture and detain Stojko's family, forcing him to withdraw from the competition.

Act 3 is when the promise of this movie's premise is fullfilled. The final showdown between Stojko and Bin Laden on the ice in front of judges, a live audience, and televised to the world. They will stare each other down knowing that this will be a battle to the death with the very future of figure skating in the balance! At which point the best fight music western society has ever produced comes over the arena sound system: MORTAL KOMBAT!! And thus begins the most epic figure skating/martial arts extravaganza the world will ever see. The fight will be choreographed by Yuen Woo-ping and capped off with Stojko finally pulling off a quintuple axle but with 1 leg extended, thus slashing his opponent 5 times! Tatsumakisempukiaku!!

And then the ending sort of writes itself, Stojko wins the gold, everyone is safe, all the details of the plot is revealed to the media, Bin Laden is disgraced, loses his endorsements, and Elvis begins a Martial Arts on Ice show that appeals to both men and women!

Posted by Long @ 04:56 PM EST [Karma: 6 (+/-)] [No Comments]

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

If I had 1 000 000 000$, I would...
Invest 100 000 000$ to live comfortably for generations
Start a movie production company that only makes epic sci-fi films
-Produce the ultimate Deep Space Nine movie
-File for bankruptcy after 2 films
Fund a full sequel to Mysterieuse Cites d'Ors
Build a very tall condo building and live in the penthouse
-Have a huge library
-Own 1 copy of every comic ever made
See the world
Sleep with lots of very beautiful, shallow women
-Feel eventual dissatisfaction
Get an Aston Martin
-Learn to drive stick
Buy Jaques Hurtubise's Fanette from MOCAM
Buy your love

Posted by Long @ 10:49 AM EST [Karma: 3 (+/-)] [No Comments]

Friday, February 1, 2008

What I've been working on
So last month I finished my project at work. Seven months of software development to create something that I think is pretty kick ass. It's a database driven, web app that uses .NET 2.0, C#, ASP, SQL Server, Stored Procedures, Windows Service, and the AJAX 1.0 Toolkit.

What is it and what does it do? It is as complete a HR scheduling system as I've ever seen. Through this software, you can schedule your employees across multiple locations, they sign in and out at each location (using 3rd party magnetic key tags) and you receive a live newsfeed about employees who didn't follow their schedules (late/early/look too long a lunch/took too short a lunch/left early/left late/didn't show up/etc!). You can then go in and make changes if you want to. Each employee also has their own set of rules, they have default schedules and late and early variances (some employees can be more late/early than others). The next part was a bitch to code, you can run payroll reports for anytime period you want. The software will calculate how much each employee is to be owed taking into account hourly VS salary VS flat rate, overtime laws, stat holiday calculations (holy shit!), bonuses, raises, vacations, sick days, etc. Another cool feature is that you can set up different "companies" to pay employees for. So if I should be working in the Garage one day but I'm paid out of the office, the Garage's payroll will indicate that they owe the office for my time.

Here is the user documentation I wrote for management, you have to download it to your PC to able to read it. Aside from some of you, this is the best thing I've ever done!

The frustrating thing about development, is that I was 90% done about 4 months ago. The vast bulk of the work took as much time as the fine tuning and deployment. As much time is spent coding/thinking about coding as it is not coding. I guess it's not really out of the ordinary for software development, or anything else really. Large swaths of work is easy, but its all the peripheral work that takes time. Like, when you're painting a room, it'll take you more time to set up, tape and paint the edges, and clean up than it will to paint the walls.

Posted by Long @ 09:10 PM EST [Karma: 18 (+/-)] [4 comments]

Wednesday, January 30, 2008

A: Sleep More
This is the worst time of the day. Early afternoon, lunch is digesting, 6 hours have passed since waking up, the wind is blowing. More often than not, it's around now that I find myself leaning a bit more in my chair, closing my eyes just for a second, drifting off to sleep. Nodding off now and then jolting up when someone opens a door or when the printer warms up. It's like that 8:30 4th year database class all over again, except back then no one really cared if you fell asleep.

How does one avoid this afternoon slump? Coffee, of course, but I've been trying actively to have less of that lately, and only go get myself one if absolutely necessary. Even then it doesn't alway do the trick. What I have been drinking lately is tea, and lots of it. It's often not good enough though. Tea doesn't have that jolting sensation that coffee does. It's more of a slow, warm fuzziness that is as liable to put me asleep as it is to waking me up.

Sometimes, I take naps at lunch, but these usually amount to only 30 minutes or so. I'll either prop my legs up on the desk and lean back in my chair or stretch out over the conference table. While it IS refreshing to take that nap, I always wish I could sleep a good 90 mins midday. Some little things that I've found that help a little bit each: Sitting up in the chair, eating a smaller lunch, listening to more energetic music, doing work (this is actually the best thing to do, and also the hardest!). Things not to do: Reading GAF (this is such a mentally passive activity, it can very easily do me in)

Posted by Long @ 02:37 PM EST [Karma: 12 (+/-)] [No Comments]

Thursday, January 24, 2008

Free Lunch
If you wear the same shirt 2 days in a row, I might notice. If you wear the same shirt three days in a row, I WILL notice. If your dress shirt happens to be very wrinkled and looks like you just threw it into your laundry basket when it was done drying, someone else might notice too. If you feel adventurous one day and decide to switch things up by dressing in a turtleneck that does not in any way, shape, or form compliment your body, well, that's unfortunate. However, should you feel particularly brave and wish to tempt the lords of luck and wear this turtleneck two days in a row, you should not be surprised to find your habit habit the subject of a friendly wager amongst two of your colleagues.

So for the sake of propiety, sanitation, fashion, my general faith in humanity, and my free lunch at Wendy's, please wear something else on Friday eh?

Posted by Long @ 03:02 PM EST [Karma: 2 (+/-)] [4 comments]

Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Blog of Tears
Shawshank Redemption, Voices of a Distant Star, Grave of the Fireflies, Stepmom, The Subtle Knife, Godel Escher Bach - The Golden Braid, 2 girls 1 cup, the Shanghai Acrobats, my account balance 9 months ago: all things that supposedly make people cry. Yet they've never had much of an effect on me. The only time I remember crying in the last 20 years or so was for about 5 minutes in 2003, when I was young and vulnerable to such things. Lately though, I've been trying to find something to make the tears flow. For no reason, really. Maybe they've been building up and need a release. Maybe just as a challenge to myself.

Whatever the reason, I'm just not succeeding. The entertainment industry is completely failing me here. I think part of it is that I can seperate myself from most fiction and it just doesn't quite hit home for me. Sure, there are certainly tons of real-life scenarios that might make me cry - like losing my entire comic book collection somehow, but I'm not going to put myself through that.

What often moves me aren't sad moments, but when people do incredible things for each other. For example, Jake's sacrifice at the end of The Visitor, Hercules choosing Meg over immortality, all of China bowing to Mulan. Goodbyes that you know are forever are also quite potent - like the endings of His Dark Materials, Escaflowne, Of Mice and Men, What You Leave Behind. But yet, none of these things dig quite deep enough.

I'm always reading reviews and comments that say things like "if this doesn't make you cry, you don't have a soul". So then I watch the movie or read the book, and I just don't cry. Does that mean I have no soul? What other books or movies can I try to make me cry? What works for you guys?

I just want to prove that I have a soul, damnit!

Posted by Long @ 04:20 PM EST [Karma: 2 (+/-)] [4 comments]

Friday, January 11, 2008

Music I like
Love Love Love by Jolin Tsai is an incredible pop song. The instantly catchy chorus from 0:39 to 1:13 is some of the most lyrically addictive music I have ever heard. She breathlessly sings the lyrics in quick, short notes, moving each syllable through dissonant notes, rising a little at key moments, falling back again, and always ending each line on a satisfyingly consonant note. The almost rap-like unvariying tonality added to the constant rhyming and choral repetition results in the perfect storm of pop songs.

Also, she's cute. That helps a lot.

Posted by Long @ 03:45 PM EST [Karma: 1 (+/-)] [4 comments]

Wednesday, January 9, 2008

Viral Woes
So I had what the worst PC virus last month. I havent had any virii in years and I'm not even sure what I did to get this one. Christmas Eve 2007, I was playing a game of DOTA when my computer completely froze, I reboot and login to windows to find a bunch of new icons on my desktop and other various and sundry signs of infection. I run a scanner, sure enough it finds a few things, I quarantine all these files and reboot once more. This is when problems start. I can no longer get into windows. As soon as I login, it logs me out right away. Not even safemode worked, and not even the great Anderson Quach was able to help me out. I spent maybe a good 3-4 hours trying to get in or getting my files out (even going as far as downloading a couple of linux distros and booting off the disk drive) without success. Eventually my brother got home and did something or other and 30 minutes later I was in windows copying stuff and getting ready to reinstall XP.

One of the virus' effects is that it rewrote every HTML document on my PC into a page with a link to a exe it put into the system folder. I keep a lot of documents in HTML format, including an HTML version of my resume and more importantly a list of graphic novels that I'm interested in which I update every month. This 6 year old document is now completely gone. What the hell am I going to buy now? Whenever I ran out of reading material, I used to be able to scan through it, pick a few books and send off a list to my dealer. Now I have no clue what's available anymore, nor what I was interested in getting. This is vexing.

Maybe less trivially is that Firefox would not start properly once my brother had gotten me back into windows. This means that I wasn't able to extract my bookmarks from it. That REALLY sucks. I keep a copy of my bookmarks online but that file is outrageously outdated. Amongst the more important bookmarks I have to retrace now are the ones pertaining to my research on Home Theater, and the dozens of links related to the non-day job.

Thankfully though, that virus only messed up HTML documents. I would be really angry if it wiped out all my TXT files (passwords!!) or DOC files, or the worst of all, XLS files. Shit, I have so many excel files it would be crippling to lose them.

Maybe I'll make a backup tonight.

Posted by Long @ 09:34 AM EST [Karma: 4 (+/-)] [5 comments]

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