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June 6th, 2004

11:03 pm - Fill in the blanks. Oh my, I've fallen so dearly behind in updating LJ. Darkrave was this weekend. Whoo boy. I actually made it to the end of this one, barely. Almost nobody I knew showed up, but wily, niccibear, and Weasel were there with their gang, so I hung around them most of the night. rouxkangaroo made an unannounced appearance, though he left relatively early. I drank a considerable amount, though I wasn't totally smashed. I was braindead by 6am when your body is exhausted and your mind is fried, but some part of you keeps going. Each rave I go to seems to take more and more outta me. I'll need to carefully plan out how to survive next Hulla. Speaking of which, I'm gonna start hyping this right now: NEXT HULLABALOO IS GOING TO R0X0RZ J00 B0X0RZ LIEK JEFF K USING DOS! I'm so hyped about it, not only is it the 7th anniversary party, but it'll also mark my personal 1st year Hulla anniversary! That's right, I've been to all 5 Hullas in the last year with Stay Here Forever being my very first. To put the icing on the cake, my favorite DJ in the whole universe (with apologies to Frolic, who also r0x0rz) is going to be spinning... HIXXY! HAPPY HARDCORE COMES OUTTA FUCKING NOWHERE OMG ULL CUM UR PANTS!!!! What I meant to say was: if you aren't there in July, then you are a huge ass loser. Go check out the details at the Hullabaloo website now and don't be a loser. </shameless plug> It's late so I should sleep, seeing as how I got very little sleep after Darkrave. That reminds me, today Yennix came over and we watched some anime. However, we tested out a theory of kovucougar's to use a long length of coaxial cable with adapters on either end to carry a composite video signal, so we could run a line from my computer in the basement to the 32" TV in the livingroom. And it worked! Throw in a line to carry audio to the receiver, then dick around with Windows to get it to render video without overlay onto the TV properly, and viola! Much better than my 17" monitor. We watched some messed up anime called Haibane Renamei about some crazy city with these angel people. Then we ate curry and strawberry milkshakes. :) Still to come in a later update: Annoying manager tricks Alexandra's Project More boring details about my week And a top-secret TMI post! We'll sell you the whole seat to view this exciting post, but you'll only need the edge of it! Current Mood: tired Current Music: Tripswitch - Silver (Ott Remix) (Digitally Imported - Chillout)

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May 29th, 2004

10:01 am - Junior Girls? For no apparent reason, head office decided to send out some "V.I.P. coupons" out with our paycheques. These coupons can be used by anyone and get you 50% off any purchase of up to $100 (before taxes) of Junior Girl merchandise at any Le Chateau store. However, I do not know of anyone who could put these coupons to use, I have 5 of them, and they're only good until June 20th. Oh, the other catches are that you can't use them at outlet or liquidation stores and it excludes the fall 2004 collection which is currently being shipped in to stores. So anyone who could use one is free to drop me a line. :) lights out black out blow out the candle again spin the room around fall down pass out get up i can't keep repeating Current Mood: amused Current Music: Thursday - Division St.

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May 27th, 2004

12:11 am - One update to rule them all. Holy shit, there's so much to put into this post that I'm dead sure I'm going to miss something. So you might get snippets put into other posts as I remember them. I'll actually just glaze over the events and highlight the stuff that was really cool. First order of business is kovucougar's moving weekend. Many thanks to those who helped out, the move went relatively smoothly if not just a touch behind schedule. Off the top of my head: Kovu's dad, branwyn, smileetiger, rukatiger, Yennix, takitapup, and jafra. We're still trying to unpack and get everything organized close to two weeks afterwards. Our vacation certainly didn't help much. Nothing extremely exciting happened during the week following. I bought some new outfits at Chateau that I love to pieces and got my hair cut short and dyed completely "intense red copper". It's the same color my highlights were, just all over now. Pictures are in order, but I'm too lazy. I've gotten many compliments on both the hair and the outfits, so I am extremely pleased with both. ^_^ Moving right along, we have the trip to New York. Getting there wasn't bad at all, the hardest part of navigation was actually getting out of Hamilton. After that it was really easy, except for some confusion right after we got out of the Lincoln tunnel. Somehow we ended up going in the right direction by accident, so it wasn't a bad thing at all. Our hotel was about 3 blocks from Times Square, at 8th and 48th. We ended up around there a lot on the way to other things, though it's pretty much a gigantic tourist trap nowadays. So many blinkey lights though and advertising everywhere the eye can see. People take up almost every square foot, there's almost nowhere you can go for any sort of personal space. We also walked through the fashion district, Greenwich village, Central Park, and just a tiny bit along Harlem to get to Randall Park. In the fashion district we hit Macy's, four large floors of men's clothing. I saw some really cool stuff in there, though Kovu didn't like much of it at all, even the stuff that I pointed out and thought would work very well on him. Other than walking through the fashion district, we didn't do a whole lot of shopping there or anything. Greenwich village was also a short little visit. We went there just before the Cirque show, so we didn't have much time to wander around. For those not in the know, Greenwich village is similar to the village at Church and Wellesley in Toronto, also known as the 'gaybourhood'. Sadly, Church street totally knocks the socks off Greenwich village (and the infamous Christopher street). Apparently it's more interesting on Saturdays when the freaks come out, but we went on a Sunday and there was nothing out of the ordinary to see. We ate lunch at a nice little restaurant and some guys were apparently checking out me and Smilee. Central Park is simply amazing. It's fucking massive, we walked for what was probably an hour and barely covered a third of the length of the park. My favorite area was the Bramble, which is a large area of dense vegetation and lots of really winding and convoluted paths. You'd definitely not wanna be in there at night, as you'd easily be lost and it'd be very dark with the tree cover. There's everything in the park: intricate stonework fountains and stairways, large fields for relaxing in, areas for soccer, baseball, street hockey, basketball, volleyball, lakes for rowing in, and much more I'm sure we didn't see. You completely forget you're in the city, except for the not quite as large amounts of people and the skyscrapers looming on the skyline. We took the subway up to the edge of Harlem to get to Randall island, which was a bit out of the main drag of downtown. You escape the crowded streets and the tall buildings are much fewer, but you never escape the grime. The subways were actually really cool, but really really dirty. I mean it makes the TTC look like Buckingham Palace. However, the cool subway system really intrigued me with the express trains and branching out lines and all. Some cars even had light up maps of the line you were on to show you which stops the train made and which stop was next. Once you got your head wrapped around it, it became pretty simple to navigate. As for the shows, Avenue Q was just as good as I expected. Funny, touching, and amazingly performed with the puppets. You'd better hope it goes on tour if you can't see it on Broadway. Having heard the soundtrack was a bit of a spoiler with knowing a good majority of the jokes, but there was much gained by seeing the whole production that you didn't pick up from the soundtrack alone. Cirque du Soleil's Alegria was also as good as I expected, very much a Cirque show with all sorts of nifty eyecandy. There were some really hot guys that I just wanted to pack up and take home with me, who could've done some extremely interesting things in bed I bet. Cirque is coming to Toronto eventually, so maybe I can track them down. ^_^; While we were there, JimmyWolf, a friend of Branwyn's who lives in Brooklyn, came over a few nights to visit and hang out with us. sympolarbear also drove down from Connecticut to visit for an evening as well. It was very nice to see both, I had seen Jimmy ever so briefly at AC 2002 and Sym I saw only two weeks prior when he visited. Hopefully I'll get to see Jimmy again at AC this year and Sym will be back up in Toronto for Pride at the end of July. Overall, I think New York is a very cool city. I'd definitely visit it again, though I couldn't see living there for an extended period of time. I guess I didn't see a good portion of it too and maybe it gets more tolerable along Long Island, but the grunge and bustle would get to me either way. I really like big cities, but this was a touch too big for its own good. I took many pictures, though not many are that good. I also discovered my camera lens has something on it that makes a nice black smudge in some pictures, which really annoys me. Maybe I'll scan those pictures and let those do the talking. Anyhow, should finish my laundry and sleep now. x.x Current Mood: busy

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May 25th, 2004

11:35 pm - Update for dummies. I've been so horrible about updating LJ that I have two entire weekends to fill in. I'll do that more justice when I have the time. For now: Kovu's moved in, though not unpacked. Yaaaay! New York fucking rocks, and makes Toronto seem like a small town again. Yaaaay! Sleeping in my own bed tonight without horns and sirens going all night. Yaaaay! Going into the insanity tomorrow that will be work where I have been gone for 5 days. Yaaaay! Me and smileetiger are the bad idea tigers. Take him home, he's wasted! Yaaaay! Current Mood: tired

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May 17th, 2004

11:44 pm - Roommate philosophy. There's been a few posts about the subject of roommates, namely by my own roommates about one of our own (here and here). I also feel like I have something additional to chip in, having lived with many different roommates and seeing some different situations. Being a roommate is a different kind of interpersonal relationship. That is why friends don't necessarily make good roomies and even people with widely varying traits can live together really well when normally they'd never even be friends. What's the difference? It's hard to describe. Sort of like a committed relationship, you're (pretty much) stuck with the other person through thick and thin. It's hard to ignore someone when you have to face them frequently and share common space. Given that, the type of relationship can be more volatile unless an err of caution is taken to approaching situations that may escalate to a level where people get at eachother's throats, since there is little room to cool things down once this level is reached. That's the other thing to consider when talking about frequent and unavoidable contact, the shared nature of space and things in that space. You have to consider that people will put things into common areas typically for common usage. This, however, is not a carte blanche to do whatever you like with said things. Most times this is bound by an unspoken agreement as to what is acceptable use and what isn't. If someone else questions your usage or you feel unsure, you should consider consulting with the owner for a explicit clarification. In this way you can get a feel for said agreements in a more concrete way, though common sense is always your best indicator when making judgments. As the best general rule: you should never, in any case, treat things that are not yours as if they were yours. This includes not doing certain things that the owner might even do himself, because he is the owner and you are not. Moving right along, we now return to the shared space aspect and tie things together again. With shared space comes shared responsibilities. To be a part of the house, you have to participate in being part of the household. Said roommate mentioned earlier, I believe, isn't making himself part of the household. He complained that he felt like he was simply renting a single room and that was it, the rest of the townhouse was property of the rest of us. I feel the same way because he doesn't participate as a member of the household in things like cleaning (not just after yourself) or being considerate of the other people living with you. Thus, he basically is just "the guy with the room" by his own doing. You'll find quickly that if you do things for roommates, roommates will do things for you. The opposite is just as true, if you don't do things for roommates, roommates will not do things for you. Reach back and tie this in the fact that you are seeing a whole lot more of your roommates than other people, and you may want to re-consider some of your priorities. It's a classic case of just needing a fine social grace to be able to live with other people. Hell, you don't even need a very fine one to make things work. Without it things may not go perfectly smoothly, but it just takes a little tact and careful consideration to keep things together. Our roommate has shown interest in being a better "friend" with us, however he has not taken the step to being a better roommate first. Being a roommate supercedes being a friend because it has tighter bounds on the sort of expectations that need to be met. That was a bit rushed and generally disorganized, but that covers the basics and I leave all the rest as an exercise for the reader. We now return to your regularly scheduled programming. Current Mood: tired Current Music: Yahel & Infected Mushroom - Live in Japan 2002 (Digitally Imported - Goa & Psy)

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May 16th, 2004

06:46 pm - Out of left field... This might seem a bit out of the blue, but I want to throw this idea out there. What better to use than LJ? So, here goes: I'd really like to pose nude for an artist. They could draw whatever they like (as long as I'm posing for something and it's not just an excuse to see me naked), I'm just interested by the thought of posing for someone and seeing the end result. So if you're an artist and looking for a live model (or know someone who is), then drop me a line. I'm assuming most artists in the area have a general idea of what I look like. ^_^ Current Mood: curious

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May 13th, 2004

07:38 am - *grumble* Morning. Pay day. Slept in. Time to check bank account... *fumbles on computer* Hey, what the hell, my account is only at $700... Wait a second... $700 in the positive direction! O.O Yay for tax return coming on pay day! Current Mood: bouncy

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May 12th, 2004

08:36 pm - Time for the purge. Okay, over the next few days I have to get my room in a ready state for kovucougar to move in. Yay! This means getting rid of obscene amounts of junk I don't need anymore, be it tossing it or just storing it elsewhere. Makes me wish I had enough money to buy my dream Ikea room. :( I worked on my old stereo last night and got it to play CDs again, though barely. I trucked it into work and set it up on my lunch break. I attached the antenna nice and high in the stock room to a pipe, and it gets fairly decent reception (though sometimes patchy). I cranked the potentiometer by the laser and cleaned off the lens, so I think that contributed to it reading CDs better. Though we noticed it was have trouble seeking along the track at some points, though I think that's just from lack of use. It was having some problems with getting "stuck" while playing a CD in spots, but seeking backward and forward again would force it over that spot. It was getting better by the end of the day and didn't sound like typical skips caused by the laser, so maybe it was just smoothing over the rough spots along the rails after years and years of not being used. In the worst case, I get a shot of lube along the rails will fix it right up. We all know lube solves everything. :) And payday is tomorrow. Money is going to a few bills, trainer sessions, and the rest I will try not to squander. Maybe one outfit from Chateau and my dresser. :P Current Mood: anxious Current Music: Wilfred Castillo - Dance Samurai Dance

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May 11th, 2004

11:02 pm - Weekend update (finally) Okay, here's the full gory details of my weekend and all. On Friday I had a pretty easy day of work. Afterwards, I went home and waited for sympolarbear to arrive. He was expecting to arrive not too long after I got off work, but there was traffic caused by an accident on the highway. He always gets delayed on the way up, so I didn't worry too much. When he got here, we proceeded to go to Memories of Japan for some sushi. Didn't do the cooking table, just sat in the dining area and munched on raw fish. Very yummy. I found out that they deliver in our area too, which is so devilishly tempting. ^_^ After dinner, since we were very close to torrle's place, I suggested we give him a call. He was busy with something else though and suggested we call back in about 2 hours. By the time I got off the phone with Torrle, Sym had driven down to the end of Don Mills and we were now heading towards verec's place, so I suggest calling up potoroo to kill a few hours. Well, the second we walk in the door, Verec, silfur, and Potoroo all ask if we wanna go clubbing. They decide we should check out System Sound Bar downtown. Never been there before, but it was very interesting. They were playing some nice deep house there at a volume level that made Hulla sound quiet. Now, I didn't sleep a whole lot on Thursday night (read: none at all) while I was cleaning up my room, so I was starting to hit sleep deprivation. I started getting after-images, which made the bright lights and darkness really damn funky. I was wondering if Potoroo slipped something into my drink since people with glowsticks were leaving some massive trails. We didn't really stay around too long there, headed home afterwards since we were beat and it was still late. Apologies to Torrle for not following up on making plans. On Saturday we slept in really late. Infact, I woke up to find kovucougar had come over after his workout. Now, we heard that Hurst and Rollie were in town and wanted to do dinner at the Old Spaghetti Factory downtown. Kovu spearheaded things and started calling up a bunch of Toronto area people. We found out they didn't take reservations that night, so we opted to show up early to wait for a table and hope we got it around 7pm, for when everyone else was going to show up. So we sat in the bar area and waited. I had a pint of beer to start. Then people started showing up, and luckily our table was ready not too soon after. We ended up with quite the crowd. You'll have to forgive me if I forget people, but I can remember it was: me, Kovu, Sym, Hurst, Rollie, nudog, ashbearfox, grimal, Torrle, bohor, entropicana, avwolf, Marlos, darkone, smileetiger, rukatiger, and Ryan Foster. I'm probably forgetting someone cause I could've sworn the count was 19. Dinner was good, as always. The funny thing was that I ordered another pint of beer with dinner. When the server brought it though, he mistakenly had 2 so he left the second one on the house for me. So after dinner, I was starting to feel a bit drunk. Some people headed out after that, and others all went to Babylon. We managed to secure the corner on the third floor where much banter and merriment ensued. potoroo also met up with us at the club, and so eventually did branwyn. Had some more drinks there, awesome as always. On Sunday we made loose plans for breakfast and a possible zoo trip. Some confusion later, we ended up at the Golden Griddle by Don Mills and Eglinton. This time it was me, Kovu, Sym, Hurst, Rollie, Nudog, Torrle, Bohor, Branwyn, and pouch. The weather was kinda miserable, so we decided against the zoo trip. Instead, we opted to go wander the village and surrounding area downtown. Stopped in to Out on the Street as always and laha happened to be working. For some reason wuffle also happened to stop by at the same time. We went into one shop called Joave, which is a small clothing store full of clothes designed by a guy named Joave (imagine that!). There was one neat "gunmetal forest green" shirt with tiger-stripes on the front that I oogled, then Kovu told me to try it on. It was a form-fitting shirt, and a small size to boot, so I barely fit into it. Everyone agreed that I looked good in it, so... Kovu picked it up for me. ^_^ After sufficient wandering, our group had dwindled down. Hurst was tired of walking, so we decided to just head back to the townhouse and watch a movie or something. We tried to hit an LCBO on the way home, but it was 7pm on a Sunday, so we were screwed. We grabbed food at the Peanut Plaza and watched Fight Club. Afterward, we chatted for a while before we got all tuckered out and Hurst and Rollie had to go. Monday was another slow work day. Kovu and Sym dropped by again during my lunch so I could say bye to Sym before he headed home, since he had to leave before I got off work. I got home after work and watched the finale of Survivor, which we recorded on Sunday since we missed it. I was kinda disappointed by the ending, but some parts were pretty awesome. Today was moderately busy at work. After work I had my trainer appointment. Boy, he worked me pretty hard and I'm already feeling it. Gaaaah. My room's still a mess and Kovu's moving in this weekend. Fun! I need to get rid of a bunch of crap, and we need to switch around the computer room sometime in the next few days. x.x There you go, Tora's exciting life in a rather large nutshell. :) Current Mood: sore Current Music: m1dy - Minami Ikebukuro Hardcore Custom

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May 10th, 2004

10:36 pm - Reflection. I'm really tempted to do the whole "weekend LJ update" as always and chronicle the small details of my life. For all you people who hate that and are about to hit the page-down key, I'm going to save that for a later post. Instead, I've had some deeper reflections that have been brewing and I think are ready to throw out. These are still rather personal, mind you. ( Go past the surface... ) PS: This post brought to you by potoroo lending me emo CDs, my Sony V700DJ headphones, the bickering voices in my head, and brooding thoughts while walking through a misty Toronto morning. ;) a door is to open a door is to shut Current Mood: contemplative Current Music: Controller.Controller - Watch

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May 4th, 2004

07:30 pm - You know what? I give up. I'm not doing anything else today. The world is out to destroy me today. So I'm angry and brooding and stressed out beyond compare (see last post). I look over the fine print of the contract for getting personal training sessions and realize that I still have 2 days to rescind it, thus not pay a dime. I already missed one appointment and given my current state, I'm heavily considering that option. All I need to do is go in tomorrow, give notice, and get back my deposit slips. Now I'll have a wonderful gym membership that's doing me little good. If I could, I'd back out of that too at this point, but unfortunately I'm stuck with it for a year and can't weasel my way out of it at this point. Fine. I'm still angry and brooding. I decide to try and relax and pick up my violin. It's horridly out of tune. I get out the trusty digital metronome and set it to play A 440. Play the A sting. Flat. Fine tune. Still way too flat. I go to adjust the peg and the second it moves, the string breaks. I just can't win today. Current Mood: angry

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05:51 pm - Shit. I have a personal trainer appointment at 7pm. Okay. I just remembered that I ran out of bus tickets. I looked at my bank account and I have $5 of available credit, not enough to take out to purchase more tickets. I looked through my wallet and at best, I have $1.40 in change. Not enough for cash fare. Nobody else is home to beg and plead with. How nice, I'm so poor that I can't even afford bus fare. I guess I'll have to call and cancel. Walking would take hours and rollerblading would take an hour at best if I really gunned it, and by that point I'd be so dead that I could hardly stand. (According to Mapquest it's approximately 4.2 miles from here.) PS: Ironically, missing this appointment is costing me $45 because you have to cancel 24 hours in advance, so it still counts as one of my sessions. I knew I should've starved myself all week instead of buying groceries. Current Mood: frustrated

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May 3rd, 2004

01:12 pm - Taxes: FILED! The net refund: $1,395.13 (including the GST rebate, which come in 4 quarterly payments) Booyeah! Send me my money NOW! (Hopefully I get it in about 2 weeks, since I netfiled.) Back to work! Current Mood: bouncy

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May 2nd, 2004

12:06 am - The anti-meme. Stolen from vanst: Invent a memory of me and post it in the comments. It can be anything you want, so long as it's something that's never happened. Then post this to your journal and see what people would like to remember of you, only the universe failed to cooperate in making it happen so they had to make it up instead. Current Mood: silly

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April 30th, 2004

07:54 pm - Serial Experiments Tora. I've left a bunch of junk I wanna put into my LJ until now, so I need to sit and actually type it all out. ( Layer 1: Everyday stuff ) ( Layer 2: Lifestyle stuff ) ( Layer 3: Self-analysis stuff ) Okay, I'm just starting to angst and rehash stuff, so I'll stop here. Nobody really wants to see what's lurking in layer 4, trust me. :) Oh, and in recent news, I got a call back from HR at Sears finally. It appears they lost my information (which I gave to my boss, but maybe she lost it too or they never asked). I didn't include my unit number when I gave them my address over voicemail last time I called, but they apparently "found" it again and re-sent it a few days ago. They also didn't have my phone number before today when I left a message for them to call me back. They said one of the Sears stores was interested in me for something but they couldn't get a hold of me (funny, cause Fairview also had my phone number), though that's not of much use now. Unless of course it was a really good position. They're probably trying to fill a sales, receiving, or MPT spot. :P PS: DJ Frisky r0x0rz my b0x0rz. Current Mood: tired Current Music: DJ Frisky - Sail Away Limited Edition

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April 29th, 2004

06:18 pm - Funnnnn. Well, my paycheck wasn't as big as I thought. I forgot about my sick days, the holidays which I don't get paid for because I haven't been working long enough, and the tax hike as I get bumped into the next bracket. So after rent and bills are paid, I'm back to being insanely in debt and not able to spend a whole lot for another two weeks. I'm so happy, I could tear all my hair out. No dresser. No boombox. No leather jacket. I'm gonna phone up revenue Canada and ask if there's anything I can possibly do to Sears for not providing a T4 cause I'm angry and spiteful and really fucking want my money. in blinded mind you are singing a glorious hallelujah the distant flutter of angels they're all too far too far to reach for you Current Mood: annoyed Current Music: Yuki Kajiura, Emily Bindiger - The World

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April 28th, 2004

11:21 pm - O_O whitefeet pointed out to me that there's a new Gay Pimp video out! Lookin' Cute/Feelin' Cute It's no soccer practice, but it grows on you. And as always, it'll raise you up a few more points on the Kinsey scale. DIRTY GAY BREAKDOWN <3 <3 <3 ooh ya gotta be smooth right ooh ya gotta have an attitude right they call you a fag you say that's right cause i fucked your daddy look cute and feel cute and everybody thinks that you are the cutest *ding* look cute and feel cute fuck them bitches and come on with daddy (boy gotta learn a lesson now 'bout dirty gay stuff daddy's gonna teach us) you get to be dirty in every single way you get to have more style every day we can't get married but that's okay we like to fuck too much anyway Current Mood: amused Current Music: gay PIMP - Lookin' Cute/Feelin' Cute

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08:54 pm - Real update. I've neglected documenting all the (not so) exciting details during the time my computer was dead. First we start with Tuesday night, game 7 of the Toronto-Ottawa series. I called up torrle to see if he was doing anything, and he said he was just going to watch the game at home. So I picked up some good old Sleeman's and headed to his place. It so happened that danruk was in town and also stopped by Torrle's place, and of course bohor was there watching the game too. All three of said people I really don't see enough of, so it was cool to see all said people in one place. I ended up staying a bit late and chatting it up with Torrle. I should swing down to visit those guys more. Let's see, then there's Friday night, where purplezart was in town. pouch called me up and they wanted to get together with people at potoroo's place. We picked up darknitefox and headed over, where a bunch of people were all around, sadly I can't remember enough to name off everyone exactly. I was pretty tired and mostly it was just hanging out and chatting the whole night. Potoroo showed everyone how creepy it is to watch Chaplin while playing Plastikman in the background. kovucougar was there and came back with me afterwards. On Saturday, smileetiger and rukatiger were visiting for the CN Tower climb. After they were done with that, we all headed out to get some pub food. We were tempted to see Kill Bill, but the theatre next door didn't have a show until 7pm. We just ended up browsing around Indigo and going home instead. Then on Sunday, it was librem's birthday. He invited a bunch of people out, but unfortunately many didn't come. Me and Kovu met up with him and eventually two friends of his (who were both straight and not furry *gasp!*). We all went to see The Punisher. It wasn't too bad, though absolutely nothing to get excited over. Then we hit a couple clubs along Yonge for drinks. Librem sure can take his shots of tequila. I was pretty amazed as I watched him take 3 shots in a row without pausing, no salt and no lime, but with a drag off a cigarette as a chaser. Overall it was a great night, his friends were pretty cool and hopefully not too damaged (though I think they're used to it from Librem already). I really enjoyed hanging out with Librem though, I should try and do it more often. I know he's gotten a bad rep from some people, but I think he's just a different kinda guy than most like. I like him so far though. Curse my shyness in being so quiet around people I like but don't know well. Luckily I had enough to drink to actually talk once inna while. Then there was last night, Tuesday night. branwyn and Potoroo came up with a sudden inkling to have a "going away" gathering for simbayo, who is leaving soon to stay in Guelph for the summer. Again, a small crowd of people were all at Potoroo's place. I got some drinks and was actually pretty drunk by the end of the night. Potoroo blew me away with playing on the synth, and the pitch reel of course rocked my world. I have no doubt that Potoroo's definitely better at the keyboard than me though, especially with me not playing very much at all in the last 3 years. That's been about it. Work is work as usual. There's some drama going on that I'm not entirely privy to, but I know it's there none the less. That's a bit unnerving sometimes. I'm ever so slowly making progress on the stock area though, which is always hopeful. Once I can get that all whipped into shape, my job gets a lot easier. As for the music at work problem, I'm still preferable to the Neuros + fixed radio solution. If I'm going to spend the money, I might as well go for something that will be worth every penny and is insanely useful and cool. As for the fixed radio, I'm considering seeing if I can drag my old stereo in and set it up somewhere on the tops of the shelves. Sadly, the CD changer in it is pretty much shot, so really it would only function as speakers and a radio. I guess I could always hook up an external source to it too. I think I may need a smaller radio though, setting up the stereo would be slightly complex and inconvenient. Bah. Instead of getting the Sony S2, I think I'll get my new equally sanity-saving dresser from Ikea. Current Mood: thoughtful Current Music: Hallucinogen - Angelic Particles (Digitally Imported - Goa & Psy)

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April 27th, 2004

06:58 pm - Indecision 2004. Growl. I was pondering today about my internal debate over getting a shiny new digital music producing device. I considered the Neuros again more heavily and came up with the pros and cons for each of my current two fore-running options. Neuros: + Portable, just add headphones and bring it with me almost anywhere. Would replace my discman, and also doesn't have to be left at work unlike a cumbersome boombox. + Internal storage, also much more capacity than even a wallet of CD-Rs (considering at least a 20GB model). + I can broadcast to a variety of things such as vehicles I'm riding in or other people's stereos without having 50 million adapters. I can force my music upon the unwilling masses. + Plays OGG files, so I don't need to rip my collection into both MP3 for a hardware player and OGG/FLAC for archival purposes. Sony S2 Boombox: + Integrated speakers, all-in-one unit. + Cheaper, would be able to afford right away. + Instant, I can walk in the Sony store with cash and walk out with one. + No need to shuffle data on and off a HDD, just burn a CD once and play anytime. + Much more durable than a tiny little easy to break electonic device. In summay: Neuros is insanely more useful and cool, but over twice the price. Sony boombox is more economical and instant gratification. The last point I can make for the Neuros which is both a plus and a minus, is that there's an extra hitch which works also as a stop-gap solution. To make the Neuros useful at work, I'd end up getting a boombox of some sort with a digital FM tuner that I would leave there and just take the Neuros with me. This means more cost since I end up buying a boombox anyhow, especially if I want good speakers. But it also means that in the absense of the Neuros, I can always tune in regular radio stations. The other problem is that the merchandiser said the reception is especially poor in the stock room, being completely surrounded by concrete. Most cell phones lose reception half-way towards the back of the store, so I might not get a good selection of radio stations, if at all. So... many... choices... >.< Current Mood: confused Current Music: Quadra - Fairy Tales (Digitally Imported - Goa & Psy)

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April 26th, 2004

11:29 pm - It returns! Ahahahah. My computer. I hate it. The official verdict is that Windows XP mysteriously ate itself without rhyme or reason. The repair function of the installer got XP to boot again, but it would crash as soon as it started the services. I considered that a virus might've done it, but it seemed too chaotic and I rarely ever get 'em. However, a clean re-install of Windows stated it wanted to nuke at least all the users and all their files, which wasn't an option for me. So I slapped my big-ass drive into my ex-gateway box, laid out a new Mandrake install on my 13GB drive, mounted the Windows partition from my from the desktop's 120GB drive and copied over all the files I could think of that I needed, then toasted the Windows partition. Luckily my 93GB data partition was safe from harm all the while. End result: I decided to install Windows 2000 again. It gave me a rough start with trying to load my network card driver, but now it's running along smoothly. Still trying to get my armada of programs loaded and configured again. E-mail is partially working and Trillian is back to normal. In other news, my paycheck is comming in a few days and my first sanity-saving purchase is going to be a boombox to play music in the back at work. In a boombox though, I decided that compressed audio playback is a must to save myself from switching CDs every hour and bringing at least 8 CDs to cover a single day. Now, here's the rub. I don't like MP3. Sadly, I have seen almost no support for other audio formats such as OGG in a set-top player. Given that, I will settle for MP3 in the absence of other formats. The one I'm currently looking at is the Sony S2 Sports Boombox. Opinions? Suggestions? The only better solution would be something like the Neuros broadcasting to any old radio (or just use small speakers plugged into the headphones). As cool and useful as that would be, the cost is way too prohibitive. So yeah. It's late. I need sleep. Stupid computer sucking me in already again. Current Mood: tired Current Music: Oforia - Cream (Digitally Imported - Goa & Psy)

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