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Got Mercury?

Posted on March 10, 2007 | Filed Under Day to day

Watched the following story on CBC Thursday: Mercury in fish warrants global public health warning: scientists

Methylmercury now poses a public health problem in most regions of the world, and high levels of mercury have been found in people worldwide at all levels of society, the [Madison Declaration on Mercury Pollution] concluded.

As a result, I’ve chosen to give up tuna and limit eating all fish in general. I had my last tekka don (ten slabs of mouth-watering, delicious raw tuna on seasoned sushi rice) at lunch yesterday, making sure to enjoy it thoroughly.

Sad to think that humanity’s fucked up the ocean so much.

In other news:

• I just upgraded wordpress and changed the theme. No, it’s not the hacked version of wordpress.
• I did some contract work in January and February. I got severely burnt out doing it. I assure you, it will be a very long time until I do a side-job like that again.
• My project at work finally shipped at the beginning of February. I started the prototype in August 2005, did another project, then started work in earnest in December 2005… so i’ve been working on it for well over a year.
• The boss that I had for the project (and honestly didn’t get along with all that well) has moved on to another team. The new boss — a senior dev from the team — is working out very well so far. Why didn’t I get promoted? I would much rather stay a dev than be a bureaucrat.
• I bought the Civilization Chronicles box set — it has Civ 1 through 4, a DVD, Civilization the Card Game, and tech-tree posters for all 4 games. I’m going to try and win each version, starting with Civ 1 this week.
• Laura and I remain unmarried, although I heard a rumour that she might be planning something

I’ll try not to fuck up the oceans playing Civ. Although, technically, the electricity i’m using is likely partially generated by coal-burning stations — a large contributor to atmospheric mercury. Feh.

~jstash

Holidays

Posted on December 27, 2006 | Filed Under Family, Vacation, Drama

Hope everyone had a good Christmas…

We spent a couple days over in Victoria to spend Christmas with my family. It was really nice to see everyone and spend time with some of Jeremy’s relatives too, although there was so many people there we were exiled to sleep in the camper. It was cosy enough but not very comfortable…Jeremy managed to beat both me and my brother at every game we played.

The days in Victoria werent as relaxing as they should have been with Jeremy and I still recovering from a very bad Friday night. I had my first ever panic attack and hopefully my last. Theres no way to really describe that experience but if you type in panic attack into wikipedia and read the symptoms you will see that it was not a fun time. A couple hours in the hospital and a lot of sleep later and Im feeling better.

Jeremy and I both realized this morning as the alarm was going off that we should have taken this week off. Oh well, three days to work and then another long weekend to look forward to.

Thankfully work is very slow today so I can sit here and daydream about our trip to Europe that we are planning for April. We are going to do a 20 day trip to a bunch of countries- Belgium, France, Spain, Austria, Italy… Its gonna be so great!

 

~L

snow days

Posted on November 28, 2006 | Filed Under Day to day

Only in Vancouver(?) can you be walking home in the dark in the snow bundled up in a coat, scarf, hat, gloves and have someone cycle by you wearing flip flops…

 

Another thing I dont really understand is how a couple days of snow can strain the transit system so much. The skytrains certainly arent running more often to accomodate the extra people taking trains instead of driving. And the buses…well today I stood in the freezing cold for 20 minutes while 5 buses of route 3 went by while i was waiting for a 8 or 19…i started to worry that my routes were even running since i never saw one of them yesterday either…I thought you had to wait for 20 minutes for a main route bus in rush hour in Victoria, not Vancouver…

 

Other than that, I love the cold! Being bundled up in warm coats (I love my new coat! Thanks Mom!) and scarves and today the sun is shining and the mountains looked so beautiful covered in snow!

 

Yay for snow!

 

~L

I shake my fist at you…

Posted on November 9, 2006 | Filed Under Rants

Things that made me mad on Tuesday:

Waiting in line at a bank to pick up something for my work and having to wait for over 30 mins while the bank figured out what i could have explained to them in one.

Waiting in line at the post office and the unfriendly service i received.

Almost being shot full of someone else’s allergy medicine at my clinic. When the doctor said “So Verna, you are on the same dose as last time” and started filling up the needle, I said “HEY WAIT A MINUTE, IM NOT VERNA!”

Being constantly interrupted all day long by someone who cant handle anything themself.

Having to handle my most difficult crazy client at the same time as being constantly interrupted by someone who cant do anything themself.

Having to try to balance our daily reports while four men stand around me talking about sports/football/hockey in really loud voices.

Taking the bus home and having people blow their stinky dry-mouth/coffee/smokers breath on my head. (I got off two stops early and walked because i couldnt handle it. I started imagining i was breathing in deadly bacterial spores).

Craving cookies and baking them only to have them turn out more like butterscotch pancakes and burning the last batch anyways.

Life could be much worse, I dont really have anything to complain about. I think it was just a grumpy day. I feel better now.

~L

Long weekend

Posted on October 19, 2006 | Filed Under Day to day

Well its Thursday already and I am so looking forward to this, my birthday weekend. I have tomorrow off work to get everything organized and then off we go to Skookumchuk for a camping weekend at the hot springs! Woot! Forecast says sunny and clear, with a low of zero, but hey, at least NO RAIN. hopefully.

This week has gone by really fast and I’ve had a very productive time at work. With Jo as extra help for the last few weeks, I am plowing through the backlog of files. Its such a relief to get things off your desk that have been piling up since May or June.

 

There is still a little issue of a person in my office that is difficult to deal with. I am kind of known for being calm and not getting mad easily. But once in a while I feel myself building up and feeling SO angry. I actually muttered a swear under my breath today. (gasp!) I have expressed my concern on a few occasions but so far nothing has really changed.

 

Last weekend we went out for a dinner to celebrate my bday, since some of us are going away this weekend, and it was really nice to see everyone. Thank you all for coming!

 

I will update some flickr photos soon and hopefully have some fun camping pics after this weekend.

 

~L

Live From Austin

Posted on October 12, 2006 | Filed Under Nerding Out, Vacation, Drama

The flight down was long. I arrived at YVR an hour and a half early, only to have my flight delayed by an hour due to thunderstorms in Dallas. Fortunately, my connecting flight to Austin was also moved an hour, otherwise i would have missed it. I made the connection OK thanks to this light rail system they have at the airport. I’m more worried about my connecting flight home; I probably have 15 minutes or less to go between gates.

On the long flight, i wrote a C program to solve “medium” sudoku puzzles using heuristic scanning and counting — which made the flight seem a little shorter. “Hard” puzzles, according to Wikipedia, requires bifurcation/guess-and-check. I digress…

The Coastal and Rocky moutains were amazing from above; it’s the first time i’ve been over them. The air above was so clear it was shaded blackish-blue instead of whiteish-blue that we’re used to. Would have been able to see Great Salt Lake too if not for cloud cover. Approaching Dallas, there was this neat diffusion/defraction effect around the shadow of the airplane which looked like a circular rainbow. Laura was bugging me to take the camera, and now i wish i had for that stuff =).

Austin itself seems fairly “normal”. By that, i mean it looks a lot like Victoria but in a hot climate where lots of people speak Spanish. There’s lots of old “heritage” buildings, brick crosswalks and roads, and slummy-but-nice suburbs that remind me of Langford. It’s really, really, humid here. The temperature outside the hotel has been hovering around 25C. At night, you can see the moonlight towers clearly in the distance from my hotel room. They give off this lime-green-ish light, which makes them look very UFO like.

The most noticeable thing, IMHO, about Austin is that the water tastes and smells like mud (which i can taste in the food). It’s probably due to the Colorado river being the main source (either that, or it’s aquifer water; i’m not certain, but both could result in heavy mineralization).

The opening Keynote talk was this crazy physicist guy that showed the crowd how to measure the speed of light. If you can imagine a crazy scientist, this guy is that archetype. He has this strange quirk: he’d randomly pause to complain that he’d run out of chocolate milk (when he wasn’t busy running around the room). As for the content, it was really interesting — especially since it has absolutely no relevance to the conference itself.

As for the reason i’m here (my talk)… i’m not happy with how it went, especially since the events leading up to it were rough.

For dinner the night before, i had a “fancy” steak with a big glass of red wine. The steak was good, but the wine was a big mistake — it hit me like a brick, probably from being tired from the long trip. I spent the next few hours trying desperately to sober up without resorting to caffiene (which keeps me up all night, regardless of offsetting alcohol consumption). I was up until 3AM CDT going over the slides and had to wake up at 6:30AM. Ugh.

After getting up and registering, I had to run to a store a few blocks away to buy a cheap watch so i could time myself. I then spent an hour before lunch talking-out the slides in my room, which made my voice hoarse. Fortunately that cleared before i had to give the actual talk, but it just added to the overall stress.

45 minutes before the talk, the room was free so i started hooking up the laptop to the projector. No matter what I did, i couldn’t get Linux/Xorg to work with the dammed projector! It would show my desktop colors, but it was totally garbage and you couldn’t read anything. I had expected this, so i said to myself “no problem! i’ve got the PDF on my fancy new laser-pointer-USB-key here, i’ll just boot into windows!” Windows worked fine with the projector, but i had neglected to install Acrobat Reader. Furthermore, the wireless card refused to associate with the access point in the same room. Argh! I ended up having to borrow the chairperson’s macbook (chairperson = person from the ASF that introduces me and, i think, rates the talk). The PDF loaded fine,but then we notice there’s only a DVI port on the macbook! Fortunately, Gozer (ActiveState mod_perl guy) had a DVI-to-VGA adapter, and i was able to talk.

The talk went too fast; I wasn’t feeling nervous, but I didn’t manage the pace very well (skipped over too much detail when I didn’t need to). There was fairly low attendance; I counted about 25 people at the start, but only 2 people left during the talk (including one developer that I was hoping would ask questions at the end). Overall, i feel that i did a substandard job. All of the other talks that i’ve been to were definitely better content-wise, but there’s been at least one other speaker down at my level. Anyway, i’m not letting it get me down too much… i know now that i need more practice and need to dedicate more time to the process of creating a talk.

After the talk, i went to a few more sessions, had a few beer at this social event, then went to bed early =). I woke up today feeling good and i’ve been able to enjoy some really good talks.

Tomorrow is pretty “light” on stuff I want to see, so I may attempt to book an earlier flight home (or, at least, go to the airport early). I hope to get a bit of tourist-ing done tonight and/or tomorrow.

I’ve rambled on for long enough, i think. I hope you enjoyed reading =).

Robbed

Posted on October 5, 2006 | Filed Under Family, Rants, Drama

My parents’ house in suburban Victoria was robbed today. As they ransacked my parents’ bedroom they managed to find the small safe in the bottom of the closet and decided it was the paydirt. Somehow thieves carried the safe out of the front door of the house, pockets full of jewellery from my mom’s dresser and nobody noticed anything. Not the neighbor beside them who was home. Not the neighbor on the other side of them that was working in her front lawn. And not the neighbor across the street from them who was ALSO gardening in her front lawn.

How do you not notice people carrying a safe out someone’s house?

GRRRR!

My wedding band which matches my engagement ring was in the safe. Along with all my grandmother’s diamonds. Huge ones. And my great-grandmother’s ring too.

Sucks that the list my grandmother wrote up before she passed away with a decription and sizes of each diamond ring/piece of jewellery was in the safe as well.

My parents are OK and their kitten didnt run away, even with the front door being open all day. And for some reason, the camera, cell phone, jewellery in the bathroom and the TV and electronic equipment is all fine.

My mom tells me that the police didnt bother to fingerprint anything because “these people always wear gloves” That made me really mad. How can you just assume that without even LOOKING for fingerprints? That does not sound like good police work. I watch CSI!

Word of warning: The piece of wood in the window sill to lock the window DOES NOT WORK.

~L

Busy week

Posted on September 15, 2006 | Filed Under Day to day

Monday after work we had Jen and Luke over for dinner to celebrate in advance Jen’s birthday. It was very nice to finally have them over to our place That night I packed up my bag and Tuesday morning I flew over to Victoria for two days of training/meetings for my work.

Taking the float plane was quite an experience. If you have never done it before I recommend it! Tuesday morning it was sunny, clear and not windy so the ride was very smooth. It flies so low you can see everything in detail. And it is only 35 mins between downtown Vancouver to downtown Victoria. Even though I get really nervous before flying, it was still fun.

I arrived in Victoria and went to my work’s head office where I got to see some people I haven’t seen for a long time! I met Jacqueline, a friend of mine from head office and we went out for brunch. I made it back to my meeting and by 5pm I was on the bus out to my parents for the night. Had a yummy family dinner and got to spend some time with my brother. In the morning my dad drove me into town and I made it through 7 hours of meetings with a nice lunch break in the middle with Adrienne, my newly married friend of mine from university. After that long day I met with another friend, Kristin, for dinner and made it to my 6:45pm plane with plenty of time. It was nice to squeeze in three friend visits inbetween work stuff.

The float plane ride home was not quite as enjoyable. It was windy and rocky and very turbulent. I think it was probably the smallest plane I’ve been in and when it dipped and tilted my stomach did the same. I think I’m just a nervous flyer anyway. Although when we landed smoothly in Vancouver there was a beautiful sunset and my sweetheart waiting for me on the dock.

We made it home and even though I was so tired, I stayed up and cleaned the kitchen and tidied up a bit. Thursday was a crazy, busy day at work and by 3pm I was getting angry/frustrated. After work the day went much better. Jeremy and I met up with my brother and his friend and went for dinner and beer, then made our way to GM Place for the Red Hot Chili Peppers show, which was a lot of fun. Jeremy was a little dissapointed, comparing it to the awesome Pearl Jam show we saw last year, but I thought it was great. I thought it was a good mix of old and new songs. I guess the only thing that was a little dissapointing was very limited interaction or even addressing of the audience.

But I had a great time and enjoyed myself. I may have drank too much beer last night and since we didnt go to bed until way past our usual bedtime I was a bit of a zombie this morning. Two cups of ginseng green tea later and Im feeling OK now. I was looking forward to going home to nap after work but then remembered tonight is work-people-socializing night, so Ill be going out after work. I guess there will be time on the weekend to catch up and relax!

~L

Blog Spam

Posted on September 13, 2006 | Filed Under Nerding Out

Hrm… over 50 comments since this morning from just as many IP addresses.

Damn you blog spammers!

I’ve turned on comment moderation until I can get a
captcha plugin installed. Sorry about that.

~j

End of summer

Posted on August 31, 2006 | Filed Under Day to day, Home

This week I have noticed its much colder in the mornings than it has been…maybe no more walking to work in shorts and tank tops? Is the summer over?

Most people grumble with the coming of fall but it is really my favorite time of year. There’s so much that I look forward to as the summer comes to a close. In the past that would have included the start of a new school year, the excitement of starting new classes, meeting new people, seeing people you lost track of over the summer.  

I’ll think of some other things i’m looking forward to:

Cool crisp air, the smell of rain (i even like walking in it), wearing snuggly warm clothes (sweaters and coats, scarves and toques), leaves turning colour and falling, Thanksgiving (home cooked family meal, mmm), my birthday, Halloween (a good excuse to eat candy), cooking warm comfort food (stews, soups, etc), drinking hot teas and hot chocolate…

Hmm I sure did mention alot of food. Anyway my point is, I love winter and I love our mild west coast weather where it never really gets too cold. At least, not like other provinces where it could kill you to expose your skin to the freezing air.

 Who wants to go shopping for fall clothes?

 

~L

 

 

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