senatorhung's pad
ramblings of an information troubleshooter
ramblings of an information troubleshooter
do you play hockey ?
Sunday, 29MAY2005:got woken up at 10-ish by someone buzzing at my door. while i got up to get a drink of water, i wasn't going to deign the inconsiderate buzzer with a response. since i was up, i decided to call odile to sing 'happy birthday' onto her answering machine.
after futzing a bit on the pc, i went back to bed until greg called to invite me over for a round of ball hockey in front of his place. emilie, john, naomi, carine and david made an appearance, but david was only there to take photos. we tried to keep it real by playing on the road, but after kicking up lots of dirt and dust, we decided to move over to the basketball courts in front of nakasuk school.
there, emilie, naomi and i proved to greg, john and carine that regardless of which direction the wind was blowing, we were not going to be beat today by the likes of them. between naomi's stick-handling, emilie's banshee charges and my sneaky wrist shots, we peppered them mercilessly. afterwards, we were rewarded for our efforts with a batch of greg's freshly baked cookies.
i am really not ready to go back to work.
i spent the rest of the evening sorting thru my receipts from the southern trip and transferring pics from my digital camera memory cards. had a bit of a scare with the last (and largest) one, but thankfully the problem resolved itself before i succumbed to the exasperated urge to reformat. i also managed to dig down thru around 8 months of notes and paperwork that had piled up around my pc - guess who wins the supreme procrastinator prize :)
one pleasant surprise resulted when i plugged in the teardrop mp3 player (that i had won in a raffle awhile back) to my pc usb port - it lit up !! i was beginning to think that it would just be a colourful paperweight, but it turns out that i just never turned the player on after plugging it into my pc. i have a portable cd player that suits me fine, but now i can demo my potential mix playlists on the mp3 player to give them a workout without having to burn test cd's.
nose to the grindstone
Monday, 30MAY2005:well, my first day back at work wasn't a total torture session. had a few phone calls, but was otherwise able to continue to excavate my inbox and clear off a little corner of my desk. in celebration of my return to the office, mother nature sympathetically provided a new dusting of snow (end of may !!) on the roads and rocks of the city.
went for lunch at the snack with greg. had my usual order of chicken poutine (no onions). i showed off my teardrop mp3, which survived most of the day on its battery charge. hopefully it will last longer than my previous mp3 player which conked out after only 1.5 months. david also swung by the office to advise me that the posters for this week's movies were incorrect and that 'unleashed' was actually set to start at 7, so i sent a note around inviting others to attend.
john, david and emilie joined me at the showing. jet li was a pleasure to watch as he displayed a wondrous innocence as a man who learns that his life as a caged and collared animal trained to fight on command is not a normal upbringing. of course, he gets some good licks in too. definitely worth seeing if you enjoyed other luc besson films like 'leon', a.k.a. 'the professional'.
that film featured a young natalie portman as a femme fatale. with natalie's insipid performance (as directed) in the latest star wars, she nearly undoes the outstanding work that she did in both 'garden state' and 'closer'. oh well, at least i can look forward to her shaved-head performance in the film adaptation of the classic british dystopian graphic novel 'v for vendetta' by alan moore and david lloyd. for those in iqaluit who won't be able to see the new star wars flick in the theatre until friday, maybe the organic flavour of store wars will tide you over ?
afterwards, we visited the storehouse where malcolm and mike joined us. we stayed for a few rounds and so i ordered a rib sandwich since i figured it would be too late to cook anything by the time i got home.
good things come to those who wait
Tuesday, 31MAY2005:went for lunch at the legion with malcolm, chris, john and olivia. we invited daniel ('the new john') out as well but he had stuffed himself with bannock already. we tutored john in the intricate process of ordering a meal at the legion and he successfully jumped when his name was called.
inclement weather (i.e. more snow) precluded a planned hike in the evening, so i stayed late at the office to catch up a bit. malcolm even found enough snow to whip a snowball at my window on his way back from the gym. the wind had picked up from the daytime and it definitely wasn't fun walking home.
i have a stack of mixes beside me, received in the mail while i was away, but am holding off on listening to them until i have sent notes of thanks to my fellow traders. since i'm demo-ing another new mix from my existing database of songs, i also didn't want to infect my brain with new music which would undoubtedly distract me from finishing that task - like i don't have enough on my 'to-do' list already.
do you play soccer ?
Wednesday, 01JUN2005:was surprised to see greg out at the high school prepping for soccer this evening, especially when he mentioned that it's been a good 15 years since he last played. however, when he found out that he'd be waiting for another 45 minutes just for the *chance* to play, he decided to pursue other pleasures for the evening.
meanwhile, the soccer team that i joined, made up of leftovers of 3 teams, appears to be close to imploding itself. mike and keith decided to slide over to john's team which played before our match, but we managed to convince them to hang around and play for us too. i played net with kook and natuk in front of me. pauline and moe volunteered as subs.
however, our team just couldn't put it past simon in the other net. liam got an early goal when he shot a steep angle ball past my head to put the other team up by 1. mike had a few chances right in front of simon, but each time blasted it right over simon's head (and the crossbar). kook and natuk made some amazing passing combos but couldn't supply the finishing touches.
i got a bit rowdy towards the end and began to chase the ball outside the crease to try to kick things into gear. i even stomped on keith as i challenged lily in the corner beside the net. a lucky bounce off the wall and lily caught me way too far forward and easily punted the ball into the far corner to make the final score 2-nil.
evening sun glare on black screen
Thursday, 02JUN2005:finally dipped into the cd pile that i had acquired down south and selected the franz ferdinand album as the first to play. very nice ! and to think that i would have never even heard of them if it weren't for malcolm.
spent a few hours after work sorting thru my travel expense claim for the southern junket. it really irks me that in this day of digital 'accuracy', that we still have to fill out forms manually. guess this is just to remind us about how lucky we are to even have our employer reimburse us for duty travel.
at least the sun had peeked out by the time i left the office at 21:30. all the snow that had fallen over the last couple of days has very quickly sublimed away.
- link of the day:
lost
in the mix
"All these tapes, whether compilations of avant-punk or classic rock standards, have a common purpose: to communicate an emotion or idea -- to a new friend, a potential lover, or even to oneself. ... The romance comes not only from the emotion expressed by a series of songs, but also from the sheer effort that it takes to plan and execute a mix."
press club plus pub crawl
Friday, 03JUN2005:well, it's a quarter to 4 in the morning as i write this note. reflected sunlight is just beginning to gleam off of the tops of the ridges and i can tell that it's going to be a nice day.
after a week of gloomy / bitter reminders from mother nature that she still had her druthers, she relented today and allowed the sun to shine. this warmed the place up enough to allow me to re-trade my mad trapper cap (lined with warm rabbit-fur) for my spring fedora.
went for lunch at the snack with greg and john. it was john's first time there so we ribbed him that he had to eat without hands. i don't think we were too convincing :( after lunch, i caught up with a few of the akitsiraq students who had spent their last school term in victoria.
well, after finishing my first week back at work, i still have about 30 new 'to-do' emails from the time i was away (plus the ones that had already stockpiled from before). yeesh. guess it was too much to expect to get caught up that easily, huh ?
anyway, i was ready for a night on the town. first up was the press club where we heard lori talk about her involvement with the 'embrace life' committee. lori complained that she was very nervous, but she made a fantastic speech. afterwards, john, greg, david and i hit the storehouse for a round.
next stop was at l'association francophonie where happy hour was winding down. when 2 girls started dueling with the decorative paper pineapples, we decided to escape the carnage by walking across the street to the legion. a bunch of the gang were already there - fletcher, rachel, malcolm, olivia, chris, sara, morgan, joe, etc. also met willy, who will be rooming with chris for a bit.
jane enlightened us with the story of her busted wrist - she initially tried to blame it on broomball, but i soon weaseled the truth out of her. seems she was out tobogganing and got a little carried away :) she also introduced us to leslie (?) who sounded willing to be roped onto the broomball crew when we start up again in the fall.
played a few games of pool to avoid the crush on the dance floor. the veteran jimmy was my first opponent. after my break, he sunk 5 balls in a row before letting me have a shot. i managed to keep alive with some strategic (and lucky) hooks, but jimmy made some nice finishing shots to put me away.
my second match was against jolly, who seemed to be trading off the table with todd all nite. both of them made some amazing shots, but were really just good at consistently making what they called. i did my usual 'don't sink any of my balls, so i have more balls to hook him with' maneuvers, but sadly for me, jolly had the skills to get thru.
when he was down to the black, he missed his first try, giving me a chance to rally with 3 balls left. i sunk the first one easily, and the second one went down too, but i wasn't able to freeze the cue enough to get the leave on the black that i had intended. this left me with a long angle shot, and with the white spot angled away, all i could see was black and didn't get a good read on it as my glasses rolled down my nose. the black ball rang the doorbell and then bounced back onto the doorstep, waiting for jolly to put it home.
i finished the evening's table action with 2 matches against luc. we played 'texas', where the black ball has to go down the same pocket as the final ball sunk by each player. luc was both a master of accuracy and of the leave, so i was happy when i was able to keep the first game close and go to the black. i had first dibs, but again came up short, giving luc the only opening he needed.
we played the rematch right away and luc easily put me away as my shots were just off enough that my hooking strategy didn't come together. maybe i'll play better tomorrow night.
after the legion, i accompanied stacey, damien and karen to visit smokey the cat and patrice. when david came knocking, we moved on to another house party a few doors down. after hanging out there for a bit, i decided that my day had been eventful enough and made my way back home against the wind.
- link of the day:
indie
distribution model possible for books ?
"Although it is notoriously imprecise, BookScan does reveal the distressing reality that most books sell in very small quantities--even those that garner positive reviews in the New York Times and the New York Review of Books. National Book Award finalist Christine Schutt has been ridiculed for the fact that her book had sold scarcely 1,000 copies at the time of her nomination. But the fact is, other than blockbuster hits, few books sell more than a couple of thousand copies. When a writer tells you how many copies his book has sold, you can usually divide that number by two or three to get closer to reality--though this may be a reality of which the writer himself is unaware. ... Paul Theroux's sentiment--that we are living in an age in which writers are bullied into publicly prostituting themselves--bolsters the misguided idea that a writer's work is done once a complete manuscript is delivered. Publishers and writers alike must adapt to the realities of a glutted marketplace and an overexposed public, whose noses are more often pointed at computer screens than buried in books. Only by recognizing--and embracing-- these realities can literature hope to reclaim the magic it once exerted upon the public.
STAR WARS NOW IN IQALUIT !
Saturday, 04JUN2005:i'm snarfing a pile of smoked oysters after another nite on the town. open the cardboard packaging, pull out the silver treasure box, peel open the metal tab, dump contents into a pie plate and sprinkle with pepper to taste. damn tasty at 2:30 in the morning !
lori called early in the afternoon to let me know that she would be coming by to borrow my digital camera for her trip to alaska. while waiting for her to arrive, i managed to vacuum my apartment. now, i only have a one-bedroom, but i still rarely manage to get the place cleaned up (uncluttered is a whole other ballgame). the size of dust bunnies that i encountered today was a little bit disturbing ...
after lori left, i moved on to mopping the floors in the kitchen and the bathroom before hitting the showers to get cleaned up for the main event of the evening: STAR WARS. we had bought our tickets yesterday in advance, so greg, david, john and i immersed ourselves in the latest george lucas visionary saga. it was neat to see greg as excited as a little kid.
after the show, we hashed out plot holes and raved about the effects over a round at the storehouse where we encountered emilie, peter and monty. from there, we planned to go on to the legion, but emilie wanted to stop off at another place on the way where one of her friends was hosting a birthday party. confetti lined the floor and balloons spelling out '30' lined the walls. john sampled the wine and then we strolled the block over to the legion, promising to return.
at the legion, we ran into malcolm and sara who had just finished d.j.ing their latest edition of 'audio missile defence'. odile and robert showed up as well, so we took over a table. i tried to sign up for a couple of games of pool, but never managed to get back over before my name got erased from the board.
pascal was celebrating his birthday, ian / richard / dave were saying their farewells, and there were lots of younger folk returned from university / college which made for an interesting dynamic. a bit of shmoozing, a bit of drinking and a bit of dancing and all too soon, the lights came on.
emilie led myself, robert, odile and john back over to the house party and we hung out for a bit there before heading our separate ways. me, i think i'm still up for a single round of pc poker before hitting the sack :)
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