Hariador

hariador @ 2009-12-12T12:21:00

2009-12-12T18:21:40Z

Weird dream last night. For some reason I was running parliment for the NDP, aginst my friend Sachit. But I didn't know why, or even that I was running for the NDP. Needless to say I spend a lot of time wandering around confused, looking for a speechwriter.

hariador @ 2009-10-14T23:51:00

2009-10-15T04:52:35Z

It seems tonight that everywhere I turn I'm stymied and defeated... about the only thing I can win tonight is housework.

Oh well, at least I get to listen to Les Mis...

hariador @ 2009-10-07T14:49:00

2009-10-07T19:50:15Z

Why is it the only time that people tend to hold the elevator is when there's already another one at there already?

Also, old coffee dredges are horrible, no matter how much cream you mix in...

hariador @ 2009-07-09T10:20:00

2009-07-09T15:50:14Z

Another nightmare last night. Only two days in a row I suppose, but still slightly disturbing. At least last night it was early in the night so I didn't wake up messed up like I did yesterday.

Last night I dreamed that I was in some sort of lush jungle valley that was exteremly isolated from the rest of the world. Myself and a group of survivors had just fled down the side of the valley to end up beside a lake at the bottom. At that point I didn't really know what we had been running from, it was just some faceless terror. As the survivors attempted to group back together and get organized and explore our new environments, it quickly became apparent that the vegitation of the valley was turning against us, being corrupted by the faceless horror that we had fled from. As it dawned on us that we were trapped in the valley, I started trying to give a speech to rally everyone, people started pointing at me in horror. I turned around and the girl from the ring was pulling herself out of the ground behind me. That's when I woke up with a start. Fortunately it was only 1:30 so I was able to get back to sleep eventually, although I did leave the lights on for a bit...

Productive Day

2009-06-29T21:11:16Z

It's been a productive day so far. Changed the oil in the car, got some groceries. Ran VOA, which was a mild form of frustration since the OT was horrible, we actually almost wiped on the easy boss because he couldn't taunt for some reason.

I also finally managed to get Visual Studio to just give me a stupid .exe instead of a ClickOnce installer. The perils of figuring stuff out on my own is that sometimes I miss the blindingly obvious. Anyways, now I've just got the stripped down application that will genereate a bunch of the monthly reports for the restaurant. Which means I can just setup a scheduled task and forget about it.

Seatlle: Day something or other

2008-11-12T17:13:45Z

Hit that point last night where I just want to be back home. Slept horribly and woke up many times last night. Haven't done any exploring at all this time, it's less fun to do when you're by yourself and when I can just stay in and at lesst talk to the people back home via the internets, I find myself just hanging out in the room. Going to have to go out tonight though, need something to read, and I should probably track down a copy or two of wotlk. I hear rumours that there are 7-11's that are selling it early around Seattle.

Seattle: Day Two

2008-11-05T19:40:56Z

Much less hectic day at the office yesterday. Nothing exploding quite as much, although I did spend too much time fighting fires, and not enough time learning the stuff that I'm supposed to be here for. Went out to dinner with Bart, Billy and William, all of whom worked in the NOC with me at one time or another, and are from Winnipeg. We went to a place called the Mediterrainan Kitchen, which attempted to kill us by burying us with food. I ordered the Lamb Couscous, which consited of two large pieces of lamb still on the bone, two large whole roasted potatoes, a large glazed onion and pile of carrots and olives and some egg plant wrapped in grape leaves. And a large bowl of couscous. Dinner also comes with nice peppery lentil soup and pita bread. I still have about 60% of it left in the fridge of the hotel room. Passed out pretty much immediately after getting back to the hotel room again last night.

I did see a bunch of people waving signs all over the place, I guess trying to get people to change their votes at the last minute or something, which was sorta weird. And apparently there was some sort of riot/party in downtown Seattle after McCain conceded, but I was already asleep at the time. There's not a lot of overt reaction here in the office, but I think that in generally people appear to be pretty hopeful about what having Obama elected may mean. The danger of course is that hes human, has faults and is facing a horrendously difficult task. The weight of the hope being placed on the man, may very well crush him.

Seattle: Day One

2008-11-04T17:16:22Z

Got up a bit earlier than I had to, I wanted to make sure that I got to work on time. Of course no one else was there when I got to the office. Spent most of the day working on clusterfuck created by software being deployed that really wasn't ready. All in all I spent 13 hours in the office yesterday and in the end, since the fix and mitigation turned out to be slighly elegant, I suppose that makes me happy. I was however wiped out when I got back to the hotel. So much so in fact that I didn't even bother with eating dinner, I just made a couple of calls then crashed.

Which of course means that I was awake at 6am this morning.

hariador @ 2008-10-22T10:15:00

2008-10-22T15:17:58Z

Spent most of last night working on a powershell script to automatically back up any recently modified files from a list of directories. For the most part it works pretty well, except that pscp ( and scp for that matter) can't actually create new directories on the remote host. However, since it's just a archive of the data, and doesn't really need to be accessed in any user friendly matter, I just make the local path to be part of the filename. A little sloppy I suppose, but it gets the job done.

Sydney's

2008-01-30T20:51:44Z

Took Jessica out to Syndey's last night. I haven't been there for a long time, so it was nice when most of the staff there still recognized me. It was also nice since it got me a table off in the corner with some privacy, instead of out in the open, which was apparently where we were originally going to be seated.

Ordered:
Jessica,
Classic Guinness and Kerrygold white cheddar velouté garnished with a smoked sea salt dusted pretzel
- Alright, but was a little too close to being gravy, which, without fries would have sucked. But
it would have been amazing gravy :P

Homemade fresh dill & cheese curd perogies garnished with mustard fennel & borscht coulis
- Good, but nothing special.

Angus beef noisette topped with cremini mushroom gratin quenched with a candied shallot & cabernet reduction
- Tasty, although compared to my Red Tailed Deer, it was a little tough.

Roasted pecan & caramelized apple-brandy charlotte
- Don't remember how this one turned out.

Myself,
La Phet – Green tealeaf & shaved savoy cabbage salad topped with shaved Hanglay curried pork
- Flavourful, although maybe a little too vinegary.

Sydney’s Reuben - homemade corned beef & sauerkraut with carved Rosenthal Swiss served between a sourdough biscuit garnished with malt vinegar chips & remoulade sauce
- Awesome, my only complaint was that it was tiny, but then, it's an appetizer, not the main course.

**Chef’s feature - exotic game pan seared classically garnished with Chasseur sauce
- Game was Red Tailed Deer, meat was exceptionally tender. The sauce seemed a little diffrent from what I remember, more savour and not quite as sweet. I asked about it, and it was probably a diffrence in the wines.

Classic crème brulée
- The classic, tasty as always.

Had the waiter that always seems to disapprove of me for some reason. Although he seemed a little less disapproving last night. Also saw Scott at one point and said hello. All in all a good meal.

hariador @ 2007-11-20T09:13:00

2007-11-20T15:30:21Z

Strange dreams last night, awoke several times through the night, always to fall back into to some very vivid dream.

The first dream, and the one that I remember the clearest. I was walking through mountains coming back to a town that I used to live in. I remember the town, although I'm not sure if it was just memories made by the dream, or if I had dreamed of it earlier in the night or even if it was based on a real place that I've been. I remember walking into a coffee shop and talking to the waitress, an older worn woman. When I had left town, I sold her my house very cheaply and she was very grateful. Now however, she was having problems with the house being haunted by a spirit. Then things get a little confusing. I start to tell her about the time I was attacked by a ghost while I was in my car, the telling becoming reality of the dream. I was then in the car, which was parked somewhere very very dark. The ghost was outside, but I couldn't see it as the windows were frozen hard with frost, but I could hear it howling. I was terrified, I thought my heart was going to explode. I started screaming. I screamed so loudly that the windows of the car burst outwards.
And then I woke up, it was about 4am.

I dreamt later that I was driving along with my friend Paul, fixing his car, watching a giant tornado destroy Winnipeg. The details of that dream have faded. Along with the details of my last dream before waking, of which I only retain a feeling that it was long, complex and involved.

And now I'm at work on the grey, chill day. Watching it start to snow.

I blame the Cheaters

2007-09-03T19:35:13Z

Guess what, more kittens

2007-06-30T14:25:32Z

hariador @ 2007-06-30T00:42:00

2007-06-30T05:44:30Z

4 days ago one of my cats had kittens. This was more than a little bit of a suprise, since we had no idea that she was pregnant.

Anyways, here's a couple of videos of said new born kittens.

http://www.youtube.com/v/aaWjaS-QFg8

http://www.youtube.com/v/oZifaSd2qH4

And we're back

2006-02-06T15:21:50Z

Or more technically, I am back.
Round Trip of almost 8000km
It is now desperatly time to shower, perhaps some more details later.

hariador @ 2005-12-30T08:34:00

2005-12-30T14:28:27Z

Finished the admin tool for the restaurant POS system tonight. This means that I wont have to hard code everything into the application and it can pull a lot of its configuration from the database at run time.
Now on to finish the POS, success is immienent, and god I can't wait till this is done.

Oddles of c# knowhow aquired along the way.

hariador @ 2005-11-01T13:38:00

2005-11-01T19:42:56Z

When I start dreaming about by ravaging horde of Facist Japanese Jews, I know I've been playing to much Civilization 4. But it's so good, I just really can't help myself. The addition of religion to the game gives you one more reason to hate your enemy, simply because they're diffrent.

So these are the ashes of my childhood.

2005-09-26T19:33:46Z

So on Saturday morning, I get a call from my mother at work. She needs me to be at my parents place that afternoon, because she was kicking my father out of the house and was worried that he might get violent. She wouldn't tell me the reasons for her decisions on the phone.

In the end, I've learned a lot of unpleasant things about my father. In the space of a day, I've come to the realization that he is not a man that I should look up to, that he didn't deserve any of the respect that I've given him. And maybe I'm being unfair to myself, but I feel guilty for not being there to help my mother and my brother. The fact that they had to deal with his alchoolic rages while I was completely ignorant...

In the end, it's not the cheating, the lying, the drinking, the massive debt or anything else that I've found out that hurts, because, well, I am my father's son, I know close the line is and how easy it is to cross it. So no, I'm not truly suprised my these things. What really upsets me, makes me angry is knowing that I'm better than him, I've faced these same things and I've beaten some of them, am still fighting some of them. But I haven't given in. Yes, he has been fighting them longer than I have, but if after 50 years he hadn't beatem any of them yet, I doubt that he ever will.

But this has burnt away the last vestigas of my youth and at least for the time being, everything that I recall of him, my family from my childhood, will be tainted. I've lost one of the pillars of my life. I'm thankful at least for the ones that remain.

Bzzz

2005-09-09T15:42:09Z

So I am now officially a drone again, I've got an ID card on a pulley again. On the plus side, this card will among other things, grant me access to any software that Microsoft publishes, or will publish, or have ever published. Seriously, they have an archive of all their old software, every version. I think I'll grab me a copy of Windows 3.1 just for kicks.

In other news, I dont get nearly enough sleep.

-Jon

hariador @ 2005-08-14T20:30:00

2005-08-15T01:59:55Z

So, at this point I think I've been up for about 36 hours ( Man, way to many of my conversations these days have been starting with "I've been up for...")

Had fun at the Tori Amos concert sitting in the front row, taunting the Toriphiles by reading a book instead of worshipping Tori.

Made some new friends, Jenna and Sarah, two other Tori concert goers that Ann had meet on some board and just happened to be staying in the same hotel as us. Stayed up most of last night drinking Vodka with said new friends. At around 6am, things moved to the into the hot tub where things got considerably more interesting. I don't really want to write more about it at this point as I'm still trying to sort out everything in my own head.

Said goodbye to the girls around noon as Jenna was heading back to Charlotte and Sarah back to New Orleans. Ann and I then drove to some old hotel to have a posh brunch. Then it was off to some discount mall, Ann shopped, I napped in the car. 30+C and 100% humidity make for some wet dreams of a completly sweaty sort. Then it was back to our hotel, where we walked across the street to get some sushi.

All in all, I'm actually pretty suprised how this whole weekend is ending up. I expected to go along simply to keep Ann company. But instead, well, in some ways it's become my vacation. I suppose I'm still in shock from some of the developments.

Just found out that we are meeting the girls for lunch tomorrow as Sarah's flight leaves from Raleigh( near us) and not Charlotte.

hariador @ 2005-08-07T11:05:00

2005-08-07T16:10:39Z

Man, what a hectic weak. Interviews with Microsoft people on Thursday, company BBQ/Poker Game on Friday evening. With everthing going on in the day, I didn't really get much sleep. Which I more than made up for last night. Went to bed at 11:00 am Saturday morning, awoke at ~8:00 am This morning. I'm guessing this explains why I'm so lazy when I'm awake, I'm an overacheiver when I sleep.

On other good news front, apparently MS was sufficiently happy with the interview results that they have decided to extend offers to everyone in the office, at least present salary levels or better, so any last vestigas of worry has been slept away.

I also learned how to play Texas Hold em, getting my ass handed to me the first game, but finishing third in the second.

hariador @ 2005-08-04T01:58:00

2005-08-04T07:00:12Z

Nothing says frustrating like trying to teach yourself how to tie a tie from pictures on the internet. At least thoose old boy scout skills come in handy. In other news, apparently I'm off to North Carolina next weekend to see Tori Amos. Well at least I get to eat thoose yummy peanuts on the plane.

Interesting News.

2005-07-20T23:18:15Z

Today was the company annual meeting.

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2005/jul05/07-20ManagedMessaging.mspx

Giving the other bits of information that I've come across in recent months, it's not really a huge suprise. But yah, apparently I'm going to be working for Microsoft. Not something that I ever thought was going to be in the cards career wise.

Tee's crossed and I's dotted.

2005-04-15T16:46:40Z

So I now have a house, or I will in a few hours once the keys are handed over to me.

It's weirding me out a little bit. Owning houses is something that my parents do, not me. At any rate the next few weeks will involve arranging my meager possessions in my new abode.

All in all, buying a house was more stressful that it probably needed to be, mainly because of the poor service that I received from TD Bank. Over a month ago now I went to talk to them about what I would need to do in order to buy a house. The mortgage specialist checked my number and pronounced that I would have no problems getting a money from the bank. At that point I pretty much had to force her to pull my credit report, she didn't want to because it might hurt my rating, but I forced her because I needed to know what, if anything was on my credit file. Turns out it was a really good idea, Shaw had placed an 800$ judgment against me. At any rate, I then asked her what else I would need to do, what information to get, etc. She told me to just go out and find a house, then come back to apply for the mortgage.

That's where the problems really started. There are a lot of little things that are involved in buying a house. Things that the banks know about of course, but I, the first time home buyer, knew nothing about. In the end, it just felt like I was trying to pull the teeth from a rabid dog in my attempts to get information from TD. I kept stumbling over requirements literally hours before I would have to satisfy them.

In the end, my mortgage was a approved by TD and CMHC, but I didn't sign it. Ann pretty much had to forcibly restrain me from doing so, as I was completely fixated on closing the deal. I'll be eternally grateful to her for stopping me from signing up with TD for the next 10-15 years. In the end, I got an extension on my offer and went to Royal bank. Which, compared to TD was a breath of fresh, sweet spring air.

All in all, it took just over 3 days for Royal to get the mortgage approved, which isn't bad considering that they didn't start working on it until Friday evening. Went to the lawyers yesterday and signed all the papers. Picking up the keys tonight.

So yah, I've got a house. Weird.

hariador @ 2005-03-30T10:41:00

2005-03-30T16:42:25Z

Dear Penthouse,

I never thought it would happen to me...