UltraCrepidate

I’ve re-asked myself this question several times and the answer has always changed in the past year or so I take it seriously.

At first, I was motivated by getting traffic, then the prospect of some cyber-girl oogling after me and later lulled by the potential to gain money.

My site has been dwindling in traffic for the past month ever since I started moving. That’s understandable due to the layout and less effort putting into writing an article. I no longer write with the intention of attracting traffics. I checked with myself and didn’t flinch a bit when the past weekend became the first one where I got 0 traffic.

Cyber-girl oogling? Ha! Nope, but I discovered that it doesn’t change anything

Potential of making money? Nah, the answer is still no.

I realized one thing when I am surfing now. That is, I immediately question the contents of a site once I see the appearance of an ad on it. It’s an over reaction of the current ad filled web. So for that, I shall never subject others to the same question. Their motivation is money and their opinions will be steered by money.

So what is the hidden motivation of my site when you read it? What should you take into consideration when I present a side of the coin? That will be to help others learn as I’ve learned. What you should be aware of when reading, is that I assume I know more than you on the subject and that you’ve never had the same thought in your mind or done the same things before.

Which will be central to the next few site update. After getting my ass handed to me by a few site designers and some community posted questions, I know what needs to be changed in my layout. I also noticed how long it loaded after I switched to Roger’s Portable Internet (This is a neat service, I should write about my experience later).

Once I get my computer desk delivered, I can finally start using pictures, restructure and work on creating a new subset of my site. My best friend Kirk and I wants to pursue our interest together and write about our culinary experiences in Montreal. His cooking style focuses on modernizing (i.e. making less expensive) traditional food while I veer off towards the realm of saucière. I didn’t invest in all those expensive kitchen appliances for nothing.

So, that’s it for now. Have fun in life.

I always try to be humble. Forcing myself not to exaggerate my results and findings to stay to the course of honesty. Honesty brews understanding of the self and attracts people who are realists like myself. I’d like people to like me for the real me instead of my glamor persona.

I thought that everyone else is more honest than me until a day at work when my colleague decided to bloat about his stock market expertise. xxx stock went up by $11! Today.

Now my reaction is actually something I should be working on to improve. When faced with an interesting phenomena, I often ask several detailed technical questions until I unintentionally corner the person into facing his own lie. I need to stop doing that and reconsider my questions so that the person can still exit gracefully. For the moment, I can only do so by blaming my failing memory, but in the future, I’d like to be able to avoid the tension in the first place while still fulfilling my own thirst of knowledge.

So my question is, how much do we exaggerate? I got my exaggeration down to twice the actual amount when I am talking without thinking and kept it at a moderate 1.25 times when talking honestly. The person mentioned here has an 11 times exaggeration. Which resulted in this particular contemplation.

A life sans coffee solved some problems but also introduced a new one. My hypoglycemia is coming back full force now that my daily source of sugar intake has been cut off.

Coffee= sweets in my life. I never had any sweet food without the coffee, so it’s not surprising to go a few month without consuming one bit of sugar. Heck, looking at the cupboards in my new kitchen, I don’t see any sugar.

Which is why, I unable to get up and drive home at this moment, because my hands shake too much to drive. It’s taking more than the usual amount of sugar to stabilize this time.

I think I should start taking candies like I do with vitamins everyday.

Logitech

I am sitting on the floor using my computer. Things got messier after two full weeks of cleaning. I don’t know why, but every piece of item that I pick out of the boxes has to go through a rigorous cleaning ritual. All the plates through the dishwasher, all the cloth through the washer/dryer and all the rest of the crap through my towel.

I guess, I want to scrub off the past and start anew.

Every time they describe how loving their friend’s children are, they represent their love through the amount of money given. Red pouches, presents etc. They describe people they know using their career successes. I never get to know if a person is a loving father or if a girl is a sex fiend.

Hugs are few and far in between while it’s rare that they show up for my soccer games like all the other parents did. I don’t hate them though. They had a harder time to adjust and more to learn than my young self back then.
They suffered more than I did and could not have fulfilled the American love which I desperately needed. They were not bred to show and perceive love in that way. In the culture where we came from, that expression is through the form of money. Because it was so hard to come by and it was through blood and sweat that my parents accumulated them little by little.

To them, giving money is like giving a part of them, although the meaning is slightly eroding through the years due to how easy it is to come up with them. To me though, it’s been just a number on the computer screen.

Which is why, tears welled up when I learned my dad’s eyesight is failing and will eventually become blind when the first feeling that comes through was that of annoyance. Annoyance at the need to take care of him in the future. The tears were for the fact that I am twisted like them.

Of course with the business side of me fully functional and alive, I start to wonder. How can I capitalize my dance experience?

Search on Monsters for jobs with the keyword “Engineer” for Ottawa and Montreal
Today: 150

2003: 5

Amount of profile views:

Today: 66

2003: 3

Head hunter harassments:

Today: 3

2003: 0

Average engineer job experience requirement

Today: 1 year
2003: 5 years

On one hand, I think I should take advantage of the current bubble and jump ship to increase my salary. On the other hand, my resume looks really pitiful without any job lasting longer than a year. The biggest concern my current employer had during the interview was: “Are you going to stay long?”

It’s only a blink of the eye, already 1 year and a half passed by. Another 6 months and my self imposed moral obligation will be up. Then, it’s all up to the economy.

Part of the series Environment upgrade.

I was face down on the ground, hand reaching into the unknown corners underneath the kitchen counter. Twitching muscles screamed while the hand holding the wrench desperately tries to turn a knob with unfamiliar motions. The progress seemed so miniscule that a snail can overtake it easily.

That was how I spent my whole night; installing the dishwasher. A waste of time from some people’s point of view, but not for me. Now that I’ve done this, the knowledge will forever be with me. It’s the result of a decision I’ve made with my life along with other principles I decided to follow when I bought the condo. I will face and learn the unknowns and I will mold the environment around me as I will it.

Which is a transformation I noticed in myself. I am willing to take the challenge of making things happen in the way I want it instead of settling for the mediocre result. More confident that it will work and more defined in the choices I make. I don’t have to think things through as much because I am more in tune with what is “me” and what is not. This definition of the self in turn immunized me from the desire to mimic others and peer pressures while eliminating most of the indecision when presented with a choice. I don’t seek to conform anymore. Now, my inspirations comes from within.

Although the place is still a mess with no furniture in sight, I felt proud and smug now that I installed all the major appliances myself. It’s my place, my rules and there’s no rush.

————Edit—————-

I have to emphasis, that installing a dishwasher is not recommended for the general population. Injuries or death might occur if care is not taken with the electrical system. The whole time I was working on it, there was an imminent feeling of death where I get a huge electrical shock and pass out to die.

First, shut off the circuit at your local breaker. If you don’t know which one it is, shut them all. Second, the most important thing is to test the three wires to see if any is live. I, like any good engineer, used triple redundancy: Voltmeter, electromagnetic live wire testing and a simple LED connected to a fuse that attaches to the ground and the live wire. Add on to that, I used the back of my hand to touch both the ground and live wire at the same time as a real human test. (The electricity will go through your skin instead of passing through you to the ground, it hurt as hell, but you won’t die).

There’s no way to avoid instances where you have to touch all three wires, believe me I tried.

My previous job as a mixed signal audio design engineer messed up my enjoyment of music. Ever since then, I’ve been able to tell, just by listening, the type of problems that a particular music system has. Worst off, I get to understand that nothing we are listening to, is what the original sounds like. That the original, is usually a big disappointment in terms of the high sound quality that audiophiles seek.

My current job, allowed me to examine and play with a few hundred cameras so I know the limits and capabilities of technology on the sensor part. That is fine and dandy, at least I get to enjoy stunning pictures… That is, until a certain medical device maker forced me to work on a complete system from image capturing to the display on the monitor.

These doctors are able to tell a 1/4 of a frame’s delay (on a 60Hz refresh rate) along with a whole army of video glitches that they’ve experienced in their 30 years of experience. I, on the receiving end of their complaints, had to reproduce them and see it. Now that the veil is off and the knowledge is in me, it’s harder and harder to freely enjoy anything on TV because of all the glitches I am now able to see.

As I gobbled down a hastily prepared food à la barbarian style, the answer to my previous question answered in an instant. Home is where I get fed. Up until now, I didn’t feel compelled to live in this new nest until I finally moved all the stored food and cookwares.

Sitting in the midst of chaos and mini towers of boxes, my senses tried desperately to adjust to a wold devoid of sentient beings while simultaneously calculating the new most efficient way of living after the microwave was plugged in. When it comes down to the most basic, being able to feed oneself and sleeping under a roof is what makes a home home.

Surrounded by immigrants, I murmured along with others in the room in a failed attempt to sing the national anthem of Canada. In the midst of a supposed happy ceremony to become true Canadian, a troubling question clouded my mind.

Where is home?

I always thought that I’d find the answer when I become an adult. Now that I am a man, I envy the simplistic views of a child.

Every obstacle provides an opportunity to learn and my recent illness smack in the middle of moving is no exception. Why did I come back to the old rental place to nurture my wound? I originally thought that it’s because I don’t have any appliances. Now that the appliances arrived, I still head to the same old place when I get off work. Making me wonder, what’s so valuable there that keeps me coming back for more?

Is it the computer?

I fell sick in the middle of moving. Half of my stuff is there, half is still here. Tis a very inconvenient arrangement. Thus it has been revealed to me, how much I depend on things to stay the way they are in order to wake up feeling prepared.

As a reflection of this disturbance in my spirit, my body has reflected my condition with a pleroma of different problems. Allergy reactions and the feeling of the beginning of a cold (Antibiotics does not kill viruses). It make some wicked sense in some way. I am living in a mess, it’s only reasonable that my health is a mess. The environment and the spirit provides an everlasting feedback loop.

So how the hell do I get out of this shithole?

I look at healthy people with envy now. Imagining myself in a runner’s shoes or remembering the wind brush against me on my bike. How good it felt to be fit and out there. I feel more mortal now. More dependent on people and perhaps less wild. Would this stick when I get better? I don’t know, what I am sure of now, is that there’s no way in hell I am going to a free pool with lots of kids around sneezing and peeing into the pool.

The requirement to pay on the weekend seem to block out certain types of people.

I have too much time to think whilst being sick and weak. Not much to do when my physical fitness matches that of a 80 year old overweight chronic smoker while my immune system remains almost non existent after the gruesome fight with the virus.

I found out what I lack in life right now. That is a hobby which requires constant improvement and discussion amongst peers with the most prominent need on the discussions. I think I’ll go try break-dancing as my next dance research subject.

Is it possible that we are too attached to this image of a soul. Of a central consciousness that controls all above else. The one self dialog of me. Have we diagnosed multiple personality disorders as an attempt to ward off the possibility that every individual is a group mind? What if, we let go of that fear and let go of the very concept of individualism and collectivism? What do we get?

I have less control of myself during my drugged stupor. Less attention dedicated to the governance of the whole creating more instances of funny behaviors. One interesting behaviors of my body I observed is that it’d start rearranging things or cleaning when I am in some sort of deep conversation with another person. Some adopted children of my optimization effort. I didn’t know it has a mind of its own. If left uncheck, it tends to get stuck on certain mundane task, like trying unsuccessfully to unscrew a screw, or open a bottle and putting the same dish back and fourth.

As I write this, several feelings of fear coursed through my thoughts. Including that of the MPD, maniac or ODD, but they no longer stops me from thinking the thoughts I want to think. I have accepted the fact that it is a human concept and it fails to describes us in totality and instead, hinders our mind from free thoughts.

3 days, delusional

Splitting migraine grade headache

High fever

Plus the usual sickness symptoms.

It all started with a girl sneezing into the same swimming pool I was in. Great way to spend the holidays