UltraCrepidate

“lalalalala you are mean blah balh” ~WTF

When I am alone and nobody is looking, my brain would sometimes re-experience an embarrassing moment in my life. I’d feel the same way all over and my body would start doing some crazy shit.

Yesterday, I came back from one of these fit realizing that I’ve been shouting the same line of a lyric over and over for the past 60 seconds while brushing my teeth. I wondered to myself…

“What the fuck was that?”

I think it was year 2003 that I started knowing it was not normal. It’s only today that I realize that it is a problem. At least it doesn’t show when I am in public.

Getting organized always involves a certain amount of revisiting your old files. Which brings me back time and time again to this particular Chinese song. The song title and artist information has long since been corrupted from several English to Mandarin and Mandarin to English text code conversion. I have a hard time finding a folder for it because it has such a unique style. If I must categorize it, I’d say it is the Chinese version of Evanescence’s: Bring me to life.

I don’t know why, but lately I’ve been listening to it on several occasions and it has always given me calm, perhaps from the somewhat unrecognizable yet comforting Chinese lyrics (Yes, I have the same problem discerning words in songs in Chinese AND in English… No problem in French though). From the little I understand, it sings about promises, love and returning home. For once, a song that’s not entirely for love… a very attractive point when every other cpop song is about love. What I believe attracted me the most is the voice of the female singer. She reminded me of another of my childhood favorite, Frances Ruffelle, whom I first heard in a remix track on Phantom of the Opera.

The only thing I have to rely on is its English title: Millenium.mp3 and the detailed information telling me that it is the genre cpop released in the year 2004 and is track #3 in the album.

There was a period when I relied on Tim Horton’s breakfast sandwich to get through the morning. It just so happens to be right after I quit drinking their coffee. Back then, I was still in the middle of renovating my condo and the overall outlook on the economy seemed pretty pleasant. I didn’t have to plan for a 3 year recession.

I ate the Tim Matin sausage sandwich almost every day at that time, so I am well acquainted with its unique flavor. So, feeling nostalgic, I went and bought one yesterday as a quickie to a care free Friday. I didn’t know I was in for a big disappointment.

Right away, I noticed a cheapening in their flavor. Most notably from the lower grade processed cheese they use. It just doesn’t go well with the flavors of its “cookie” dough and the spices on their sausage patty.

The sausage patty also reduced in thickness, in its place, a bigger than usual egg. This change suggests that even the restaurant business is feeling the crunch from rising food prices as well as high transportation charges. So much so that they have to cheapen the ingredients.

A quick check at Loblaws on a few staple items confirmed my suspicion. Grain based products have increased in price and there’s a big sign at the flour section saying that a price hike will come in the near future due to wheat shortages. For now, only processed and treated product price have been affected and is slowly trickling into the raw materials. My favorite focaccia bread went from $2.99 to $3.17, a 6% increase. Poultry remained stable, beef increased a bit while pork see a big decline in price. I don’t understand why (Maybe because they are not being turned into oil).

One thing I don’t really understand is, why are we using grains as alternative oil? There’s a readily available source of energy we human generate called “fat”. Why can’t someone research a way of using that? I am sure free “liposuction” will appeal to a majority of the population.

Things are getting more and more ridiculous.

“It is every geek’s destiny to have his/her patience tested by Linux”

“I just know” a frustrating answer that I’ve been hearing from the Linux developers whenever I ask how they know certain technical details. “I just know”. I thought they were just being a cocky geek, but I noticed that I’ve started saying it as well.

How do I describe this. Linux is logical, even though I did not personally implement or write any code, because of its nature, it is easy to guess the different ways that something can be implemented. Once that is established, the only thing left is to run tests to see which of your assumption rings true. Most of the time I am dumb struck at why certain obvious implementations are left blank, but most often than not, I am just awe struck at my own ability to solve the problem.

I remember this one instance, when I thought about what I was doing. Something I’ve never done before, yet I am so sure that it is the way to do it. I didn’t panic when minor setbacks prevented the system from booting. I know how to recover the system, check the log, correct mistakes as single user and reboot. It didn’t phase me that I might have destroyed the hardware or something or the fact that I have corrupted the MBR and other sectors. A year ago, I would just reformat and reinstall XP, but nowadays I took it as a challenge to see if I could just modify a few files with vi to revive it.
“I was confident of the solution even though I’ve never done it once”
Playing with linux feels like playing with an OS that has all of the options yet nothing is automated for you. I miss window’s plug and play but at the same time, I really enjoy the lessons I learned while debugging this mess. Especially the bugs in kernel space. I was probably just lucky. But then again, I’ve been lucky with all the bugs that I fixed.

“Like a Kiwi (the animal) frozen in the spotlight” ~Kiwi (the people)

Even though I keep telling myself to move my ass, to get on with all my plans and improvement projects, I seem to lack the will power to bring them to reality. Instead, I am stuck doing things that are easy, requires no effort and doesn’t require any thinking or decision making. In the face of a great change that’s coming, I am paralyzed by its enormity.

It’s like that moment right before you get hit by a car, or before a disaster stuck you down. You see it coming, but your body just stays there while your mind gets shocked into an “Oh My God!” state. No thoughts, no action. Well, I am in that state.

I haven’t had to do something that make me stress out for a while. A little uneasy in the wake of “change” and a little unsure if I can pull it off or not. It shows just how much I’ve settled into comfort that a small challenge like this can unsettle me so.

It is so unlike myself.

I’ve taken measures to adjust my lifestyle beginning October 2007 after my prediction of the coming depression. After discussing with a few other people I know, it is agreed that this one will have more impact than the hi tech collapse of 2001 as it involves several major events: Collapse of financial sector, war on two front, decreasing home value and extremely high gas price.

So, what did a mere mortal like me do to ensure that I get through this safe and sound? Why, by making sure that I am invaluable at my job and cost cutting in everyday expenses. I’ve taken a different attitude towards work now that it seems like jumping ship in the near future is close to impossible because companies have started cutting jobs, I might as well be content where I am. On the cost cutting front though, I tackled the only two factors that I can tackle. Food and energy cost.

I am still waiting for more data to confirm the other parts, but I’d like to talk about how I streamlined my driving habits to reduce gasoline spending by 37%. My 3 month stats saw a reduction in gas spending in the previous 3 months as follows: $145.41, $128.64 and $90.35. I applied different techniques in each month so I can register the differences they made and here are the results of each month’s implementation:

Gas price (~$20)

I used to wait for Thursday to take advantage of the 3 cents reduction in premium gas grade, but decided to scrap that strategy in favors of others. I tracked gas station prices and noticed that the price would usually shoot up before Thrusday making the 3 cent reduction pretty much meaningless. The movement of prices shows that the up swing happens in a day and slowly goes down over the next 7 days. Average variation is in the vicinity of 1 dollar. For example, the price tag will shoot up to $123.4 and slowly drifts back down to $113.4 before it shoots up again. So a one dollar decline is the best time to gas it up. If somehow, the lowest point of price coincides with Thursday, I will then fill up a full tank with premium gas to clean the engine otherwise, I am contend with using ordinaire.

Timing traffic (~$40)

It is my understanding that traffic jam wastes the most gas. An alternative route was thought up along with changing my work schedule to avoid the 8AM~9AM morning rush as well as the 5PM to 6PM rush hour. This represents a 1 hour reduction in commuting time everyday and a ~$40 decrease in gas usage after the second month. I also noticed that the afternoon traffic jam last longer and are more congested than the morning. Probably because of all the trucks that are taking up all the room.

Streamlined driving (~$???)

This may or may not have contributed to anything, but I’ve also changed my driving habit by reducing the amount of time and force applied to my breaks. I observe and noted the timings of lights so that I don’t have to hit the breaks too often. Sure, it means that I sometimes drive really slowly and other cars passes me by, but in terms of city driving, it only results to a 3~7 minute time saving. Timing traffic jams helps to offset this difference. When must comes to must and I do have to stop at a red light, a gear shift to neutral also helps reduction in gas usage. On top of that, I usually turn my heater/ac off about 3/4 of the way to the destination. These are still experimental and the results are not directly observable. We’ll see in the future if the gasoline cost reduces to below $90.35.

Further cost reductions

Food and electricity savings will be discussed in the future as data are still coming in. I am still waiting for my new electricity bill for the coldest February and March period. On the food front, although I’ve switched to using raw ingredients in cooking, I am still going out dining with people and experimenting with food. Whatever reduction in food cost are put into the experiments. I have yet to switch to maintenance mode by cooking only the most delicious value/buck food. However, I’ve started doing that starting last month and found some joy in investigating how to make cheap but delicious mass production meals. Bread research is in the fine tuning stage so I have started looking into Spaghetti sauces to add more variety to my cheap meals.

These people are professionals at making things happen.

The teams on both side of the conference calls are getting bigger and bigger and the titles sounds more impressive than before. Chief Engineer, VP and people with signing power listening in on the conference in case the NDA needs to be quickly revised or certain information needs management approval before being revealed. I really welcomed the introduction of management type into our conversation as bring an air of non-nonsense to the table. The nerdy and geeky types stopped their quarreling and there’s a general lack of ego boasting.

There are several traits I noticed about them, the most important of which are: clear voice, not deep nor high pitched. They are direct and to the point unlike the bullshitting I that usually accompanies the management types. They are not afraid to take a back seat and let the team member with more knowledge on the subject speak. They were Engineers too and they know that one person cannot know everything. It gives me something to aspire to.

Before this, I’ve always looked at the leadership role as something that’s shoved to me due to the inability of others. But as I encounter and meet more and more leaders that inspires me, I find myself wanting to do the same, to become them. My attitude towards work changed too making me a better employee in general.

You should never overlook the effects of inspiration.

I’ve been looking forward to spring. To get away from the snow and all, but I did not foresaw being this restless. Is it the season that’s playing trick on my body? The fact that Spring is here and I am still trapped indoors?

Or is it the fact that I got this mountain of menial tasks awaiting to be done. None of which related what I prefer to be doing, but each one necessary for the sustenance of a life. Maybe I should just throw down my pen and declare: “Fuck it, let me join the hippies.”

On top of that, while walking towards the parking lot today, I realized that I can’t remember the last time my heart fluttered. You know, that feeling you had back then whenever your first crush would walk into the room? Yeah that. All I can feel nowadays, is the steady rhythm of “ptong, ptong” beating on. Through fear and excitement, joy or duress. It seem to be telling me: “Yeah, I’ve seen this before, no biggie, you’ll pull through with one of the possible outcomes.”

Where is that excitement, that overwhelming feeling of not knowing what’s coming yet you still do everything you can to go for it? Have there been one too many setbacks that killed it? Or is it the disappointment in the reality when a goal is reached?

Something. Someone. Make my heart beat again.

This is a quick cheat sheet with all the most relevant information. Click on read more for details.

Prize: $1000

Time: March 31st 9AM to April 6th 5PM

Registration: TekSavvy Solutions website

To install Steam: Install Steam

To buy TF2 online @ $29.99: TF2 on Steam

To buy orange box on Amazon @ 47.99: The Orange Box

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