February 2008 Archives

Old train station, originally uploaded by forester401.

Today the Toronto star had an article about how Peterborough was awarded a high-speed rail to connect them to Union, running through several Conservative ridings including Jim Flaherty's.

Now, let's think about this. The line is expected to move 900 people (a GO Transit Rush Hour train carries something obnoxious like 2000 people). GO, VIA, TTC and GTTA all said this was a bad idea. GO has already decided not to run a train service to Peterborough. The TTC (which is the main chunk of the GTTA), and the GTTA question why funding is being given to one big project instead of funding whole systems (soon to be one mega system). VIA canceled its service because of high per-passenger costs in 1990. CP, who owns the track, doesn't even know how the line will be run since the north-south track isn't connected to the east-west track.

HOW is this a good idea?

I started reading West Africa Wins Always after it was nominated for a 2008 Bloggie in the Best African Weblog category. I went through all the nominees for each category I was interested in voting in to decide who would get my vote.

This is by far the best blog I up for an award that I hadn't already read (i.e. Dooce). It's written by a Dutch (I think?) journalist who's been living in Côte d'Ivoire since 2003 about what life is like in West Africa. I absolutely love it.

A lot of people are going to laugh at me when I say this, but the best date I've ever had was probably a walk through Waterloo Park and "downtown" Waterloo. Come to think of it, its one of the few dates I've been on that actually count as dates. Probably why I rank it so high. Thinking about it, the only other real dates that immediately come to mind are a night at the movies, and another one that shouldn't even be counted as a date because the guy had a sort-of boyfriend at the time.

I don't like the standard dinner date. Not because I'm trying to be some neo-hippie that doesn't like society's whatever. I would feel trapped at dinner. That would require me to drink a lot. Then I would make a fool of myself. My aversion should be pretty simple to understand after that.

I realize the importance of dating to find out what you like and don't like about a person, and whether or not the likes outweigh the dislikes. But trust me, if anyone ever comes up with an alternative, I will be one of the first using it.

I was awake when the sun rose. I tried to go to sleep shortly after, only to wake up about three hours later to a frantic phone call from my assistant manager who needed me to cover his shift due to an emergency. I could only cover half of it. Longest five hour shift of my life.

I saw the Spice Girls last night in what the billed as possibly the LAST SPICE GIRLS CONCERT EVER!!1! It was pretty good. I was happy I got to see them after the disastrous attempt on the 4th. Amanda and I had a pretty amazing night that included gossip, the Old Spaghetti Factory, and Second Cup (because Starbucks was closed).

I had my prep appointment at the Sleep and Wellness Clinic. I'm not looking forward to being attached to a machine for a night and then spending a day there anyway. Sounds like a waste of a day to me.

If I am still awake when the sun rises, I am going to shit things.

Every now and then stars somewhere in the universe align and give you the opportunity to do something stupid. Yesterday was my turn: I got drunk in the early evening on a lot of vodka and red rave. Now the vodka has worn off, but the red rave hasn't. So I get to be awake and twitchy. Win.

1. Pick 15 of your favorite movies.
2. Go to IMDb and find a quote from each movie.
3. Post them here for everyone to guess.
4. Fill in the film title once it's guessed.
5. NO GOOGLING/using IMDb search functions.

Queen St. West, East of Bathurst [2007], originally uploaded by Kevin Steele.

This is what the south side of Queen W looked like before the massive 6 alarm fire ruined almost everything left of the big tree in the middle.

LOL GAYS

This is a wall post I got from my good friend Matt regarding a speech he's written for Obamarama's next big event.

img 088, originally uploaded by scott_loudoun.

Today is Caturday. I am posting a cat.

Dear Mr. Flaherty,

I find it amazing you have the gall to suggest that Ontario has "lack of leadership, a lack of vision and a lack of economic stewardship" considering you were a minister in the provincial government whose stewardship gutted education and trashed our health care system.

In conclusion, please move to Alberta. Permanently.

Regards,
Mike Haddad

I really and truly enjoy the soundtrack from motion picture version of Chicago. I have a strong bias toward the movie version of musicals because they are usually more produced and cleaner sounding. Chicago is no exception. While I could barely bring myself to listen to the OBC recordings of Chicago, I can listen to the motion picture recording start to finish (minus Mr. Cellophane, because I just can't stand that song). It also has a few bonus tracks that weren't in the movie.

Favourite tracks: Cell Block Tango, When You're Good To Mama, We Both Reached For The Gun, and Nowadays.
Tracks I skip regularly: Mister Cellophane, and to a lesser extent Funny Honey

I'm not sure who's responsible for this..., originally uploaded by Kelly Sue.

HOPE. CHANGE. HOPE for CHANGE! Can has.

TTC GM New Look T6H-5307N #2278, originally uploaded by dyip_90.

The Toronto Star ran an article about the upcoming 50th anniversary of the "New Look" buses in the TTC fleet. They've literally become an icon as the North American bus. It will be interesting to see what bus replaces it in the North American psyche. If I had to guess I would say it will probably end up being the Novabuses that the GRT in Waterloo and AMT in Montreal use.

Main Street Houston, originally uploaded by eschipul.

Houston has done an amazing job from an aesthetic stand point on their Main Street LRT Line. I can only hope that Toronto does half as well on some of the soon to be built Transit City lines. The stations are also beautiful. The one drawback is that we can't implement something similar here, because we actually have weather (their stations don't have shelters). Luckily the designs I've seen for the shelters look really really nice.

Well if "making people's lives miserable" meant that disqualified you from being a bear, the bear community would be DRASTICALLY SMALLER.

The I Hate jameth Club: it's good for serious lulz.

Please, please browse around. I can't imagine how many times I've tried making sure that all of the entries are rebuilt properly. I just reinstalled MT again (still didn't fix the problem), so I'm willing to be they're not. If that's the case, let me know? Thanks.

Dear ROSI,

Tell ECO227Y to eat it. And that I'll be seeing it again this summer.

Love,
Mike

I've reached a point of saturation. There is nothing that I can retain past this point, at least for a little bit longer. The problem with this is I have a jumble of formulas in my head, and I'm not really sure when to use them where. I also don't fully remember how to integrate properly. Sigh. Is it bad to have completely accepted you're going to bomb a test before you write it?

I've been killing myself trying to study for my ECO227Y Term Test tomorrow. For all the people I've tried to ask for help in finding z[sub:α/2] to compute these problems, NO ONE told me there was a CDF table in the back of the book I needed to use. No one.

I hate you almost as much as I hate stats right now.

Well. I think this is as good as it gets. I need to fix the comment form. I still don't think commenting works properly. I also have issues rebuilding Entry Archives properly.

MT 4.1 = Lose.

Well. It publishes properly now - sort of. I just need to change around all of the way links were done internally. Once I finish that I'll be able to access to proper entry archive pages and see if the comments (the whole reason I upgraded) work properly.

As always, upgrading has been the biggest hassle ever. The reason I upgraded was to try and fix the comment problems I was having. As a result, I have to tweak a few templates, redo a few more, and figure out why the "Publish Site" button crashes half way through its process and doesn't actually update.

I just upgraded to MT 4.1 in an attempt to fix comment problems, and also deal with the fact that stats stopped making sense about an hour ago. Only now I'm getting problems with the way it republishes files, and the permissions it saves the new files with. So. This is mainly a test entry to see if comments work.

I've never claimed my study habits were the greatest. In fact, up until December I didn't really have any. So that fact combined with my constant state of illness meant I would barely skim by in my post secondary education. I've been trying very hard to remedy that recently. In December I started my study campaign on the simple premise that I would first get caught up in classes based on the order up upcoming midterms, up to the point in the text covered for that test, and then work from there afterwards.

I've got some pretty good results. My marks can still use a whole lot of improving, but I've managed to retain most of the theory (the problem comes from when the practical is much more complicated than the textbook and class' theory, which is usually is). Thursday is the final of the four term tests that I've been studying for, in dreaded Stats (ECO227Y). Last week was my Labour Market Policy (ECO239Y), and before that it was Microeconomic Theory (ECO206Y). So as you can imagine, I've been doing a lot of studying.

While studying, I have a habit of leaving my msn on, set to busy, so I can access people when I have a quick question about my study material (or need a quick sanity refresher). This is where the major problem occurs. People have completely lost all respect for what 'Busy' means.

Guess what: It means I'm busy. It means I don't want to hear about how you were so drunk last night, and now you have a big hangover. It means I don't want you sending me random song lyrics. It means that, as much as I care about how bad a president Obama will be and how much it sucks that he's doing better and better, I don't want to hear about it right now. I'm BUSY.

Unless I've messaged you, I don't give a shit what you have to say. I can think of a hand full of people who it is ok for them to message me when I'm set to busy. And this isn't one of those "You know who you are" things, because there are always the idiots who think it's about them when it's not. Not at all. These people either know explicitly because I've told them, or implicitly, because I message them all the time anyway. So if you don’t know, explicitly or implicitly, then it is not ok. Fuck off. Go do something else until I'm not set to Busy anymore. As much as I like to think I am the centre of the world, I know that it's not true. You can find something else to pass the time until I can return to being the centre of the world. And you know what? That probably won't be for a while. So suck it.

It is Monday. I already have my replacement Blackberry, and it is up and running. I managed to save most of my contacts through a combination of my previous back up and emailing the remainder that I could remember I didn't have saved. I am a happy customer.

I'm amazed at how nice Roger's was. This is the first time I've been satisfied with Roger's Customer service since I switched, and it should be known that I switched because (among other reasons) I knew the Roger's rep; everything after that was pathetic. It was a game of hot potato to pass the blame around internally with a heaping side of "Sorry, there's nothing I can do for you [to remedy the fact that you were both mislead and lied to]." This morning took a grand total of half an hour to get through, 4 minutes of it on hold, and another 10 walking to the store to pick up my replacement. 10 points for Rogers.

I just got back from the Roger's store. I got lucky with a friendly rep, as opposed to that obnoxious pink haired cunt who was rude to everyone. He was almost defensive when he asked me what I wanted him to do about my broken USB port. "Umm, point me in the next direction?"

Sometimes I think when you work a job for too long brain processes are rerouted around common sense, towards the easy answer instead. I know my coworkers do it too. So I have a phone number for Roger's tech support. I can phone tech support (tomorrow, since it's only Monday to Friday – ugh) to arrange an exchange at the Bay & Adelaide store. By exchange, I assume (and hope) he means even exchange for another 8800, or something similar. In the mean time I need to find someone with an 8800 to charge my battery so it can last one more day.

Last night I realized that my 8800 couldn't be charged anymore. The usb port was broken. Inspection lead me to find the piece dangling around inside like a limp noodle, unable to transfer power to my battery. I'm going to go to Roger's to see what can be done. Guaranteed this will be a disaster.

I agreed to go in early for work today. I then hung up the phone and immediately regretted it. Why did I sacrifice 2 hours of my day? I need all the time I can get to study for stats. I just traded in 2 hours of my time for $13.69. I did it because I felt bad. I need to stop being so caring.

I'm sitting in my ECO 227Y (Stats) course. I have a term test next week. I have been sick for the majority of the academic year, and it's been last on my list of courses to get caught up on (because it was the one with the last term test). I have three chapters to teach myself in a week, and to know well. I think I might cry/scream/vomit.

I can't WAIT for summer. I might lose my mind. Fast forward button anyone?

I'm still sick. It's not fun. I stopped throwing up, but every few hours I get that feeling in my stomach like it's going to happen anyway. Missing the Spice Girls sucked major balls. So did making delirious phone calls to people just so I didn’t feel like I was alone. After the first round, there wasn't anything left in my system to throw up so I just threw up green looking fluid. That was kind of fun. But not as fun as the one round where there was red fleshy bits in it.

I didn't get any sleep that night. I finally fell asleep around 7a.m. That gave me several naps during the day, with time to meet my dad to get my back with my health card in it (should I need to freak out and go to the hospital) and try and prep myself for my Labour Market Policy test that night. I'd like to say I did well. That would require a memory of writing it.

Mmmm Clinton win in CA.

Instead of seeing the Spice Girls last night, I gave my ticket away and spent the night throwing up. Sympathy please?

Today I'm supposed to study. Of course that really means I'm going to procrastinate. I was planning on updating "About Me" part of the site, but could only think of one point: I have the world's best roommate. So I changed some of the CSS in regards to the already finished character pages. Maybe next time.