Elbie at Trig dot Net

Wed, 28 Jul 2004

Good news doesn't always sleep 'till noon.

Insanely tired today. Went out and saw I, Robot last night at the late show. More on that later. So I turned off my alarm and tried to sleep in a bit. Didn't work very well. My cats know when I'm supposed to be up.

In the middle of my shower, the phone rings. Being late for work, I figured it might be a good idea to answer it. So, sopping wet, I hurry for the phone, trying not to slip all over the place and land on my sopping wet ass.

Turns out, it's the HR people at the University. They want to proceed, and do I have references that I can give them?

Uh. Sure I do.

w00-fucking-00t!

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Sun, 25 Jul 2004

All outdoorsy

Wow. The weekend was amazing. Weather was sunny, but not terribly warm. I was a little lazy, and went to Whole Lotta Gelata for lunch both days. But their paninis are amazingly good, so you can't really blame me. And coffee. Their coffee is good too.

Saturday pretty much started there, sitting at an outdoor table, enjoying the sun, and the coffee, and the yummy sandwich. clvrmnky showed up, and he also had a panini and a coffee, and then we wandered down to Kitchener to bum around and eventually wound up meeting ZUckerVaTi and the Leader at the Beer and Rib festival. We had some pork, and some suds, and met up with ecogrrl and Dr. le Chapeau. Then I took off to get some laundry done, and get to bed early.

Sunday morning, I got up sorta early, and met up with a climbing friend and we drove out to Milton to go climbing at BottleGlass. Weather was not as sunny, but it was still quite nice. We got some great climbing in, then headed back, where I had my second yummy panini and coffee. Then I met up with Dr. Thingo and family and we wandered around uptown Waterloo as they did their errands.

This week is the week, I hope. Lot of potential for good things to happen. At the end of it, I turn 32.

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Thu, 22 Jul 2004

An update

K. It took less than half a day for Carbon to figure out how to get up on the ledge. Oh well.

More importantly, I've updated the RSS feed to 1.0. Those of you that have added me to your aggregators, please change your links to http://trig.net/~chris/blosxom.pl/index.rss10.

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Wed, 21 Jul 2004

I stumped my kitty

The windowsill in my bedroom is home to the one remaining plant that Carbon likes to chew/destroy/whatever. The other plants have either been taken to work, or have simply just died.

Said windowsill, and in fact all the windows in my home, have shutters that I can close in a vain attempt to keep cats off the ledges, and thus save my precious precious greenery from more abuse. The shutters managed to close in such a way that they wedge each other shut. Great.

Carbon, however, like most cats I have known, is smarter than she looks, and is fairly adept and sneaking her paw under the shutters, and somehow prying them open just enough for her to sneak up, onto the ledge where she can feast undisturbed.

Well, maybe not that smart. Last night, I closed one shutter, but not the other. This seemed to confuse her to no end. She sat on the top of the headboard of my bed, just staring at the window, her little kitty mind trying to figure out what the hell she had to do now to overcome this bizarre obstacle.

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Thu, 15 Jul 2004

Cleaning out my desk

Well, in the literal sense only. I have not yet left my company. Though with the feeling that such an event is forthcoming, I've been taking home things that I've had in my desk for years that I haven't really been using: Books, toys, some papers that I don't want to throw out.

One such thing that I took home was a four year-old tin of No Name corned beef. This is one of those tins that comes with its own key to peel open the tin. It was sad, I couldn't remember how to in fact open the tin with the key. I ended up snapping off the key before being able to actually use it.

That being said, I am probably never going to eat tinned meat ever again. And not because of the key thing. Now that I know what I'm doing, I think it's pretty cool. But for the last eighteen hours, I've had the worst headache I've had in a long time. It's most likely due to all the sulphates and other preservatives in the "meat". That it's four year-old "meat" probably doesn't help either.

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Wed, 14 Jul 2004

Hello. Allow me to introduce myself.

My name is Christopher Calzonetti. I am an orphaned Canadian, trained in Applied Mathematics and currently employed in a successful marketing firm. Recently I received a large sum of money due to passing "Go" while out for a stroll the other day. This compounded by the latest political upheaval resulting in a near loss of power by the goverment, and has indeed resulted in a loss of majority seating has allowed me to take tremendous advantage of those earnings.

Due to our countries strick taxation regulations on revenues, I am forced into a difficult position. If I can find a way to deferr my earnings by investing the money in offshore resources, I can save a considerable amount of money which I am prepared to share with you.

The discreet nature of my earnings and my position in my company have given me access to approximately seventy-two million (72,000,000) Canadian Dollars in cash, which I am currently storing in the second drawer of my desk. All that is required is a means to legitimately transfer these funds to an outside account, preferably by making choise investments within your country.

After successful relocation and transfer of funds, presuming that you and I can reach a viable business agreement, you shall be entitled to 37% of the gross, plus any expenses, up to 4% of the total. You would be required to facilitate the initial setup of investmesnt and it may be necessary for some small out of pocket expenses to be taken care of by you, for which the 4% of the total has been set aside.

You will be given full access to the financial statements, and if necessary, arrangements will be made for you to travel to Canada to visit the site of operations here, and ensure that everything is ligitamate, and proceeding to your expectations. However, I must ensure that I have chosen wisely in contacting you as the foriegn party to which I trust my investments, something which will be mutually beneficial to us both. Please provide me with your Social Security number, complete bank statements and a comprehensive credit history.

Please fax these documents to me at the following number:
(419) 555-9329

I eagerly await your response.
Christopher Calzonetti.

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Fri, 09 Jul 2004

Future imperfect

So yeah. Tuesday.

My day didn't start off particularly well. I was anxious about my interview, and restless. I didn't sleep well. It was quite humid, but not warm. Cold and clammy makes for a lousy night.

When I did sleep, my brain dredged up all sorts of hypothetical situations of the future. These are the kind of situations where for some reason, you imagine getting into a huge argument with someone in your dream, then you get all worked up, and you wake up feeling vaguely angry, but not knowing why. That happened.

I got to work a bit late. I was going to eat before-hand, but I was running behind, so I just had a packet of instant oatmeal. I was nervous and figety the whole day. I kept worrying that someone from work would confront me about what I was planning on doing.

I was planning on grabbing something to eat after the interview. I got there on time, and went through three hours of interviews relatively unscathed. I'm a good fit for the job, and I seemed to be reasonably coherent through it all. But the nervous energy was all I had to sustain me. When the interview was over, and I rushed back to work, I was insanely tired and hungry.

Mostly better now. I've had a few days to get my blood sugar levels back to normal. And except that it's almost 2am, I've got sufficient sleep as well. Fortunately, I'm on vacation tomorrow, even though I have to get up early. Yay! I'm going to the beach! And then yay! I might have a new job!

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Thu, 08 Jul 2004

POCKY!
POCKY!

I've had a craving for this stuff since Tuesday. More on Tuesday later.

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Mon, 05 Jul 2004

Summer rain

Lots of rain. We got a decent summer storm yesterday, though a little light on the actual thunder. Certainly lots of water. This morning it was a bit wet too, though not actually raining. You could smell the humidity in the air. It smelled like summer. It's a nice smell.

My shamrocks at work aren't doing terribly well. I have a measly three stalks now, two with burned leaves. I haven't had any new leaves, and only a few new flowers since I moved it to work. Beh.

My desk at work is cleaner than it's ever been. I've slowly been taking things I never use, but that I want to keep home. I'm approaching a point at which if I take anything else down, people will suspect that something's up. Well, something is up. I hate the state of the company. I want to know that if I have to leave, I won't need a bloody truck to take all my things home.

Things are marginally more organised at home too. Mostly because of the need to keep the space I have tidy. It will be easier when I get more shelving from Ikea or wherever. In the meantime, as long as I can keep things off the floor, I'll be able to sweep and vacuum semi-regularly.

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Sun, 04 Jul 2004

Ëlbjørn
My new table

I am sitting at my brand new dining room table, on my brand new dining room table chair, pretty much as pictured. The picture was taken rather late last night, after assembling said table and the first of four chairs that I bought as a set from Ikea.

My trip was rather successful, all things told. Zukervati drove me to Toronto where we hooked up with decogrrl and we wandered the massive store looking at various things, weighing options, discussing possibilities. In the end, I decided on a small, but sturdy dining set, and the floor model of a really comfy office chair for a desk that I'm going to buy later. I also looked at some very promising bookshelves for my place.

The weekend has been good in general. Thursday I spent at work. The office was about half full, which meant it was nice and quiet, so I got lots of work done, relatively speaking.

Friday was the day I spent in Toronto, and more specifically at Ikea. We ate at a Fifth Wheel truck stop for the first time on our way there. I was actually sufficiently impressed with the service. The food was pretty much truck-stop-greasy-spoon-style. Nothing spectacular.

Today I showed folks my new table. The weather was ridiculously nice, if only a tad on the warm side. Wandered around a bit in the neighbourhood, then over to the Thingo household for dinner with lots of peoples. Now I'm back home, and sitting at the wonderful table, and just for kicks, I'm streaming an episode of Star Trek TNG over iChat to a friend in Minnesota. Heck, why not?

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