August 30, 2004

Home For Bubble Tea

Thumbnail: Bubble tea shop

Went home for the week­end, spent it with Darren. It was a gloomy few days; cloudy, humid, and gen­er­ally uncomfortable.

At one point, Darren asked me if it felt like home, or whether my apart­ment here has taken the role. I couldn’t really answer him at the time. I just knew that they feel dif­fer­ent. We lit up in a park that I used to play in while I was still in ele­men­tary school, and it felt odd to be stoned in a beau­ti­fully empty play­ground in the mid­dle of Saturday, sur­rounded by all these upper-middle class houses with their pools and patios. Places that aren’t com­fort­able, but familiar.

August 30, 2004

Fighting The Bob Comment Spam

I’ve been get­ting tons of spam com­ments from the “bob@y####o.com” address, and I’m sure that I’m not the only Movable Type user suf­fer­ing from the same prob­lem. At one point I was get­ting a dozen a day, which is much more annoy­ing than spam e-mail because delet­ing com­ments from MT is a lit­tle more involved than delet­ing an e-mail. Even though I use MT-Blacklist (which has been a great help), the spam URLs, and even the IP addresses keep chang­ing. The only thing that stays the same is parts of the e-mail address, so I wrote a very sim­ple reg­u­lar expres­sion to catch the offen­sive com­ments, because no one else seems to have posted one on the net:

bob@y\d*o.com

I know that it’s rather basic, but I fig­ure that I’ll adapt it when­ever the spam­mer starts using more com­pli­cated e-mail gen­er­a­tors. So far, the only adjust­ment has been a change from catch­ing four dig­its to catch­ing any num­ber of dig­its. It’s sat­is­fy­ing to check the activ­ity log and see that the black­list has caught over 500 spam com­ments over the week­end, not let­ting a sin­gle one go through.

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August 25, 2004

The Political Olympics

I don’t enjoy watch­ing the Olympics. The cov­er­age we get (exclu­sively from the CBC), is shoddy. There’s no pre-planned time sched­ule for matches or events, so I never know what’s going to be on when I have time to watch. There was also absolutely no cov­er­age of table ten­nis, which has already ended, most of the medals going to China. Why is this? I sus­pect because Canada basi­cally had no chance of plac­ing in the top three, so why would the CBC want to show them? Well, more likely not even in the top five. Even Google gave table ten­nis props with one of their daily ban­ners, and with 28 Olympic sports but only 16 days, 12 of those sports aren’t going to have banners.

There are also so many pol­i­tics involved, with dis­qual­i­fi­ca­tions, dop­ing, judg­ing, etc., that every­thing just seems tainted. There’s also all the frus­trat­ing media cov­er­age in the mix, such as Perdita Felicien’s hur­dle dis­s­a­point­ment splat­tered on the front page of most papers while Ann Muenzer’s golden achieve­ment gets a sports sec­tion blurb. And with sports that don’t need to be in the Olympics (why have syn­chro­nized div­ing AND div­ing AND syn­chro­nized swim­ming?), there’s not much to keep my interest.

August 25, 2004

Bruxer

Apparently I cur­rently brux audi­bly at night. Hopefully it’ll stop when things calm down.

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August 22, 2004

Concert: Death From Above ’04

[kml_flashembed movie=”/videos/events/deathfromabove04/deathfromabove.swf” width=“320” height=“255” wmode=“transparent”/]
Thumbnail: Zaphods
Thumbnail: Lighting at Zaphods
Thumbnail: Jesse Fucking Keeler

Went to a Death From Above show at Zaphod’s. I actu­ally rec­og­nized Jesse F. Keeler (the F stands for Fucking) out­side when Aaron, Trolley, Jesse, and I were wait­ing for Jen. Both Keeler (the bassist) and Sebastien Grainger (the vocalist/drummer) have sim­i­larly lithe bod­ies and unkempt facial hair so they aren’t hard to spot, but are easy to mix up. The set went just like the last time I saw them: they start off with an intro song as a warm-up, then Grainger takes off his shirt for the real show. They also ended with Do It!, when Grainger kicks down his mic stand and goes crazy on his set.

The word is energy.

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August 22, 2004

Learning At The Table

I played three matches yes­ter­day against three dif­fer­ent peo­ple and won all three. It felt pretty good, espe­cially since I had never played one of them before (he was a Canadian-born English teacher, work­ing in China). He also started play­ing about a year before me, and was taught in what’s con­sid­ered the table ten­nis coun­try of the world. Knowing that he was using an anti-spin rub­ber gave me an advan­tage though; I didn’t have to worry about his spin, and since I focus on speed and place­ment, his rub­ber became point­less. I also have less respect for peo­ple who use the anti-spin rub­bers, because they gen­er­ally rely on the pad­dle to do the work for them, instead of prop­erly learn­ing how to counter spin. My habit­ual ner­vous­ness when fac­ing a new oppo­nent wasn’t there.

I also won against one of the peo­ple I use to have great dif­fi­culty beat­ing. He had a new pad­dle, with small ball-bearings imbed­ded along the rim. When one shakes it, the pad­dle sounds like a baby rat­tle. Apparently, it’s sup­posed to pre­vent rever­ber­a­tion, but I don’t under­stand the point. I count on feel­ing rever­ber­a­tion through my han­dle to give me feed­back on where I’m hitting.

I also beat one of my long time oppo­nents, although it’s more of an empty vic­tory because I’ve learned his tricks and styles, so I know how to counter them. I won based on vital­lity over­com­ing his expe­ri­ence, not skill over­com­ing skill. It was inter­est­ing to find out that his pad­dle has a hol­low han­dle with a weight attached to a screw assem­bly in it. The weight can be shifted up and down through the han­dle to change the cen­tre of grav­ity of the blade.

Still, it’s good to know that I’m improv­ing. I can learn at the table now, in the mid­dle of a match instead of afterwards.

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August 21, 2004

The New Deal (Part II)

I don’t want to ask, I don’t want to beg. I don’t care if you like it or not.

I just want it loud. I just want it thick. I just want it scream­ing until my head throbs.

Until my ears are numb.

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August 20, 2004

The New Deal

FDR had noth­ing on me.

Some cut. Some burn.

I bash.

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August 18, 2004

The Most Repulsive On The Bus

I just got home from a nice din­ner with Aaron, Karen, and Chris. On the bus ride back, there was a woman sit­ting in front of me, who I couldn’t help but look at. I watched, the entire trip, as she peeled an orange, and threw all the skin and fibre on the floor. Then she would spit seeds into her hand and throw those on the floor too. It was one of the most repul­sive things I’ve ever seen. WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH PEOPLE.

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August 18, 2004

The Difference Between Rude And Inconsiderate

I just stopped at Timmies before work this morn­ing, with a large triple triple in my hand, and a caramel pecan cookie in the other. I had to maneu­ver the cof­fee and cookie around because it was too hot to hold by its sides, and I did this as I was walk­ing out the door. Without think­ing, I let the door close behind me. As I step out­side, I hear a lady say, “Tanks for ‘old­ing the door” in a loud, grumpy, sar­cas­tic tone. I usu­ally hold the door open if I see some­one behind me, but I was still wak­ing up, I didn’t see her, and my mind was else­where. Normally, I would feel ter­ri­ble for being so incon­sid­er­ate, but I really didn’t feel bad at all after she said what she said. I actu­ally wished that the door slammed in her face, spilling her cof­fee all over her proudly worn blue Magic School Bus shirt, stain­ing it for­ever, and that she would slump in the door-frame, sob­bing, because it was the final gift from the debil­i­tated grand­daugh­ter she had just put in the ground. At least what I did was an acci­dent, one that I’m not prone to let hap­pen, but what she said I con­sider even more rude.

Trolley and I had this dis­cus­sion a lit­tle while ago. We both agree that it’s rude to keep a seat occu­pied with a bag on a busy bus, but it’s even more rude to walk up to a bagged seat, then com­plain loudly and rudely about the owner. There are ways of politely doing things that just make things go eas­ier for every­one. Interesting, how the first per­son to take the step in being polite is the one in con­trol, but few peo­ple actu­ally take the risk because they assume an unapolo­getic person.

Anyway, I need some cof­fee in me.

So go the fuck away.

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August 17, 2004

Collapse

It’s been a long, exhaust­ing, uncomfortable-in-clothes, hard-to-focus day. I got a lot done though, so at least I feel sat­is­fied. I can finally col­lapse, for the first time, on my new futon, duvet, and down pil­low, with my blue-green Aduki in my hand and Loo by my side.

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August 16, 2004

The Cracking Sky

I already knew that I had a lot to learn, but it’s only now that I’m feel­ing a lit­tle over­whelmed. Sometimes it feels like I can’t keep track of every­thing, because there are so many things to think, talk, write about.

I have to keep in mind the fact that every­thing should be approached slowly. Rushing causes con­fu­sion, mix-ups of emo­tion. As much as I’d like to jump head-first into things, I have to pace myself. Learning is an invest­ment, and as long as I can pic­ture what I’m work­ing towards, this shouldn’t be too hard. After all, I have the rest of my life, and the only limit is myself.

This will be a test.

But, most of all, this will be fun.

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August 16, 2004

I’ve Been Here Before

Ever look at a morn­ing and think, “I’ve been here before. I was here in the sum­mers of my youth, when the leaves were still lushly green, in the cool, dew-dropped morn­ings before the sun rose above the trees. I was here dur­ing the first morn­ings of school, walk­ing to the bus stop through gen­tle sub­ur­ban neigh­bour­hoods, with their well-manicured lawns and their inter­lock­ing bricks. I was here before the Sunday rides into town, for big break­fasts and milk tea. I was here in another life, and all I’d like is to one day do it all over again.”

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August 14, 2004

Don’t Interrupt Me

I hate being inter­rupted. When I’m talk­ing about some­thing, I get into a momen­tum, and inter­rup­tions lose all the momen­tum. It doesn’t mat­ter what I’m talk­ing about or how comfortable/uncomfortable I am talk­ing about it. To me, it’s like try­ing to tell a joke then being told to wait five min­utes right before the punch­line. Although some­one may remem­ber the first part, the momen­tum just dies, and I’d rather just for­get the whole thing than fin­ish talking.

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August 13, 2004

Regional Driver

Loo learned to drive in Toronto. She’s prob­a­bly the most aggres­sive dri­ver I’ve ever met, sur­pass­ing the truck­ers in Hong Kong, although I’ve seen much more aggres­sive dri­vers in New York. She’s not as safe as John, but she’s not as crazy as Darren. Either way, the trip is interesting.

This is her dri­ving, calm, collected.

This is me rid­ing, excited, shit­ting myself.

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