Posts in category "Daily Life"

On Friday The 31st

This morn­ing I woke up and my ana­logue watch told me it was the 31st. I did­n’t believe it.

I could have sworn that I put my October bus pass in the lit­tle com­part­ment of my bag where I keep my change, lens cloth, lip balm, stash, and pro­phy­lac­tics, but instead, I left it on the shelf in my room. This is the same bus pass that I bought sev­en days pri­or so that I would­n’t have to wait in inor­di­nate­ly long lines, and would­n’t for­get on the first of the month and shell out $2.60 in change.

So I end­ed up pay­ing the dri­ver any­way, not­ing the 10¢ increase since the last time I paid with change. Groggy, I make it to the stop just in time to catch my next bus, some­thing that nev­er hap­pens, but I let it go by any­way in favour of buy­ing a caramel cor­ret­to from Second Cup.

For the last two weeks I’ve been try­ing to ween myself off cof­fee. It’s sat­is­fy­ing to have some­thing warm and sweet (and caf­feinat­ed) to sip with a bagel in the morn­ing. I’ve recent­ly gone to the lighter orange pekoe (from two bags to one bag), and I’ve avoid­ed buy­ing cof­fee if I don’t feel the need for one.

But today is Friday.

The IT Budget Just Got Bigger

I was giv­en the oppor­tu­ni­ty to pur­chase a new machine (with my choice of parts) at work and put it togeth­er from scratch, some­thing I had nev­er done before. I’ve dab­bled in cas­es ever since I played games (the dri­ving force behind much of my com­put­er knowl­edge), but nev­er actu­al­ly assem­bled an entire box from parts.

It’s amaz­ing to see how far along moth­er­boards, and even cas­es, have come now. Overclocking can be done through soft­ware, as opposed to open­ing the case and fid­dling with jumpers. Fan speed is auto­mat­i­cal­ly con­trolled for a bal­ance of silence and cool­ing. Rail mount­ed dri­ve bays make hard­ware con­fig­u­ra­tions much sim­pler. Thumbscrews elim­i­nate the need for screw­drivers for a sim­ple dust­ing. Firewire ports, eth­er­net con­nec­tions, video sup­port, even 5.1 sur­round are all built onboard, for the option of extreme­ly clean, roomy, and cool cas­es, even if they are rather sim­ple.

I man­aged to put the sys­tem togeth­er with­out hav­ing to re-seat a card, clean a con­nec­tion, or wig­gle a pow­er cable. My machine is now a P4 3.2E (I sup­pose all high­er end Pentium chips now auto­mat­i­cal­ly come with hyper-thread­ing), with a gig of DDR RAM, a 200 GB ser­i­al-ATA HDD, and a 128 MB ATI 800XT Pro video card. I also request­ed anoth­er 17″ flat pan­el, and received it the next day, so I can take advan­tage of the dual dis­play good­ness.

Work was good, but now it’s just bet­ter.

Memories Of Korn

Holy shit, I was walk­ing towards work this morn­ing with the cool autumn air on my skin and the dulled sun creep­ing up, cast­ing tall shad­ows on the grass. Something from Follow The Leader came on (I think it was Freak On A Leash) and I was back in high school again, a shy, ner­vous teenag­er, wait­ing for the yel­low bus to Catholic school.

Morning By The Elgin

I was on my way to catch­ing the bus to work this morn­ing, when I passed by a fan­cy restau­rant filled with patrons at the cor­ner of Elgin and Slater. The patrons were all peo­ple past mid­dle age, enjoy­ing con­ver­sa­tions over break­fast, dain­ti­ly eat­ing their bacon, and tak­ing cau­tious sips of their sun­shine joe.

The first thought in my head was, “How could any­one be so hap­py at such an ungod­ly hour?”. Then I held my thoughts (along with my peev­ish mood) in check, and won­dered to myself. Perhaps they spent the night embrac­ing the warmth of anoth­er’s body, hud­dled togeth­er against the chill of the open night air. Perhaps they were think­ing of their lovers, and could feel noth­ing but strength, think noth­ing but hap­pi­ness. And I liked that expla­na­tion.

It’s all enough to make one smile at any time of day.