Author: Jason Doucette

Ok, even if I was to start talking about some of the things that happened today, I wouldn’t get things posted in time for the midnight deadline, and then it’ll go on as tomorrow’s entry, and I’m sure I could work around that or at least convince myself that it doesn’t matter, but I’m beyond tired, and the show continues tomorrow. Without ninjas. If I don’t make it here on Sunday, Monday’s a full day of writing about other stuff (work and veg and veg more veg), so I’ll need a break. See you when it’s over.

Here’s a tale of the annual company barbecue.

The good news was that they had veggie burgers and the buns didn’t have egg in them! This was the second year that they did this, so that’s cool, but last year they had the veggie stuff in a totally different line than the rest of the food. Maybe it was the social stigma or something, but there was never a line for the veggie stuff, which means I ate twice as much in less than half the time. Maybe this year’s integration made it easier for people to say “you know what, give me the veggie burger”, but I figured a lot of people gave it a try last year just to save time. Unfortunately, the product they picked this year was one of those no-fat kinds, which when barbecued quickly reduces to the base components of hockey and puck.

Speaking of hockey, there was a raffle for a bunch of stuff, and one of the prizes was listed as “picture signed by [hockey player] Curtis Joseph”. Everyone assumed that the picture was of Curtis Joseph, but it’s quite possible that it was some sunset or something that Cujo autographed for no particular reason. That got me to thinking that the art world would be pretty funny if Wayne Gretzky bought the Mona Lisa and signed his name on it. Would the value go up or down?

Back the to BBQ, there was a logistical issue with the layout of the event. Everyone had to sit downwind of the grills. Any omnivores reading, do people actually enjoy being bathed in the ashes of dead animals? We were choking during some wind shifts, and it’s not like it smelled like anything remotely good; it was just smoke. Is it part of the macho art of the barbecue?

Keeping the BBQ – food – BBQ – food cycle going, there were also some games you could play to win fabulous prizes. I scored a bottle opener keychain, which is great, since my keys are literally on a loop of wire that comes open from time to time. I had to knock things down with bean bags to get that. There was another game where you had to hit a seesaw thing and launch something into a bag, and I didn’t get it in, but they gave me a prize anyway, because it would be one less thing for them to clean up later. It was a CD by Carole Pope, who people tell me was in Rough Trade, who people tell me sang High School Confidential. I picked it because someone else won one (legitimately), and we could be CD twins. When I got back to my desk I opened it up and put it in the CD drive to see what we were in for. Just as I was closing the drive something caught my eye and I had to open it up again. The CD was screen printed. My very conservative company had been giving away CDs with a picture of a naked woman on them. All afternoon. I spent the next hour showing people the company-approved naked lady. It was the funniest thing that happened that hour. I can’t wait for the feedback form to circulate:

What would you like to see more of next year?

Better veggie burgers.
Recycling boxes.
More CDs with naked women on them.

Actually, that would make for a good mission statement for my TV show company, which is now hard at work on some show about a penguin in the Sahara Desert. I know, it’s been done to death, but this penguin is the reincarnation of Jerry Garcia.

With ninjas.

I’ve all but given up on logically connecting paragraphs together here. Some day I’ll change the layout to put more of a separation between thoughts, but for now you’ll just have to deal. Maybe I could make it my business model – subscribe to Herman Thrust Pro today, and the daily postings will be seamlessly arranged in such a way that they might actually make sense. Until the venture caps start knocking…

I’m really behind in my emails, so apologies to anyone who’s waiting for one. As a mini-excuse, I got an email from my service provider saying that they’ve been having problems with their mail servers. I got that email twice. Could the problem be congestion?

I have those neat magnetic clip-on sunglasses for my glasses, but I live East of my job, so the sun’s usually at my back when I leave for work and when I come home, with the exception of reflections off of buildings. It’s still usually bright enough to justify wearing them, but sometimes it’s like holding an umbrella when it’s drizzling out, and you’re not sure if it’s stopped. Still, nobody ever wrote a song about holding an umbrella on a semi-drizzly day, so I think sunglasses are ok. The theory seems sound for this guy, anyway.

Work woes of a technical nature today. While Microsoft released a bunch of APIs as part of their legal battle, a casual inspection did not find a “MicrosoftExcel()” function, nor did I see any “FixThatBugThatHasHoundedYou()” routines. Ah well, I’ll keep looking. What I did discover today was that the Visual Basic Date() function returns a value that depends on the Regional Settings in Windows. Sure, that almost makes sense in some ways, but when you have an app that parses Date() to get the month and year, there’s a big difference between 8/26/2002 and 02/08/26. I know, I know (now), DatePart() is the proper way to do this, but the proper response to this problem is more along the lines of “why in the name of Zod did you change the desktops to use a different date format without telling anyone?” It’s like crossing the streams in Ghostbusters – you’re not sure what would happen, but you know it would be bad. It’s something you do when a giant man made of marshmallow attacks you, and I haven’t seen any Marshmallow Man attacks in the paper recently. On the bright side, there’s a workaround until we can get a patch shipped out (it only takes about 4 months with our standard cycle).

My career as a TV show making guy is going to take off any day now. I’m tired of big screen remakes of television shows that don’t add anything to the mix other than a budget. My new rule is that any remake will require the phrase “with ninjas” added to the title. Think about it, “LA Law”, or “LA Law With Ninjas“? “The Partridge Family”, or “The Partridge Family With Ninjas“? “Road to Avonlea”… Well, you get the idea. Blockbusters, all.

Finally, I went theme grocery shopping tonight. Berries, Bread, Bananas, Broccoli. I’m going to write The Alphabet Diet – your 26 day weight loss plan, as soon as I can figure out a few logistical issues with multi-word foods. Can you eat Yellow Beans with Yams, or are they strictly a B-day staple? I’ll sort it all out someday, and then I’ll go on Oprah and people will love me. You’ll see.

Rapid fire unrelated thought process! Go!

I feel like I’ve moved to a new level at work. Unfortunately, it might be a downward one. After six years of trying, I managed to perform my first Pointy Haired Boss manoeuvre. I’m not going to go into details, because it’s sad, but I spent a good chunk of the rest of the day working on technical stuff mumbling “I still have useful skills” under my breath to compensate. Tomorrow I’m going to go to work early and, I don’t know, rewrite something from scratch using algorithms from the year 2034, and when other people arrive and gaze in awe at the splendour that is my technological achievement, I will stand proudly atop the cubicle walls and proclaim “BEHOLD! I AM STILL WORTHY OF YOUR CONVERSATIONS!” and they will not roll their eyes in such a dismissive way when they ask me questions, no they will not.

Does anyone know the “Marco Polo” game that people play around the pool? I’ve never played it nor seen it in action, but I thought of a vegetarian version where people call out “Lacto” and “Ovo” that might be funny. AngelA says that instead of that “fish out” thing people could shout “veganveganvegan”.

My hospital drama show idea with the Asian actors speaking with Swedish accents is developing nicely. The show is going to be called ASIAN DOCTORS, because I think it’s important that people notice that the doctors with Swedish accents are not actually actors playing Swedes. That’s a different crossing of boundaries.

I posted my first porn from work today. Dangerous precedents abound, but I’ve finally justified my dumb list of domains.

From the just what I needed department: we’ve been working hard on a bunch of different projects for TVA, and guess what search term shows up in my access logs today? TVA Sucks. Totally out of context, but still a refreshing change from g-a-y d-o-g-s, which has thankfully gone away and will remain among the fallen referrals as long as I keep spelling things properly. Ask me why I don’t have an archive. Ok, it’s because I’m lazy, but still.

One of my co-workers clipped an article out about Kevin Smith’s latest extras casting call and pinned it up on my cubicle wall. She has a wall of her own, so I think she’s just trying to get me to change jobs, but in a nice way. That’s much better than leaving McDonald’s job applications on my desk. Still, I’d be a decent movie star. I saw someone famous on the way to work today. She was standing on a flatbed truck getting wired up for sound. I’ve no idea who she was, but they wouldn’t wire just anybody up for sound, so she must have been famous. Just think, with some persistance and a little luck, some day someone could be walking to work and they’d see me getting wired for sound, and they’d be all, like, hey, famous guy.

It’s looking like I might hold off for a few more days on the computer stuff purchases. This is only partly due to schedule concerns, and is mostly because my credit card billing dates are coming up, and if I wait until they hit, I don’t have to pay for the stuff for a month and a half, which is so fun to do it really doesn’t matter that I actually have the money in the bank.

I’ve got a few more bucks coming to me once I actually fill out the insurance forms for all the physio stuff. I ran today, and I had a twinge or two of pain, but nothing serious, so I’m happy. All in all I’m glad I went through the process, because I learned something really cool: there are muscles in my body that do interesting things, but they don’t get stronger doing those things. I’m working on some weird little things in my legs, and suddenly I can stand on one foot like nobody’s business. I could maintain an acceptable level of balance before, but I’ve never been what one might call graceful. Once the leg stuff is taken care of, I’m going to focus all of my fitness energy on my left pinky finger, because as far as I know I never use that, so it must control bullet proofness or something.

Ok, that’s the score for today. I’m going to try actually relaxing with a book for a bit before bed tonight, seeing as I have three on the go right now and I just bought one more. It’s somehow less relaxing when you feel like there’s a deadline.

Does anyone even rememeber the game SimCity? I thought it was just one of those things that people knew, but someone had to remind me that it’s over 10 years old, so here’s a primer. You build a city. If you do it well, it grows. Actually, it pretty much always grows. Anyway, the cool part of the game was the disasters that would show up every once in a while. Earthquakes, tidal waves, even Godzilla would visit your metropolis from time to time. Alright, it was kind of cool. The really cool part was how the disasters were available on the menu. That’s right, you could pound the crap out of your creation and rebuild, if you were so inclined.

I was, and in many ways, I think I still am.

This thought came to me as I was eating a bag of chips after going to the gym.

In other news, I was really happy to see this interview online. I read the print version several years ago, and it’s still that perfect mix of funny and sad. A sample question: “How many times have you see The Little Mermaid? About 150. I’ve seen each TV episode quite a few times, too“. Yeeha!

That possible cold I mentioned a while ago seems to be just allergies. If I start to feel sick again, I’m going to sign up for Swedish lessons, because people who speak Swedish are healthier. I wonder if a Swedish accent would be enough for simple diseases? When Hollywood finally starts listening to me, I’m going to get a hospital drama going where everyone has a Swedish accent, but they’ll all be Asian, just to make sure people understand that this is not a bad cultural import. Well yeah, it would be a bad cultural import, what with me not being American, but I meant that in the sense that I’m North American.

This would certainly count as a segue if you read the source. I can’t bring myself to use the i tag for italics in HTML. It’s always em. Don’t know why, it just works that way in my brain. Once in awhile I give it a try, but it never takes.

Moving to the world of work, it’s no fun, that work thing. I actually saw a job posting for a CTI job today, which I don’t see very often, but it’s at a company where a colleague got a job a while ago. He gets to fly home on the weekends. No fun. Why can’t telecom workers telecommute? I have the feeling that I’ll be at my current job for a while, which is good from a “I get to go home most evenings” perspective, but it’s been six years… I’d consider posting my resume as a “hey, you never know” thing, but that’s where adopting a name like “Herman Thrust” doesn’t work out so well… Or having a website with the word “porn” in it. Hmmm, www.seriousprofessionalblog.com? Nah…

We’re halfway through the Day of Unbelievable Fun!

This morning was spent at Ontario Place, where I learned a valuable lesson. I am not hydrodynamic. There’s this water park, see, and it’s got this ride called the Hydrofuge. From the promotional copy: “Riders shoot down a tube on a thin sheet of water reaching speeds of up to 50 kph, then swirl around in a gigantic bowl and plunge into a six foot deep landing pool“. Yeah, it’s just like a toilet bowl. I hear Canada’s Wonderland has a ride just like this, except on theirs you get to sit on a raft. Why the raft? Oh, probably to prevent your skin from hitting every seam in the slide as you shoot down. Ow. I may have hit 50 “kph”, but not for long. In the end I just kinda fell diagonally out of the slide into the pool below. Gracefully, of course.

So the good news is, I won’t have to worry about being enlisted into the war on terror as a submarine. They won’t rig me for silent running. I think that’s a good thing. All the other rides are good, by the way.

Tonight will be spent at the CNE, which is right across the street from Ontario Place, but we decided to go home in between venues. That’s the great thing about living downtown.

Yesterday wasn’t as fun, but it was productive. We finally got AngelA’s site looking non-bleak with the addition of a few background images. I also did something I should have done a long time ago and made a development copy of VP. Yep, all this time I’ve been making most of my changes live in production. It’s amazing how much faster I can work now. Why, if I’m not careful, I might deliver actual functionality to the system! I’m halfway through the dreaded CSS conversion, and once that’s done I’ll get to make the juvenile filter actually work the way I want it to. Damned exciting stuff, especially if you don’t read the papers.

Gotta go eat a solid meal now – going on some nasty rides soon!

My problem, it would seem, is timing.

For example, I bought the new used Mac a while ago on eBay. I came out about $300 ahead of the equivalent used model locally, and the upgrade path looks pretty good. I was this close to placing the order for all the required gizmos when I saw massive price reductions in the local paper on Macs that the new used Mac could only aspire to be. My upgrade window is crushed, and the trade-in value isn’t even that great anymore. I figure I’m going to go ahead with the upgrades rather than scrapping everything for a whole new system. It’s more environmental, and yeah, I realize that this is just the cycle of obsolescence kicking me in the teeth, but it still hurts to get kicked in the teeth, even when you know it’s happening.

Last night was another prime example. I’ve been beating myself senseless (again, metaphorically, and not in the teeth) with work lately, and I know I’m getting run down, so I promised myself I’d get a decent night’s sleep. It’s 8pm, I’m kinda drowsy, I do the math, and hey, if I crash now and get up at 6, that’s a respectable 10 hour recovery. I go for it, and of course I wake up at 11:30, which is when I probably would have gone to bed anyway, but now I can’t sleep until 3:30 or so. Would I have had better luck crashing at 9? 10? Who knows.

Timing’s been bugging me in other ways. I was rendered useless yesterday at work because someone would interrupt me every 4.7 minutes on average. I was mad enough that I was planning on shopping for some kind of chess clock mechanism to bring in so I could slam the timer button down every time someone said something. Of course, I went for the “sleep right away” plan instead, but if there were any 24 hour chess supply stores around last night, I tell you…

This all clicked as I was leaving for home tonight. I had a peach on my desk that I’d bought a few days before. It wasn’t ripe enough to eat at the time, so I put it aside, content to feast on chips and other non-peachy junk until it had matured enough to be savoured. It’s Friday night, and it’s not ready yet, but it’s clear that the 5 hour window of optimal peachiness would hit before Monday morning. Not wishing to work the weekend just so I could enjoy a peach, I took it home, where hopefully I’ll remember it in time. The place is actually pretty tidy right now, so my chances are good. Still, it’s not the peach experience I had planned on, and it’s all about timing.

In other news, I’m debating whether I’ve got a cold or really bad allergies. I’ve been crying and sniffling all day, and I hear allergies are really bad this year, but I’ve never had such an intense attack, so it’s kinda up in the air. I’m leaning towards the cold theory right now, which sucks because it breaks my streak of “not sick”, but on the bright side colds go away, and apparently it’s ragweed season for another 2 months. I thought that living downtown surrounded by concrete would make me immune to these things, but I have a feeling that co-workers are bringing the stuff in on their clothing that they wore in nice parts of the world while they enjoyed that thing called life.

I remember the thing called life. I’m talking to a lot of people who are just finishing school, and none of them seem to be in a big hurry to join the workforce. When I graduated, it was just the next logical step. I had bills to pay and my parents had moved since I went away to school (they left forwarding addresses, but it’s not like my room was still there). Regardless of my situation, most if not all of my classmates had a similar mindset. Maybe it was the training in logic, but none of us really questioned the “you’re done here, now go get a job” life path. Looking back, I wonder if I would have done anything interesting if I didn’t rush out to work, or if I would have just ended up sitting on my ass. A lot of things that seemed really complicated at the time are pretty straightforward now.

One trivial example is this site. I didn’t do an entry yesterday, but I did tweak the CSS a bit. You shouldn’t notice any difference, but there were some really stupid statements hiding in the code. Of course, I haven’t checked with any other browsers, but it’s stuff that just should work, and I know that it does and why, which is something I obviously couldn’t do a few months ago, so that was pretty cool. Oh, and if you’re going to mess with my head with a comment about how it looks like crap (moreso than before), you’d better back that up with a screenshot or I’ll come to your house and water your plants. In the eyes of the law, that’s not a threat, but things seem to happen when I have to take care of plants. If I could explain it, it’d be Bachelor University time, but that’s an advanced class that will probably only make sense in a few months. Again, timing.

Today’s Bachelor University lesson was going to be “if you don’t cook, you don’t have to clean”, but somehow matter is spontaneously appearing in my dining area in some twisted perversion of Einstein’s theories. If only we could find a way to generate power from the mess as it grows…

I have a hard enough time managing the differences between my HT persona and my day to day “guy who works at a desk” guise, so the overlaps are tricky. The biggest confusion comes from working at TVA, which ironically is where Herman Thrust was born. They generally frown on the name when I’m dealing with the public, and the word “porn” is mildly out of the question. At the same time, I act more in Thrust mode when I’m there, even though I’m officially not acting in a Thrust capacity. I liken it to those times when Batman would “disguise himself” as Bruce Wayne in an elaborate plot to catch a super villain. Anyway, non-Thrust was recently interviewed about vegetarianism “from a youth perspective”. That’s right, one of me has become the voice of vegetarian youth. I don’t even know which one of me did it, because we’re all pretty old, but I don’t have the energy to invent a new personality right now.

Also coming soon: the closest Herman Thrust will likely ever come to a personal appearance at the TVA Food Fair: I’m going to be the MC for the fashion show. Anyone who knows me will understand how funny that is. I’m a guy who has to pay attention to what the mannequins are wearing so I can figure out what to wear with a new shirt. I have to ask if something goes with black pants. I only shop in stores that have a clear division between the men and women’s sections, because I might accidentally end up getting something completely incorrect and not actually realize it. No, I’m not talking about thongs, but here’s a sample conversation with a store clerk:

Clerk: Hi, can I help you find anything?
Me: Pants.
Clerk: Ok, are these for work, or casual, or clubbing…
Me: Pants. I need pants.
Clerk: Ok… Is there a colour you’re looking for?
Me: Pants like these. (pointing to legs)
Clerk: Sir, you’re wearing a kilt.

So yeah, I’m the MC of the fashion show. Nothing to fear. I’m already the voice of vegetarian youth. Next up, I intend to become an opera singer.

You can be assured of one thing though: there will be emphasis on pants during the show.

I’m not big on passing around Internet tests, but my mom (who owns a bong) sent me this one, and I’m puzzled about my result. I’ll reveal my answer at the end of this entry if you want to play along at home.

Operation: clean the damned place up before AngelA gets back is in full swing, chronologically, although you wouldn’t know it to look around. It’s all about the strategy phase. Much like a good software design cycle that renders the programming to a mere bout of data entry, I’m planning and plotting the organizational whatzits required to get it done well before Friday. Yep, we have a confirmed arrival date. As I haven’t gotten to sleep before 3 for the past few nights, I’m opting for a rest phase before going banzai hardcore on the pile of crap that comprise my worldly possesions. The new CD storage solution has cleared off a whole shelf of stuff, but there’s the small matter of the huge pile of CD cases strewn in front of the player. I would have dealt with them tonight, but it seemed urgent that I start entering labels for a good chunk of the discs.

I’m sure there’s going to be a time crunch with the cleaning operation, since my plan of going “hey boss, what time did you leave last Wednesday? 4? I left Thursday night at 6, seeya Monday” is turning into “stupid system testing don’t these computers know who I am? I have tasks which must be done”. I just have to load some applications on five systems. Applications that have never been tested. A technicality, to be certain.

Magnetha says she can tell when I do this. Just checking.

AngelA is going to be mighty confused when she gets back. I’m not just talking about the cleanliness. One of this week’s CD purchases was a Dashboard Confessional CD, which seems to consist entirely of songs about heartbreak. I know AngelA’s just gone for the week, but somewhere in my brain there’s some kind of empathy circuit kicking in, so AngelA will get back and I’ll be all “oh thank god you’re back I missed you so much” combined with alternating bouts of “you think you can just waltz back into my life? Nothing’s changed, has it?” that I’m sure she’ll understand were just brought on by the songs, nothing personal. Maybe I should just stick with Tom Jones.

Ok, the test I mentioned earlier. It said to pick a vegetable, and I picked turkey. While I’m sure that puts me in the minority of the population, WTF???

Ok, I’m a bit baked from helping AngelA out with the Toronto Outdoor Art Exhibition (at Nathan Phillips Square until Sunday!), so this is going to be brief like that awesome fight scene in Superman II where Superman doesn’t have any powers but asks a trucker to “step outside” anyway. Cool.

Mostly, I just wanted to relay a message from Jason: Muchos Muchos Grande Pantusos!

I had some other fun computer stuff happening too, including yet another domain name purchase. I haven’t done much of anything with my last one, but dammit, my hosting plan allows for seven, and dammit, that’s just good clean fun. It’s like a drug or something. At about $40 (Canadian) a pop, I figure if I can make jokes about it to five friends it’s paid for itself, which means I don’t have to feel bad about letting it expire next year if I don’t touch it. Sometimes interesting things come out of a drunken name selection, most often not, but it keeps me off the streets.

Speaking of streets, there was a Reclaim the Streets event tonight, and I thought it was a funny coincidence that Yonge Street was suddenly closed off for some construction work on a Friday night. Them police dudes are smarter than they look. Ok, maybe not.

There are other things to say, but there isn’t time, so hopefully tomorrow, but by then I’ll have had some other fun adventures, no doubt. Fun tales from the art show anyway.

Fun tales with ninjas.