It has come to my attention that I'm 19 years old. This is a fairly obvious
thing to realize, I know. But I'm the opposite of that Norrington fellow from
Pirates of the Caribbean; all he was missing was the girl, but all I
have is the girl. I'm decidedly lacking in any kind of work, and therefore any
kind of money, and therefore I am also lacking any kind of (working)
car. Because of all three of these I am also severely lacking in social stature,
I assume. Oh, Norrington, my polar opposite.
But if I had to choose I'd stay as I am and keep the girl. Trading places would
leave me lonely, though rich and powerful. And I'd look silly in a powdered
wig and frilly shirt anyway.
I still need money and the only way to honest money is apparently to get a job
or at least some kind of work. So I've finally finished the web
design section of the site (looks sharpish, previews and rollovers and functional
websites, oh my!) and have added the computer
consulting section, yet another skill of mine that I may be able to use
in my quest for financial success.
I've started saving money, too. The new rule is that I can't spend twenties.
Everything else below or above a 20 dollar bill I can (and will, with glee)
spend, but the green ones will be added to my small collection for a rainy day
or car repair project.
It seems that I am heading back to school, too. Carleton University, here I
come. Admittedly I'm just a Special Student (no program, just courses) with
little hope of actually making it into the world-class Industrial Design program,
but I will do my best nonetheless. I'll need to get my 536 Math (advanced Grade
11, the last year in Quebec, should have taken that in high school, and I knew
it then, too), OAC-level physics, and some calculus. That will take a year at
the very least.
Hopefully I'll make enough cash during this next year to fund the purchase of
a car and a fairly good lifestyle as well as a pile of twenties to help pay
for school.
It's difficult to get back on the tread mill, back into the rat race again,
to take control of my life. But at 19 years old I can hardly afford not to.
Googlism
Saturday, October 16th, 2004
sayyad is interested in communicating ancient mystical ideas and beliefs on
a physically explosive yet quietly intuitive way
sayyad is very ambitious in developing a new language
sayyad is averaging just over four points and three rebounds per game in his
12 minutes per game
sayyad is the fourth sunni moslem cleric to have disappeared and reportedly
been murdered in the region since 1994
sayyad is reportedly the fourth sunni cleric to have disappeared under suspicious
circumstances in the region since 1994
sayyad is a human rights expert and the current director and co
sayyad is a dancer and choreographer as well as the artistic director of namah
ensemble
sayyad is on
sayyad is at his best
sayyad is a highly respected figure within the persian community
sayyad is also good
sayyad is in prison in the united arab emirates for having smuggled narcotics
sayyad is among the greatest politically
sayyad is a ph
sayyad is a big
sayyad is one who has subordinate to him a large number who should serve him
out of sincere eagerness and natural obedience
sayyad is a great athlete from sudan who has not played much basketball
sayyad is blocked by hawaii's troy ostler
sayyad is not sanguine about the economy or its impact on sdi’s fortunes
sayyad is also charged with receiving large amounts of funds from the hamas
leadership in syria to purchase guns and ammunition
sayyad is not enough to prevent a layup in the lane
sayyad is for sale
sayyad is dajjal because he heard umar
sayyad is renowned for its exquisite stone window tracery which is a superb
and peerless example of delicate carving
Try it on yourself at www.googlism.com
(though you probably already have and I'm probably the last man on earth to
find this).
Right then.
Sunday, October 3rd, 2004, 6:05AM
Still awake. W.T.F.
Following up on the last post, that was probably the tiredest I've been in
Montreal in ever. I stayed up for like three days straight with only about an
hour or maybe two of sleep (cumulative, a nap here, a daydream there, you know
how it is, unless you don't). Despite this I still managed to have fun and a
sandwich.
As the astute may be able to tell, I'm still not really sleeping all that well.
I blame myself and the internet. I just finished endlessly modifying Viki's
blog's template (have
a look-see) but that wasn't so bad, I do enjoy working with the arcane and
overly complicated code structures devised by design-blind engineer-types at
most blog sites. Those who know me will know that I seldom work for any solid
period of time and would much prefer to browse around and read stuff while considering
problems that must be solved.
So in tonight's browsing around I discovered what may just be the most fantastically
beautiful speaker (like, device for reproducing sound) ever created by humans.
This is genius, I say. If anyone out there has ever heard me say that good engineering
is equal to good design, this is a great example of what I meant. While not
perfect, this is damn close. Enjoy the little 360-degree thingy.
Isn't it great? Isn't it beautiful? They won't say what it costs though,
but there's probably a good reason. Bowers
& Wilkins, quality audio products at quality car prices.
You probably get what you pay for but I doubt I'll have enough money to
find out.
In other news, I've rediscovered the joy and wit that is Rum
and Monkey. What is Rum and Monkey, you might ask? And I'd say something
retarded about how it's definitely not a drink. It's a rather amusing british
site with articles and comics and tests and widgets. Mike, if you're reading
this, it's your kind of place, check it out. Everybody else, you too.
I spent way too long reading articles and finally took a sort of personality
test, the "Which Office Moron Are You?" one. The result:
Saturday, September 25th, 2004, 6:11AM
Montreal in two hours.
Well. That certainly was interesting. Another party at Mike's, a few drinking
games ('cept for me, cuz I don't drink, I mean really, what's the point?), one
severely drunk dude, but he'll be fine. So Alex and I wander out to the Tim's
to get Viki food and we sit down and talk for a bit. Tom and Katherine show
up and we talk for a bit, and then Katherine notices the girl at the counter
and she knows her so she goes over to say hi and I do too. Somebody (Tom? Probably
Tom. Seems like a Tom thing to do) asks for half-price donuts or discount donuts
or something and Amy, our cashier for the morning, as this was about 4AM, tells
us that all the old donuts are going to be put in a box and then dumped. We
happened to be in the right place at the right time, so we went to wait for
her out back.
Being the resident shopping cart addict I find one and we kinda run a few strength
and durability tests on it, as well as one that was more for balance (and it
looked really cool). The guys on the benches a few meters away clapped for that;
we had an audience. Eventually the back door opens and this huge box of donuts
is left sitting on the milk crates, so we haul it into the cart and are about
to leave.
The guys on the bench notice this so they came over. "Hey man, what've
we got in here?" Asks the apparent leader. I, having no idea what kind
of person this guy is, answer kind of sarcastically that the box is, obviously,
full of donuts. He takes offence. "You bein' fuckin' disrespectful?"
And Tom swears at this obvious nobody, in his most joking tone. Nobody who knows
Tom would have taken him seriously, but this guy Matt decides to make a scene,
and starts shoving Tom around and swearing at him. We tell the guy to calm down
but he doesn't listen. Tom backs off for a second and the guy punches him right
in the mouth, not hard, but enough to make him bleed. Keeps saying stuff about
how Tom is disrespecting him and how he really doesn't know who he is messing
with and how he should knock him out. We tell our young thug to back off, let
Tom be. Tom backs off of course, even more now, and the guy tries to start a
fight. Here's where Alex really comes in handy with his people skills and diplomacy,
and it was at about that point that I walked Tom across the street and away
from our now obviously drunk agressor.
He wanted to fight back, to hit the guy, so I suggested he use one of the wooden
posts stuck in the grass, because I was pretty angry with the whole situation
and I would have tried to fight back had it been me who had been hit. Tom didn't
fight back even then and we waited for the other two. He kept saying how he
couldn't remember being hit and how that scared him.
The Last of the All-Nighters (yeah, right.)
Saturday, July 10th, 2004, 6:24AM
Holy crap, it's been a while.
So I'm still awake. Bloody hell. Some of you may, or very well may not, remember
me saying that if I stay up one more night all night I'd die. Well this must
be me dying, doesn't feel much different though. And it now seems that I'm
going garage sailing (is that a verb? Do I really care?) with my father and
grandma. This will be yet another exercise in wisely not spending money.
Have I ever told anyone this? I dunno, here goes anyway though: I am by far
the least spendy (shaddup, just read) person in my family. Given a set amount
of money and time I'd have the most left by far at the end. Just the other
day I ended up at Business Depot with the matriarch and I wisely didn't spend
$17 on stuff I didn't really need. Mother dearest walked out of the store
with several unnecessary things totalling a bit over $17. And they wonder
where all the money goes... Here's a clue: LITTLE THINGS. Always. But hundreds,
thousands, maybe more over the course of a year add up. This is why budgeting
is so freakin difficult around here.
'Course it has it's upside. With the books not being set in stone (closer
to rubber, really) I can sort of bend the overall flow of cash (from government,
through parents, into house) a bit towards me, which comes in handy all the
time. Though recently I've tried not to abuse this privilege and this has
resulted in me being chronically broke. Stupid ethics.
A note on not-spending (not to be confused with not spending). This is something
I think I've invented but I'm probably wrong. It involves wandering around
a store looking at things that you'd like to have, adding up the total and
then not actually buying anything. This is the hard part of not-spending;
adding up price tags is easy. I usually feel regretful after having not spent
(not to be confused with not-spent) anything (it would be "after having
not-spent [quantitative noun] of [currency]," notice the lack of a second
negative) if the people I'm with have just most certainly done the opposite.
But then later on I realize I still have money, instead of the opposite situation
which would exist had I spent anything earlier.
All this to say that I forgot what I wanted to say when I started writing
this. Probably had something to do with me being poor. But I must leave now,
gotta go do some serious not-spending.
