Author Archives: Dorian

Another Day of Wandering

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OK. These sinuses are bugging the hell out of me. Its going away, imperceptibly slowly. The work at home is also seems that it is not going away. Washing dishes, picking up things, and worst of all cleaning the tarps that Dad used on the roof. Blobs of black tar that leave green smudges and that can only be cleaned using paint thinner. Oh and did I mention it was ragweed season and that I am sick at the same time. 🙁

In the morning I managed to finally spiffy up my computer. Yup, updated and running a new 2.6.11 kernel. It boots with a splashscreen that I made myself. Yeah! Go me go! I wish that I had more time to work on my hobby projects. Maybe tomorrow.

Drifting in a Netherworld

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Fall. Well not officially but still… everyone can feel it. Summer’s warm embrace is loosening and slowly turning into the cool of autumn. And haven’t enjoyed it a bit… not much time off. And now the sickness. Apparently my latest illness which seemed to be fading, has struck my sinuses. Now I have had to deal with this quite painful secondary infection… So much for time off. To top it off my knee-jerk coughing spree kept me up till 4:00 AM yesterday night. The only thing enjoyable was a reading a VERY depressing Japanese (Yeah for English translation) animated novel. Well maybe not enjoyable but at least I least I felt better about my own situation after it.

Fortunately I have been feeling better with each passing day. Mostly thanks to intensive pill-popping. Of course, to make the experience more exciting, my condition always seems to worsen in the evening. Lovely. So I decided to get some work done. I have updated my Linux box recently, with a newer version of udev, a new kernel (which I soon found to be broken with a new implementation of the Alps touchpad driver…) and few other things. I cleaned out a few old things, like useless libraries, a few games including Quake 3 Demo (sorry it was just too bloody) and UT2004 Demo (love the fast action, but I don’t have time to play), and best of all Mozilla. That’s right! Now I have only Firefox and Thunderbird… without all the additional bloat. I also
threw out the Gentooized version of Eclipse, and got a newer copy for my own personal use off the Eclipse.org site. A few minutes later (and DSL reconnects), I had everything I needed. Sort of. My update kept on crashing with the configuration of wings (awesome 3D modelling program), but that bug report I sent in yesterday paid off. I am currently in the process of
reemerging a few kernel dependent programs, and my update.

I have given up on my old laptop. The not-so-hot release of FreeDOS now lives on it. What a change I might add… I really do prefer a Unix system… but at least I can play my old DOS games again. Weee… OLD SCHOOL!!!

As for back-to-school (university) preparations, I am debating on whether to take PEY or not… and whether to pursue a degree in bioinformatics (I suck at Bio and Chem labs and their reports :() or take that one icky statistics course and take the AI courses. I would really love to hack robots (especially space probes/drones/rovers) as a job^H^H^Hcareer.

The Shingle Crab Cometh?!?

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The universe saved. Again. But children beware!!! The shingle crab has come, and he is going to eat you unless you help pay his university tuition. Yes, today was another day in the re-roofing saga. Mostly I hopped around the heap of old singles we had pulled off yesterday. This was apparently an interesting sight of me in my green fishermen hat, black shades and a blue/white mold mask on my face. I guess the mold mask really was the oddity, but hey, its ragweed season again. The last thing I want to do is to inhale litres of air filled to the brim with pollen, mold and dustified shingles. Anyways I hopped around the pile like some sort of a humanoid crab, and gained the stares of a few children and teens passing by. Normally I get my share of anonymity [sic] and no attention. Hence, I became the shingle crab from outer space. 😉

Re-roofing is going at a good pace. We cleaned up and boxed all the shingles, and have made 5 trips to the local CRC (dump). Probably only 2 more visits are needed. My Dad only has to replace the window sides, and add a bit of ice protection to the windows. Tomorrow he will probably get to putting up shingles… I hope, and if I have anything to do with it.

As for life, nothing much is happening. I have been fighting with Slackware to install it unto my ancient computer. After an exhaustive battle, I decided with going along with muLinux. It maybe a mini-Linux but it is pretty much everything I am going to need, (workstation, X11, GCC, Perl, Tex, JVM). Then I can get around to writing my epic, which I am calling Solation One until I come with a better name.

I hope that once this roof is done, and everything for school is prepared I can get around to rebuilding my non-existent, shattered social life.

Out of the Abyss and into the Clouds Again

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Hello, hello again, dear reader and fellow blog-journeyer. Finally had the heart to write an entry again. The last few days since the last entry and this one, I had a bout of depression arising from an all time low self-esteem and self-worth. Today, when I got up to work today I thought today would be the same old low. But no. I got up late, but not tired and with a full reserve of energy. Didn’t really need my customary early morning French Vanilla coffee. But hey, it is customary.

Work itself was exasperating as always. My machine ran OK except for one place where the material would fold up… and everything would die in the messiest way. The lead hand, Malkait tried to fix it. But the machine had its day, and the lead hand got on my nerves. Again. He is a really nice guy, but an utter fool and has the perpetual illusion that his way is always right. I play along since I really don’t care about work, and am not in the mood to stir up problems. Beside I got to finish earlier since I ran out of material. Hey! Who’s your daddy now, T-3?

I have only three more days left of work. Sunday, Wednesday and Thursday and then… freedom 22!!! Now that in itself isn’t would seemed to end the vicious cycle of defeatism. I started to write up that novel I was talking about. I don’t have a title for it yet, but who cares when I actually have a plot, characters and everything else falling into place. This is really exciting, and maybe I will add a bit more content later on Today after I get ready for work tomorrow.

Another success was that my Dad fixed my Palm yesterday, so today I had my precious music. Yay! To top it all off, I actually can keep up my hackey-sack for more than four hits. In fact, I feel like I have been better today, than ever. Now only exhaustion is holding me back, as I got a hold on the technique and the rhythm of the game. I am exhilarated by all of this. I hope tomorrow will be just as good as today. (Maybe I should ask out Kat today, since today seems like my lucky day. Or am I just pushing things again?)

Last Work Night Week

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Yay!!! My last week of nights begins today. Wow this summer did go by fairly fast. And unproductively (on the part of my pet projects). But that is about to change.

As for house work today: washed dishes, dug a frozen dinner out of the freezer, and cut the hedge (really proud of that last one). Anyways, I also finished up all the blogs that I missed out on. So go ahead and read through the archive. If you dare.

I plan to get some justCheckers, Insomia, Palm programming and writing work done. But I don’t know in which order. I guess I will work on that sci-fi novel I started recently, xNihlo. It is a mix of my short stories, and a story of a Terran inflitration officer on board one of the deep sea trinit-ships looking for an Neurocis saboteur at work. The whole story will takes place in the far future after the Great Soliation (whats that you say?) in the strange sea world inbetween the ice sheet and unforgiving depths of an ice giant, Trinik Prime. (Got your attention yet? Good!)

A Quick Glance of Recent Events

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A number of things have happened that I have neglected to mention. So here is a quick rundown:

My brother has been away at scout camp for the past 3 weeks. While he did have fun there, he also had to endure some ridiculous conditions, and messed-up leaders. I in his shoes would of bailed out as soon as I could, or protest violently. But he stuck it out. I can’t figure out why, especially since he ate very little (cause the hair-brained cooks couldn’t and wouldn’t serve his special diet foods, even thought everything was prepared in advance) and slept in awful tents, etc. Anyways he is back, and he hopes to go back there next year…

Another thing was an accident at work I had. I cut my elbow with my utility knife in an ugly fashion, and had to get stitches. Not fun. Especially not the tetanus booster shot I got. The nurse jabbed me so hard, that my shoulder and upper left arm were sore for the next three days.

Dmitri moved to a new house, so now walking to his house is no longer an option. Ewa decided to go on vacation to New York with her boyfriend, Lucas. Yes I am jealous. Domenic is off to Michigan to attend one of his college friend’s weddings. Katka is somewhere in Slovenia. Still. Rudy is working and taking a few courses. Lucky bastard. Oh and Mike Hart when not working with me at CKF, he is out partying the living daylights out of… whatever it is. And me. Well I am blogging. So that means I am home, deluded and the highlights of my day being time in front of the computer. Pathetic.

Anyways, I also went with my folks for a walk in the woods today. Mom enjoyed it. So did my brother. Me and my Dad tested positive for mosquito affinity… and counted 45 bites each… wished we stayed home. Now I am covered in red little itchy bumps. Its a Canadian thing.

Good news is that I am caught up with my blogs. So I will try to be from now on up-to-date in that section. And I filled out my OSAP application. Finally. Oh and I got sound working in Quake 3 under Linux. Yes!!! Not to mention, yesterday I kicked Rudy’s sorry ass in a round of Legends. Hehe… got you at last. 🙂

Reality Shifting

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Well I am back, after a long delay. Work has finally enveloped my entire life. There are only work, and rest cycles. The slow, dive into the abyss of automaton (drone) life continues. Everyday, I seem to care less and less about my fate. So gradual… I feel oblivious to everything. I loathe this feeling.

I have not written a blog in a while. Most of my friends are out working, moving, on vacation… so no one really has any real time for me. Except Dima, but he is moving… so the weekly walks might also become rarer. Now none of my friends will be living anywhere near me. This is most distressing and upsetting. My only saving grace is the slow process of writing of story. And I mean slow.

I plan to get my other previous non-posted blogs up soon. Maybe very soon.

Happy Birthday Canada

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What a day. Dead tired and had to bake some stuff for my brother’s trip tomorrow. Later got some sleep and I am ready for work. Yay! And on Canada Day. And such a beautiful day too.

Discussed my current writing project with Dmitri yesterday. Now I am confident about this novel. Should be good.

Another Half-Day

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Most of the day I slept through. And when I woke up it didn’t get any better. House work and almost complete sanctions on computing devices. Feel so left out from the rest of the world. Life. Bother. Everyone seems pissed off at me. Wish I had my own house.

Hoping to get my Palm fixed soon. Well… until then I will write on it.

Silent Running

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Sorry for not writing sooner… The excuse is the overused “I didn’t have time to…”. That of course is not the real reason. While physical exhaustion is a factor, it was really because I was angry and upset. I find that writing comments in such a states often just makes things substantially worse.

However I will not be writing blogs as often as I would like to. This is because I am writing a novel nowadays. So I will concentrate on that for a while.

As for news, my Dad finally got a cellphone. I finally got a high speed broadband Internet connection and an excellent router to go with it. Yummy emerges from home. And Mom finally got a multifunctional printer, scanner and copier. And it looks more robust than the last one. So now I got a new (old tabletop one) scanner.

Met this guy Bart who is my age and goes to Waterloo University. He is studying Software Engineering and seems pretty cool. We talked and played three rounds of Legends. Naturally my Dad is giving me trouble about this. And all my explanations are inadequate for him. And now the laptop confescations and the “why do you have any non-educational games installed” are beginning anew. Sigh…