i’m a homeowner for the first time.. i bought a tiny (~1000 sq feet) house in june of last year, and it has been a *lot* of work.. not that it was in bad shape when i got it, but there’s been a constant stream of improvements.. the baby’s room. the living room. the garage. the backyard. ahhh the backyard.. this weekend i finished building a fence to mark off an area for our dog. it’s pretty cool.. here’s a picture and another and a picture of the dog with his friends (see if you can guess which dog is mine ;) so i think that when i retire (hopefully soon, realistically not) i want a condo or at least a handyman/gardner so that i don’t have to do much.. i’m chronically lazy (a slacker if you will) and the idea of working a lot doesn’t really appeal to it. i don’t even have the gall to call myself ‘efficient’.. anyways, enough today.

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i’m a programming grunt.. i do some design, blah blah, but basically i write and code. and go to meetings, which i’m not really into. some people like meetings.. they become managers and ceos. i don’t. at work we’re working on this big project, and there’s new schedules, old schedules, changing schedules, and a project timeline that is 26 pages long (i shit you not.) is it any wonder that no-one seems to know what they’re doing? *insert chicken running around with no head joke* i think that in honor of jwz i’m going to start an internal news group, alt.companyname.bad-attitude. then at least we can get a little relief. maybe it will end up being a humorous catharsis for all :)

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i went to see the midnight showing of x-men last night. wow. allow me to repeat that: dubya. ohhhhh. dubya. better than the first, by a long shot. a lot of cool mutants make an appearance (siryn’s in particular was pretty damn cool). and what can i say about the nightcrawler costume? un. freaking. believable. it was worth staying up, not getting home till 3am, and having to have my wife kick me in the ass to get me up this morning. (i stopped at the border for some food and a 44oz wild cherry pepsi – gotta get those essential vitamins and inks) and i’m feeling almost human. this is the first movie that i’ve seen in a while, in the theatres at least, and it was worth it. go see it. now. take your boss, he/she’ll understand.

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so i’ve been thinking lately about getting a tattoo… my sister got one last year and it’s pretty cool, i have to admit. when i was younger, i was like, “why would someone want to mutilate themselves?” and now that i’m thinking about it long term, i’m like “hmm, it’s something that i want to have or be reminded of forever..” i want to get a small beaver tattooed on my left calf. for those of you gentle readers who don’t know, i’m canadian, and proud of it. my wife gives me a lot of grief because i have a very canadian mindset, and she considers it on the border of ‘un-american’. oh well.. we are what we are. the real question is should i broadcast it to the world with a beaver on my leg?

courtesy of rick mercer from this hour has 22 minutes cbc television:

on behalf of canadians everywhere i’d like to offer an apology to the united states of america. we haven’t been getting along very well recently and for that, i am truly sorry.

i’m sorry we called george bush a moron.

he is a moron but, it wasn’t nice of us to point it out. if it’s any consolation, the fact that he’s a moron shouldn’t reflect poorly on the people of america. after all it’s not like you actually elected him.

i’m sorry about our softwood lumber. just because we have more trees than you doesn’t give us the right to sell you lumber that’s cheaper and better than your own.

i’m sorry we beat you in olympic hockey. in our defense i guess our excuse would be that our team was much, much, much, much better than yours.

i’m sorry we burnt down your white house during the war of 1812. i notice you’ve rebuilt it! it’s very nice.

i’m sorry about your beer. i know we had nothing to do with your beer but, we feel your pain.

i’m sorry about our waffling on iraq. i mean, when you’re going up against a crazed dictator, you wanna have your friends by your side. i realize it took more than two years before you guys pitched in against hitler, but that was different. everyone knew he had weapons.

and finally, on behalf of all canadians, i’m sorry that we’re constantly apologizing for things in a passive-aggressive way which is really a thinly veiled criticism. i sincerely hope that you’re not upset over this. we’ve seen what you do to countries you get upset with.

thank you.

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so i’m an addict. i don’t mean that i’m addicted to anything specific, (except the internet) but i have a very addictive personality. i’ve been addicted to different games, tv and the internet at varying times. fortunately they’re not too destructive, like substance abuse. alcoholism runs in my familiy (a *lot*). i don’t seem to have the specific cravings for alcohol, but i do have a lot of the traits that sometimes accompany an addictive personality. i have been re-reading some older cyberpunk-style books (ie: gibson, etc) and there’s a scene in one of them where a family goes into cyberspace and never comes out.. a period of time goes by and another family member comes over to change their diapers, while watching them waste away, little by little losing muscle tone, fat, and finally dying. at first i was like ‘whoa, that’s a little extreme’ but then i realized that it’s just a parallel to what happens right now with people who drink or take drugs, they’re killing themselves slowly too. anyways, enough rambling.

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