Not so Much a Sneak Peak...

as a transition period. I'm pretty happy with the new design and setup now, so feel free to change any links/bookmarks to the new one, as this one will probably just sit like this for a while, unless I start having some problems with hosting the new one.

Have a Peak

http://void.serveblog.net.

Double Oh Nine

True to most New Years around here, it was rung in with an oil fondue, some drinks, and some games. It was so laid back in fact that the 'new year' rang in in the middle of a round of Scattergories which none of us were really willing to interrupt for the sake of watching some balls drop.

In fact, by the time midnight rolled around, the majority of us were still too overstuffed from dinner to enjoy a glass of cheap champagne, or cake. Amazingly, with all the experimentation with foods in hot oil (apparently deep-fried deviled eggs aren't bad; '..I'd deep fry a salad if I could'), no-one ended up violently ill. The whole holiday season in fact was pretty amazing in its lack of hangovers which I can't claim to have accomplished in probably the last 10 years, granting that it doesn't take much when you're 15.


As usual, I've set no resolutions for myself based on New Years, as I could just as arbitrarily pick any other day of the year to commit myself to a promise I won't keep.

A broken boiler pump on our 65 year old heating system, and a couple computers to build and set up for my buddies' dad has kept me conveniently distracted from those goals so far. I'm not complaining. They've each had their rewards, the case of beer from the latter hopefully going a long way in getting me through the writing and editing of one of those goals.

Clearly that goal isn't this post.

Boxing Day Sales?

One of the more enjoyable parts of christmas for me is hunting some boxing day deals to get the most out of gift cards. This year though, I wasn't very impressed with any of the deals I saw; at least on stuff I was interested in getting. I blamed it on the economy; or just a better general memory for prices really not all that different to the 'huge sale prices'.

Whether its the economy and the shitty Canadian dollar, or artificial jacking of prices to make the 'sales' look good; the fact is prices are higher now than they were in September. At least computer parts, as I happened to have a list of prices for the parts to build a computer for Steve's dad from back in September that he asked me to update for him to find any deals this week. Overall, even at sale prices, an 8-10% increase in price since mid-September on technology that normally drops weekly as new stuff comes out.

So in the end, I ended up with no new telephoto lens for my camera, or new speakers for my stereo, or BluRay drive for my computer; just booze enough to ensure I see spots for half the day on Thursday.

Oh, and Carolyn loves her x-mas present, and will until she kills them.

Its doomed.

Sausage Party

More often than not, the weather around my birthday is shit, and this year was no exception. An e-card I got from Nick pretty much sums it up.

I have to plan my birthday a month in advance if I want people to actually be able to make it out with all the family reunions and other engagements that tend to go with the x-mas season. This year I planned a sausage party, a quasi-potluck affair where people were to bring their favourite sausages and cheeses. Apparently it wasn't immediately clear that the sausage should be precooked but, with that cleared up, there was a ton of kielbasa to go around.

Despite the close to 20cm of snow that kept a lot of people trapped at home, the turnout wasn't bad. For once it wasn't the day after hangover that kept me out of commission the day after my birthday celebrations, but the revenge of the massive quantities of spicy salami consumed.

All that said, I'm left with a ton of leftover meat, and gruyere and gouda to snack on while sitting around playing Civ IV, spotting online boxing day deals, and reading (next up is the newly gifted The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins). Besides all that, I've got nothing on the go until the traditional New Years Eve fondue again at my place; I don't think there are many that can claim to have a much more relaxing holiday season.

Nickel and Diming

I hate x-mas shopping at the best of times. When I have little money to play with it only intensifies my distaste and difficulties with picking the right gifts for people. That said, I'm down to just my mom and Carolyn left to shop for, and still have 2 weeks to go. I tend to start my shopping early every year now to take advantage of the best online store/eBay deals I can find, but after a couple weeks, I can't take all the 'shopping' anymore and want to get on with the 'buying' and be done with it. It still has to be better than waiting til the 23rd or 24th.

Having gotten tired of the 'christmas cheer' from walks around the lights in Waterloo park this week (and watching, on multiple occasions, old people ignoring signs and driving their cars right down the main pedestrian pathway), we decided to go for a walk around in the Galt portion of Cambridge along the river. 9:30 on a Tuesday night, no record shops, but no people either; it was a ghost town. The rain I'm sure had a little to do with that (and made taking pictures less than spectacular), but with a major construction project on the main bridge, and the architecture school out for exams, the most activity was a lone patron and a bartender sitting and watching a hockey game in an old, run-down bar.

It was a welcome change from the blaring carols on the outdoor speakers at the park, or the mall easy-listening versions of the same tunes while dodging ignorant and impatient people who feel the number of bags they are carrying is positively correlated to their importance in society.

Trivia?

I've been playing around with Wordpress and a new blog. I've decided that I don't want to spend much time altering templates and such this time around. If there's something out there that looks clean and polished enough, why change it? That said, I'm working with the 'Minimalia' template published through BraveNewCode which was used for a time, yes you got it, on the Matt Good website.

At this point, one of my main issues is finding a way to blogroll without a sidebar because I know for the most part people barely even click on sidebar links, so getting people to go to a whole new link page just to see a list of blogs probably won't happen. I'm sure I'll figure something out though, as soon as I finish working my way through the Showcase streams of Kenny vs. Spenny episodes I haven't seen.

In the meantime, if you have a mind for trivia, or a competitive nature; some of my friends and I have a trivia game that's in desperate need of players. Monthly totals start scoring on the 1st of the month, so get in there from the start if you can.

Week Wasted

My back was still off for most of this week, but I finally found a new desk chair for myself this week after suffering with an 'ergonomic' kneeling task chair for the past year or two. Whether the chair had much to do with it or not, the lingering dull ache in my back is gone. Next week should be a lot more productive.

Carolyn got booked for a a shift tonight, so I've settled in with a two litre bottle of Grolsch (complete with swingtop, and suitable for re-use with homebrew) and a link to some streams of live hockey games for tonight that I hope play out.

If I had the money, I'd much rather be at the NIN concert at Copps Coliseum tonight, but I'm sure I'm not out of chances to see Trent Reznor live just yet.

Amidst my time wasting this week, I set up a web server on my computer. I know I've alluded to change before, but I might actually finally make the switch to Wordpress and move the web page to my own computer. Most of the reason behind this though is to get an early jump on setting up a smoothly running, minimal management playoff hockey pool for this year. If nothing else, at least I'll finally learn PHP in the process.

Its probably not normal to be excited about learning a programming language on a Friday night; but then when the sun sets at 5:30 and there is nothing but snow and rain in the forecast, anything looks like a luau.