theMediaman.com

Slow time for me right now. Not many movies for a while (although I saw Underworld with Simone, inspiring me to have a Halloween party). Murdoch is surpisingly almost complete. That little project I had to fix the I/O connections on a Palm IIIxe using a little bit of solder has basically failed. The commute down Bayview is slower than ever.

Since Labour Day, the drive has been impossibly long. In addition, there are three multi-farm-field subdivisions opening just north of me. By this time next year, I will have no choice but to find another way to work. The 15 minute drive will become an hour long commute.

Everyone around me at work is busy, busy, busy. My function is usually the “Other Stuff Guy”. Although I’m blessed (?) with a wide variety of skills, one of them is not PowerPoint. So when the office goes in to crunch-mode leading up to an event, I do all the “Other Stuff” like video prep and compression, getting materials and content, and being generally annoying in order to keep my co-workers alert. The only difficult part is how I need to be a zero-to-sixty-in-three-point-five-seconds kind of worker. When I AM needed, then I’m needed yesterday.

Simone and her friend, Alyssa, will be working on a column for a local York Region newspaper called “One Eighty” (or something like that). They will be featuring local bands in the article, and more importantly, getting press passes so they can get into shows. Smart girls!

Last night I set up the domain NextDoorNoise.ca for them on my server. Simone and Alyssa are going down to The Edge Wednesday night in order to promote it, and let bands know how to contact them. They will be on Punkorama with George Stroumboulopoulos (good story on how nice the guy is). She’s not getting her hopes up that she’ll get on the air, but Simone is making sure that her sister tapes it from the radio anyway. In any case, I’ll be down there with Simone’s camera snapping off photos of the event.

No doubt, ‘Georgie’ (as we call him) gets lots of “Woolly Mammoth from Sesame Street” comments, so I’ll probably just stick to the “Handsome ABCnews Anchor” comments.

After watching the first three Matrix Revolutions TV spots (includes SPOILERS), it looks like the end of the movie is going to be a very anime-inspired, what-the-hell-was-that, fancy effects and no dialogue fight scene. Sort of like Akira on acid. They managed to pull off a live-action anime-style ending with Dark City, so the Wachowski Bros. might also be able to get it right.

Two shocking deaths yesterday… John Ritter and Johnny Cash. The inevitable comparison between the two is that they’ve each made a surprise comeback over the last year. Both were considered to be past the best days of their respective careers. However, John Ritter had a well received sitcom - by both reviewers and viewers - start last season. Johnny Cash also had a bit of a revival recently with his cover of Trent Reznor’s ‘Hurt‘.

Weird, since it reminds me of a similar day thirteen years ago when Jim Henson and Sammy Davis Jr. both died on the same day. In both circumstances, one was a singer from my preceding generation, and the other was an entertainer from my childhood (and someone idolized by my brother, John). Additionally, the elders death was simply a matter of complications brought on by old age, while the younger was a sudden and shocking surprise.

Perhaps it’s my age, but even though I mourn the loss of Johnny Cash (who shares a birthday with me… and Michael effin’ Bolton *ptooie* ), my real sadness lies with John Ritter’s death. ‘8 Simple Rules…‘ is a well written show, could have survived for years, and is intelligently paired up with the blue-collar show ‘According to Jim‘.

Even though the show is focused around his character, I have no doubt that it will continue. The writing is strong, the cast is talented (even if the daughters are played by deceptively young actresses *ahem*) and it’s one of the only non-Reality-based shows high in the ratings right now. Personally, I would like to see the series continue. It would probably mean “A Very Special Episode Of…” followed by a ‘Valerie’s Family‘ set up.

Since there is so little on TV that I look forward to every week, I believe that such a ‘cop-out’ would be worth it.

*phew* Not since they took Samurai Pizza Cats off the air have I had such an unproductive two weeks.

To start, I took an extended long weekend, spending Tuesday and Wednesday with M&D and Simone up at the cottage. Excellent windsurfing on Tuesday even though I smashed my elbow on a rock. A week later and I still feel a jolt of pain when I absent-mindedly rest my left arm on that spot. Wednesday, Simone and I had lunch at Inglis Falls before working our way back to Toronto.

The weekend was cut short by half a day by a live broadcast from San Francisco showing off the new versions of Flash, Dreamweaver and Fireworks… although I was really only interested in the first two. Looks like Dreamweaver has its first real enhancements since version 1.0. Flash has a lot of new stuff, but they didn’t get into a fraction of it. However, from what I can tell, they’ve changed ActionScript to allow for even more complicated programming. As long as they don’t make the mistake of making it “more like Lingo”, then I’ll be happy. (I’m still bitter that I couldn’t get a Director show to run because I forgot a ‘the’ in my code.

On Thursday I returned to work. By eight o’clock that night, the sniffles started. Over the next 24 hours I went through enough Kleenex to account for the missing wood in a small, clear-cut forest.

As much as I could, I slept this weekend. When I was awake, I was completely devoid of ’sleepyness’. I couldn’t sleep even when I wanted to. Unfortunately, I was still groggy so I couldn’t muster up the energy to do much. This was to be the first weekend in ages that I don’t have anything planned, and I didn’t accomplish anything except to watch a few more episodes of .hack//sign.

So, my apartment is still a mess, so is my car, and I still haven’t got that end-of-summer coat of wax on it either. The Palm still isn’t fixed. Last night before going out with Simone to see ‘The Order‘, I had to use my beard trimmer on my fuzzy neck before shaving… this after my first attempt with the Philishave proved excruciating. I don’t think I’ve shaved in weeks… lucky I’m a slob, so I can pass off the look.

I’ve even visuallized the design of the new theMediaman.com interface. I still haven’t started even one line of code… not enough energy for that. That requires me sitting upright in a chair for longer than a moment.

Monday morning I was still feeling crappy, and I know that I was likely still contageous. There were two HTML code errors that I had to diagnose and fix when I left early from work on Friday. So, I logged on at 8:30 AM from home, found the problems and fixed them before calling in sick for work. Realistically, that was probably the only work I would have for the day, so I didn’t miss much.

…And now it’s Tuesday and I’m back. I watched Space channel until late last night, then tossed and turned in bed for nearly an hour before nodding off. All the sleep I have had over this weekend was catching up with me. I forced myself to go to bed at 3:15 AM, and probably entered REM around 4:00 AM.

I’ve been told by Laura that I’m still looking a little pale. Truth is, I do feel a little unbalanced (warm forehead, freezing hands) but the pain is all gone. It was also suggested that I may have West Nile, but one of the telltale ailments is “significant muscle aches and fatigue out of proportion to common mild viral infections”. The only soreness I’ve had (besides my elbow) is some stiffness across my chest during the first day. Certainly nothing West Nile-ish.

Just to be safe, if I bite you, you might want to get vaccinated.

Just a few quick pieces of news with the obligitory sarcastic remarks:

Bjork played Toronto last night. Concert tickets were apparently $62. Add in taxes and transportation to and from the venue, and the evening would cost you over one-hundred fifty bucks. For that kind of money you could buy a used lawn mower, drain all the oil out and run it for two hours. It would cost less, run longer than the concert, and it would sound about the same.

First SARS, then West Nile, then The Blackout, now Bjork. Will Toronto’s suffering never end?

Governer of California hopeful, Arnold SchwarzenEGGer got hit with an egg while visiting a college campus. Welcome to politics, Arnie. He handled it well by smoothly taking off his jacket and flexing his boo-jing bie-ceps.

It’s taken nearly a week, but our office is almost completely rid of the various computer worms that have been plaguing Internet connections for the month. I said with confidence that my system was clean, while virtually every other computer in the office was infected. I take care of my computers. My desk is a mess, my apartment is a disaster, but my hard drives are immaculate. Back in 1995 I got the Junkie B-strain virus on my 486. Since then I have never had a virus infection… excluding a few test infections that I did on purpose ,^_^

School’s back in, and with it my 20 minute commute returns to a three-quarter-hour trek. You know your commute is too long when you have to change CD’s because the first one is over before you’ve arrived at work. I’m looking at getting a bachelor condo downtown, which would add to my commuting time but not without giving me some extra sleeping time. I’ll have to add in to the price of a condo the cost of a portable MP3 player for my trips to work every day.

Universal Music is cutting the cost of CDs. The hope is that other major companies will follow suit. The point that this is what the music-listening community has been telling them to do for years is almost too obvious to mention. It is worth noting that the RIAA’s decline in music sales has been comparible to the drop in the overal economic prosperity of World Market - even including industries that do not suffer from “Digital Piracy”.

Why are we still paying for Mike Harris?

I’ve got my hands on a Palm IIIxe from an old co-worker. The display stopped working, but continued to take input. She bought a refurbished Sony Clie SJ-33 to replace it. Since I’ve helped her with some tech problems in the past, she said I could have it if I were able to fix it. After cracking the sucker open and browsing around a bit, I found a ribbon that had become disconnected from the I/O board. I picked up a solder kit from Radio Shack and plan to reconnect the ribbon. If it works, I’ve got a new Palm IIIxe! Sweet. Unfortunately, the last time I worked on circuitboards was in a high school Electronics class about ten years ago. The experience should be interesting.

The Toronto Blue Jays have released a new logo for the 2004 season. This is the fifth logo in the club’s history, and the fourth new logo since 1997 (new logo in 1997, slight modification the next year and a ’secondary logo’ released in 2000). Even though “Blue” won’t be part of the logo, they’ll still be using the colours - opting for black and a darker blue than they currently have. Thus filling the safety rule of the fashion industry, “when all else fails, use black”. The imagination is astonishing.