1467 - HOTSHOTPETERPARKER

I don't think I have an introductory paragraph in me this week. So, to take it's place, I'll talk about not having one for a while. Actually, I'm starting to feel one coming on... the week was a bit of a Harvey Dent, uneventful and directionless early on, exciting and action-packed toward the end. That's all I've got.

Halifax decided to withdraw its bid for the Commonwealth Games this week. Once again, we've made ourselves out to be the backwoods idiots that many people east of here already thought we were. It was awfully nice of us to force Hamilton out of the running before bailing out ourselves. Sorry, Hamilton - we didn't do it on purpose. We don't seem to do much of anything on purpose. We're twigs riding the mighty shoulders of a river that we cannot control. I don't wish we'd gotten the games, I just wish we hadn't bid on them in the first place. The whole thing is a fiasco, as pointless as any Wesley Willis song.

Anyway, back to plausible reality. I had a great work week this week. I was busy the entire week on one project, and the time really flew. I hardly listened to any music, because my concentration was such that I wasn't bothered by the noisy office. This week really highlighted perhaps the most damaging of my work-related flaws: perfectionism. I spent a lot of time keeping the code files organized - functions had to appear in a certain order, spacing had to be consistent, naming conventions adhered to... I would decide on a change for one file, and then have to go back over the five I'd already finished to bring them up-to-date. My justification for doing this, and rightly so in a scaled-back manner, is that it makes duplicating the code much easier - and this is something I'm going to have to do many times next week.

A couple of new guys started this week, and AN and I are responsible for bringing them up to speed, which has been difficult because we're so busy. We both delighted in assigning them a task - the first time either of us had ever done that. They took the task very seriously, despite it being monotonous, repetitive work.

On to the important part of life now - !work. (The exclamation point symbol is the "not" operator in my programming language of choice - it is normally applied to "boolean" data, or data that can have a value of either "true" or "false". So, if I have a variable (a named item that holds a value) called X of type boolean that is storing the value "true", and I evaluate the expression !X, I will get "false".)

Monday evening was a waste of time. I spent over an hour making pointless updates to a group I created on a certain networking Web site. I was bored, and somehow the updates brought joy to my life. I especially liked taking pictures, cropping them in paint, and posting them, thanks to a lack of scanners. I think I'll have to get mine back, as Dad doesn't use it. I spent the rest of the evening surfing music Web sites. I just didn't feel like doing anything constructive, I guess.

Tuesday evening was better. I watched most of Ocean's 11, an excellent movie about a group of eleven criminals, each with specific talents, coming together to rob a large casino, via an ingenius plan. The interesting bit of the movie is the plan itself - much of which is revealed before the heist. Of course, a few key moves are left out to provide suspense during the actual robbery. The characters were fun, but very predictable - they stayed well within the clearly-defined roles of "computer nerd", "cool guy", "new guy", "crazy guy", etc. But hey, they have to pander to the expectations of the audience. A cool computer nerd just isn't within the realm of possiblity. Anyway, I really liked the movie despite this. After the movie, I went to JW's to relax for a while before bed.

I finished Ocean's 11 on Wednesday, and then finished the relevant parts of the yellow book, a book I've perhaps mentioned before. Specifically, it's meant to treat depression, but generally it contains life lessons valuable to anyone. I also spent some time deciding whether I should once again re-implement my Web site. I lost the code last year during a computer upgrade, so I can't make changes to what's there. I can add new things sure, but I can do nothing about the slowness of the golf section, in particular. I toyed with the idea of using db4o, an object-oriented database (meaning it is good at storing data as objects, where an object is any concept, such as a car, a work shift for an employee, or in my case, a golf hole played. My current database is not object-oriented, but the information that I store in it is. This makes the golf parts of my site very slow. We're going to be using db4o at work, and I thought it might be useful to know. However, I'm tired of continuously re-implementing my site, and I kind of like it as it is. I'm still not sure what I'll do. I have better things to be spending my time on, but a lot of people at work seem to spend time at home learning new things. Maybe they just like their work more than I do.

Thursday evening was a fiasco almost as grand in scale as the one mentioned earlier. I had a simple wish: to eat tasty pizza. I ordered a pizza from Donnini's, my pizza of choice (think cheap and tasty). I was warned that the delivery time might be a half hour, which I thought was very reasonable. In the end, the delivery time was 100 minutes, and to top it all off (or not, in this case), they forgot the most critical ingredient: hot peppers. They also burned the Brothers' pepperoni, a deluxe topping. I didn't have time to eat the pizza, as I was heading over to JW's, so I packed the slices in plastic bags and headed out into the cold.

At JW's, we re-heated the pizza, and talked about how sad it looked. It didn't taste much better. I've learned two lessons: never get Donnini's to deliver, unless you know it's not busy; and, never get Brothers' pepperoni as a topping - just eat it as is - it can be found at your local grocery store. I'm going to try ordering a modified Greek pizza next time: feta cheese, onion, tomato and black olives. Word on the street is that they really pile on the feta!

By the time we ate the pizza, it was a bit late, so we relaxed until bed time. JW goes to bed super early these days so that she can get up and exercise in the morning. It makes perfect sense - I used to do it myself, but I don't these days because I worry about disturbing my neighbours. It just sucks having to go to bed so early, especially with her noisy roommates, who often chat loudly until midnight or so. I'm happy I didn't spend the night there this weekend, with her roomates away.

Friday evening was interesting. It started out innocently enough - I went up to my parents' to pick up the car. Before going home, Dad and I took a run up to Bayer's Lake to look for a mattress for me. My current bed is a double, and it's just too small. I also want to take preventative steps now to ensure physical health down the road.

We went to three stores, looking at the king beds. I had a king bed in a hotel room once, and it was great! I felt like a little kid, with all this room to play (though I was by myself then, so you can safely de-emphasize "play" a bit). A king would take up nearly my entire bedroom though, and recently I've been thinking a queen might be more reasonable. But, if I buy a queen, and then regret it, I'll be out of luck. The constant spectre that is "need" is also plaguing me. I only really mind my bed when JW is over - even then, it isn't that bad. She's very rarely over, and not likely to be more often in the near future, so how can I justify a new bed? Maybe I should just keep this one until I have reason to buy a new one. I don't know, and I usually don't do anything when I don't know. I have until March 21 to take advantage of a great deal on a top-quality bed at one of the stores.

Dad and I tried to go see "Wild Hogs" after the mattress hunt, but fortunately, it was sold out. I didn't really want to see it, but I was going to humour him, as I had no reason to think that anything better was going to happen that evening. It all worked out perfectly though, as JW called on our way back from the theatre to tell me about a CD release concert her friend was having. She told me about a picture of a robot featured with the ad for the concert, which was promising. It started late, so JW decided to take a nap for a couple of hours.

I went over to her place around ten-thirty, which is normally after her bedtime. She was still asleep, and ringing her doorbell did no good. I hope no one important to her dies, because the policeman going to the door won't do much good. I had to call her on the phone to wake her up, and she sounded terrible. She looked terrible too, like she'd been awake for a week straight, and I'd woken her up fifteen minutes into her overdue slumber.

After a bit of deciding, she still wanted to go to the concert, so she cleaned herself up (and looked quite beautiful to boot). She wore perhaps my favourite shirt of hers, and some high-heeled boots, so needless to say, I was going to have a good time regardless of whether the band was any good (or whether they even showed up).

We headed down to the bar after eleven, and had to wait until almost twelve before the first act hit the stage. They were called HOTSHOTROBOT, and they captured my attention less than a second into the first song. The lead singer started it off by playing a few notes on a small keyboard that reminded me of old Atari games. Then, the guitars cut in, with a fast, heavy sound. It was awesome. I don't know if I've ever heard such complicated basslines - the bassist's hands were moving as fast as the lead guitarist's. I liked the first few songs, but the songs were similar to one another, and by the end of the set, it got a bit tiresome.

I looked the band up online afterward, and it turns out that they have an EP out, so I think I'll try to find it, just for fun. I'd love to see them again. The second band, called "The Peter Parkers" was also good. I guess I'd have to classify them as metal, but they often strayed away from that label. The most memorable song of the evening was one of theirs - a very long, instrumental piece with alternating loud/quiet parts. I'd pay to see them again for sure.

Finally, Joyless Streets came on, the band releasing their CD. They were metal, and their vocals were of the screaming yelp variety (is one way of putting it, and another is...LW stumbles uncontrollably into the truth). It was very late, so JW and I left about fifteen minutes into the set. We could only take so much when it came to the vocals. The drumming was really good, on the plus side. Legally deaf, we headed back to the car, and home.

I didn't get up until one in the afternoon on Saturday. I only managed to have a shower and clean up a bit before heading over to JW's to go out for groceries. After the groceries, we went out to Sackville for a surprise party for JW's friend JT. The crowd was very similar to that of New Year's Eve, though I was not at all uncomfortable. I had a decent time: good food, fun with sparklers, games with pom-poms - the party had it all. I felt more comfortable this time - I talked to a few more people, and I felt noticed when I left.

I dropped JW off on the way back into town, then went home to await AD and AN. They arrived late with TA, and we proceeded to watch "When Good Animals GO BAD" on Spike. After more maulings than I care to count, we put on Porky's, a comedy that Dad's been raving about for years. AN was excited to see it - he said it was one of his favourites of all time.

It was about a group of sex-crazed teenaged boys in the 50s. They played practical jokes on one another, joked about their anatomies, looked through peeping holes at girls showering, while wreaking general havoc. The focus of the movie, though rarely present, was on Porky, the owner of a hick nightclub in the next county. The first trip to Porky's is a disaster: the boys pay Porky $100 for a half hour with three of his girls, only to be swindled out of their money (they find themselves in the swamp beneath the bar). The county sherrif is a friend of Porky's, and he smashes up the boys' car, so that he can charge them with crimes such as driving with a broken headlight. Porky and the sherrif let the boys go on the condition that they never come back. Of course, toward the end of the movie, the boys formulate a scheme to get their revenge. They saw out the supports under Porky's building, rig the bridges out of the parking lot with explosives, then confront Porky. They destroy the bar and blow out all but one of the bridges. Porky and the sherrif chase the boys into their county, where police officers (one of whom is a brother of one of the boys) are waiting for Porky and his men. The brother officer smashes out Porky's headlights and shoots his tires, telling him to get out of his jurisdiction. Everyone cheers and confetti is thrown into the air, on a road out on the woods. The movie ends. It was entertaining, and worth watching.

We made the terrible decision of then watching Porky's II: The Day After. The best part of the movie was the recap of the first movie at the beginning. I'm not sure why they included it, because the second movie had nothing to do with the first. It focused on an evangelical minister who teamed up with the evil gym teacher, and local residents, to halt production of the school's Shakespeare plays, which they deemed as inappropriate for general viewing (the minister cites several steamy scenes). There is a strange graveyard scene where pranksters themselves are double crossed, and a person in a zombie costume comes out of the ground to scare everyone away. It makes no sense. A lot of the movie was such scenes strung together. There is also a plot line about a father of one of the boys, running for public office, who promises to get rid of the minister, only to join forces with him to garner support. A girlfriend of one of the boys takes advantage of the father's liking of young women and arranges a date with him, where she humiliates him by being loud and obnoxious, vomiting in a pool in the restaurant, and revealing his motives.

Porky's II is a terrible movie, and no one should ever see it. It isn't the worst movie I've seen - it isn't even the worst sequel. That honour still belongs to Caddyshack II, made even more impressive because Caddyshack is better than Porky's. After the movie was over, we imagined what Porky's III might be like - I mean, how is it that it was even made? At least the Porky character is in Porky's III (he wasn't in Porky's II).

Well, it's been a fun week, I guess. At least it seems that way now. I'm looking forward to the upcoming week - JW is on March break, so perhaps she'll be slightly less busy than usual. I'm looking forward to not waking up at 5:30am. We're going on a mini-trip to parts unknown for a couple of days, followed immediately by St. Patrick's day. If it's anything like it was last year, look out!

I’m currently listening to: A Better Place, from Army of Anyone by Army of Anyone.

Movies watched this week: Ocean's 11, Porky's, Porky's II: The Next Day