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MICROSOFT WINDOWS SERVER 2008 FREE OFFER
https://downloads.channel8.msdn.com/Products.aspx

Though I think not
To think about it,
I do think about it
And shed tears
Thinking about it.
   - Ryokan

As he is about to be executed for his war crimes, the existential soldier has an epiphany:

"Why are we here?  Smart enough to ask and too stupid to answer.  My God... I wasted my whole life thinking about this stuff. I should have just gone fishing! I should have just had a sandwich, or had a few laughs! Now I get it!"

His illumination is cut off by the firing squad.

Thought I'd share this:

You can save energy, save money, and help the environment by activating power management features on your computer. Benefits include:

1. Cutting the electricity used by your PCs roughly in half, saving $25–75 per PC annually. Estimate your savings using our online calculator .
2. Enhancing data security by reducing the chance that valuable personal information is displayed on an unattended PC
3. Saving time by eliminating the daily wait for computers to boot up
4. Helping the environment. Saving energy reduces air pollution associated with the burning of fossil fuels, and ultimately lowers the risk of global warming.

More information and instructions are here:
http://www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?c=power_mgt.pr_power_mgt_users

This is funny ...

    I'm F*cking Obama - Hillary Clinton feat. Sarah Silverman
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5jyTc6rnbI

In case you didn't see what started it off, watch these ones first:

    Sarah Silverman "I'm F*cking Matt Damon" on Jimmy Kimmel
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnVJZkDuVBM

    Jimmy Kimmel is F@cking Ben Affleck Response to Matt & Sarah
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIQrBouWRiE

And the whole "inconvenient censoring" thing started off on Jimmy Kimmel ... 

    THE BEST OF unnecessary censorship
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltGmjMBrLjs

Filarious!

They say it takes money to make money.  But not all that much, really.  I got an email from Citibank today.  Here is what it said:

Dear [omitted to protect my privacy ;)]

As a valued Citi Cardmember, you can take advantage of this special offer.

Start saving now with Citibank's high-yield online savings account- the Citibank ultimate money account.

Plus get $50.**

Here's how:   1  Open a new Citibank ultimate money account and fund the account by 4/30/08.** 2  Make at least 2 electronic bill payments each month from your new checking account for 3 consecutive months.   3  Get $50**

First of all, I love that they call this promotion the ULTIMATE ... as if it was like some commercial for motocross or monster trucks....

  

        TV Announcer 1: Plus the amazing...
        TV Announcer 2: The outstanding...
        TV Announcer 3: The unbelievable...
        All 3: Truckasaurus!!!
        TV Announcer 2: Twenty tons and four stories of car-crunching, fire-breathing prehistoric insanity!
        TV Announcer 1: One night only!
        TV Announcer 2: One night only!
        TV Announcer 3: One night only at the Springfield Speedway this Saturday
        TV Announcer 1: If you miss this, you better be dead or in jail.
        TV Announcer 2: And if you're in jail, break out!
        TV Announcer 3: Be there!

( It sounds funnier when you're actually watching The Simpson's and can hear the emphasis in their voices. )


It's not actually that great of an offer.  There are better offers at Capital One, Savings Square and even E*TRADE Bank.

But, all you need to do is deposit $1 initially, and then $1 twice a month for three months.  That's $7 in total.  All it takes is some of your time. You might end up spending an hour in total applying for the account.  And if you have a good payroll system at work, you can add the account and have the payments done automatically.  After 3 months, just close the account and they'll send you a cheque for your $57.00 plus about 45 cents in interest.

I like this so much, because I think the banks have been making so much money off of people for so long, it's time for them to start paying us!

I haven't been blogging much here, but thought I should make a post to inform people of this promotion.  If you are a student, you can get Microsoft Office 2007 with a perpetual license for $60USD (versus the regular $679USD).

    http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2007/sep07/09-12UltimateStealPR.mspx
    http://www.microsoft.com/education/ultimatesteal.mspx
    http://www.theultimatesteal.com/home.asp

You need to have a valid .edu email address to take advantage of this.  It expires April 30, 2008, and is valid in Canada, USA, and UK

Pass it on!

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Okay, so forget my New Year's resolution about being on time more often or being more proactive - I've failed on that one terribly already, seeing as though this entry is almost 2 months overdue... :)

But, for my own records of personal, professional, educational, emotional, physical and mental growth, here is a review of last year's resolutions and some new ones for this year.

Review of New Year's Resolutions for 2006

I wasn't entirely successful at being more "self-ful" (not selfish). I guess when I wrote this, I had specific cases in mind, which I did not get around to, but I think on the other hand, I did a lot of things for myself last year - the trips to Hawaii and Europe, which were very rewarding on so many levels, and I guess you can't really change so drastically, and I do feel that I've at least put myself much higher on my priorities list than usual, so overall a good step forward and a successful resolution.

I did not do as much volunteer work as I planned. And I guess since I probably had ulterior motives (of meeting some women), my heart was probably not really in it for the right reasons. I did make some charitable contributions, which is the lazy man's version of volunteering, but hey it was better than nothing, but not a successful resolution.

I did travel outside of North America twice - if you count Hawaii (LOL ... one of the people I work with, thought Hawaii was it's own country, and he was born and raised in the USA :). A successful resolution, and one I'm definitely interested in continuing.

Dating ... normally a topic I'm not very happy talking about, but actually I've been doing okay with this. Except for this one crazy psycho-hose beast that keeps calling me up but I'm not mean enough to tell her to fuck off.  And I am not measuring the success of this resolution on the success of any of the dates - I am still officially single, ladies! - but on the number of dates; more points for successive dates with the same woman.  So, yes, all things considered, this was a successful resolution.

I did finish my BS degree.  Now I'm not just a smart-ass, I'm an educated smart-ass.  Successful resolution.

Getting late ... will have to post my 2007 New Year's Resolutions later...

I can't wait to go travelling again.  I just need to build up some vacation time, and I'm going to go to South America.  I fully intend to take some night classes to learn some spanish before I go, so I can hit on all the girls I meet there :)

I'm not sure when I'll go, though.  I'm going to be working from home (Canada) in April for Easter (tomorrow is Ash Wednesday already!).  And in the summertime, my cousin Danny is flying to Saskatoon, Saskatchewan -- where we'll meet up with my other cousin (his sister) and spend some time with her (and hit on her girlfriends), then we plan to make a road trip to Vancouver via Edmonton, Calgary, Banff, Jasper, Kamloops and Chilliwack.  We might go to Seattle while we're over there, if he/we have the time and he has a passport.  If I'm in Seattle, I think I can probably stay with one of my teammates.

So, hopefully I'll go between April and July.

I've been thinking about perhaps taking a sabbatical from work for a year or two, and just travelling around the world, but realistically, I have two mortgages to pay and I can't really take the time off.  I think when I'm old and retired (at 45), I'll do that.

What I really need to figure out is how to get a phone that I can use anywhere.  I found this article but I'll have to read it more throughly tomorrow after I get some sleep.

On Friday I saw "La Science des rêves" (The Science of Sleep).  I rented (netflixed) it because it has one of my new favourite actors - Gael García Bernal, who I came to appreciate in "The Motorcycle Diaries", although he is probably more well known for his role in "Y tu mamá también". 

What an extraordinary movie!  It was a very visually appealing, fantastical (with a little bit of reality mixed in) romance film.  It would probably fall under the category of an "artsy" film.  Definitely unique.

One of my favourite scenes is when Gael's character, Stéphane, is playing the piano, looking for the right chord that would cause the clouds of cotton rise and stay suspended in mid-air.  Also, the inventions his character made - the 3-D glasses ("You can see real life in 3-D"  "Isn't life already in 3-D?" "Yeah but... come on.") and the the one second time traveling machine :) really made me happy.  I can remember a time when I let my imagination take me to such worlds.  Those were the days.

The cast was great.  I'm now officially <<tres en amour>> avec Charlotte Gainsbourg, who played Stéphanie (yes, the two main characters were named Stéphane y Stéphanie), and the guy ('gI) who played Guy ('gE) - Alain Chabat - was hilarious in this film.  Watching him throw that TV off the bridge into the water reminds me of the time my friend threw a Mac off the roof of his building.

The only thing that bothered me were the subtitles.  Unfortunately, there was no option to turn them off.  I hate them in general!  They're so distracting; I find my eyes averting from watching the movie to simply reading the dialogue, which was a mixture of english, french, and spanish.  While I'm okay with the first two, I'll admit that I don't know very much spanish, but enough that I wouldn't need to have the subtitles.

I can't wait to see it again!

I figured if I ever played basketball, my nickname would be Kevin "Air" Miles, but people tell me I'm white (wtf?) and supposedly white men can't jump...

I found this nice online journal that talks about the value of air miles points.  Here is a basic recap of the "points" mentioned:

• Frequent flyers miles don't usually expire as long as there is some activity in the account once every three years.
• Select mileage programs based on history of best performance.
• Look for programs that allow consolidation of mileage points.
• Find mileage plans that have affiliations with companies you frequent often.
• Redeem mileage points when costs of airline tickets exceed the 2-cent per mile calculation.
• Review the program's fine print - terms and conditions.
• While you may be able to assign mileage to friends or family members you do not own them.
• A perk for the business traveler? It stands to reason that many miles are racked up by the business traveler. The company that you work for may not see it as your mileage but their mileage - however mileage is awarded to the traveler not the ticket purchaser. When you leave the company do your miles travel with you? Something to get in writing up front.
• Consider donation of unused miles to charitable foundations and organizations.
• All experts agree that, upgrades to business or first class on international flights are the best use of air miles.

I've got about 140,000 air miles (most in American Airlines, some in NWA, and a few thousand in a few other programs).  I went to Points.com to see what I could get with this many points.  Some of the "great" deals:

Get a $500 gift certificate from Eddie Bauer for 73,529 AAdvantage® program miles.
   $500 / $0.02 per mile = 25000 miles ... not worth it!  75,000 air miles are worth $1500 !

Get a $250 gift certificate from American Eagle Outfitters for 35,809 AAdvantage® program miles.
   $250 / $0.02 per mile = 12500 miles ... not worth it!  36,000 air miles are worth $720 !

It looks like the experts are right .... and I'm reconsidering switching to using one of my many cash back rewards cards instead of my miles card, nepotism aside...

This shot goes out to those people who made fun of me for keeping all of my records, receipts, and bill statements pretty much since birth. 

Telephone Tax Refund Questions and Answers

Instead of the paltry $30 standard deduction on my taxes, I'm getting a whopping $70 deduction... thanks to the fact that I've kept every phone bill since I moved here in 2001 and am able to calculate the exact amount of excise tax I've paid to the phone companies.  Every local phone bill...  every long distance phone bill...  and every cell phone bill from 3 different carriers.

And sure, I've got receipts for a ham I bought in December 2002.  Okay, so maybe that is a little overboard... but you never know when it might come in handy.

So yes, you may have had your laughs, but look who's laughing now.  I'm rich, be-otch!!!

My inner-geek has been itching lately for a nerdy project to work on. After looking around, I found the Openfiler project.

The sourceforge.net site (where you can download an iso for the free software) describes it better than I can:

"Openfiler is a browser-based network storage management utility. Linux-powered, Openfiler delivers file-based Network Attached Storage (NAS) and block-based SAN in a single framework. It supports CIFS, NFS, HTTP/DAV, FTP, and iSCSI."

With this, using iSCSI and Oracle's clustered filesystem (OCFS2) I can create a cheap NAS device with a spare PC that I can use for my 4-node database cluster I'm going to build.

I'm giddy with excitement that I'm sure nobody will understand :)

Phew ... it's been a busy few days. Work hasn't been this busy since last summer, and just when I decided to start doing some home (condo) improvement tasks.

After a year and a half of working at home, I was getting sick of seeing these white walls all the time. I don't think this place has been painted since it was built about 17 years ago. Well, I decided it was time to add some colour to the place, and got an itch to paint.

I bought "Picnic Sun" yellow (for the living room) and "Seafarer" blue (for the computer room) and some painting accessories (rollers, a paint brush, drop cloth, etc.). I figured, oh, maybe 4 hours it would take me to do the painting. I was so wrong.

4 hours it took me to move furniture around. Another few hours to just put paint tape around the borders of the walls (and even then I managed to get some paint where I didn't want it to go). And because of some not-so-strategically placed door and fireplace frames, I had to paint a lot with the brush instead of the roller.

After several dozen hours and several days (interruptions from people calling and wanting to talk for hours, and tiredness), I finally finished the living room, dining room, and hallway.

I think most of the work in painting is not actually in the painting, it is the pre- and post-painting work (I'm still cleaning up; amazed at how much paint is coming out of that little brush!!)

I think I'll put off painting the computer room until next week, after the Superbowl party. And I still haven't decided yet on a colour for my bedroom, but I will paint it, because after all the work, I think it looks really nice, and I feel good that I did it.

Your results:
You are Superman

Superman 80% Spider-Man 75% Batman 65% Hulk 65% Robin 60% Iron Man 60% The Flash 60% Green Lantern 55% Catwoman 50% Supergirl 50% Wonder Woman 40%

You are mild-mannered, good, strong and you love to help others.

Click here to take the Superhero Personality Test

This is a funny clip from "The Colbert Report". Glory be to the AT&T, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.

In my research for a presentation I have to give on Wednesday on the topic of "Sustainable Development", I came across this link.

I'm amazed at how much energy we use...

:(

I think these are really cool music videos.  The first one I think is so ingenius! I bet it only cost them a few thousand dollars to make it.

"Here It Goes Again" by OK Go


"Invincible" by OK Go


"A Million Ways" by OK Go