v43.6: Floccinaucinihilipilification Friday

Good morning folks,

-slurp-

It's Friday!  TGIF, Day of Frigg, Fredag Day, Day of Venus or whatever else you want to call it.  For me it signifies the end of a brutal work week and the birth of a relaxing weekend.  In some cultures, Friday is considered unlucky (or Dies Infaustus) and if you read up on it, there are so many different superstitions around the day I find it hard to believe that anyone can be happy on such a glorious day.  Of course the only reason most of us like the day is because it ends our work week.

-slurp-

Enough about Friday.  There is so much information out there regarding this particular day that I could spend all day (and several musings) writing about it.  Let's just say that I'm happy it's Friday and I'm looking forward to leaving work today and starting my weekend.

-slurp-

I am also looking forward to starting work next week.  If you haven't read the last couple musings you're probably picking yourself off the floor from the shock.  I should have made sure everyone was sitting down before announcing such a shocking statement.  If you haven't been following along the past couple days, you won't know that I plan on performing a little experiment next week to see if I can reduce stress levels and become more productive at work.  I performed this same experiment a few years back (ok, 8 years back) and it was quite successful.  The big difference here is I don't have a vacation waiting for me at the other end.  This will be a true test.

-slurp-

You are all probably wondering what the word "floccinaucinihilipilification" means.  I used it in the title of the musing because I've used the words "Fantastic", "Fabulous", and may other common adjectives to describe Friday.  Today I wanted to put a little spin on it and (most likely) cause all your spell checkers to scream wildly when you loaded the page.  It basically means "the act or habit of describing or regarding something as unimportant".  Of course you could shorten this word down quite a bit by simply saying "Meh".  However, since Meh does not begin with F, I could not use it.  After all, how was I supposed to use alliteration to create my musing subject (and be witty at the same time) by using a the word Meh?

-slurp-

Well folks, time to get back to the grind and see what my day has in store for me.  Lots of coding and DB work to do today so I the sooner I can get to it, the sooner I can leave.  I hope everyone has a great Friday and an amazing weekend.

Cheers,

Al

v43.5: Beaver!

Good morning folks,

-slurp-

I have recently been watching the TV comedy "How I Met Your Mother".  My sister introduced me to this show a few months back and recently it showed up on Netflix (first 7 seasons).  I decided to sit down and start watching it a month ago and I'm already into Season 7.  There were a lot of funny episodes but one that I found the most humorous was the Beaver episode.  Here is a short clip that was made from that episode; hopefully it brings a smile and a laugh to someone out there.

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hqklWJxUTo

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Ahh, good laughs had by all.  Hopefully this video brightened someone's Thursday.  Only 2 more days left until the weekend!  Looking forward to next week and my stress free experiment.

-slurp-

Cheers,

Al

v43.4: Stressed

Good morning folks,

-slurp-



Last night I was going through some old musings and came across a musing I wrote back in May 2005.  I was counting down the days before my vacation and had a series of musings that week (v4.7 - v5.1) where I ran a little experiment.  It was a de-stress experiment which, according to my musings, was quite successful.  I had completely forgotten about doing that (it was almost 8 years ago after all) so after reading it last night, I felt it would be good to bring it back and give it another try.  You can read the original musing HERE, but to summarize: I had determined that the link between work and stress is all in your head.  If you go to work planning to do the absolute minimum, you can be more productive due to the lack of stress you're feeling about doing your job.  As mentioned, my experiment was a success and despite going to work with the intent to do as little as possible, it was my most productive week ever.

-slurp-

So here's my plan.  Since it's already hump day today, it doesn't make much sense to run another experiment starting in the middle of the week.  Therefore, starting next Monday I will attempt this experiment again and see how it goes.  Just to be clear, this isn't about coming to work with the expectation to do nothing at all, it is about adjusting your mindset to not go crazy and think about your job and the things you need to do from day-to-day.  This experiment won't work for everyone and if you're in a volatile position at work, I wouldn't recommend doing it.  While I'm sure you would all prefer to sit and dwell on work during your evenings and morning commutes, I think the reason a lot of us are over stressed in our jobs these days is due to the fact we dwell on our work much too often.  I know I do it and I suspect a lot of you do as well.

-slurp-

This means starting next week I will be writing every day for the duration of the week; documenting my progress and hopefully come up with some witty banter and humorous musings.  It's been a long time (as I noticed while reading through them last night) since I've had a really good and amusing musing (see what I did there?).  It also may be a fun exercise to have others join me in this experiment.  After I muse each day, you will be able to comment on the musing and I would love to hear how your own day went and whether you've noticed a change in your overall mindset about work and the stress that it often causes.  Feel free to rant or bitch about your day (if you need to) and let me know how things went overall.  It will be interesting to see how many of us actually go through the work week and truly feel less stressed because of this experiment.

-slurp-

As already mentioned, please don't attempt this if things at work are volatile right now.  I would hate for anyone to lose their job because they were taking part in one of my experiments.  For those of you who are quite stressed at work and are not able to take part, I urge you to try to not dwell on work during your evenings.  Try to leave work AT work and resume when you return.  I know this is easier said than done (I'm living proof), but by dwelling on work after you've left work, you are basically still at work and will never truly be able to enjoy that downtime you so desperately deserve.  Work isn't easy, hence why they call it "work", but it doesn't have to consume your entire life.  Have some fun with this and experiment on your own.  I've provided you a very lose guide on what I will be doing so take that and adjust it to your own work needs.  Good luck everyone!
Well folks this musing has taken much too long to write due to "work".  I'll wrap things up here and if I don't have a chance to write before the weekend, see you all back here Monday.-slurp-

Cheers,

Al

 

v43.3: A New Year

Howdy folks,

I'm sure I already have a musing with this title in here somewhere (have been doing this since November 2003 after all) but I figured what the hell.  Happy New Year!

-slurp-

I figure since it was a new year and we all survived the ending of the Mayan calendar and the afore-mentioned end of the world, I should probably write something.  I could sit here and make up any number of excuses as to why I haven't written:

1. I figured the word was going to end anyway so why waste the last of my days writing to only have it all burn up in an apocalyptic ending.


2. I misplaced my keyboard


3. I've been tied up in the basement of a crazy Musings over Coffee fan who has been making me write personal, erotic musings just for them (-slurp- {shudder})


4. All of the above

In all seriousness, I really haven't been inspired to write these days.  Every time I look at the site I try to think up some brainy, witty thing to write about and my mind goes blank.  Then the words of my mother echo through my head, "I hope your kids grow up to be just as bad as you so you can see what it feels like!".  Wait, that has nothing to do with what I was trying to convey.  Oh well, I guess what I'm trying to say is I have no good excuse for not writing for the past few months other than I'm just lazy and uninspired.  Over the holidays I put a lot of thought into it, I read a few of the articles on "Write to Done" and I spoke to some people.  The end result was a semi-New Year's resolution to write "something".

Those of you who know me know I'm not a big fan of New Year's resolutions.  That said, I decided to give writing a semi-New Year's resolution to see how it goes.  I don't know how long it will last, but it will get you at least one musing out of me this year :)

-slurp-

I hope everyone had a safe and happy holiday season.  If you celebrated Christmas, I hope Santa found you and didn't scare you in the middle of the night as he went through your stuff.  Personally I think we are much too trusting of letting a fat man with a sooty beard rummage through our houses while we're asleep.  When you sit and think about that, it almost begs people to break into our houses on Christmas eve and steal all our stuff.  I mean who's going to get up if they hear rummaging around on Christmas eve?  I know I wouldn't; I would stay snug in my bed knowing that good ol' St Nick was there.  Wouldn't I be surprised the next morning when I sprang from my bed all my stuff was gone :)

Of course, I merely jest.

-slurp-

Well folks, just a short one today.  I had to spend a bit of time fixing up the site due to an upgrade complication over the holidays.  I think I fixed most of the issues so hopefully things look good from your end.  If you are seeing any problems with the site (formatting issues, error/warning messages, etc.) please don't hesitate to contact me.  Until next time, please don't run with scissors.  It may seem like fun and exciting at the time, but think of the poor spider who's web you've just inadvertently cut due to your negligence.

-slurp-

Cheers,

Al

v43.2: Fracking Friday

Howdy folks,

It's Friday!  Thankfully the gods have deemed us worthy and have allowed us to see another Friday.  If you are one of the fortunate ones to have their work week end today, I bid you a happy weekend.  If not, you can join the club with me.

Unfortunately for me, I will be working most of this weekend.  There have been a lot of things going on at work this week and as a result, I will be spending most of my weekend tied to my BlackBerry and laptop while I perform changes and monitor progress/emails.  I'm sure things will go well and come Monday all of the things I hoped to accomplish will be completed and running well.  I don't foresee any complications, but like anything in the IT industry, it can go bad real fast and end up spoiling your entire weekend.

This weekend also marks the season premier of Dexter.  I started watching Dexter after season 5 had ended.  I downloaded all of the episodes and watched them back-to-back all the way up to the end of Season 6.  If you're a Dexter fan, you're probably anticipating the season 7 premier as much as I am.  If you've never seen Dexter, I won't spoil it for you but suffice to say, it's going to be very interesting to see how this season is going to start.

-slurp-

As some of you know, Blizzard released the latest expansion to the World of Warcraft franchise this past week.  The expansion is called Mists of Pandaria and it introduces a whole new race (Pandas) to the world of Azeroth.  I wasn't really that hyped about this expansion as I was in the past ones, but I was still excited to check out some new content and see what new things were added to the game.  In typical pre-release fashion, Blizzard rolled out a bunch of the changes that were expansion independent a few weeks prior to the release date.  I was able to play around a bit with these new changes and I must say, they've done a great job.  The expansion came out Tuesday and I hadn't had a chance to login and check it out until last night (Thursday).  This marks the first time I have ever missed an expansion release; in fact, I didn't even think about it at all on Tuesday until after I got home from work and realized I couldn't login and play because I had a bunch of work to do and wasn't able to.

Last night I decided to take a bit of a break from work and ended up logging in and spending a couple of hours playing.  Blizzard introduced this new system called "Pet Battles" which is basically Pokemon using the non-combat pets you've collected over the last 7 years.  At first I was a bit sceptical about the system and how it was going to work, but after spending a few minutes learning the new interface and reading up on the FAQ, I found myself in-game going around and finding pets to kill and capture.  Basically it starts off with a quest (after you've learned how to do pet battles) which sends you away to defeat a pet.  A "pet" is simply a critter and you see them all over the place.  Some of these pets are flagged for pet battles and when you click on them, it starts the pet battle interface.  You can specify your "active" pet out of all of the pets you have and the turn-based fight will begin.  The fight ends when either your pet(s) or the other pet(s) are defeated/captured.  Yes, you can capture pets in this system and add them to your pet list.  If you come across a pet you don't already have, you can challenge it and fight it.  Once it's health is below 35%, you have an option to capture it.  In the beginning you will almost capture it every time on the first try, but later on it gets more difficult and it may take more tries to successfully capture the pet.  Pets are also of different quality (like gear); you have your common, uncommon, rare and epic type pets that are placed all over WoW.  Sometimes you may even go up against multiple pets which makes it a bit more challenging.  So far I've only ever had to fight 1 pet at a time, but I'm assuming that will change later on as my pets get higher level.

It's a fun system and very well deployed.  I can see wasting many hours of my game time playing with this feature in the near future.  If you're a World of Warcraft player, some of this will make sense to you; if not, I apologize :)

Well folks, it's time to get back to work and prepare for my work filled evening and weekend.  Remember to always ensure you look both ways before crossing the street and abide by the rules of pedestrianism (ooo, big word).  Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice.

Cheers,

Al

v43.1: Yawn

Good morning folks,

A wise man once told me, "You can never catch up on lost sleep.  If you try, you will only end up being lazy."  I would have to disagree :)

Thankfully God created coffee, otherwise I would never make it through my days.  There's just something about the smell and taste of coffee that seems to just wake you up in the morning (or afternoon or evening).  Of course not all coffee is created equal and recently I was introduced to a new way of making coffee.  I thought it might be a fun exercise for you at home to attempt to make this coffee along with me.  I've broken it down into 10 easy steps and if done correctly, will yield the most amazing cup of coffee you have ever had.

What you need

• Coffee beans (any kind will do though you may want to go with the cheap kind your first time around until you get the process down)


• Coffee grinder (preferable one you don't mind throwing away after)


• A bowl (see note for coffee grinder)


• Patience (good things come to those who wait?)


• Small tin of soft cat food (you know where I'm going with this)


• A cat (your own or a neighbour's cat will do fine.  As you get the process down, you may want more than one cat for mass production)

The process

1. First you will want to take the coffee beans and get them prepared.  You might also want to ensure you have not fed the cat yet today to ensure the beast is hungry enough to eat what you are about to feed it


2. Take the tin of soft cat food and begin to fill it with the coffee beans.  If you have a smaller cat, you may want to cut the beans in half to ensure they are swallowed whole.  It is very important that your cat eats the beans whole and does not chew them.


3. Take the cat food full of the "ninja" beans and place it on the floor (in a bowl preferably) and watch as your cat (or your neighbour's cat) begins to slowly sniff the food trying to figure out what it is.  Thankfully the cat has not eaten today and it is hungry enough to just about eat anything.


4. If everything goes as planned, your cat has eaten all the food (beans included) and is resting happily licking its paws and grooming itself in the sun.  A small purr may be heard as the cat is telling you it's happy and thankful to be fed.


5. This is where your patience comes in.  Now we sit and play the waiting game.  What are we waiting for you ask?  Why we're waiting for the cat to take a shit so we can gather the precious coffee beans that have been sitting inside the cat soaking up all the nutrients and special things there.  Yes, I said "special things".


6. Once the cat has relieved itself (there may be some discomfort as the beans pass through the cat's ass hole), you may gather the precious pieces and place them into the bowl so they can be cleaned.


7. Clean the beans thoroughly.  It is very important to clean the beans but not to soak them as that will defeat the purpose of the exercise thereby depriving you of the most delicious cup of coffee you have ever experienced.


8. Take the recently cleaned beans (not soaked remember) and place them into the coffee grinder.  You can grind the beans as fine as you like.


9. Brew the coffee in whatever way you enjoy most.  I suggest getting a French press and letting the grinds soak in the water to ensure a rich, flavorful cup of coffee.


10. Drink and enjoy.

You are probably sitting there staring at your screen in complete disbelief.  I assure you, this is done today.  It's called Kopi Luwak and while you're not actually feeding the cat "beans", I thought it might make things more amusing.

Well folks, I think that is enough for now.  I hope everyone has a great day and remember don't try to feed your cat coffee beans at home :)

Cheers,

Al

v43.0: Yarrr

Howdy folks,

Happy International Talk Like A Pirate Day!

Today is September 19th.  Also known as the 262nd day of the year (263rd day if it's a leap year) and exactly 103 days left until the end of the year.  That's right folks, we've gone through approximately 61% of this year already and Christmas is less than 100 days away.

There is also another special event going on today.  If you're an iPhone/iPad user, today marks the day you can get iOS 6.  For some of you this may not be a huge deal, but for those of us in Canada, it marks the ability for us to use Siri to get locations in Canada.  Now you can ask Siri, "How do I get to place/address/etc." or "Table for 2 in Halifax" and Siri will be able to help you out.  I imagine our friends to the south have had some of these abilities for a while now, but for us here in Canada, this is exciting times.

Of course iOS 6 comes with a bunch of other interesting features which I won't bother reposting here.  If you're interested in seeing what's new in iOS 6 you can ask Siri "What's new?" or you can read about them here.

-slurp-

Today's Coffee Musing is brought to you by Tim Horton's.  Drop by Tim Horton's today and buy one of their Smile Cookies for $1.  You can make a difference in a young child's life.  Also drop by and check out their new Super-Tasty strudel in either Apple or Strawberry cheese; they are quite delicious.  I was going through some of the old "Roll-up-the-Rim to Win" statistics I used to keep and I was quite shocked to see how much the price of a coffee has gone up over the past few years.  I remember back in 2005/2006 I was paying $1.55 for an Extra Large coffee from Tim's.  I didn't start recording the "cost" of the Roll-up-the-Rim contest until 2009, but then an Extra Large coffee was $1.73 (Large was $1.54).  Today when I went to Tim Horton's, the price of a Large (not Extra Large) was $1.96.  That means between 2009 and 2012, we've seen the price of a Large coffee at Tim Horton's increase by approximately 42 cents or 10.5 cents per year.  At that rate, by the time 2020 comes around, we can look forward to paying approximately $2.80 for a Large coffee from Tim Horton's.  I digress of course.  The price of things must go up over time as long as we're still heavily reliant on fossil fuels.  Hopefully someone figures out a nice, clean way to generate energy soon.

-slurp-

Last, but not the least by any means, today marks my 7 year anniversary at my company.  It is hard to believe I have been here for 7 years today.  I look around and see how much this place has changed/grown over the last 7 years and feel slightly proud that I was here and had a part in the growth and success.  It's been fun and for the most part I've enjoyed my time here so far.

Well folks, work beckons me like a horny lover so I must answer her call.  I hope you all have a great day and don't forget to at least answer the phone like a pirate once today.

Cheers,

Al