10 posts from March 2008

Went into work Tuesday morning. I showed up at the usual time ate my bagel and began to work. At about 8:45am I received an email invitation to a meeting with my director at 9:00am. I find that anytime a supervisor wants to speak to me that it's never good news. Today was no exception, she began with "Tim it's time for us to have a difficult conversation." At this point I've already checked out. After about 20 minuets of discussion I stood up shook her hand and thanked her for the opportunity. I must say that I was pretty elated at the fact of losing my job. Elated because to be honest, I was bored as shit!

I had spent the last 2 weeks pouring over laser toner POS data. Basically my job involved staring at a monitor and clicking a lot. It felt a bit like Diablo but not being a fan of such grindy grind fests, yeah I was bored. I know it sounds trite but I'm really taking this as an opportunity.

I'm super excited to hit the ground running again and begin searching  for a job I might actually like.

While I was getting the "You're fired speech" my boss pretty much told me that I'm way too creative for a job in an operations capacity. Which my brain interpreted as "You should be writing dummy". So it's time to search for that ever elusive full-time writing job, I've already applied for one at Capcom and am still looking for other opportunities, I might even try to get two or 3 part time or blogging gigs. Who knows?

After two jobs that started great and then became boring as all hell, it's time to stop settling. It's time to make this happen.

Over the weekend I admitted my feelings to a girl that I have fallen in love with. Much to my astonishment she reciprocated. Both of us being bloggers we talked about how to best express our feelings to the inter-tubes.  So after a couple of days thinking about the situation and absorbing my new found happy feelings I was ready to write. Last night I wrote up a nice little piece only to have it destroyed by IE7. At first I was disappointed that I wouldn't be able to let the world and of course the object of my affection see what I had put together. I was put at ease when the subject at hand gave it a nice perspective. She felt that since I had lost the post in a freak accident it just wasn't meant to be shared with the world. And you know what? She was right. More passion, emotion and feeling can be conveyed by a look of endearment or that one magical kiss.

First_sunset_08

Well hello there Mr. Sunset, long time no see. Oh wait! Don't go, please I wish to talk. How is your wife Sunrise?........

Ladies and gentlemen, the Sun has gone down.

Too bad I missed him. For the last 4 months Sunset and I have had kind of a Poke-A-Roo relationship. I always seem to just miss him. On weekday mornings I normally leave my house for work at about 6:15am. I don't need to tell you that during the winter months it is pitch black outside at such an hour. Last week I noticed something while waiting for the bus... The street lights turned off. It made me smile a bit inside, smile because of the thought that spring would soon come. However, the copious amount of snow on the ground were indicating otherwise.

This past weekend was daylight savings time. I can't remember if it was the end or the beginning but I don't think anyone can. The only thing people are meant to know about daylight savings time is that it is "Spring forward, fall back" and to change the batteries in our smoke detectors. Prior to this past weekend I had been enjoying some bountiful early light when "stupid farming saving time" comes along snatches it away. A shame, it made me sad. At least until my ride home today.  Where after a long day of work I was treated to the lovely sunset pictured above. It was a nice compensation for losing that first blush.

I know my crappy camera/phone doesn't do the sunset justice and for that I apologize for it was the most brilliant red. So bright yet slightly hidden by the clouds it was a shame it had to disappear beyond the horizon. I'm sure I'll see Mr. Sunset again but his appearance today more so than the streetlights last week, made me smile inside.

RCSS_Store

Would they have different products there? Might one find tools of revolution?Other like minded individuals who wish to overthrow the Harper Government? Or maybe just a bunch of American flags.

I ponder this question after my family made 3 trips to the grocery store in as many days. That seems like a lot but every time we ended up leaving with different products. Well, except me of course. I'm only ever tagging along to buy more Ginger Ale and candy so I can make sugar fuelled blog posts like this one.

Going to the grocery store with your parents can teach you a lot. For instance on these particular trips I learnt two things about my Dad. I mention this as significant because my father is very quite. It's really hard to learn anything about him actually. The best way to do so I find is to observe him. He acts much more candidly when he assumes no one is paying attention.

So the two things I leaned; first and foremost I found out that my Dad really likes raisin bread. I mean REALLY likes Raisin Bread. When we got to the store yesterday all he could talk about for the first 20 minutes was raisin bread and how he needed to get some.

Raisin_bread

At some point Dad wanders off and disappears, I assume it's procure a loaf of raisin bread. Upon his return I politely ask "Did you get your raisin bread?" His facial expression said it all; they were out of raisin bread. Then my Dad starts to muse about the reasons why there is no raisin bread.

According to him "It's all in the back" and they're going to bring it out as soon as he leaves. So he suggests asking on of the many stock boys milling around the store. Little did I know that even with mentioning this idea he had no intention on following through. Which brings me to the second thing I learnt about my dad.

My Dad is afraid to ask anyone for help. Still longing for his raisin bread he lets stock boy after stock boy walks right on by while he remains bread-less. I ask him "Dad why don't you ask one of those dudes?" Silence....."I'm sure they've bread in the back" More silence. At that moment I realized that he didn't want raisin bread anymore. He would not accept any bread if he had to depend on someone else to get it.

That little exchange right there explains more to me about my father than any heart-to-heart talk or other cliché "male bonding excursion ever could.

*UPDATE On the 3rd trip to the grocery store Dad finally got his rasin bread. 

**What? Did you think I was kidding about "Adventures in Grocery Shopping"?

*Spoiler Warning* If you plan on playing Valve's Portal and would like to be surprised DO NOT read any further.

It's Saturday and that means it's time to chill out, relax and unwind from the work week. Unless you're a guy who likes to play video games. To me Saturday is a day of work. I get up early so I can get as much play time in before I actually have

something to do. Working full time and enjoying a 4 hour a day commute doesn't exactly leave a lot of disposable time for gaminess but I make do. Sometime I even finish a game, this happened last week with Valve's Portal. A game that was only about 6 hours long but the ending made it all worthwhile, a rare occurrence these days.

In recent years game endings have kind of taken a backseat to massive in-game cut scenes. So I must say that it was refreshing to see an ending that was creative, clever, funny and most of all very very cute. I liked the ending of Portal so much, that I'm going to share it with you.

The only context you need is that the Lab's computer goes all Hal and then tries to kill you. So you destroy it, there good enough? We now join our regularly scheduled program already in progress.

Hi I'm Tim.

I'm 24, single and live at home with my parents. Please don't pity me. I am here because of circumstance not an inability to leave the nest. No I was out on my own once but back then I was known as the loyal, yet bored blogger at www.wiirally.com. Now I come to you live (sort of... not really) from a basement in the frozen hills of Halton. Follow me as I regale you with tales of bus rides, adventures in grocery shopping and of course the sinful weekend treks to Canada's most populous city. 

So welcome friends to comma error.  

On this the 5th day of the 3rd month in the 2008th year Tim Ashdown returned to the internet. And it was good.