Goodbye Antec Aria, we hardly knew thee :(

Dear Antec Aria,

Although I was very happy that you came into my life back when I built you, I knew that it was too good to be true. You delighted me in your cute cube-ness, and your glaring, blue LEDs that lit up the night while I tried to sleep as I downloaded huge files; your highly convenient - in theory - but non-functional card reader was my largest pet peeve, among other things like becoming discontinued and "improved" upon as the new NSK1380 model without card reader, most likely due to it being non-functional to begin with.

Everyone marveled at your smallness. They oohed and ahhed you as I showed you to everyone who bothered to look, as I beamed proudly and told them that you were "adorable" and "gave me many a headache." I even enjoyed the relative dustiness of cleaning your innards every so often, swabbing the little corners with rubbing alcohol and making lots of dust bunnies in the corner of the room.

Alas, it was indeed too bright an existence with me. Last night, while I was busy listening to the marvelous Saturday night recordings of Colorfinger (SA), sailing away at a Cursed Isles adventure on Puzzle Pirates (as I often do now to kill time and to be adored by my SA crewmates), and contemplating on wedding planning... Everything suddenly turned black. Silence.

Except for one singular noise.

Squealing away while your power cord was still plugged in, I realized it was your time.

Your power supply had suddenly died. The saddest thing is that I cannot transplant a power supply, as your case is too cute and specialized to have just any old one (oh noooooo), and I can't get your plug out of the case anyway.

Thus, it must be that I bid thee farewell, my dear Antec Aria. You served me well through three different cities, and you have come to your final rest.

With deep regrets,
your momma ;_;

***
(Before you ask, the warranty is only for 3 years anyway.)

I am borrowing Jorghnassen's laptop in the meantime, while I wait for my new case to be delivered. The NSK1380 may fill in the same spot on my desk, but it certainly won't fill the same spot in my broken heart. :(

Summer Camp 2008

Before I talk about the huge party up in Quebec City after the school term ended (since I lament the fact that I came back from there probably 2 weeks too soon), I must speak of the Summer Enrichment Program(c). The school put together students mainly from Ghana in the dorms of the universities and then give them a month of workshops, trips, and other exploration activities. Tokulah put it best when I arrived back last Monday, in that it wasn't called a "summer camp," but an "enrichment program."

Thus, I was asked to give two workshops last week on "enriching" students in the wily ways of mathematics and computers. I could have done absolutely anything I wanted, but having seen the things I did with the kids during the last two years, he wanted to have them build paper polyhedra, and also to play with the computer parts that I accumulated over the last two years.

Fortunately I didn't have to do much planning, except to make sure the parts and things were all there and allow some educational lecture time. And I got paid so it was all good.

In the first workshop on Monday, I gave a short lecture on fractals (the Sierpinski triangle), and then talked about making tetrahedra. Then I had them build a Sierpinski pyramid.

I had half hoped they'd finish the whole thing by the end of the first two hours, but they seemed to have gave up steam and totally fell short by about 10 of the 64 needed. To top it off, I had made sure there were 72 photocopies (18 times 4 different colours, I'm so thoughtful) so there should have been extras of each colour, but some went missing and I had to fish out some ruined ones from the garbage can to finish the damn thing myself.

Do I have any pictures of it? Nope. It didn't hold up properly because the kids (ranging from 8 to 16 probably) didn't have any experience making paper models and so some of the tetrahedra were completely messed up. When I returned on Friday to give the computer workshop, the whole pyramid had fallen apart and I had to stick it together. It makes me sad when things are broken for a long period of time with nobody to fix them... :(

The funny thing about Monday was that I was unaware until I got there that the afternoon writing workshop had been cancelled and they wanted me to keep going with the math workshop. So I had to improvise - they spent the second two hour session making origami cubes. By that point, most of them were running on empty and they basically nodded off like the kids that you'd expect, sitting indoors in nice weather and folding paper into stupid shapes.

But the amazing thing later on Friday I discovered, that made things all the better in my perspective, was that the kids had painted some little panels during that week after the pyramid was complete - and one of them whom I had pegged as kind of ambivalent to the whole deal (which he was, actually) had painted the pyramid. Some of them had very cute paintings of their trip to Toronto, houses, flags, or whatnot, but that one kid painted the pyramid. I was touched. :)

What did they do on Friday? Massacre system units. Then I had to spend another hour after their workshop putting them back together properly.

At least it was "enriching." TO MY WALLET! :O

The CSS activity/project/homework assignment

Some of you techies out there might be wondering what the heck I am teaching in the computer science class. Well, according to the Ontario curriculum, it's supposed to be the continuation of a Java programming class... but unfortunately none of the students have ever had an introductory programming class (and the teacher doesn't remember her own introductory programming class) and some of them don't even know the difference between a programming language and a command line interface. Heck, you'd be hard pressed to ask them if they could find their computers, like today (she left it in the washroom!?).

Anyway, I thought I would make the course easier by making four units, three of which are completely non computer science-y. The first was computer hardware, which the students learned to identify and put together components of computers that I obtained around town from donations. The second unit was learning about (ugh) software types, operating systems, and ethics of computers. Unfortunately, I was not able to get a hard drive that worked well enough to install an operating system, so no Linux conversions this term. (Not that I know much about Linux anyway...)

The third unit is web page coding; I wanted to step up the difficulty of the course by requiring that they code the pages by hand using (more or less) XHTML and CSS standards. They don't like practicing anything for some reason (which is why their homework marks are terrible), so I gave them a class activity today on CSS layout. This is probably the trickiest part of CSS for me because I never, ever, ever get any CSS layout right the first time. Or the fourth time. Or ever.

They are supposed to be creating the style sheet for a given web page (for a "clueless" client - soon to be obvious). For this, I had to make a web page and some images on MSPaint. The students are meant to set up either an internal or external style sheet, edit the markup language to (almost) XHTML standards, and make a more appealing kind of layout. They are not allowed to change the content of the page.

To tell you the truth, I don't know what the crap I was thinking when I was making the page. Behold, the fast and furious times of the mysterious middle-aged playwright/actor!

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Welcome to THe GReAT eSCAPe!

Follow the navigation links to view the awesomeist pictures of the show.

• The scooter!


• The Ladybug!


• The cast!


• The chainsaw strummer!

Thumbnail gallery:

News

May 18, 2007 - The lead girl has called in sick - she says she probably has bronchitis (maybe her swimsuit is a bit too light for the show; I might have to cut back on the snow machine use). Now Little Tom will have to play dual roles, as our stand-ins are unfortunately unable to come due to their parents' anger that I have been taking them out of school. It's not my fault they were skipping middle school that day I recruited them; I thought they were just college kids "down and out of luck."

May 13, 2007 - Due to insufficient funding from a small audience this weekend, I've had to close the show for the weekday runs. I'm going to wait until the weekends to put on the show, at least until we get more reviews.

May 11, 2007 - The show has started playing at the Old Barn Theater downtown, and we've had rave reviews from the local hot dog stand!

This is the most exciting show presented here since Hair came and went back in '79! Of course, I don't know if any other shows have been on since then.
-Pete, the Weinermobile

May 8, 2007 - LOTS of tickets left! Great seats! Get them while you can!

May 1, 2007 - I've found the GReAT VeNUe! The Old Barn Theater was slated to be demolished this week, but with my savings, I managed to procure it for the show. It'll be our permanent venue, at least until we get more reviews then maybe we can start touring around the country.

April 3, 2007 - We're still looking for a new director to replace the one who decided to quit on us a week into the practice sessions. It seems the previous director wanted to change the script around, since it was "unbelievably stupid" but I wouldn't hear of it! It's perfect the way it is, and I don't care if we have to scour the whole town for another person who will direct this the way the original script intended it to be. On the other hand, we have a great cast! For a PRevIeW of them in costume, click here.

March 30, 2007 - This week was great! Someone just came up to me on the street and asked if I had a something for a person "totally down and out of luck" and I just happened to have the job position of director for my awesomeist musical! We'll be seeing each other within the week.

March 19, 2007 - After a week of searching and chatting online, I found a couple of people online who are interested in my idea. Next stop, the photocopy place!

March 12, 2007 - I have this great idea for a musical production. So last night at 3 a.m. I scribbled this whole script out and it's called "THe GReAT eSCAPe." It'll have everything, including this awesome scooter that I just bought last week. I love that scooter!

About Me

I'm a 45 year old guy who decided to change my life around after having spent 20 years in the retail industry, selling flaxseed cakes on the streetside downtown. You might have seen me next to Pete and the Weinermobile. I wrote the script and I star in the next sensational musical production, THe GReAT eSCAPe!

Links to Great Sites

THe GReAT eSCAPe - the next big MUSICAL SENSATION

Flaxseed Cakes - the next big NUTRITIONAL SENSATION

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This has to be either the most awesome chainsaw-solo filled musical ever, or the most atrocious waste of money ever.

Year-End Update

Dear all,

Amid turkey leftovers, guest-receiving, chocolate overdoses, a new washer arrival, and a terrible, terrible mess to clean up from the delivery, I'm having a wonderful holiday. It lasts for another week, or two, or whenever. As it so happens, my long vacation is a result of a good and/or bad thing - being a supply teacher.

Anyway, I would like to start to end this year's blogging by trying to remind myself what happened over 2005. Uh...

January

Continued to work at the school. Constant reminders of why teaching is a hit-and-miss game pop up everywhere. Also, January tends to be the most depressing month due to nothing happening.

February

Ivo comes to visit and cheers me up immensely. :):):) ... Winter is also starting to look less ugly due to my first trip to the tubing place. Stupid shit happens with the landlord.

March

Nagging thoughts over purpose of obtaining two degrees.

April

The Pope dies. Why is this such a big event to me, I'm not even sure anymore... Waves of strike days further disturb the regularity of the school year at the school, not to mention the teacher turnovers during the year.

May

More of my strike escapades. 3/4 of the school disappears to the wild for a character-building camping trip, while the leftovers like myself are stranded at school to fend for ourselves.

June

Exam corrections, and biking diversions pepper my month. The anniversary of my father's death still hurts.

July

Trip to Cowtown and environs. Weddings strengthen the family bonds. Got to see Wesley. :D Also, got to meet the psycho vampire dog Bobo. :|

August

Disappointed with myself not getting a job for the school year. :( Nonetheless, I made a vow to continue working in Quebec.

September

Amazing training to run 5 km! Well, not really that amazing. I turn 25. Does that mean I'm just an old baby?

October

Amazingly completed the run. @_@ Also, amazingly obtained a driver's licence. @______@ Also, the start of a long supply teaching run...

November

Continued the long supply teaching run. Happily, it means that I shouldn't be as worried as the summer to obtain a job, hopefully for the reasons I'm thinking of. The word "pancake" keeps popping up. Eddie's grandma passes away. :(

December

Birth of PJ the 3rd. :) Along the same lines, I learned the virtues of ordering things online. The possible start of crazy buying sprees... Felix and Rachel separately visit for the holiday break. :D:D:D

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Jorgh visits me every month or so. I also go to Montreal every so often to shower him with gifts and/or food. I mean "and."

I met many interesting people and had lots of memorable experiences. I keep reading more and more manga when I should actually try to read real books, but I find pictures and stories more attractive. Might this be the real start of a different path?

Here's PJ the 3rd, with new best friend Mama-Mega-Modem. 

The Aria is Alive!

Finally, after three days of hacking away, PJ the 3rd is connected to the net. But not all is perfect in the cute little box (that now does *not* blind me, having disconnected the infernal light plug)...

Such a quiet, quiet box... but alas, my motherboard is having a completely screwed up time trying to get any sound out of it. No sound driver. And it seems that the culprit is the ever disgusting WinXP (that I had installed from a questionably legal copy).

On top of that, so far I have experienced the SUPER LENGTHY blue screen of death thrice at completely random times in the last few hours. It doesn't give the odd short unintelligible message, no. The entire screen is filled with unreadable blather about how crap just happened and just when you think you're about to read War and Peace on your screen, it flickers off and you're left wondering what happened after the second word.

Oh, PJIII, when shall I be allowed to enjoy the first game of Baldur's Gate upon thine precious hard drive? ;_;

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I had a most disgusting hot chocolate event this evening, when I brought out my suspiciously old box of cocoa and made a cup. Right when I'm about to take a sip, a dozen little floating dark non-cocoa flecks floated up to the top. Little bug-shaped flecks. :(

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Did *anything* happen today that didn't end in tragedy for me? Well, I woke up early to join the teachers up in the hinterland to picket, since all the public school teachers in the region are on strike. I was not obliged to go, as I am not working, but I decided to join in to show my appreciation of everyone.

What I enjoyed the most was one teacher's most clever sled. It looks like a dog sled, but it's actually a kick sled, that was designed in Norway. It's part skiing, part sliding, and all fun. She said it was a gift from her husband, who got it from Ontario. She also said it cost around 400$. I said I would buy a million of those and sell them here if I could.

At the end of picketing this morning, we were treated with coffee and doughnuts by the union. :)

I Feel Totally Stupid.

After the months of research and weeks of buying parts, I finally got them on Wednesday. I have been out of town though since Wednesday, so I only got the chance to put the parts together today.

I was very happy to start cracking on the assembly, thanks to the wonderful Antec Aria case, and the cheapo Asus A8N-VM CSM motherboard. I then realized after several attempts at plugging in a 20-pin power connector to a 24-pin power receiver, that the two are not actually compatible, nor wish to become compatible.

I do not blame Ars this time because they didn't recommend it, and I bought the parts without thinking everything through. Hell, I would have just stuck my old crap in the new box if I didn't read about mATX cases. But let that be a lesson to us all. 20!=24

UPDATE: There exists an adapter for this kind of crap. Good.

UPDATE 2: I feel like an even bigger idiot. There's a way for the 20-pin plug to go into the 24-pin socket, with an extra 4-pin plug. Ok, I don't even know how it works, but it should. ... If my next update starts with "OMG" it means I killed it.

UPDATE 3: Much luck! I put it all together, and now it runs like a blueberry chocolatety potluck with marshmallow fluff... I mean like a dream.

Return to Obscurity

The teacher is returning on Monday, but I have a supply day Monday as well for another teacher so it still means I have to go back there Monday.

I wasn't sure yesterday if I was supposed to return to continue replacing but they told me that morning so I spent all evening at school correcting absolutely everything. It was worse than report card deadline because at least I had weeks to prepare for that. I don't even know if I cleaned up everything in her room... But I'll be able to talk to her on Monday to straighten out certain things, like why there's a chocolate bar in the drawer, and where I left the records because I sure as hell don't know.

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I'm listening to "Christmas in Heaven" from the Monty Python movie The Meaning of Life, and I think it was probably the most exciting Christmas song at the time. Who wouldn't like to watch a song and dance number with a bunch of topless women? Really. '_'

I still have yet to watch Life of Brian. That could probably count as a Christmas-y theme of a movie, no?

I got home last night and started uncontrollably singing a jazz variation of Jingle Bells everywhere. It must have been due to the supression of all holiday spirit I had to endure during the last few months, not necessarily due to the union's pressure tactics.

When my computer parts come, I'm going to go absolutely INSANE.

Mother, where art thou?

I'm still stuck with just the processor. It's been sitting next to me in its box the whole week and I have yet to decide its mama. I have been looking over SFF cases (small form factor) that look like cubes. Unfortunately I am completely befuddled over a million reviews:

Antec Aria
Plastic and aluminum, cube-like, blue (glowing blue!), cute and currently 113 dollars. No motherboard.

• Advantage: It's quiet and has a lot of potential for upgrading. Has an 8-in-1 card reader included.


• Disadvantage: It's a case that is reputedly warm on running because it's not as well ventilated as it should be. I wouldn't be thrilled either if my power supply unit caught on fire as well. But modders gave it a good rating because you could drill holes in it. (Then again, I have no tools to do so.) Also, it has no floppy drive slot.

Aspire X-Qpack
Plastic and aluminum, cube-like, 3 windows (not the OS), comes in a bunch of colours (that also glow that colour), looks like a box that a mofo gaming pimp would use. 116 dollars. No motherboard.

• Advantage: It tells you what the temperature inside the machine is. And it's got freaking plexi-windows on 3 sides!


• Disadvantage: Seems like it has a pos power supply, but that's only what I read. And who wants to see what kind of crap I installed in my computer anyway?

I already have the motherboard chosen for the purposes of buying only the case, so that's not going to be mulled over.
Asus A8N-VM/CSM Whatever that means. It's currently at 107.99.


And then there's the barebones Shuttle boxes... they all have their own proprietary motherboards, so it's more important for me to consider the upgrading capabilities.

Shuttle XPC SN95G5 (V3)
It's quiet and cool. Currently at 378.55

• Advantage: I like it tons and tons. Its performance garners great reviews. I can carry it in a cute (optional) bag if I wanted to go to LAN parties (which I won't). It has more stuff in it than I will probably use.


• Disadvantage: It's unfortunately limited in terms of upgrading potential, as it doesn't have any PCI-E. It also doesn't have a floppy drive, nor does it have a card reader. It's freaking 400 dollars in total. That's like 2 cheap computers. (I know, quality over quantity.)
  

Shuttle XPC SN25P
Currently at 469.94

• Advantage: It's got 3 PCI-E slots, and 350W of power, compared to the 240W in the other box. It's slightly bigger for more space to manoeuver with parts. Actually, I could just keep listing the specs because they're all good.
  


• Disadvantage: This is the biggy. I have to buy a new hard drive (or SATA/ATA connector), and probably a mess of other new things, more than the other Shuttle box, in order to use this case. Overall it would be the one I'd choose if it wasn't so expensive and if it didn't have so much other stuff to buy. God, I feel like crying when I think about it...
  

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I really, really, really like the Swissbit, but it's ridiculously expensive for a knife and 1 GB of flash memory. So I will resort to getting the Corsair Voyager. Merry Christmas to me!

It's Here! It's Here!!!

I nearly fainted today from getting the Athlon 64 3000+. I wasn't expecting it to arrive so soon, since I only ordered it on Monday. This is my first online purchase so I am very happy it came intact. Now it's a matter of getting a motherboard that can test it...

LOST made me cry. Again.

I sound overtired. That's because I spent 13 hours at school today.

Old Skool

(Telephony) Kickin' it old skool!


Real old skool! [Expletive deleted] yeah!

Strawberry Shortcake, my sister's old school bed cover that complemented my old school Smurfs bed cover.

The Videotron folks sent two guys over today to migrate my crap Bell service over to the Videotron telephone service. My mum paid 40$/month/something crazy under Bell. Combined with cable modem and basic cable tv service, the new telephone system would cost less than 20$/month/something cheaper. What's the catch? Well, you need to have subscribed to all three of these services to get that price. Thus, I would estimate the cost of everything together to be 80$/month/something sad.

Anyway, they worked around for about 3 hours, trying to figure out where the phone feed was for most of that time, until I finally got the service. And I managed to pick up year-old dustbunnies at the same time. Sadly (!) I have to give up using the old cable modem (with the busted plastic power insert) for this faboo black mega-modem. And on top of that, my (stupid) phone that always got tangled up in everything stopped working properly so I replaced it with this old school black rotary phone. (Now, I have no clue if the rotary thing still works, or if the phone company lets me use pulse dialing, but what the hell - I barely call out anyway.)

The guys were very nice. One of them saw my degrees on the wall and was impressed, and he saw the "Great Baseball" Sega Master System game sitting next to the door and was also impressed. I think the general lack of any sense of self-respect in this apartment was impressive. He was most impressed when he pulled out the phone cord in the kitchen, having found it in a state of complete crapness (ie. holey and exposedy) and found that the phone still worked.

APPEND

I keep checking back on ECN's site for jobs in Quebec, and now it seems that my old school is missing both a phys. ed. teacher and the french teacher.

A Note About Pictures

Now that I have nearly unlimited uploading and hosting for my Yahoo photo album, and this nifty Hello picture thingy feature, I have noticeably slacked off in the photo editing department. Why? Well, it's time consuming for sure, but it's not like I didn't enjoy doing it. It's because of one thing: this computer is f@#$ing too slow.

Let's say I want to take a picture of about 600 x 400 pixels. That's pretty near the max resolution of my camera anyway. Suppose I take it to Photoshop 7, which takes a minute to load, and then play around with it. A complicated filter that could take about 5 seconds on an average PC of today takes damn near 5 minutes to run on this machine.

I try to tell Photoshop to select certain blobs of an image and it'll sit and think for a moment. "Well," the computer thinks aloud, "I think this person wants me to take this selection, but I'm not sure if th-" The mouse slips and I click by accident something else. "Holy sh#@&$*!" the computer bleeps, "M#$%!#&^?@!!!" Sparks fly, small explosions and mushroom clouds, you know the rest.

In short, I like computers. Even this one. I think I'll take it outside and shoot it.

Start Me Up

So just to keep this blog supposedly HIGH OCTANE UPDATED!!!1111! I am uploading another picture of when I was cleaning up my room a few weeks ago. This is how my computer was being used for a week. No desk, no chair. On the upside, I could claim that this configuration drove me to actually start cleaning my room. 

For Sale - A lot of garbage

After bringing home nearly all of my Montreal effects, save large furniture I loaned to my brother for his use, I realized how much complete crap I have in total. Five years worth of textbooks, notes, course packs, and other looseleaf is accumulated in my living room and quarters. Another lot of papers, electronic equipment, toys :) , presents, and such are scattered around here still.

I'm completely baffled as to how to deal with all this mess. I have a dinky desk with very little space for my computer. On top of that, now I need to get a printer since my brother took his all-in-one.

The bookshelf is so fragile looking and old that I doubt it would hold up all these damn textbooks. I have way too many notes for it to look anything but messy in the bookcase. And I don't even want to think about sticking everything under the bed, like I used to do.

Would I count as a candidate for "Clean Sweep"?

Probably not since I don't have a job. :( And I live in a crap-assed apartment anyway.