Computers are stupid

"Whomever" vs. "Whoever". Do you know when to use either? Me neither. (Hey, that rhymes!)

Anyways, I'm in the middle of composing a very long and detailed email. Microsoft Outlook has this really neat feature where it will detect grammar incorrectness and underline it with a green squiggly line. You can either ignore it or do something about it.

If you right click on the word, one of the items that pops up in the pop-up menu gives you suggested "correct" words to use. So I right-clicked on "whomever". It gave me "whoever" as a suggestion. I select that and the word changed.

Wait! It's still underlined with the green squiggly line! So I right click again and lo and behold, the suggested "correct" word to use is "whomever". I've just now flipped back and forth between the two words. Apparently, it's confused and doesn't know which one to pick.

Yes, computers are stupid.

(My hubby has been trying to convince me for years of this, despite being a former IT guy, so he'll love this post.)

"i+lost+my+virginity+to+my+cousin"

I checked Google Analytics today. Yesterday, someone had done a search with the keywords "i+lost+my+virginity+to+my+cousin". So I did the same key word search and lo and behold this post from a couple of weeks ago came up as the first result in Google. Nice.

I've been planting words here and there in my blog to see what sort of search terms people use to "find" my posts. So far, this has been the most interesting one.

Now, I'm not one to judge. In fact, first-cousin marriage are legal in Canada. But I have to say this: EWWWWWWWW!

(My experiment is turning out to be somewhat interesting though...)

Kudos

I have to give a big thanks to IT Plumber/Janitor for helping us figure out how to remove our bathtub plug and allow us to fix the plug that's been plaguing us for some time (ours was Lift and Turn). You are not just a computer monkey after all. You should consider switching careers. Don't plumbers make $100/hour? And you can show your butt crack to all those housewives/husbands, great perk if you ask me. He's also got great cleaning tips.

Please also note in the post that hubby and I now speak to each other via IT Plumber/Janitor's blog comments (see second link). If this keeps up, he'll definitely need to start up a whole new section just so hubby and I can keep communicating.

Harry Potter Dies...

So it seems that JK Rowling has let out that two more characters will die in Book 7. I used to hit as many Harry Potter sites and read everyone's wild speculations and predictions. What made them really entertaining was the fact that people tried to "read" into the book text looking for clues. What's even more entertaining is how they interpret the text. Sure, JK Rowling does leave subtle hints, but I think some people have gone above and beyond the call of duty and tried to see something that's not there. I suppose that's part of the charm (if you will) of the books.

Here's what one soccer dad had to say. May the speculation begin... As for me, I don't have time to read all the nonsense, I'll wait for the book.

(I don't know why I decided to put this up except I found it funny. I need more sleep, I think, darn heat! Click on the image to see it full size).

Captain Picard's Journal

I normally don't steal posts, but I couldn't resist this time. Someone had sent IT Plumber/Janitor a link to Captain Picard's Journal. I can now get my daily Star Trek fix. Whoo!

Fan: 1, Dave: 0

So my industrious hubby was trying to install a ceiling fan to get our bedroom somewhat cooler. Well, he installed it correctly, but as soon as we turned it on, sparks emitted from the ceiling. Not a good thing. Now we have to wait for our handyman friend "E" to come by to help us.

He thinks that there might have been some wires touching each other that shouldn't have touched each other, hence the sparks. So we have to suffer through another night of heat. Tomorrow's high is 26C, and it'll be the same all week. Not the warmest we've ever experienced, but our house has ever single wall insulated, including the inside walls. Great for winter, not so great for summer.

We would have had the ceiling fan up a month ago, but we ran into a series of technical roadblocks. Sigh.

La Casa Gelato

Tonight hubby and I went to what I consider to be the best ice cream place in Vancouver, La Casa Gelato. They certainly have the biggest range of flavours, from your staple vanilla, chocolate and strawberry, to the more exotic, like durian, wasabi, curry, coconut red rice and (I believe, probably the most expensive one in the store), pistachio saffron.

What's amazing about this place is that it's always packed, even in the winter time. Yes, it's that good.

So if you live in Lotusland, or are planning on making a visit, you must stop by and try their ice cream.

The new Captain Kirk?

Yes, the rumor is that they want to ask Matt Damon to be Captain Kirk in the next Star Trek movie. Strangely enough, I actually don't have a problem with this. Probably because I still respect Matt as an actor. The only problem I have with Matt is that he's in his 30s, and the Captain Kirk in the new movie, from what I understand, should be a bit younger (like, by 10 years?). We will have to see how this pans out folks.

However, if they ask Ben Afflick to play the role of Spock, the Star Trek people may start having meteorites thrown at their heads and phasers set to kill pointed at them. I will be the one holding one of the phasers.

[Source]

Another reason not to get a Dell

Apparently they explode... [Source]

This 'n that

So I have today off. I decided to go to the gym later in the morning (after all the moms-that-have-dropped-their-kids-off-to-school-and-had-hit-the-gym crowd). Let me tell you that I like this time of the day at the gym. It's not crowded, and the group is older, so there aren't any young 20 year olds flaunting their skinny bodies around, making me feel insecure (I'm still going after the bikini body, just not today).

I bumped into my trainer, who was surprised that I was there at that time of the day. "Whatcha doing here?" she asks. "I took the day off, " I replied. "That's cool," she says. "Not really," I sighed, "I took the day off to do homework." Sigh.

There was a woman who I think was doing a yoga series for at least an hour (or she was doing it the whole time I was there). I was really impressed with her skill and her core strength must be awesome. You don't normally see the 20 year olds doing that.

Truly, I hate exercising. But I hate doing my homework more. I at least had a productive day, went to the gym, paid down some debt (always a good feeling), ate two bowls of chocolate ice cream (whoops!). But I did get a fair bit of homework done. Hopefully I can get as much done before the end of today, with all the time I have given myself (yeah right!).

One consolation of not having to wake up at 6.30 in the morning, I actually got my 9 hours of sleep. Today's the first day in a very long time that I don't feel utter exhausion.

Species 8472

(You probably want to click on the picture to get a better view)

This is my desk at work. Or more specifically, what's hanging over my desk at work. Yes, boys and girls, it's a cheap, plastic rendition of the Starship Enterprise-D. The saucer and lower body actually separate, just like in ST:TNG. Pretty cool. And you can open up the top part of the saucer section and see a not-to-scale, pretty unrealistic rendition of the bridge. With a non-to-scale, plasticy Picard and Riker inside.

Only today, I happened to look straight up (yes, I sit directly under this thing), and saw and addition to my starship Enterprise-D. It's what you seen in the picture. It totally reminded me of Species 8472, which is actually from the Voyager series and not TNG.

I found out that IT Plumber/Janitor had stuck it there last Friday after I'd left work. I didn't notice it until today. My brain's usually in a fog on Mondays, but with my stress, exhaustion and lack of good-quality sleep over the past year, I didn't notice it until today. But it made my day. That, and the other stuff that happened over the course of today.

Yes, I am a Star Trek geek.

Don't colour me blue!

For some very odd reason, everyone around me is depressing me today. People on Hitched, people at work... Now I realize that dealing with politics and megalomanics can be a downer, don't get me wrong.

Today, my co-worker and I bandied about two scenarios: ideal and realistic. The ideal situation, in my mind, still doable for the large part, just not in the time frame that we were looking at. Realistic situation was... depressing. Two steps forwards, three steps back. Do the math, and you end up walking backwards to the Dark Ages.

They say if you're given lemons, make lemonade. Really. That's what I try to remind myself every day. Things are never as bad as they seem.

Let's see, what were the positives of today:

• I met a fellow Hitched chick today for lunch. We commiserated over her ruined $150USD Citizen jeans, but she managed to find some authentic ones at Value Village for way cheaper. Yay!
• I went to go buy a bag of chips at the vending machine. I'd put in my money and punched in the numbers, and waited for the machine to do it's thing. Well, the bag started falling, but just as it was going to complete it's fall, a corner of the bag gets caught in the coily thing that holds it in place. I was flabbergasted. But then the machine started whirling again, and I got not only my original bag of chips, but a second bag as well! Sweet! (Now if you want to pity anyone, pity my hubby, who will now have to hear me whine about me getting fat over my silly craving. But he doesn't get a choice in the matter).
• I finally got to go to the chiropractor today. My upper back, neck and shoulders were killing me, mostly because of Evil Homework, so I've kinda regressed. But it's all good. And I'm going to start regular massage therapy sessions as well until Evil Homework is over.
  
• It ended up being sunny and warm today.
  

Well, that's it, but it's a start.

Now, blue people are Smurfs, and Smurfs tend to be a jolly lot. So if you're blue, then you're a Smurf, and if you're a Smurf, you're happy. And if you're happy, then you're not depressed. So stop making me depressed! How's that for Irene-Logic?

(BTW, Smurfette always annoyed me, I don't know why I put her picture up. Bah.)

No more turkey for me!

I had some frozen turkey dinner for lunch today. Then in the afternoon, half my brain fell asleep. Not good when trying to do work, and more importantly, have a meeting with my boss and trying to explain some concerns I had about something. I kept repeating myself, over and over again. My only consolation is that he was just as tired as I was, and didn't noticed. Bah.

The Chen Clan

Yesterday at my cousin N's wedding, an uncle from Chicago shoved something into my hands to give to my dad. It was a detailed genealogy of my dad's side of the family, the "Chen Clan". (By the way, my legal last name isn't Chen, it's something else. It's a long and interesting story how I came about my fake-legal last name.)

Anyways, reading through it, I apparently am a descendant of Emperor Shun (2300-2201 BC)! It's speculation whether or not he really is the "Adam" of all the Chens, according to this person (a distant relative of mine who compiled the whole thing). But he has evidence from documentation that he had found.

The first generation that he has listed is Chen Nan-qiao (1205-1284 AD). But going back further, it seems that there may have been a Duke in our family, and he had lost his Dukedom due to some civil strife. I may also have high ranking government officials and possibly a rebel who initiated and led a popular uprising that ultimately overthrew the Qin Dynasty (221-207 BC). My ancestors seemed to have moved around China for a long period, partially due various invasions, partly due to more civil unrest.

According to this document, I'm the 28th generation "Chen". They even have hubby's name in the family tree. But whatever the story is for my ancestors, it's really cool that someone actually took the time to trace the roots of my ancestry.

Wedding Food

Yesterday, I attended my cousin N's wedding at the Sutton Place Hotel. I would post pictures of people, but my pictures didn't turn out all that great, and I don't have their permission to post their pictures on the internet. And really, you wouldn't find people you don't know very interesting. But you will find the food interesting. (I have to apologize for the really crappy pictures, they were taken with my camera phone, and I'm still figuring out how to use it. Dave says that the white balance was off). Food was very nummy by the way.

Here's the menu:

Amuse Bouche Plate: Citrus cured salmon, spiced tuna loin, stick of aged white cheddar, basa filet with mango salsa, and cocktail prawn wrapped with Prosciutto. (And of course, I'd forgotten to take a picture of it. D'oh!)


Lobster bisque with cognac chive cream:










Roasted prime rib steak green peppercorn dijonnaise with garlic prawns and scallops (this was one big hunk of meat!)










Dessert: Wedding cake and chocolate buffet (what the Sutton Place is known for!):

• Warm chocolate fondue with assorted fruit
• chocolate truffle cake
• white chocolate bavaroise
• chocolate flourless cake
• chocolate cheesecake
• chocolate pecan pie
• chocolate & mango mousse

I've lost my virginity!

Yes, for the first time ever, I've gotten a pedicure. Now my toes are polished red for my cousin's wedding tomorrow. Those are even the shoes that I'm wearing. Now to decide the rest of the outfit.

(I'm no longer a pedicure virgin, what did you think I was talking about? =P)

Salty Dried Prunes

Yesterday, my dad came by to give me some salty dried prunes. If you've never heard of them before, they're a Chinese "candy", so to speak. Ingredients: Dried prunes, licorice, salt, sugar.

When I was a kid, I would inhale these in, I love these things. A lot of my friends would put the whole thing in their mouth and suck on it. I was not so brave, after all, these babies are very salty.

Last night, I had three in a row. Okay, I felt like puking after the third one, but they are still good. They're great for car or plane sickness too. Just suck on one of these things should you start to feel nausea.

If you want to get on my good side, by me one of these packages and I will love you for life. (They're really cheap, so does that make me a cheap floosie?)

I'm a purge queen/nazi

The moment I saw today's PC Weenies cartoon, I thought immediately of myself. No, I don't have Apple packaging, I hadn't even gotten to absorbing the Apple details when the thought came to my mind. All I saw was boxes in a garbage can and someone being upset about it. (I do get the joke, but that's not what this post is about). Ryan would be my hubby. I would short, fat, bald guy.

You see, I'm a purge queen/nazi (pick whichever you think is appropriate after you've read the post). Once a year, for about 3-4 days (or two weekends) I morph into a green-eyed, ugly witch, and go purge-mad. Last year, the ugly, green-eyed witch took over in the middle of summer, on a really sunny, hot weekend when we could have been out biking or hiking or something. Not purging.

The thing is I don't just go through things like clothes and books. I go through every single item in the house. And I make my hubby go through every single item. This is the one time, guys, you'll be glad that you're not married to me. I can be downright inflexible and non-negotiable at times. There is no such thing as "well, maybe we should keep it, just in case." In my experience, "just in case" never comes.

I am ruthless when it comes to purging. I've even thrown out photos. I never look at them, so why keep them around? I'm all for putting pictures on disks. Hey, I'm not much of a sentimentalist, what can I say? Hubby on the other hand, likes photos. He's a bit of a amateur photographer (some of his stuff's pretty good), and any photo that's on display that isn't a portrait of someone, he took himself.

There are still some items that I want to throw out, but hubby doesn't. So it becomes a battle of wills. Sometimes I win, sometimes he does.

Fortuately for hubby, my yearly purge will have to be postponed to next year, because I simply just don't have the time to do it due to Evil Homework.

I've created a monster...!

One of my co-workers is a really big spender. He's also an impulsive shopper. Not a good combination. So today he showed me this $200+USD light/bowl thingie that he bought (I think it's a table lamp, but I'm not certain).

Anyways, I introduced him to this site that I'd ran into a couple of days ago. The stuff on the web site is really more his style than mine, and I can't afford/justify most of the stuff.

So I sat back and watched the show.

He took to this site like a moth to a flame. And bought a $89USD wine rack. And looked at each and every item on the site (there's quite a few items). He's definitely planning on buying more things off of the website with his next paycheque, I just know it.

I'm such a bad, bad person. =D

Body Rolling

I almost didn't go to my Pilates class tonight. I didn't sleep very well last night, and was quite tired all day today.

My major stress from work has been over for more than a week, but my body's still not relaxed from all the stress I put it through (plus burning the candle at both ends doesn't help).

Anyways, I forced myself to go. And I'm glad I did!

My instructor decided to do some body rolling, and let me tell you, my upper back hasn't been this loose in months! We have a ball at home that hubby uses on his IT band (whatever it is, but it helps prevent his knee problems when he runs). I think I'll be rolling on the ball a little more often, as a couple of people have already commented how tight all my muscles are. Wait until I go to my chiropractor next week! Yikes!

(Definition of Body Rolling in red).

I have no life

My boss was shaking his head when I asked him to sign my vacation request today. Don't get me wrong, he's all for vacation and taking time off (and he never does enough of either, as he always claims).

So I'm taking next week Wednesday and Thursday off. Why not do something like take Thursday and Friday or Monday and Tuesday off to get a 4-day weekend, you may ask. Good question.

I'm taking two extra days off to do Evil Homework (which I will rant about in more detail soon, I promise). I actually want to go back to work on the Friday, I actually like my job much more than Evil Homework. All I do on the weekends is Evil Homework anyways, so I don't know if I could take four days straight of it.

Yes, I have no life.

Hello G!

Gwynabella and I have never met. The only way we know each other is through a common person, "D". "D" is my co-worker, and "D" is a good friend of Gwynabella.

This morning, I found a post-it note with a message from Gwynabella. It seems she was in the office on Friday after I'd left. She really liked my wedding cake topper, and my other Star Trek paraphernalia. I figured I'd show Gwynabella (and my faithful readers) my cake topper in all it's glory.

I love my cake topper. I bought Locutus at a Star Trek convention, and Janeway on E-Bay. And glued it onto a surface. Total cost: $25-ish. Total cost for a regular wedding cake topper, about $100, depending on what you're after.

What can I say, I'm a geek. I still need to get around to buying the Jane Austen action figure, and then my life will be complete.

Edge to Edge Marathon

Here's what hubby's doing this weekend: The Edge to Edge Marathon. He's doing the relay with a bunch of other people, so he'll only be running less than 10K for his leg.

As you can see, he'll be running along side the Pacific Ocean (the real ocean. From Vancouver, the water you see is the Georgia Straight, not real ocean). Hopefully he won't fall into the water. And have good weather.

(Well, running a marathon has got to be more interesting than what I'm doing right now, which is Evil Homework.)

Trouble

Yay! Blogger is working again. I will post more later. For now, this is for IT Plumber/Janitor...

D-Day

(Wow, this is my 100th post!)

So today is D-Day.

It's the 6th day of the 6th month of the 6th year of this century. 6-6-6. The sign of the Devil

But that's not the D-Day that I mean.

It's also the day that the Battle of Normandy started back in 1944. As much as I appreciate the fact that countless of lives were lost for our freedom, I'm not referring to this either.

No, boys and girls, today is my lovely hubby's 35th birthday. And his name is Dave.

Happy Birthday Dave!

Coffee is Vile!

You coffeeholics/jazz-a-philes are going to really hate me now.

Coffee is VILE. Blech! Today I went to Starbucks, and because it was a nice sunny, warm day, I decided to get one of their summer drinks: Bananas & Cream Frappuchino Blended Creme (with no whipping cream).

First, the barista gave me the drink with whipping cream. I pointed out her mistake, so she fixed it. As I went to take a swig of my cool drink, VILENESS hit my mouth! She made me a Banana Coconut Frappuchino Blended Coffee! Yes, it was the wrong drink. With icky coffee in it!
After nearly choking to death, I pointed out her error (yet again) and she finally whipped up the correct drink (with no whipping cream). And like a good little Starbuck employee, gave me a coupon for a free drink as a gesture of goodwill (I now have two coupons, the other I got from a similar incident). Anyways, the drink tasted like a banana milkshake.

I had to explain to my boss why I was late for a meeting with him. I told him about my near death experience. I also told him that I hate the smell of coffee. He asked me how I every survived walking into Starbucks each time. I told him that I've perfected the art of not breathing through my nose whenever I smell vileness. Really, it's quite a handy skill to have.

I don't like jazz

Okay, what's the big deal about jazz? On Saturday, I was at my work's summer BBQ Funfest, and the topic of jazz came up. People were horrified that I don't like jazz.

I don't hate jazz. In fact, I know how to play two different instruments (piano and bass guitar), and can appreciate jazz technically. And some of the faster stuff is okay. However, at best, I'm indifferent to jazz. At worse, it bores me to tears.

See, I'm not one of those types who likes to mellow out, glass of wine in hand, relaxing on a nice rainy day, listening to jazz. Jazz puts me to sleep. That whole scenario puts me to sleep. On a rainy day, I'd be doing something, like cleaning. Or purging. Or surfing the Internet. Or shopping at the mall.

I need to move around. I love dancing, and most jazz pieces, really you can't dance to. Okay, so you can swing to some of it, and that's kinda cool, but otherwise forget it. I need a regular, fast, pounding beat to shake my booty to.

It's not like I'm not going to give jazz a chance musically. One day I try playing some jazz riffs on my bass guitar.

But ask me to listen to it and like it? Forget it.

Aggression is good

So I had a pretty hellish week. Actually this past month was pretty stressful, but it really accumulated this week. We had a deadline this week that our vendor had pretty much admitted they couldn't meet, and although they thought they did, they still had to go through user acceptance (ie we had to give them the thumbs up.) . There were no thumbs pointing up.

It pretty much was a lot of back and forth with several different people (there even was a VP in the melee), lots of not really good customer service, and a final mediocre product that still needs fixing. I had finally lost my patience. But we're at a point where we need to go-live, so go-live on Monday we will!

So anyways, last night at the gym, my trainer decided to do a little mini-circuit with me. She noted after the first round that I was pretty aggressive. I told her my long sordid story of all the jackassery that was going on at work.

So when I was hopping up from a bench to touch a low hanging ceiling, I wasn't touching, I was whacking. Hard. And imagining that I was whacking someone's head in the process.

Whack! Take that Mr. Vice-President-who-never-returns-my-calls.

Whack! Take that Miss-programmer-why-do-you-ask-me-how-the-system-
works-when-you-can-see-the-code-for-yourself- and-you-were-the-ones-who-coded-it-in- the-first-place-so-I-shouldn't-be-the-one- telling-you-how-it-works!

Whack! Whack! Whack!

My trainer also got me doing karate kicks on an exercise ball she was holding. I kicked very hard, but I didn't want to hurt my trainer. I like her.

Kick! Kick! Kick!

Sometimes it was the head I was kicking, sometimes it was the groin.

I think I really pushed myself cause I was already pretty tired a bit exhausted from the week, and afterwards, felt a big sick and dizzy. But it felt good.

(Note that I've never met these people before, only ever talked with them on the phone or email.)

I HATE Regular Expressions

So I've been in vain trying to look for a regular expression that validates dollar amounts but doesn't allow any other symbols other than "+", "-" and "." (no commas either please).

I refuse to figure out how to build it, it's bad enough simple ones are beyond my comprehension (read: I have no patience, and frankly, no time to figure this out). So I'm just not going to put the validation in right now, I still have too much to do.

For once, Internet is failing me. Waaaaah!!! If anyone has any bright ideas, please let me know.

(And for those who haven't got a clue as to what I'm talking about, trust me, you don't wanna know).

Chocolate has its uses

When my boss see me with a chocolate candy bar in my hand, he knows it's due to one thing: stress. And kind soul that he is, asks me what's wrong. Sometimes it's work related, sometimes it's something else.

I love chocolate, but I actually try to cut down on my consumption as eating too much makes me fat. However, I cave when I get really stressed out and I can't push away the craving.

Chocolate is yummy. And it makes me feel so much better. My husband is at this point rolling his eyes as he read this.

Now scientists are finding a way to create fuel with chocolate. Maybe one day we'll be driving chocolate-fueled cars. Talk about a renewable resource.

See hubby, chocolate is useful. You can stop rolling your eyes, they're going to get stuck.

Ringxiety

This morning on my way to work, I was listening to the normal chatter on the radio. The topic they had brought up was "ringxiety".

What the heck is ringxiety? Apparently, when hearing a faint, discernible sound in a certain sound frequency range, that person mistakens it for their cell phone ringing when it is not. A "phantom" ring, so to speak.

This is apparently a widespread phenomenon, according to this NY Times article. Because many people's lives are centred around their cell phones, they automatically make this connection in their brain. Makes sense.

What is surprising (or sad, depends on how you want to look at it), is that when they hear this "phantom" ring and discover that their cell wasn't really ringing, it affects their feelings self-worth and popularity.

This coined-phrase has already made it's way around the Internet at its normal lightening-speed. It's in at least one online slang dictionary, go figure.

Fortunately for me I don't think I'll every suffer from ringxiety. The majority of my calls are from hubby (who usually is calling to ask for an opinion or if I need something at the mall) or my mother. Or maybe I'm just not popular enough.