So I had a few people over for dinner tonight. I prepared a few appetisers, some cheese, fruit and wine. Made some outrageous pizzas.

My interviews today were slightly dissapointing. I think it may be because I was expecting too much or just slightly out of practice. Company is just about to get going as one of the guests is feeling the effects of alcohol.

Gotta run.

-drj

Well, I have 2 interviews tomorrow. One formal, one informal. I don't expect that either will be a cup of tea, although I just had a cup of tea. I've been very well caffeinated today. 1 large cup of homebrew coffee. 2 small glasses of Coca-cola, and now a cup of Indian tea.

Yummy.

Went to New-West and poked around on a contract that I'm working on. I seemed to do more poking and 'napping' than working. It wasn't a good day for either of us to be working. I think the project is a little bit more involved. (and the code a little crappier) than either of us first suspected.

By 7pm we were both sick of the project. So we called it quits.

I had to study up for my interviews and 'practice' answers to questions in my teeny and overworked brain, and my friend had to go to a bar! (Hope you had fun Mike.)

w/ about 18 hours of sleep over the past 3 nights... its been a little rough.

Gonna need a REALLY good nap tonight.

I'll also need to be well caffeinated as I'm building up quite a tollerance here.

-drj

So there I was in my room, surfing the web and NOT working like I should have been. When I heard a sound coming from the kitchen. I thought to myself. Oh shit, another mouse, but was too involved in whatever I was reading to bother looking.

Then I heard it. The golden sound "SNAP!"

The mouse-trap had gone off.

I went to look at the damage and it was more gruesome than I had expected. The mouse narrowly escaped the trap, but it appears as though the trap had forces his poor mouse-head against a sharp edge of the refridgerator, causing it to dash open.

A small pool of blood was gathered around his head as he twitched uncontrollably.

I then sent him for a swim.

-drj

I went to see Jackass last night with a friend of mine. I had a really good laugh. I don't think I've laughed that hard in a long time. Unfortunately my friend had never really experienced me laughing that hard. (I don't think)

I might have frightened him by my loudness and violent flailing throughout the film. After it was over he said to me. "I was afraid you were going to break the chair". That comment was funny in and of itself.

Also I have a job interview lined up for this Friday. Hooraj! I might be employed again soon. 6 weeks of persistence has paid off.

-drj

Well, I got a haircut today because I felt I needed one in order to keep up the illusion of self-respect. ;)
I do realize though, that there is next to NO way I will have a job before January 15th. I have pretty much given up hope.

Even my 'agressive' approach has hardly yeilded a phone-call, let alone an interview. I'm hustling around the city like a hooker with her pants around her ankles and bent over.

I'm almost ready to do anything to get some stability in my life. (This has not yet turned to prostitution)

Additionallky today I finished making some chicken stew. I hope to have some tomorrow for breakfast.

Tonight I was invited for dinner at my friends house for traditional Punjabi Indian cuisine. YUMMY!

Hope all is well. A special thought out to one of my ex-coworkers who was fired earlier this week. (3rd time in 18 months). This has nothing to do with him believe it or not...he just seems to get into places at the wrong time. :)

-drj

I had breakfast at Ben's place this afternoon. Berry pancakes with syrup, bacon and fried toast. Yummy.

After, my room-mate and I decided to make a medium sized roast chicken and have some people over that we haven't seen in a while. Here is the recipie.

There was also a side of steamed carrots with sugar sauce and Tapioca pudding for dessert.

If you would like to come to one of our other scrumptious dinner festivities, send me an e-mail and I'll be sure to include you. Due to space restrictions I like to keep the gatherings to just a few guests per dinner, but If you send me your name then I'll bump you to the top of my list. :)

Listening to Chris Rock now and laughing pretty hard. He has some good points in his live performance "Bigger & Blacker". Very intelligent and funny man.

Off to bed, there are things to do tomorrow.

-drj

Well I missed the post for Saturday because I was so tired on friday that I slept before my usual post time and had to meet some friends down-town vancouver. I spent most of the day hanging out and helping one of my best friends move.

He moved into this really nice appartment with his girlfriend. They just bought the place and this will be the first night that they get to sleep in it. I'm sure they are really excited. They didn't seem to show it. I'm sure it was because they were really tired from all the moving.

They seem so wonderfully content and in love. I'm so happy for them.

Hmm... that is all.

-drj

Well

Not much exciting happened today. No new mouse sitings. Took a trip to New West. Looked around the web a bit at some mini-itx stuff. Thats about it. Finished a document for a customer that is to be delivered tomorrow. Horay. First non-gov't paycheck in 4 months. :)

Perhaps a booze-up is in order.

-Dr. J.

So there I was...

minding my own business, half asleep and probably drooling on my pillow. I must have already been awake but chose to flop back on top of the sheets. Then all of a sudden I felt something on my foot, and my knee-jerk reaction was to 'flick' my foot.

The strange thing was is that I heard a sound following the twitch. This indicates something that is not a person, and something that is not a flying insect.

First thought as I woke up: "What the hell is that". I've had similar thoughts waking up to fire-alarms, telephones, screaming neighbours, barking dogs, and after a week with a head full of acid and a 24 of Molsons. So things were unusual, but not unusually unusual.

Second thought: Cockroaches.
Third thought: Shit.
Forth thought: Where'd that bugger go?

I quickly saw a 2 inch creature crawl under my dirty socks.

Now as luck would have it, I keep all my laundry in a box at the foot of my bed. Why? Well I used to have a laundry bag, but that is another story....

So I started pulling clothes out of the box. It was mostly empty since I had just done laundry the night before.

As I see the critter scurry again, I think to myself. That is a pretty nice sized cock-ey-roach. I mean, I saw quite a few in Thailand. They get to be a fair size, but this was a whopper.

As I carefully removed more clothes, I soon discovered that it wasn't a cock-roach at all, but a small door mouse.

BASTARDS!

He was stuck in the box, but he could almost jump over the side of it.

I quickly got a glass jar from the kitchen and put it over him. This he did not like as he started to squeak.

I then got a piece of paper and covered the glass jar and punched some holes in it so he could breath. I wanted to temporarily preserve the creature so that I could back-up my crazy story.

When my room-mate arrived home. I showed him the rodent in the glass jar and then he said to me. "What was that"?, as he pointed behind the couch.

I thought he was shitting me until I saw it for myself, an identical twin of mouse number one.

10 minutes later, we had him in the same box that his brother was earlier in.

We put them both in the box for some photo ops and a planned release outside. The one that had been in a jar for about 8 hours was not looking so hot, but his recently caught brother was making every attempt to jump out of the box.

Both of us went to investigate where the intruders were coming from. About 30 seconds later I got the shout from down the hall. "We seemed to have lost a mouse".

"Oh shit.", I gasped.

A thorough search yielded no trace.

As the little mouse who had been sitting in the jar all day wasn't looking like he could tackle the outside all by himself, we decided it was time to do the humane thing: -Burial at sea-

As I tipped the box, with the most English accent possible my room-mate said "Au revoir" as he simultaneously hit the flush mechanism.

One down, at least one to go.

Traps freshly bated w/ P.B.

Pics on-line soon. (Rick if you read this, put 'em up and I'll post a link)

-Dr. J

So I got invited to see a Benson and Hedges "Gold Club Series" concert with one of my friends "Uncle Joel". It was really good. John Digweed is an amazing DJ.

I got to meet him after the show and Joel got someone to take a picture of us. He was a little under the weather aparently, but you could really tell by the look of the dance-floor.

The crowd kept chanting. "one more", "one more".

Brilliant.

Too bad it was on a Tuesday night. :( It made for some good laughs. Definitely a veritable "who's who" of the Vancouver DJ/club scene. Kevin Shu, Scott A., Scott V, Mr Gessler, Cory. Funny to see these guys at a show with someone who is so "big-name".

Anywho. Busted it up on the dance-floor for about 2 hours. Had a few drinks and a few cigarettes. Generally a good time. About time to hit the sack though.

-Dr. J

So here I am listening to the clicking of my keystrokes and whirring of the hard-drive and nearby fans.

Mildly excited about my day tomorrow in which the Government want to ensure that I am not defrauding the EI system and that I am actively looking for a job. I am looking quite hard. Trying not to be too picky.

I am also going to see John Digweed tomorrow night. A buddy of mine won a pair of VIP tickets and asked me to go with him. How awesome is that?

I have such great pals.

Talk to you soon.

-dr. J

^M

Well I went to Surrey on Sunday. Man that was quite a trip. Met some interesting people on the bus including an obvious 'raver' wearing a big Yellow 'Fubu' hoody and massive red bagy pants. Eyes as big as golf-balls, but their was obvious effort involved in keeping the lids propped open.

All in all, quite a blast.

Called in my EI today, payed some bills. And watched one of the stupidest things ever produced on the web: Bum-fight!. Of course this has approval of Howard Stern. Which doesn't say much about the morality of the individuals responsible.

At times it was humorous, but all in all kinda sad. I didn't feel bad for the "kids" fighting, but when you saw some of the things they did with Rofus. I really thought that they were abusing their wealth.

Got the .mpg if anyone is curious.

-Dr. J

So I went to a Comp-sci grad party last night. There was lots of drumming and singing and guitar playing and wine consumption. Theme: "No Electricity" which when you think about it is kinda weird for C.S. types... I mean don't get me wrong, I can live without electricity and all. (I did for 3 1/2 weeks during the great "Ice-Storm" of '98), but as a Computer "NERD", electricity is part of my day to day life. I do suppose I take it for granted on occaison. (Case and point, Internet story of last night0

I was supposed to have people over for dinner and then go to a different party, but they all bailed on dinner so I gave up on going to a 'rave' to visit other friends, who would have been jacked up to the nines both physically (as the theme was James Bond) and mentally on stimulants.

Sorry gang, but two weeks in a row is all my body can take before I start turning into an animal like one of you. I just can't have that. My respect to those that can, but It isn't like that for me.

I hope you all had a wonderful time, get to talk off the strangers ear next to you, become their best friend and never want to call them back all in the span of 6 hours. It is a short lived trip, but I hope you make the best of it.

Take the blue pill.

-Dr. J

So there I was stuck w/out my high-bandwidth connection for over 14 hours as I patiently listened to telephone updates helplessly on the other end of a cordless phone. Starting at 22:00H, the gracious "System Administrator" would post by-hourly updates on the hotline. at 04:00H, my body gave up. Requiring only a few bytes of bandwidth to keep it alive: my brain fell unconcious into a primordeal mass of neurons.

I was woken abrubtly at 10:00H. I thought it was the aforementioned xDSL system administrator informing me that the bits were once again marching triumphantly down the pipe. It was only my room-mates mother reminding us to vote. (Which I entirely forgot to do. I do blame this directly on the failure of the electrons travelling toward me so that I could research the candidates).

I also managed to get out of the house today. The first time in quite a few days. I've been feeling rather fragile as I'm sure my room-mate can attest to. :) I went to return a $188 HDD that was only needed in case of emergency. The 15Gig laptop drive was returned successfully for a mere $141. I had to face a 25% restocking fee. (OUCH)

Not to mention I missed a bus on the way back by about 15minutes. I could no longer 're-use' my transfer and had to spend an additional $2.00 to get home. My-my... money travels so quickly here.

Ahh, just keep smiling (and the world will smile back i tell myself). Although I still had to kick myself for getting out of bed today at all. I had a strange suspicion it would be "one of those days".

Good to know that my instincts are still functioning.

I hope you all had a much better day!

-Dr. J

I just thought of the greatest idea of what I could use my log for....
I could log my logs. :)

Indeed, If I can get my hands on a digital camera, I will take pics of all my bowel movements. Wouldn't that be exciting. I could get close-ups so you see if I've eaten corn in the last 12-24 hours.

I then realized that I would be competing against one of my favourite sites: poopie

Rick, get me your cam... I feel a whopper coming on! I'll try and hold it until you get home.

-Dr. J

Here we are and it seems that I've successfully slept through another day. Today waking up at ( a not quite record breaking) 14:30 H. Considering I went to bed at 04:30, that's not too bad. :)

Immediately ate some cereal to eliminate the foul 'mung' taste in my mouth and then went to eat some Soup @ soupspoons. Waitress was a little suprised that I was eating breaky @ 15:30 ...but hey, it is "happy hour" so I got 20% off. I should go back tom.

Now, I must get some code understood. Perhaps some written and some dinner made. (heh)

Computer is more stable now, but it did crash in the wee hours last night. Going to upgrade the kernel. Also I have been promised an interview at the company I have been hounding for the last 5 weeks. We'll see how much more hounding it takes before they grant me my request.

-Dr J.

So after a weekend of extreme fun. I somehow came to the realization late Tuesday night, that not only had I been ignoring my log, but that I had such a good time that I forgot what I did on Saturday night. Holey Crap!

Well it came to me admidst a hellish s/w install involving a lot of MS products. I had dinner at Beth's house. Additionally I was supposed to go to a house party that I thought was on Friday. (but it was Saturday)... oops.

Well now that the debauchery is over, time for some work. Currenly looking for work, and may have an interview with my company of choice. Hooray!

Now on with the sperm. Yes. An excellent site for all your needs:

SEMEN

-Dr. J

So here I am once again 'arm-wrestling' with my linux. ARG!
I've narrowed my "constant" crashes down to the following (no particular order):

1) Gnome (it sucks...don't ask why I'm using it... back to enlightenment i go)
2) BIOS issues. Gonna upgrade tomorrow to the latest and greatest version.
2) Driver problems. Working on getting this resolved. Resources on the .NET are NOT helping.
May be related to above.
4) Bad RAM. I have another stick around here somewhere. Might have to do with the DVD-ROM
resting directly on the RAM. :)
5) Toasted CPU. All my "heat-sink" experiments might have taken their toll.

Shat...

Ok. Log is set up. Colours are neat and the way I like it.
Went to the G'N'R show tonight, except they didn't turn up or some shit, so no show!
Some peeps broke some shit. Got some pics, post 'em later.

-Dr. J

Slowly getting things set up on my log site. Just a few more tweaks and things should look as I like.
Then I can get on some serious story telling involving my last weekend. Mmmm Whip-its.

-Dr. J

What the hell is going on here?
First post. (testing)