Today is my last day with Dell. I have been going around the floors and saying farewell to all of those who have been with me in the last year. It’s a very bittersweet time as I leave behind some amazing people to take a risk with my career.

Look to this section for photo updates of the last year, and including pictures I’ve taken in the last week.

Update: 10/27 – I have been feeling pretty ill today. With very little energy and losing my voice in the process I haven’t had a chance to get the pictures online but before I head into the doctors tomorrow I will ensure it gets up and all that jazz. Thanks again to everyone at Dell who is reading this, it was a pleasure.

Update: 10/28 – Here we go, I have uploaded a few photos to Flickr – check it out here.

Games, games, games!

We all have our favorites bookmarked online but I wanted to share with you some of my favorites. First, let’s get the basics out of the way. Kitten Cannon is one of the greatest games ever made. The SPCA concern aside, it’s fun and has provided me hours of enjoyment. Unfortunately the new high score to beat from Scott is 4,401; so everytime I play it now I’m going for second place.

A new one I was just turned on to was Tanks. A new take on an old classic. Although once you start losing it’s difficult to dig yourself out of that hole. Both of those are found on www.addictinggames.com, as well as many other time wasters. I leave the best for last though.

DNA Trials is the one game I keep on coming back to. Back in NAIT I played this game exclusively. We started in September and even in April we were still playing it, much to the surprise of others in the lab. It comes off difficult at first but once you get the physics figured out you can do front/back flips while navigating the course. I still have problems on some levels so the challenge remains. Fortunately for you all, I grabbed the directory from where this game was stored and have it hosted on seagurs. Click here to begin the fun!

There are a lot of other games out there, but I’m a vanilla kind of guy when it comes to my games.

Well, truth be told I have been sort of busy the last few days and in turn the Internet got neglected. I am on day eleven of twelve straight and am looking forward to having a few days off. I think I will finally finish Half-Life 2 and/or Republic Commando. Being a computer guy you have hook ups and one of those generous connections with Quake 4 and FEAR coming my way, so I think I will be able to enjoy myself on my impromptu vacation.

I put in my letter of resignation with Dell yesterday, so in six months time if you pass me on the street begging for change, you will know what lead up to that moment. Since I don’t have a good idea floating around I will just share a hodge podge of thoughts.

Halloween is coming up next week. Unfortunately I won’t be dressing up this year, but I did have a chance to reflect on past costumes. In the last few years I have gone as Mustard (Jenna was Ketchup) and a Jedi Knight. From “way back when” I was a hockey player, burn victim (Mother was a casualty simulation make up artists so I looked great), Ghostbuster and I think in Junior High I dressed up in drag. Oh youth, it can be so confusing.

A week back I received a new credit card in the mail. Never one to turn down credit I was pleased, but a little suspicious because I didn’t order a new card. I delayed activating it until I received another letter in the mail stating that my previous number may have been compromised so this was sent to keep the identity thief’s off my back for a few more months. Activating it wasn’t a big deal, but switching numbers with PayPal sucked.

After they charged me $3CDN, yes it’s not a lot, but they are charging me to continue service with them, I received multiple emails right away saying my “service had been cancelled” because I deleted my first credit card number. One of those emails was for my web service, and thinking I was going to lose my connection with the e-children I wrote a quick email and waited for a response. A day later, still nothing. And when I go to make this post, the host is down! Hopefully, since you are reading this, everything sorted itself out.

Oh yeah, here is something. Piracy doesn’t pay! I was attempting to activate Norton Internet Security 2005 yesterday on Dad’s machine, no worries, I know how this is done, and I’m an old pro at this. Once I found the proper information Dad’s machine was up and running but wherever I had downloaded this file from it had crippled my machine with Spyware. I attempted to do an image restore with Ghost, and it couldn’t find the HDD. Apparently the Maxtor 250GB doesn’t appear in BIOS, but shows up in Windows. So because I can’t do a quick clean sweep I attempted to use SpyBot, MS Anti-Spyware and AdAware to cleanse my machine. After multiple searches on each one everything they remove, keeps on coming back. So in an attempt to help Dad’s machine be virus free, mine gets beat down because of it.

Don’t cry for me Argentina and stay strong e-children.

This past week something magical happened in Millet. Anyone who has seen our garage knows that my Dad never throws anything out. There are walls in there I haven’t seen since I was a youngin’, and every few years another foot of junk grows and decreases our storage space a little bit more. There have been times a wall became visible, but it was quickly occupied by the latest garage sale find or highway pickup.

The house is not as bad, as the policy of “If we can’t see it, it doesn’t exist” comes into play. The four-level split house has a hierarchy of organization. The upper floors are clean but the further you go down, the worse it gets. When something reaches the basement it is destined to be there forever. Today though, an appliance older than me was moved outside.

We have had this fridge in the basement for the last ten years. Dad wasn’t sure where it came from, but it was probably from one of our neighbors. What are we going to do with this old dishwasher? Give it to the Gursky’s, they will take anything! It was a great place to store various items, but has recently become a dying ground. I’m not sure the exact contents of the fridge, but Dad was paying several bucks a month to ensure what was growing in the fridge didn’t multiply under the right temperatures.

I wish I was lying on this next statement, but the last time anything went into or out of the fridge was over a year ago. I made the mistake of opening it up a few times last year and quickly shut the door and stayed clear of the fridge. I didn’t address it’s presence and it didn’t unleash whatever hell kitten was growing in there. This was the agreement.

Dad had the pleasure of cleaning the contents of the fridge on Thursday and I am glad I wasn’t there because no one should share in that experience. With the fridge defrosted and sludge oozing out of the beasts belly we relocated it outside and one step closer to the dump. I have told myself that whatever happened I would make sure I had a spotless garage and a clean house, today I have made a vow to tend to appliances or else they may attack. I will leave you all with a snippet of a fitting Weird Al Yankovic song:

There’s something weird in the fridge today.

I don’t know what it is.
Food I can’t recognize
My roommate won’t throw a thing away.
I guess it’s probably his.
It looks like it’s alive
And living in the fridge

There’s something gross in the fridge today.
It’s green and growing hair.
It’s been there since July
If you can name the object in that baggie over there
Than mister you’re a better man than I

…I wrote five paragraphs about a fridge. This is a friggin’ fridge people and I am writing a novel about it…I hope you are just as disturbed by this as I am.

Not sure I can consider today a marathon, but it is finally Friday so that has to count for something. I guess I am on day seven of twelve in a row, so halfway there and will have a day off soon enough (my birthday and three concerts). I was able to sleep for, get this, ten hours last night. And I plan on doing the same again tonight when I return from Statusfirm. There was no picture this morning, didn’t think it would be fair since I was able to get sleep and didn’t have to rush out of bed. With the last three pictures all online you can see the progression of joy in my face when the alarm went off.

In other news, I got rid of the Validate XHTML and CSS link under Meta to the right. It may have been an IE issue not displaying them, but I thought it for the best to remove completely. When I did validate both the XHTML and CSS there were a few errors on my list items and centering of graphics, so made the choice easier to clean up that sidebar.

This is the home stretch. I have two full days with Statusfirm, and tonight I can sleep in! Not sure how much sleep I will get as I have to be back here for 8AM again tomorrow, but if I get to bed early enough I should be able to pull 8-9 hours of sleep.

Not really much to report, I have been productive throughout the day but with just over an hour left I’m starting to feel the burn. Being on the west end I’m concerned about the traffic volume, so I may just take 170th street all the way south and see where it takes me. Don’t worry, if I pass Ponoka or Rimby I will turn around.

Thanks to the powers of Google Map and Mapquest I didn’t take 170th Street south, Mapquest said it would be a 66 minute drive whereas doing Whitemud/Hwy2 was only 50. And Mapquest was right, it took me 50 minutes exactly to get home.

Running Total (Four Days):
Sleep: 21 hours
Tim Hortons: 3 coffees, 1 Iced Cap

I took another picture this morning, but won’t have a chance to upload it until later. It’s probably for the best because I wasn’t looking too good.

I am into the final stretch now. Today is my last day at Dell and then I have Thursday and Friday at Statusfirm, and then back at Dell for the weekend. I am leaning towards staying with Statusfirm so at Dell today I will have to do more research and plan my exit. My birthday is coming up next week so might be a good gift to me, right? I will continue to update more throughout the day, as I have fifteen hours left of work.

I have been staying at Jenna’s for this marathon, and while the pillows may not be up to fluffy standards, I would take a cardboard box for a pillow because I’m so tired when I get there. The drive to her place saves me about 45 minutes of driving each day so that is definitely helping me through this.

With three hours left in my day I feel pretty good, almost like I can make it through. My body took a beating on the first day but seems to have adjusted, or am setting myself up for a No Video/No Post error in a few days. Okay, that was a poorly placed computer joke, and tomorrow I may not even find that amusing.

Running Total (Three Days):
Sleep: 15 1/2 hours
Tim Hortons: 3 coffees, 1 Iced Cap

Looking at this picture pains me. No one looks good in the morning, but I think it is summed up nicely in this shot. And this was the better picture of the two I took”