From the "Infrequent Blogging" Dept.
It's sunny, no humidity--a nice day. It's a very comfortable 27�C.
I don't want to work...I don't think anybody in the office want's to work.
Lots of stuff has happened over the past two-plus weeks that I since wrote in my log. My work at Critical Path has gotten much more intense (which is why I haven't written), the ASB#2 video has been filmed (thanks for Mendel and Dave flying from Tokyo and Milwalkee for the shoot, respectively), and Eric and Aneil came back from Asia with amazing stories and pictures.
My heart goes out to Arthur and Angela's father. He suffered his second heart attack, but fortunately all indications are that it was small, and that his high fitness-level (he was playing tennis at the time) will lead to a quick and full recovery. Sometimes when you do everything right, something bad still happens.
Jen and I are still good. Jen, Florence, Cris, and Kevin went to Boston for the long weekend. To be honest, I wasn't that hyped on going. Several reasons really:
I worked at home last Wednesday. I had a tough time trying to explain to my father that I could use the extra 2 hours of time working, rather than commuting from Markham to TO and back. I went for a run down the Rouge Valley with my Brother and Eric. The run really kicked-my-ass. Sore joints...had to stop at the 25 minute mark, and start walking-running intervals for the rest of the leg. Sorry, Eric, i couldn't give you something more competitive.
Well, all the frequent running, and regular work outs...I've lost 3 pounds.
I still have to do more Abdominal work though. Got to get rid of the roll of fat.
I was reading a report that I wrote for Critical Path last year (it's the template of the reports that I'm using now). Wow. I'm the type of person that tends to dismiss the stuff that I had written in the past...but I have to admit, the report was solid. Very solid.
Have you ever written something back in high school or university that you thought was great, but when you read it now, you shudder at how infantile it sounds? That happens to me all the time.
This weekend is basically work, work, work, and more work. I'm going out with Clement, Leo, Ann, and John to On the Curve for dinner and drinks. After that, I'm skeptical that I'll be able to go fishing on Sunday or up to Jamie's cottage as I had initially planned.
Life is like that sometimes. It sucks, so I'll get over it now.
There. I'm over it. :-D
Cheers guys. I hope all of your weekends will be more eventful than mine.
Back to work.
-T
From the "How could we of known" Dept.
So I went to the "Barenaked Circus" Concert at the Molson Amphitheatre with Jen, Natasha, Cris, Mae, Jamie, Karim and Sarah.
The tickets said 4pm, so we arrived at the gates at 3:10pm, lined up and went in.
The concert did start at 4pm, but it wasn't the Barenaked Ladies. We were like, okay, cool, it's just the opening act.
The band ended playing a full 40-minute set.
Three bands after the first act, at 9:30pm, the Barenaked Ladies finally played. The concert ended at 11:00pm.
Okay, I was disappointed. Jen and I both had work to do, and we had expected the concert to end at around 6:30p. Jen was suppose to go into work. I wanted to finish off stuff for next week.
That didn't happen.
Natasha missed her bus back to Guelph.
Even thought BNL gave a great show, it was tainted by my overall dissatisfaction of the four mediocre bands that played.
To add insult to injury, I still didn't have a chance to go running, I had to eat McDonald's for Dinner, and Natasha lost the clothes that she had purchased at the Eaton's Centre.
Man, I'm trying to get healthy but things like this suck.
Cheers,
Tai
From the "I am 2 times more cool now" Dept.
I woke up today and packed my clothes up because I was to spend the night at Jen's House today. We also promised that we'd go running tonight too. So I packed my shooes and stuff.
Today i decided to wear a thumb ring and bowling shoes--instant cool factor.
Shannon was very distraught to hear that I didn't know about the change in venues last night. I'm like, "Uh, Shannon, I can't check email without an Internet connection. Next time call, please."
Looks like wearing a thumb ring and red bowling shoes makes me more cool but less of a nice guy. Hmmm.
From the "If I'm so amazing, why don't you hire me?" Dept
So Mike came in this morning. He thanked me for the install disks that helped rebuild his computer. I said, "No problem Mike, just think of all the wonderful stuff that I could do if I was here full-time!"
Mike laughed, but I decided not to joke around about my employment anymore. That's just bad taste, and CP has done a lot of for me already.
Ironically, Mike made a similar joke a long the same lines in the afternoon. I told Mike that we shouldn't joke about that....
From the "Honest Conversation" Dept.
I had a really great conversation with Sasa. He's a developer at CP. He has a real inquiring mind...which can be annoying because he questions everything. Anyway we had a great conversation about What we think about Design, how I fit in on the scale of things and where I think Design in New Media is heading.
My conclusion:
Good conversation, I felt spoke eloquently--I guess that's what happens when your speak honestly.
Bier Market
Left work to go to the Bier Market--a tap house with over a hundred different types of beer. The last time I was there, was 3rd-year University. Saw Dan, Florence, Susana, Cris, Le, Carolyn. Good fun--until the waitress spilled beer all over Flow and Sue. At least we got a free round of drinks...unfortunately there isn't a drink called a "Virgin Martini". If there was, I suppose it would be water.
We waited for Jen for a long time. She didn't get there until about 10:30p. So I didn't go running today. We all had dinner at Marche.
It sucks that I didn't have a chance to run. I was really looking forward to it.
Cheers,
-T
From the "Thought you might need this" Dept
So I woke up this morning and said, you know what, Mike might need my install disks and restore disks for OS 10.1. So I pulled out my box for my iBook and through it into my back pack.
In the morning I gave them to Mike, who still was trying to fix his laptop. That scored major points.
Blaine asked me to borrow my disks. I said no problem man, "Share the wealth."
Shannon set up a dinner at Kalendar Restaurant for a whole bunch of CP people. She invited me, and I said i was going to be late because of the seminar I was going to, but I said I'd be there by 8:00 pm with Jen.
From the "This speaker is way too happy" Dept.
I went to the Apple Driven by Design Seminar today. It was okay. The speaker was a little too happy, I thought. The crowd there was a little too easy to please--they'd clap at anything:
Speaker: I love OS 10.1. It's so easy to use. Look at the bouncy icons at the dock
Crowd: [Clap, Clap, Clap]
Overall, the Adobe presentation was awesome. Lots of integration between products. All the products recognize native file formats (.psd, .ai, etc.), so you don't have to export your files into EPS or jpegs/gifs. Just insert as an AI file, and PSD file. When you publish, it publishes it in the right format. One advantage of this is that editing and resizing images is much quicker.
InDesign supports transparency, dropshadows, and because it recognizes .ai and .psd, you no longer need clipping masks or slices. Absolutely awesome. Amazing text handling and table management features. I was very impressed by the Adobe presentation.
My criticisms include:
Over all I was impressed.
From the "I can't believe you ditched me" Dept.
So I leave the Apple Driven by Design Seminar at around 7:15p and I buy a book on PHP4.
I get to Kalendar just after 8:00pm.
No one is there.
I'm like, "Where are they? They didn't ditch me did they?"
I called, but no luck.
Jen came about 5 minutes later. We had a nice dinner at a restaurant called Langolino at 50c Clinton Street. It turns out, it was our 3 Year, 2 month anniversary, so it was nice to see her and have great conversation over fetuccini alfredo.
From the "iBook update Bomb and How I saved the Day" Dept.
Well, I kind of saved the day....read on.
Today Apple released a large OS update weighing in at 22 MBytes. It was suppose to offer a whole whizzbang set of functionality to the OS.
In particular: Quartz Anti-Aliasing of fonts---So Now I have smoothed fonts all away around.
I updated immediately as soon as I found out about the update. It went fine for me. Unfotunately for Mike, his update crashed his computer. It would no longer boot.
We had the other OS 10.1 gurus take a look at Mike's computer. No dice.
Coincidentally, I had brought in a stack of CDs containing software that I had acquired, and one of them was Tech Tools Pro--a disk repair utility. One run, and everything was OK, Mike could boot back in to OS 10.1.4 and do work.
Now this is the part that I thought was unwise. Mike tried to install the 10.1.5 update again. In fact, he tried doing it so many times, he ended up breaking his computer. Now, if this had happened to me, I would have never attempted to update my computer again...especially if it's the computer that I use to do work. Mike was just so focused on getting this update. He kept mentioning: "I don't have time for this shit." I even told him maybe he should ay off of this until he get's back to Calgary; he didn't listen. I thought it was weird. He wasted the entire day rebooting, using techtools, restoring his drive, and reinstalling the operating system.
I left the office with him still fiddling with his iBook.
From the "I am losing weight" Dept.
I admit it. I was gaining a massive amount of weight during the last 3 months of 2001. I'm not going to deny that. So I had Lunch with Laura (ex-girlfriend/best friend) today and she said I had lost weight. That's good. She said that I looked horrible the last time she saw me: Christmas of 2001.
Thanks Laura,
you Rock.
Right now I'm about 158 lbs. I'm trying to lose about 15-20 lbs of fat (running regularly, "resistance training", and eating "within reason").
From the "return of Mr. Michael Kurtz" Dept.
Well, my boss Michael Kurtz is visiting the office this week. That's good.
Mike is brilliant at what he does. He's an artist, an industrial designer, Human Factors specialist, programmer, and all around great guy. You don't meet too many people like that anymore--kind of a digital man for all seasons. He typifies the "dot.com" era in my eyes.
I'm glad to have worked with him.
Cheers,
Tai
From the "Holy Shit! I have to lose some weight" Dept.
Hi all,
Well last weekend I worked on the computer, did some house chores and the like. I wanted to go fishing, but alas, it was not to be. I suppose I will have to wait until bass season opens. :D
This upcoming Saturday I will be going to watch the Bare Naked Ladies Live at the Molson Amphitheatre with Jen, Natasha, Sarah and her boyfriend.
Hopefully I'll have time this weekend to see my chum Laura so I can wish her a happy birthday. She and I went to Europe together (with Cris and Jen).
Worked out today....that felt good. Went for a run with my brother...that felt, uh, well, it felt bad. My achilles tendon on each leg were acting up, and I felt crappy through most of the run.
My HR: 168 beats per minute ~85% maximum heart rate for a person my age. My time running: 16 minutes.
Eek. I know, horrible.
At least I'm brave enough to write it down.
I realise that respiration isn't a limiting factor, but damn yo-I felt bad.
So what happened? It's obvious that I had yet to reach steady-state.
Expanded explanation: When the body is forced to exercise, it overshoots the physical requirements needed to actually perform the work required. This overshoot (in respiration, heart rate, etc.) is really dramatic in people who have a low physical fitness (like me, I've been basically sedentary for the past 6 months). Thus, in the first five minutes, my respiration rate (the number of breaths I take each minute) and my heart rate jumped up to almost 80% max. This is why novice runners, or any low fitness person for that matter, can't do a cardiovascular work out over long periods of time, because the ramp up is so suddent, it makes them feel like shit. Once they get past that "hump" or "wall" (at about the 12-15 minute mark), their body begins to ramp down; respiration decreases, heart rate drops--they reach "steady-state". They get their "second wind" and can run longer.
Novice runners, who stick with it, and don't give up will find that they'll be running 45 minutes easily within a month. I trained for my first 10 km run in only 28 days back when I was 17.
Elite athletes' bodies do much the same, but the hump is much less pronounced, and they reach steady-state much sooner.
So what does this mean for me? Having run at an intermediate distance throughout highschool and 1st year university, I know that it's important to keep running and break that wall.
Besides, I have to get into shape for the "Albert Street Boys" Reunion.
There are of course strategies to cope with this, Interval training being one of them.
Tomorrow, I'll talk about sweating. Does sweating more = good or bad?
Cheers,
Tai