Posts from June 2007

Here I am using a Cisco IP phone but not the iPhone at 6:00PM on Friday, June 29th when really I should be getting my hands on my new shiny iPhone that I am not going to get. @jim we should have gone just for the hype.



My tooth hurts so much. I definitely need to go to the dentist now. It has a giant hole in it. I guess I probably eat too much candy.

Had a meeting with Algonquin Studios about purchasing licenses for surebert from Roswell to use in their products. I am very confused how it will all pan out because I developed a ton of it before working at Roswell back into 2004. I hope to at least land some sort of percentage of the profits.

Saw one of my former students, Mike Spencer who works there.

@fellyconnelly when do you arrive and how do you say your username? God I love this laptop now. It was playing second life, recording this video, running windows and mac, and the net all at the same time.


I went back into secondlife. I still have a lot of money there. If I cashed it in for American Dollars it would be worth about $450. Thats brings me to over $1000 I would have made from that game. I am so torn between selling the land and money for an iPhone or not.

It is so crazy to be able to run windows and OS X simultaneously. Notice the start menu and the dock.



I love the macbook although it gets so hot you could fry an eggs on it. Like not just warm, but like never could go on the lap hot. Ironically, I am typing this form the vaio using Suse 10.2 because it is way ore portable and doesn't burn me. The mactop however is great as a desktop replacement.

I am sure having 4GB of RAM makes this way smoother than it would be otherwise. It all runs at totally native speed with shared clipboard, muse, windowing environment, etc.

So as for the iPhone. I am thinking about getting it because it would be cheaper for us to have a family plan with AT&T due to my union discount and then my old phones could work too. The real deal breaker is the speed and coverage. It is definitely a step backwards for me in terms of connectivity.

This is what I am afraid of:

So if you're used to broadband, you won't be using the iPhone for tethering to a laptop, or traditional web surfing, but it will be fine for email and WAP sites via EDGE.

So I am now officially part of the mac club again and here are the picture to prove it. Now all I need is to get my camera back and my blog will shine sparkly new.


I spent all of today ironing out some bugs and refactoring code at work to fit some old apps into the new surebert framework. Today we decided on some coding style issues. I was really frustrated at the end of debugging today because it turned out that the bugs were based on a data issue on a database not owned by me.

It is weird to go to see a giant gay pride festival in a futuristic city where most gay rights issues have been resolved. There was lots of crazy stuff to see and lots of tasty food.

That being said, I hate big cities. We almost killed each other on Saturday night as we were all so frustrated with crowds and what to do, etc. It is unreal crowded and overpopulated in Toronto. I could never live like that. The whole time I kept asking myself what would make it worth it to live in such a polluted, overpopulated place with personal space invading chinese women.

I can't believe how okay asian woman were with touching and pushing me to try and get around/ in front of me. I am tall and you can't see, I don't fucking care - I waited two hours for this spot, and I really don't want you to touch me. They would just nudge and push and elbow and wiggle. One woman just kept putting her elbow in my side and pushing constantly so she could cut me and get upfront.

Apparently, the chinese have a hard time understanding lines.

To establish the norm of waiting in line in public places, the Beijing government annunced on Thursday that the 11th day of every month will be the official "wait-in-line day."

So back to the women, I just held my ground but eventually I was so sick of it I decided to up the battle. I ended up just turning towards woman so that in order to push wiggle around me, she would have to deal with my penis being all up on her - she was at about that height where it should have just freaked her the hell out. I thought, "This will definately stop her"

Nothing made this woman stop.

Finally, I was so sick of being pushed around that I elbowed her back in the side of the head and left the front row of watching the parade. It was mean but satisfying.

Living - They have like 7,000 of those new glass sky palaces they are trying to build all over Buffalo, it sees like everyone must live in a highrise.

Not having a camera with me was the most painful experience. I saw so much blogworthy stuff but none of it got recorded ;(

A land with most gay rights issues solved -

The focus of Gay Pride politics in Ontario now seems to be on transgender and adoptive rights.

Who am I to say what is acceptable or not but I am not in favor of tax payers paying for gender modification surgery. Then again I am not Canadian and we don't have socialized medicine.

Someone is going to blast me for this but it seems so unnecessary and that people should just learn to comfortable being what they are.

On one hand we, as gays, we fight so hard to get people to believe we should be able to be the way we are because we were born that way, but then transgendered people make being born a certain way a disposable, correctable situation.

Commercialism
I found this pic on Flickr when searching unde the tag "Toronto Pride 2007" I wanted to take a pic of it myself but I had no camera.



There was tons of commercial marketing. Look at how all the motorola boys looks the same. They are marketing the motorola red phone. They gave out tattoos so that other people could tattoo themselves with the motorola logo. At first I thought, who would do that, but a lot people did it. I a constantly amazed at people willingness to make themselves into advertising surfaces at no charge.

I went out to thursday in the Square with @enknot and megan and ended up with @mike , @libertad and @amanda at mcmonkees. They have three for one drinks and black lights which leads to obvious markings on clothing, ;)

I forgot what straight bars are like and that there is actally a lively bar scene in Buffalo.

First, does anyone know the Buffalonian who is competing on "So You Think You Can Dance?" His name is Neil Haskell and his bio is here

We were curious to see just how small town Buffalo is.

I am not a patient person. Between waiting to get a camera back so I can resume blogging and waiting for the new computer I am going crazy.

Getting a new computer has been a constant theme since april for me. It all started with the tax returns that never made it as a laptop in lieu of house repair projects. Now, it's finally worked and there is a laptop on it way out but exactly two weeks after placing my order, the macbook still hasn't even shipped according to the apple site.

Here is what it says today, June 20th, 2007.


Then when it arrives, IT gets it for a while to "set it up." I seriously am ready to die in anticipation of my life as a born again mac user?!

So to pass the time I am going to quit programming at night until I have a new computer and instead work more on the house. I guess it has it benefits. Last night I was able to set up a large tool closet until I get my workroom in the garage set up. I put one of at least every major tool in a small toolbox too, so that I can "hopefully" always find a screwdriver, adjustable wrench, hammer, etc. Tomorrow, I am going to begin stripping wallpaper.

I also cleaned out the garage. Once it is all clean I can begin the major task of painting the house and re-roofing the garage. By then the laptop should arrive and i will not care about the house anymore, lol.

First of all, does anyone need a working condition dorm refrigerator.

I was sad to see @lilho go. Now when I am home alone, I am really home alone. However, while redoing some electrical wiring in the wall I was looking for some tools that led me to search around the house and see what a junk yard our house has become.

She seriously hid shit everywhere and it's not like she didn't have two months to get rid of it. I think I am done having people live with us and I am definitely done dealing with other people stuff. Anyone need a sony trinitron CRT monitor, computer or 40 tampons.

I am so tired of other people junk. I mean I have a hard enough time dealing with our junk let alone all the new excess trash. We have so much junk still from the guy that lived here before. If you remember what a 2 tonne disaster that was @paul #32719 and @paul #32764

Here is what Nameless Bitch's stuff minus the furniture


and here is some of what @lilho left














These are a culmination of all the girls magazines!

Last week we celebrated my father's and uncle's birthday. We ate at Cameo's on Niagara Falls blvd. The appetizers and clams were good but the food itself was too greasy, even for me.





Then we celebrated father's day on Sunday with brunch at my mothers. It was one of her usual extravaganzas but my camera is in the repair shop. We had omlettes, leg of lamb and procuitto wrapped salmon. It was so yumy.

The things that shape your life. I guess maybe this is what led to me becoming a computer dork. These entries are so funny.

Paul Visco May 18, 1987 (10 years old)

I would like to be Frank Balestrieri because he is very very good at sports. I would also like to be him because then people would let me play sports like basketball, hockey, kickball, baseball and catch.

That day I would start a baseball game with some 5th graders and some other kids. That would be the first time I played baseball with someone else!

That day I would learn to play baseball and other games. I would also learn what play a sport wih someone would be like.

I guess I was always an Apple fanboy, why am I such a poser pretending I wasn't. I feel like the same reoccurring themese have happened throughout my life but I thought most of them were new now.

Paul Visco January 26th, 1987
If I had $1000 I would buy an Apply II GS. The biggest apple computer. I would buy a logo disk and a basic disk first. ThenI would buy a 90" monitor. Then I would buy a diskdrive and a mouse. Then I could show all the classes the Turtle in the Auditorium.

Money is not a problem. I can always decide what to buy. I just never have enough money. That drives me nuts.

I take back anything bad I said about Kenmore, they have public facilities!

Paul Visco November 18th, 1987
Kenmore - Kenmore is a good place to live. There are many schools nearby. They have parks. The parks have been remodeled, they have a fitness area, a basketball court and a playground area. They also have a youth center. This winter they will have an iceskating rink. In the sumer they have two pools, one for ages 1-6 and one for 7-adult.

There are many types of restaurants. They have public facilities! They have a library. They have basketball, hockey and soccer teams, not forgetting baseball and swimming. They also have a cubscout and boyscout group which does a lot of things. There are a lot of children. But don't take my word for it, come look for yourself.

Paul Visco March 3rd, 1987 - Poem
Computers beeping,
Drawing with logo
Excellent teaching tool
They can do anything

Paul Visco 1987

Forests Are More Than Trees

Forests for nature -
The life of the wild,
The beautiful kingdom of deer.
The beavers chop so very near.
I wish I could see him this year.

Forests for hunters...
The death of the wild...
The hungry kingdom of humans...
The beaver skin so fancy...
the deer skin so beautiful...
Why do we suffer the wild?

Random snippet

Now Jenelle is my best friend also. Her brother is weird and has a small computer!

Considering my rant above about wanting the biggest computer, and the fact that it is 1987 - I think that saying he has a small computer is a sort of insult. If only I knew how cool small computers would be in the future.