A None Titled Post

September 29th, 2006 Thomasso

**Note to self:** Never trust a women whom you’ve just had a “tiff” about a parking space with, and they want to help you with filing later in the day. There is most always an evil intent involved, sugar coated with revenge stuck somewhere in the plot. At least guys will just go out and slash your tires, or tell you that you are an A-Hole or something… then leave it.

The Bedford Landing Development in Fort Langley had a interesting development of its own yesterday. For those of you who are not in the know, Fort Langley is experiencing a housing boom with over a hundred homes getting built in what some would call “very prime real estate.” The sale is to start this weekend, but some folks figured that they would get a head-start in the line up by camping out a week in advance to get their choice of lots. I live just a block away from the office that is selling these homes, and we in the neighborhood were having to deal with the mess of parked cars, RVs and tents pitched along the sidewalks. I made a complaint after seeing one fellow urinating by my fence along the road, and the next day, on Tuesday, they had two “port-a-potties” set up. However, by Wednesday, everyone was cleared out because I think enough people complained about the nuisance, they were told to move out. But, according to CBC, of the 180 homes up for grabs, there were an estimated 5000 inquiries: people from as far away as Montreal wanting in on the action! Yikes—too rich for my pocket-book!

Posted in Bitching about work, General, Social Justice | 2 Comments »

What an Ugly Week So Far…

September 28th, 2006 Thomasso

I guess it’s about time that I posted something here: its now or never. The reason why it has being so hectic for me, getting stuff done, i.e., posing on the weblog, is that I have being swamped with network problems at work, lots of homework and a hard drive disaster on my home machine. First, at my work, management figured they caught the culprit who sabotaged the mainframe. Like I predicted, it was a disgruntled employee who was in deep pooh over being laid off after the seasonal slow-down period. She had worked during the summer, and was scheduled to come back in November when the work picks up again—she thought she was wrongly let go. Anyway, to make a long story short, she managed to corrupted several hundred files for the server, and then tried to delete several key record archives. Management is not saying as to what was lost or how much damage was done, only that they did call in the RCMP to investigate. I spent most of this week catching up from being down all of last week—hard to believe how much we need our computers! Yes, I was taking work home with me: on top of class homework! Then, to end it all off, my hard drive crapped out on me on Monday, just as I was getting ready to type out some important documents. I lost a lot of data. Yes, it was backed up, but organizing it is going to be a nightmare! Gasp!

Posted in Bitching about work, General | 2 Comments »

Are You Secured Via Your Network?

September 24th, 2006 Thomasso

I just went through the biggest up-grade in resent Thomasso history: I added more security! As we are always bomb-barded with hackers, scrip-kiddies, viruses, etc…, even those of us who don’t run Micro$oft need to keep a vigilant eye open. What is sad, however, is the amount of security I need now that I’m running a network from my home to my work, so now I have to deal with the threat of anyone, (especially fellow employees), hacking in. This threat has being around for quite some time, and it would figure that it would be the disgruntled employee who would go out and do such a thing. Although I’m running a UNIX platform at my home, my work is stuck with Micro$oft, something that is so insecure, even my niece could hack her way into the network there. Already I have notice that some of my share files have being corrupted, i.e., missing data, fonts changed, etc… I started writing my super sensitive documents with a UNIX Shell program, then put inside encrypted archive files, then emailed directly to my web-mail. At least my information is protected. The shitty part in all of this is, people paid money for this $tuff.

Posted in Bitching about work, General | 2 Comments »

An Ode to a Season

September 22nd, 2006 Thomasso

Bon Voage summer! Soon the fall will be upon us (at the time of writing), and all that was hot and dry will be gone. In just a couple of hours, at 9:02 pm savings time tonight, summer will end and fall will start, as the autumnal equinox divides the day and night exactly in half. It is weird that it did not happen on the 21st, but as clocks and mathematics have their way, nothing is exactly the same anyways. To celebrate it, I will watch the Sun set, and say goodbye to 12 hours of day and welcome 12 hours of night. Perhaps our good fortunes will stay with us and we can rob the autumn season of just a few more days of summer!

Posted in Astronomy, General | 5 Comments »

You Steal from One, You Steal from All

September 17th, 2006 Thomasso

Larceny: is the theft of personal property, without any right or regards to the owner, defrauding him or her of their goods. This act of stealing one’s personal property is punishable based on the monetary value of the item(s) in the state at which it was during the crime.

In our tight-nit community of Fort Langley, I live in a neighbourhood that seems diversified on the outside, but is quite organized from within. Our problem is one of trust and convenience. We are very lucky to have a propane filling station, located centrally, in which we can have our BBQ’s filled when they run out without the pain and hassle of driving into to Langley City for a fill. Everyone can enjoy the convenience of leaving their propane tank at the filling station, and returning later to pick them up at whatever time is good. For most residence, the location is so handy, that, nearly everyone that uses it can transport their propane tank by walking it to the filling station with a dolly/cart: how’s that for a deal!

However, this little slice of utopia is threaten by a sinister unrelenting person(s) who has, on a number of occasions, committed larceny by randomly taking the freshly filled propane tanks from the filling station. Although the cost of replacement and the service is not enough to tip anyone into bankruptcy, the inconvenience and cost are enough to hurt anyone at whatever wage bracket they are at: loosing something in this manner sucks! No one, including the owner, wants to shut the facility down, yet to change the way the operation is run would change the way this very convenient service is done. Without setting up surveillance cameras and electronic devices, the neighbourhood has started to take a proactive stance against the future larcenists. Eyes are watching you…

Posted in General, Social Justice | 5 Comments »

Ahh, the Week in General

September 16th, 2006 Thomasso

It was a fast passed week work wise. With classes started and the onset of shorter days and cooler temperatures, work is about the only constant I have right now. Change is good, as someone once told me, but when it goes beyond your comfort zone, it can be an uneasy feeling. However, from the last seven days, I did learn a thing or two about myself and life in general: religion and work don’t mix. Other than the differing views of creation versus Darwinism, the time spent at work was, well, not that exciting. My youngest sister and her family are now part of the “connected” social demographics, having just being hooked up via ADSL last week. I received her first email just the other day—I am so happy that we can email instead of phoning. The thought of living up in Prince Rupert without any connection to the World Wide Web would send me into tears. Rupert is not that great of a place in my opinion: it rains there a lot! Anyway, I figured I should at least throw up a post, however short and uneventful it maybe, just to let everyone know I’m still alive. Happy weekend everyone!

Posted in Bitching about work, General | Comments Off

The Golden Days of September

September 10th, 2006 Thomasso

Awh, the golden days of September are upon us… Oh, you are asking why I’m calling the beginning days of September the “golden days”? Well, have a quick look at the photo in this post, then think for a moment as to what could be so golden about September other than a reference to age, or the end of the month?

Now, once you have looked at the photo carefully, you will see the golden colours of the grass amongst the few green survivors. And let me say this: I did my part for the water reserves in the Lower Mainland and Vancouver! This is a multi-pronged benefit for me.

• I never needed to take the time to water it.
• No one would ever dare complain about it–especially the By-Law Officer.
• Golden is not such a bad colour.
• I can boast about water conservation!
• I now have a low maintenance yard!

Damn I feel good about myself right now! I hope it stays like this for the next month–right up until October!

Posted in General, Photographs, Social Justice | 3 Comments »

A Little Slap-Stick Comedy: for the Nuts

September 7th, 2006 Thomasso

An English professor of classic literature once told me that comedy is about thinking as is tragedy to emotion; however, I really wonder how the Greek Gods look upon this comedic rapture located by the link below. Special thanks to my Uncle from Ontario for sending me this one. It is so stupid and full of tragedy that seeing it almost landed my ass on floor from laughing so much. Please forgive my poor taste for this one, but this is truly a laughable video clip.

**Warning, may not be suitable for all viewers**

The Japanese sure have funny game shows with REAL incentives! http://www.glumbert.com/media/tonguetwister.html