No Business Naming Things

So, I’ve fallen back in love with Quartz composer. I got a bug to do something in flash awhile ago and decided to prototype it in Quartz. I got so wrapped up in the Quartz that I basically gave up on the idea of doing it in flash. Instead of something for the web I came up with a nice little screensaver which I am quite happy with. Today another graphic project dropped in my lap (a video piece to go with a stage act) and once again Quartz has come to the rescue, allowing me to throw something that looks quite good together in just a matter of hours.

It has it’s flaws but I’ll be damned if I don’t love this thing to death.

So, after ten days of Wii (at 35 minutes a day) fit I’ve lost… just shy of 5lbs. Not exactly dramatic results, but results I’m happy with all the same. My clothes definitely fit better and my lung capacity seems MUCH better. The games are still fun, but I do feel I’ll exhaust their charm eventually. Also, there is one feature that’s critically absent and that is the ability to pre-define a daily regime. I do the same thing every day and it’s annoying to have to go through the menu system to do it. These quibbles are sure to be addressed in the enevitable Wii Fit 2.

I had incredibly low expectations for this movie. The first one was pretty bad beyond the ZOMG Transformers!!1! aspect but I was still skeptical of the early reviews I had read. The criteria for a “good” summer action blockbuster is pretty minimal – could it really be as bad as the reviews say?

Oh yes. Yes it could. That movie was bloody TERRIBLE. I don’t even know where to begin. Take any given metric of success a “good” movie might express and this movie expresses the exact opposite. The plot is shite, the acting is shite, the graphics are shite (by virtue of the fact that they’re moving so fast the human eye can’t process them), the characters are shite (and sexist and racist and any number of other -ists you care to find) and it’s longer than every movie I’ve ever seen PUT TOGETHER. The whole thing is a debacle. The only point in that whole mess that snapped me out of the list of grievances I was crafting in my head was the appearance of Devastator and they even had to ruin that by giving him a set of f*#@ing testicles.  TESTICLES!

The reviews out there are cruel but the kicker is this – THEY AREN’T CRUEL ENOUGH.

After much wimbling we decided to pick up Wii Fit today.  As a first impression it’s pretty bloody awesome.   The board is responsive and the activities were a lot more intense than I was expecting – after half an hour I’ve managed to work up a really nice sweat.  I’m aiming to play for 30 minutes a day and see what kind of results I get – according to my pudgy, judgmental little avatar I’m Overweight – I’d like to show her a thing or two.

Incidentally, I’ve all but given up on the Wii.  As a console it’s a pretty dramatic disappointment.  Nintendo puts out some good first party titles (and have farmed out  some development of other assets to some competent folks) but in general the machine just doesn’t get any use.  I’ve always loved Nintendo, but they’re on the cusp of losing me here…

I don’t know what we’ve done to piss off the gods of customer service, by we’ve pissed them off good. It all started a month ago when we got a bill from Ottawa Hydro with our address and our neighbours name. Thinking nothing of it, we marked it return to sender. A week later, another one came. Instead of sending it back we instead brought it next door to him. He took it and said he was going to deal with it ASAP. True to his word he did and a short time later there was a knock at our door. There was, as they say, a royal cockup. Hydro was insisting that he had been paying the bill for our unit for at least 3 years and we, by default, were paying his. A quick trip to the meter verified that yes, our bill had his meter number and vice versa. We called hydro and confirmed this with them and were assured that someone would call us within the next 24 hours.

Three weeks later and we still hadn’t heard boo from them. Lexy called to find out the score but was told not to expect anything for another week or two.

Impatient, she called again today and was given the brush off. The guy insisted there was no problem and that our neighbors bill was consistently higher than ours and that we shouldn’t worry about it. Now, given that we’ve confirmed a meter mixup, this answer just doesn’t cut it. However, he refused to escalate it up the chain.

This caliber of service has been plaguing us lately. In addition to the hassle with Ottawa Hydro, lexy has been on the horn with Rogers to correct billing/service errors on a weekly basis for over a month now. The worst part is that each call is needed to address a screwup caused by the previous – they are only capable of making things worse.

Are we they only ones that experience this kind of service as a norm? I honestly don’t remember the last time I received decent customer service from any organization.

Both Lexy and myself were able to score time off last week and for the most part it was incredibly relaxing and lazy. I was really looking forward to returning to work today and in fact it was a good day. Unfortunately, both of us are now feeling under the weather, Lexy moreso than myself. The worst part is I would have been happy to be sick last week – sicktime is downtime for me and that’s all I craved last week. Ah well!

Is it just me, or has there been a glut of must-have musical releases lately? Metric, Death Cab, Nick Cave, The Airborn Toxic Event (this may be older), Bat For Lashes, Lily Allen and next week sees the new Silversun Pickups and Rancid should come soon after. I don’t recall the last time I bought this much music! It seems like every few days I’m getting something new from iTunes…

Life is a blur. I wake up, I go to work, I have my Tim Hortons, I come home just as the sun sets, I try and do necessary things like shower and eat, but that’s it. I honestly don’t think I’ve ever worked this hard in my life. My time on a mature project has made me forget how crazy things can be when you’re trying to get a project off the ground.

Thankfully I have some vacation time coming my way soon. Lexy and I will be visiting our favourite Montreal B&B at some point soon and we’re both really looking forward to it. Our honeymoon wasn’t that long ago but we both need some time off more than anything else.

Usually this is where I’d make some excuse about how I have nothing to talk about.  The fact is, I have a lot to talk about.  The reason I haven’t is time – I’ve been working a lot lately and when I’m not at the office I’ve been packing my free time with things other than dorking around on my computer.  In fact, my computer isn’t even easily accessible anym0re – I’ve left it in the bedroom for over a month now and honestly I haven’t really missed it.  I am sure I owe a lot of people a lot of email (unread count is somewhere around 250 now) but I just cant force myself to wade through it.  Maybe when work dies down a bit.  Expect to hear more on that in the next few months (after I’m allowed to talk about it. 

The bus strike is finally over. Huzzah. What brought it to an end? The threat of binding arbitration with the resultant agreement being… binding arbitration.

This city is ridiculous.