Runaway Future

Actually, sitting on the balcony by the harbour, but same difference. I found an open wireless connection around here and so enjoying my laptop in the fresh air. Poor sap doesn’t have anything set up for his router, even has the default username/password for administration. Regardless, free internet is free internet.

I’ve spent 8 hours worth of overtime so far at work over the course of yesterday and today setting up the new mail server. It’s an ISPConfig box for those in the know. Very interesting although there’s still something odd occuring with webmail. Regardless, Monday will be hectic and unkind as I transfer everyone over to the new system. It was kind of neat to be working on it alongside of a consultant. In my position, I rarely get to interact with other IT guys. Me against the world.

While watching blue lines traverse across screens, we had an interesting conversation that culminated in a nugget of advice worth holding onto. By the time you reach the age of thirty, you should be doing something you like doing, be well on your way and be with someone you want to be with. If not, it just gets a lot harder after that. I always get caught up in wanting everything in my life to figure itself out now, and feel like I’m running out of time to be and do what I want. At the end of the day, I’m just 21.

My horoscope from a recent paper: What a fun loving month ahead! Love and romance, plus professional sports, the arts and playful activities with children will delight you. Enjoy yourself!

On Thursday, I came across an ad in the Coast for the NetCorps, which is like that SWAP program but specifically targeted towards IT people. So in an instant, I had the whole thing figured out: I would join their eight month internship in Hungary that starts in November, I would get Chris hired at my job, I’d come back after eight months with a great experience on my back and move on up in the world. It seemed so perfect that I should do it, then I remembered I’m stuck in a lease until next August. Alas, alas, it’s still something to consider to keep in the back of my mind.

I have this odd desire to program and I’m desperately trying to clear as much of my To Do list as possible, so I can maybe, just maybe do some work on Playsport.

I also have this odd desire to take up running. Maybe once I beat this cold throughly. Plus, I need to rededicate myself towards the gym.

I’m not sure if I’m going to curl this year, and yet not curling doesn’t seem to be as big of a concern as I thought it would be. The membership fee for curling more than one night a week is $550 which is a significant amount of cash (I think I paid like $375 last year). I’m just not so sure what I get out of it is worth that much money. Some of that depends also on whether or not I get credentials for the Mooseheads. I would much rather do the journalism thing then the curling thing.

I feel like a bit of an idiot, because my Dad’s birthday is coming up the same weekend as the Stones/NHL exhibition games. Dad and I used to pretty consistently go to these NHL games together. This year, I was going with the Leafs’ game crowd: Derek, Heather and Murf to the Isles/Bruins match as well as the Leafs/Sens. Now Murf and Derek are going to the Stones during the Isles/Bruins game and so we found people for the other two tickets. If I was any sort of good son, I could have used one of those spare tickets as the birthday present for Dad. Thankfully, Mom made me feel like a bit less of a fool by reminding me that Halifax will be super-duper insane that weekend and Dad probably wouldn’t want to have dealt with the traffic/parking/etc. She might even be right.

I watched two interesting documentaries this week. First was one of Stupidity, that wasn’t really as funny as I thought it would have been. It was more about the paradox that you can’t define stupid without defining intelligence, but at the same time, it’s hard to come up with a definition of what one or the other is (or isn’t). It really all goes back to the fact that there are different types of intelligence in the world and at the same time, there’s no real way to measure or define overall intelligence, nor the individual types. The second documentary was about the Falling Man, one of the people who jumped to their death from the World Trade Center during 9/11. It was a quest to find the identity of this particular guy, who was caught on film. A Canadian journalist thought that he had the Falling Man identified and yet the family in question refused to believe it, because it went against their religious beliefs, their whole meaning as a family. Then the film maker took a closer look and proposed that it was another person. Interestingly enough, the family of the second possible Falling Man welcomed the news, to know how it ended. Very intense.

Keith’s Fest has been announced which is awful exciting. October 5th, Matt Mays, Joel Plaskett, free. Also coming up (next weekend) is a brewery tour through someone I work with. Lots of beers and money goes to a good cause. Might as well…

Something interested me in this week’s Coast. The front editorial by Bruce Wark. Apparently, the Dal Student Union is pressuring HRM to try to remove the Dawgfather from his place on Dal Campus. Now the Dawgfather is popular, very popular in fact, especially with the students and faculty of Dalhousie. That’s why he’s where he is, it’s prime territory to make some money. But the Dal Student Union wants him out of there. The Student Union, who’s sole purpose is to represent the students of Dalhousie and their interests. Why do they want this popular vendor to hit the road? Because they’ve got their own food places in the Student Union building which the sheep of Dalhousie ignore when the Dawgfather is there. So because the students like the Dawgfather better then DSU’s fare, DSU wants him out of there. And they’re representing the students best interest? By getting rid of a favoured food cart? Enough said.