This represents my last week working in an office environment and I couldn't be happier. I have been working as an IT Support monkey for the last 4 years, and that officially ends on Friday September 5, 2003. I have finally decided that I want to actually work for a living, and so starting on September 8th, I will be embarking on my new career as a Heating and Air Condition mechanic. Of course, I'll need to apprentice for 5 years, but that goes with any trade.

It took me about 8 months to finally decide to quit my nice cushy job, and trade in my business casual for work boots and coveralls. I have been a miserable, moody cynic for the last few years, and I honestly think that working in an office had a lot to do with it. I was apathetic towards work before I resigned. How can they possible expect me to do anything now?

I have been nice enough to spend my remaining time documenting my daily routine, as well as any pertinent information I might possess in my swiss cheese brain. I also had to sit down with my boss and go through all the passwords that I know, and compare to the ones that he knows. Now that all of that is done the only thing I have to look forward to is my going away party on thursday night.

My boss hates all this, by the way. He was never any good at manual labour like running cables, installing rack-mount gear, etc. That was where he relied on me. Now that I am gone he is going to have to be responsible for a huge renovation, which I predict will be a disaster. I should have volunteered to help out with that, but then I think back over the last 2 years. He has been acting like a miserable, bitchy little girl, constantly getting me involved in office politics. Then he had the nerve to sit me down in his office and rant about how he hates all that office gossip. I'm not exaggerating. This guy wouldn't last 5 minutes in a normal office.

I don't want to leave on a bad note, and I really don't hate the place. I just hated working for him. Now that I am free, I feel great. I really wish I had had a video camera to capture the look on his face when I handed him my resignation notice. I could tell that the first thought in his mind was "Shit, now who is going to be my little monkey boy?"

For those interested, yesterday was the largest concert in Canadian history. Offically called Rolling Stones Rocks for Toronto, but unofficially called SARStock. If I had to sum it up in a word: Amazing.

We arrived at around 1pm, and the place was already packed. The best spot we could find was about 600 metres from the stage. We could see the stage, but the performers looked quite small. The first highlight of the day was a CF-18 flying over the park, doing a large circle, and then zipping away. Plenty of video monitors and speakers, though. Sound quality was iffy, especially for the earlier bands. For one band (The Tea Party) the sound was really screwed, and we couldn't even hear the guitars. It wasn't fixed until the last song of their set. By the time the second act started, the sound was louder, and somewhat better. It wasn't perfect until AC/DC took the stage however. I don't think this is anything to do with the bands, but more to do with the shitty speaker we happened to be near.

The best band of the night was by far AC/DC. I had never seen them live before. I wasn't sure what to expect, but they absolutely rocked the place. It took a lot out of us to be sitting in the sun all day, and it was hard to get into some of the earlier bands because of the heat. (And other reasons, this is Canada after all!) AC/DC came on around 8pm, so the air had cooled down substantially, and it seemed to give the crowd a boost. Brian Johnson sounded like he always does, and Angus Young's guitar sound was fantastic. A perfect crunchy rock guitar, backed by massive stacks of Marshall tube amps. He got the crowd screaming when he did a strange stripteas to the song The Jack, and pulled off his pants to reveal a pair of Canadian flag underwear. I would rate their performance a 9 out of 10. It would have been a 10 if they had played Who Made Who.

Rush was second best, in my opinion. They happen to be my favourite band, and are one of the best live bands in the world. Unfortunately they only got to play for 35 minutes. What they did play was good, however. Opened up with Tom Sawyer, then Limelight. A nice surprise was to hear Rush play Paint It, Black. Towards the end of the set, the sound had greatly improved. Geddy Lee played a great bass solo, Alex and Neil were as tight as ever, and the only bad thing about the set was that it was too short.

After Rush and AC/DC, the main event was coming up. Of course, it was the Stones. They were as good as they usually are, or as good as I have heard live recordings. I hadn't seen the Stones before, so I was quite excited about seeing them. Sound quality was good enough, and they played the songs that people wanted to hear. Opened up with Start Me Up, and then played Brown Sugar. They slowed it down with Ruby Tuesday, and then Keith Richards decided to sing a song, and talk to the audience for a while. That lasted about 10 minutes, and luckily Mick came back to get things back on track. They played Gimme Shelter, and after a few more songs ended with Satisfaction. The encore was Jumpin' Jack Flash, which sounded amazing. Mick even work a Toronto t shirt, with the Rolling Stones Lips as the second O in Toronto. All in all, a decent set, and great event.

Some negative points:

Justin Timberlake being included in this concert. I guess the kids and the girls like him, but I hate him and his music. It didn't fit in at all. The fact that he did a duet with Mick on Miss You made it even worse. Great for Justin, I guess, but shitty for the rest of us. Somebody in the front section actually had a sign that said Justin's A Fag. Plus he had plastic bottles thrown at him. That should have been the first hint to end the set quickly.

Too much time elapsed between AC/DC and The Rolling Stones. We sat around for almost 45 minutes after AC/DC left the stage. That definitly took some emotion out of the crowd, and quite a few people started to leave before the Stones even took the stage.

The first few bands really sucked. If this was supposed to be a world-class concert, why include shitty Canadian bands? Why not get good Canadian bands? La Chicane, Kathleen Edwards, Sam Roberts, Isley Brothers, Timberlake, to me are lower-tiered performers, and should have been replaced with bands like The Tragically Hip, Barenaked Ladies. Get less bands, but better ones, and let them play longer sets. Rush and The Guess Who should have played longer.

Food lineups were insanely long. Luckily they let us bring in our own food, so I was fine with my sandwiches.

Beer tents were packed, and some had a 2 hour wait to get inside. You had to buy tickets at one booth, which only took a few minutes, then wait in line to get into the beer tent. It took 2 of my friends 10 minutes to walk from the front to the back of the line. Needless to say, we decided we'd rather watch the concert than wait in line for 6 dollar beers.

We decided to walk the 6km home, as opposed to waiting hours for a bus. It was quite impressive to see thousands of people walking down city streets at 12am. I was also impressed with how fast the place cleared out. There was never a time when we weren't moving on the way out. The crowd all moved at a good pace, and the foot traffic flowed nicely down the surrounding streets. Took about an hour and a half to walk to our neighborhood, and we even made it to our local pub before last call. That was a well deserved and thoroughly enjoyed beer.

All in all, a great concert. I am happy that I was there, and I can say I was part of that record setting crowd. I think there will probably be a DVD released before long. I am curious how it will sound on video, hearing the sound right out of the mixing board. I will certainly buy one, as will probably most people who were there. I am curious how much media attention this event was given outside of Canada. It was supposed to prove to the world that Toronto is a safe place to travel to. They even premiered a new promotional video about Toronto. I guess only time will tell, but I doubt we'll see any increases in tourism until next year.

Any /.ers going to the huge SARStock/Rock for Toronto concert tomorrow? I'm going, as is about a quarter of the city of Toronto. I wonder how many people from outside the Toronto area this concert will actually attract? It is supposed to raise money for the employees of the service industry, after all. Not that I really care about the cause. This is the Stones, Rush, AC/DC, The Guess Who (and about 15 other bands that I think suck) for 21 bucks. Plus 430,000 specatators.

For those that care, I shall be posting a review of the concert on thursday morning.

The last few times I have gone to a cottage up north, I have brought my laptop along. Not to do any work whatsoever, but to have access to ~30GB of music. Much easier than every person lugging along 30-40 cd's each, and having them all mixed up at the end of the weekend. I bring the laptop, 2 decent speakers, and all the appropriate connectors. It all fits nicely into one of those laptop backpack cases.

I usually try and bring up an assortment of music that all people can like, ultimately giving myself veto power, of course. This has worked quite well, and I imagine it will continue to work well.

My laptop runs Gentoo. More specifically, it runs Gentoo without X. It can do anything I need it to, which is mainly play music, write, and occasionally send an email. The application I use to play music is mp3blaster. If you have ever seen it, you will understand how simple it is to use. It is an ncurses-based application, and every key is fully customizable. I would agree that it might be confusing for somebody who is used to usin Winamp + Windows Explorer to find files, but not so difficult that a child couldn't pick it up within minutes. Case in point: One guy at the cottage who said he knew nothing about computers took literally 2 minutes to understand how to add, remove and skip songs ina playlist. Plus, he was even navigating through the individual directories and adding songs that weren't on any of my playlists.

Another guy at first asked me if I was running DOS. I told him no, it's Linux. He stared blankly. Ever heard of Unix, I asked. Same thing. Why do you use that. Why don't you install Windows? I told him that I prefer not to use Microsoft products, especially on my own computers. I guess he took that to mean that I can't afford to purchase XP, because he offered me a pirated copy of XP, along with Office XP, and anything else I might want. This guy just didn't get it. I don't want that stuff. I have no need for it.

So the moral of the story? I don't think there is one. Perhaps it is never underestimate the simplicity of a well-designed console application? A laptop without XP confuses only people who know 'something' about computers? Or perhaps I'm an elitist because I bring my linux laptop to a cottage full of Windows people?

Just had an interesting thought, which led me to an interesting question to pose to anybody who might know more than I do about the way cellphone networks work. As most people are probably aware, the Rolling Stones Rock for Toronto (aka SARStock) concert is next wednesday. There will be ~430,000 people there. The area of Downsview Park, which is the location for the show, is ~2.5 square km.

I am assuming that a majority of the concert goers will have cellphones. Is there a limit to the number of people that can be on any given "node" of the cell network at any given time? What if 80 thousand people simultaneously try use their phones. What if 250,000 people call somebody the moment the Stones take the stage? Will it be possible for concert-goers to, for lack of a better term, Slashdot the cell network?

I think that certain cells of the network overlap, but I wonder if Downsview Park is in an overlapped area? Do the cell networks even still work that way? Can anybody here enlighten me?

The Hon. Ernie Eves, Premier of Ontario,** has asked the citizens of this great province to please try and conserve electricity during these sweltering summer days. Those of you not from Ontario might be wondering why he would make such a statement.

The previous government of Ontario tried (and failed badly) to privatize Ontario Hydro. The lessons California learned were obviously lost on the Ontario Beauracracy. For whatever reason, Ontario seemed to think that we were different, that it would work just as proposed. What ultimately happened was increasing rates, a public backlash. This caused the government to consider a rebate, and ultimatly cancel the plans to privatize the utility. Of course, it didn't hurt that the Superior Court of Ontario ruled it illegal for the province to do such a thing in the first place.

So where are we now? The government has retained control of Ontario Hydro, and has also frozen rates for the next few years. I don't know about the rest of you, but if the rates are frozen at around 34 cents per Kilowatt hour, I don't think that is much of an incentive to conserve power. Regardless of how much I use, I will be billed at the same rate.

Less than 10 years ago, the province was applauding it's abundance of electricity. There was never talk of a shortage, never talk of having to import from other markets, never talk of rate increases/decreases. We had plenty of power, mainly due to 2 massive Nuclear plants located near the Greater Toronto Area. In 1997 Ontario Hydro shutdown part of the Pickering Nuclear Plant for maintenance and repairs. It was supposed to be done within a couple of years. It is still offline. Last year, Ontario Hydro also shutdown the second half of Pickering as well. This plant at one point produced 10% of the Province's power, and now is completely offline. To make up for it, we increased capacity at coal-fired plants, which are some of the worst polluters in the province. (Which probably explains why Ontario is second only to Texas as a polluter!)

So what is my point here? The Premier has asked us to conserve power. At the same time, his government is in the middle of an unofficial election campaign. There are wonderful commercials on TV telling us how the Premier has frozen Hydro rates, and that our rates are guaranteed for the next 3 years. Is the voter attention span really that short? Don't people realize that the only reason he froze rates is because his government fucked up the whole electricity market in the first place?

So please, listen to Ernie. Save power. And when the next election rolls around, Vote Green!

** It is just me, or does he look like a shyster?

For those not in the know, Vancouver has been awarded the 2010 Winter Olympics. For the record, I am totally against the Olympics ever being in Canada again, unless done at Calgary. However, most people seem to think it is a good idea, so whatever. I was hoping that Salzburg, Austria would win, until my friend told me something very important:

Toronto narrowly lost out on the 2008 games to Beijing. Another good bid proposal by Toronto would surely win. Luckily, the IOC would never do 2 consecutive games in the same country. Yay Toronto!

I don't believe all the hype about making profits, adding to the local infrastructure, blah, blah, tourism, blah, blah. The fact is that Toronto has been royally screwed by the Province with downloading of services, poorly funded transit, closing hospitals and schools, and not to mention property tax increases. This is a city that wants to spend billions of dollars to host a sporting event that isn't even about sports anymore? I'd much rather see that money go to transit, education, even health care. Heck, I'd rather use the money to buy new textbooks for every school in the province than give one cent to Olympic movement. A great source of information (although quite dated now) used to be Bread Not Circuses.

Good luck Vancouver, and all of BC for that matter. I would imagine that the Province will be on the hook for any costs that get out of hand.

One final question. Why do countries like Canada and Austria need to build new facilities to host Olympics? Why spend ~2 billion to build things in Vancouver when Calgary already has everything built (and paid for!)? The same goes for Austria. Why build new facilities in Salzburg when Innsbruck has everything you need? How much would it cost to host the games at Calgary? Maybe 20 or 30 million for upgrades. Sounds a hell of a lot better than 1.89 billion.

I'm not sure who is aware of the huge concert going on in Toronto at the end of July. AC/DC, Rolling Stones, Guess Who, and possibly even the Tragically Hip. Going on at an old Air Force base in Toronto, and tickets are only 20 bucks. Of course, the Stones are the headline act. Usually when those boys come to town tickets are about 100 bucks.

There is enough room in that venue to hold approximately 800,000 people. This has the potential to be the biggest concert in North America, at least that I am aware of. Only one small problem: I can't freaking get through to ticketmaster.ca.

I want to be a bounty hunter. How awesome would that job be? Provided you can actually find fugitives, and collect decent money on their capture. It would be a great way to answer the ever-present question "What do you do for a living?" I'm a bounty hunter! Not to mention it would be a really cool thing to say to girls at bars.

Have you seen any pictures of Duane Chapman, the bounty hunter who captured Andrew Luster? He looks like one tough, mean mofo. I want to work with him, anybody able to get me an interview?

Here is the posting in question. Am I missing something here? Unbelievable.

On a more serious note, I have mod points right now. Does anybody have something they want modded up? If not I guess I'll just randomly mod up posts from my friends' journals.

That about sums up last night. There was big anniversary party at work last night, which means LOTS of beer and wine.

The main downfall is that these nights tend to go very late, and ultimately end up in a local bar. That of course means that I miss the last subway home and have to get a taxi.

From downtown to the 'burbs where I live is almost 30 bucks. Not exactly a lot of money, but considering the subway is only 2 bucks, it isn't exactly cheap either.

The key is to find somebody who lives close enough to you to split the fare. That isn't a secret, and I have been doing it for years. What I did discover, however, is a way to make it even more economical: Pick up somebody else just after the first passenger gets out. Make that person chip in a few bucks and you can potentially get home for free. Added bonus: The second passenger might even let you bum a smoke off of him (if you happen to be the kind of person who likes to get drunk and have the occasional smoke, that is.)

For those that might remember my previous JE about the possibility of using a straight razor, I still haven't made the change. To be honest I am a little frightened about slicing my neck open when I'm hungover in the morning. That being said, I realized something else about shaving tonight: I might be doing it all wrong.

I plan to shave tomorrow morning (or not, it all depends on how tired I am), but I am a little nervous that I'm doing it all wrong. I was never given the official shaving lesson by my father. I figured it out all on my own. The first few times I tried it I didn't even use cream. Dry face, sharp razor, painful experience.

I quickly learned that the way to do it is to go with the grain of the hair. Shave downwards from the sideburns, and then straight down below the nose and mouth. To me it seemed simple. Then I started seeing the shaving commercials on TV. These guys use brand new blades on the razor of the moment, but go against the grain of the hair.

Does anybody shave that way? Sure it gives you a damn smooth shave, but at what cost? If I shave that way I get a razor burn, not to mention ingrown hairs like a mofo. Am I wrong here? Am I the only guy who can't shave like all the dudes in the commercials?

Perhaps it is the fact that my facial hair doesn't grow as fast as your average caveman. I currently use a Mach 3 that I started using at the beginning of May. I shave thrice weekly, which means I have used this particular blade about 14 times. The only problem I have noticed lately is that my shave isn't as smooth as it could be. But that really doesn't bother me. If I rub my hand along my freshly-shaven face (with the grain, never against!) it feels really smooth. Even right now. I shaved on wednesday morning, and I have a decent enough beard starting, but if you go along the grain it still feels somewhat smooth.

Am I in the minority here? Do I shave incorrectly? If I start to shave against the grain my dull razor will probably cause much pain. Are we supposed to shave against the grain, thus needing fresh blades more often? I would suspect that is what the Gilette reps would have us all believe. I wonder why they don't say in the commercials that you can use a Mach 3 almost 20 times before replacing it?

I don't know why, but I just watched this shitty movie. I thought the ending was horrible. I can't stand the ultra-happy ending. It makes me sick. I was cheering and hoping for Thermonuclear war. To no avail, alas. Instead, Affleck saves the world. Why do so many movies have the ultra-happy ending? Is the movie-going public that sensitive that they will reject movies that don't have a happy ending?

So what if everybody dies. To me that makes it more exciting. The Sum of All Fears would have been much better if the nuclear war started within the first 10 minutes, and the rest of the movie was about the survivors.

Instead, we get Affleck. Bah.

Or should I say lack thereof? Why is it always cloudy in Toronto when anything cool happens? It usually rains on Victoria Day, which ruins the fireworks. It has been cold and rainy all week. I feel as if we have just skipped Spring and Summer and gone right into Autumn.

I am going to the cottage this weekend anyway. I don't care if it is raining. And I'm going swimming, even though the water is barely above 10 degrees.

As most people are aware, the government of Canada is going ahead with a controversial plan to decriminalize marijuana. Originally it was going to be 30 grams or less, but recent pressure has forced them to lower the amount to 15 grams or less. I really have no issue with this, as I honestly think the courts have better things to do than try casual drug users.

Presently, if I am stopped by a cop and I am in posession of 14 grams of marijuana, it will be confiscated and I will be charged with drug posession. If the new law is passed, supposedly I would get a ticket for "Marijuana Posession", and that would be it.

My question is this: Would I be allowed to keep my bag of pot? After all, I have already been fined, so why not let me keep it? I figure it is kind of like a speeding ticket. You get the ticket, but the cops don't take your car away, as you need it to drive home.