Unifying Contradiction
Below are the 10 most recent journal entries recorded in the "Unifying Contradiction" journal:[<< Previous 10 entries]
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05:11 pm
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Alberta Bound
So, suddenly I'm gonna be in Calgary for 4 days and, once again, nobody I know there is going to be in town or available. :-/
I usually love to travel, but I'm not really looking forward to this trip. No particular reason why; I just don't feel very motivated to fly half-way across the country at the moment.
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03:03 pm
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Long Time No Post
Yeah, I moved over to facebook, and I've been neglecting my LJ. Which is a shame because FB doesn't really keep anything like a chronological journal of events that I can look through later.
Much of the previous gap in my journal has been me being really depressed, which is another reason I just stopped writing. I don't want to write about being depressed any more than folks want to read about it.
All that changed last April (almost a year ago now), when I finally got a full time job with people who actually seem to respect my skills and experience. Feeling like I'm useful has certainly helped, and the money (although not great) is far better than no money. Getting rid of the continual anxiety caused by monthly bills I can't pay has been a major relief as well.
Yesterday, we finally got the inheritance from Linda's mom's estate. Its been delayed so many times I was wondering if we would ever get it, so I didn't want to mention it and jinx anything. Now that its actually here though, we can consider replacing the car, which has been on its last legs for quite some time now, and getting a much newer and more intact model. Somehow I suspect the next car will be another Volvo as both Linda and I have been very happy with that brand.
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11:04 am
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Assimilated by the GoogleBorgs
Went and got myself a Google+ account. Still undecided as to how it will ultimately stack up against Facebook, but I think it has real potential.
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09:01 am
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And another dear friend is gone.
I learned yesterday that, Liz Metcalfe, one of my oldest friends was killed while riding her motorcycle. An oncoming vehicle crossed the center line causing a massive multi-car pile up resulting in several injuries and deaths.
I don't have words to describe how much I'm going to miss her.
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07:34 am
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The Doctor's Wife
Given the title of the episode, I thought the latest Doctor Who episode would be about River Song. Boy was I wrong. Neil Gaiman wrote the episode and he decided to delve into the character of the Tardis. Strangely enough, I've been mentally writing an episode that did the same thing, for some time. Neil Gaiman's take was completely different than mine, and roughly two orders of magnitude better. I guess that's why he's a world renowned writer and I'm not.
Suffice it to say that I absolutely loved the episode although I had to keep pausing it and replaying bits to get all of the dialogue, some of which I found hard to make out. Its also quite evident that Neil Gaiman has got to be completely mad (in a good way) in order to be THAT creative in his writing.
Current Location: Calgary
Current Mood:  amused
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07:06 pm
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Feeling Much Better
I seem to have made a surprisingly rapid recovery from one of the nastiest bugs I've been hit with in some time. I think that since Saturday Night, I've slept for a total of something like 48 hours. Last night I started trying to eat solid food again, and today I've been slowly progressing to regular meals.
I don't yet feel 100%, but now I feel like I have a slight cold or something, rather than the Death Leurgy From Hell. I call that an improvement.
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10:10 pm
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Really Quite Sick
I went to bed last night feeling fine and woke up this morning feeling awful. I've spent the last 12 hours in bed sleeping due to extreme fatigue, punctuated with a mad dash to the bathroom every 10-20 minutes.
I even find it hard to concentrate enough to let folks know how sick I am. I have a whole bunch of activities that I'm supposed to participated in this week, and now they're all in question.
So, if you don't hear from me, assume I'm too sick to make it.
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01:41 pm
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Doin' Pretty Good.
My first week of work was a short one, as its Good Friday today and so there's no official work. I actually spent the morning configuring stuff on the new distro install so I'll be able to be productive on Monday, and so that I can get dual boot working properly (its 97% there. I can dual boot, but its interaction with kernel updates is kludgy).
Anyway, I haven't done much. Most of the week was taken up with the usual first-days-on-a-new-job thing like paperwork and getting accounts set up and reading the basic documentation and stuff. I'm hoping to actually get something accomplished early in the week because I'm flying out to meet my bosses and co-workers in Calgary on Wednesday.
I had initially thought there would be a two-week delay before heading out there, and had hoped to have something small but real to show for myself by then -- to prove that I can hit the ground running. Right now, not so much.
Other than that, I've been in a REALLY good mood the last week or so. Its amazing how much better one can feel when they know enough about their financial future to make reasonable plans.
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09:34 am
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Working Away.
Its quiet here... too quiet.
I've just started my first day of work at Userful. However, although I started at 9:00 am local time, its 7:00 am at the main office in Calgary and no one is there yet, so I haven't actually been given anything to do. Still, I know enough about the project to start reading up on the various bits of documentation I'll need to be familiar with. So far though, my first day of work feels a lot like most of my non-work mornings.
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06:32 am
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Things that go *BUMP* in the Night.
I'm in the middle of another period where my sleep schedule is all screwed up, so I've been working on some of my software through the night. A few minutes ago it gradually registered that I'd been hearing a rhythmic bumping noise for some time.
It wasn't a steady bump-bump-bump, but was more of an rapid series of beats that would grow faster and louder until they stopped, only to start again a second later. Sort of a "bump ... bump ... bump bump ... Bump Bump Bump BUMP BUMPBUMP*BUMP*!!BUMP!! .......
At first I dismissed it as the sound of a neighbors unbalanced dryer, but ... at this time of night? Then I thought it could possibly be a snowplow, but it didn't really sound like one. I wandered the house and it seemed louder in some rooms, quieter in others, with no discernible pattern other than it got louder the farther down I went.
I eventually ended up in the basement only to see that one of our copper water pipes was vibrating frantically. The vibrations would build up until the pipe would move the 3 inches needed to hit the wall, at which point it would stop for a second and then start over. It looked like it was planning to tear itself out from the wall if I didn't do something.
I stuffed a handy jug between the wall and the pipe, to damp the vibrations, and stood wondering what could be causing this wild behaviour. The only thing I could think of was some sort of broken pipe gushing water somewhere, but I would probably have noticed such a thing (if it was in our house) while looking for the source of the noise.
Then I noticed that the sewage stack I was standing beside had a continuous sound of rushing water, but I knew there were no taps on in the house, and that water had to be coming from somewhere in our condo. I traced the faint sound of running water all the way back up the stairs to the second floor, and to the bathroom.
There I noticed that the toilet tank was giving off a continuous "sssstick ssstick ssstick" noise. It dawned on me that the toilet valve hadn't seated itself properly the last time the toilet was flushed, and the water was continually draining from the tank and needing to be refilled. The noise was the on/off of the new toilet fill valve. It was cycling on and off at just the right frequency to set up a major oscillation in the pipes in the basement.
So, jiggling the handle solved the problem, but it does have me worried, as it could easily happen again and I don't know how much punishment our basement pipes could take. Since it was the cold inlet pipe into the water heater that was vibrating, much mess could occur if it were to fail. I'm going to have to looking into permanently putting a block of wood or something on that pipe, so it can't vibrate freely any more.
And now I think I need to go lay down a bit and calm my nerves.
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