It’s the WP!

I got a little side-project going on with the WP – I was asked by Dad to change the prices on the menu. Unfortunately, I have no idea where I placed the original document that had the menu inputted. After having multiple boxes with different OSes over the years, my personal folder got separated and distributed across boxes, but I digress. I ended up recreating the document, but I was too lazy to match the fonts from the original, so I just used better looking fonts. The prices were rehashed as well, and I even fixed some spelling/grammar errors.

I think I’ve been watching Restaurant Makeover too much, and while we are far from needing a makeover, I wanted to redesign our menu, at the very least. Helping the customers along would be great – giving more information about their items and even including a bit of that urban wit that seems to be cropping up in restaurant menus lately. However, in the end, the menu actually became bigger, even though I grouped things together, but due to the hefty descriptions, it became such an eyesore. I copied the worksheet and removed all the descriptions save for the main headings. Then, I thought to myself, ‘Hey, me. Aren’t we already at the digital age? I know I tried it before and failed, but why don’t I make a website?’ I could toss the URL on the paper menu and say that the full menu is there. I can also print out the full menu in color and paste the pages on the front window for advertising. We could even change our ad in the phonebook to reflect our URL. Heck, I could make a Facebook group to link customers together. What a genius idea! Go, me!

I spent all night trying to get a domain name. It was painful. I wanted to register with GoDaddy, but it said my username was taken, which is BS, because nobody else would likely have the same username as mine – it’s pretty unique. After much (wasted) research, I found out that I had registered some old domains with my username on Ace of Space hosting, which then got gobbled up by HostUtopia, which then got affiliated with Wild West Domains, which is a sub-company of GoDaddy. As a result, my username became reserved on GoDaddy, but inactive, which is why I couldn’t login or register. Phooey. I just made a new account, but didn’t get a chance to register the domain. I might even register two. I’m thinking of consolidating the network at home from multiple workgroups to one domain, which would be the second domain I’d register, and then perhaps I could set up VPN or CAG even. Muahaha.

Nothing else has happened yet, I’m now at work. More updates later.

Buried alive by snow.

It snowed two nights ago. No big deal, right?

WRONG!! (Kevin Spacey style)

I woke up yesterday morning to tons of snow and massive wind. I had to shovel the driveway before we could leave for work. When I got to work, I parked the car, which promptly got stuck. Later on, at lunch time, I spent 15 minutes shoveling away the snow drift that buried my car alive. And the wind was blowing the snow back into my face. Oh, and when I got out of the parking stall, I got stuck, but I rocked myself out. I quickly drove to the shops to do a tape swap, and it was nicely grated on the roads. However, between the refinery and the shops, there was an amazing wind tunnel effect going on that was blowing the snow off the rooftops in such a way that it was making a super foggy, Silent Hill-like atmosphere. I seriously couldn’t see two feet in front of me! Even the buildings were barely visible!

After a quick lunch, I went to the Vale Inco open house to help set up laptops with LCD TV units. However, the units (and one laptop) hadn’t arrived! I basically helped to do some grunt work while waiting for everything to arrive. I was there for two hours in total, so that took a chunk out of my day. Went back to work, drove through the parking lot – forget about it! I went back into the plant and parked in there – at least I wouldn’t have to dig myself out or get stuck – again.

WRONG!! (Kevin Spacey style)

I got stuck backing out of the stall because the loaders grated the road perpendicularly behind me, which left a man-made snow drift. Luckily, I didn’t need to break out the shovel because a guy saw me get stuck and helped push me out.

I went to the Book Nook to pick up some comics, but the shop was closed. I got stuck on the way out, though, but with a little bit of rocking, I was well on my way to the WP. However, road conditions were so terrible that I couldn’t possibly do deliveries without getting stuck, so I parked my car in the back. We usually park sideways against the building because the idiots who visit the neighboring Boys & Girls Club building don’t realize that the entire parking space is ours. However, my car is so compact that I parked it sideways so that I could plug my car in, and the B&G van would still be able to get out. Fun!

The service roads and parking lots were all grated last night at work, so getting stuck is no longer an issue today. While the wind is calm and the sun is shining, that wind tunnel with the snowy fog is still going strong.

Anyway, I hope the Nook is open today, because I need stuff to read. Also, I tracked my Rock Band, and it’s currently on the way. I’m crossing my fingers for the weekend!!

Too cold out there, not hot in here.

Winter sucks because of the extreme cold temperatures up here. I may very well be one of the few Thompson residents who can’t take the cold. Everybody else has a light jacket or sweater in 40 below weather while I’m wearing four layers, gloves, neck warmer up to my ears, and a toque.

Unfortunately, I’m still bundled up like that in my car. One of the broken things in my new Toyota Matrix is the heater – that is, it doesn’t work properly. Sometimes, the air flow gets moderately warm, and that’s only if I set the fan speed to low, turn on the aircon for a couple minutes, move the temperature dial from cold to hot, and turn off the fan for a couple minutes. All that fiddling just to get it warm. I won’t even go into making the entire car warm.

So, I called up the dealership last week and they said that Hi-Tech has done warranty work for them in the past, and that the mechanic, Richard, used to work for them. I called Hi-Tech, made an appointment for this morning, and just dropped off my car.

I hope it gets done today.

In other news, I broke down and ordered Rock Band from Best Buy yesterday. I totally squeezed it into my budget, but I did it. It was strange, though – nobody else had it in stock, but Best Buy had 76 copies or something. What’s up with that?

About the protected post.

A certain girl showed me her boobs, that’s pretty much it. I just wanted to note it (because such things are noteworthy for guys), but I wanted to protect her anonymity, lest people think she be a boob-flashing kind of girl, though she’s not.

Protected: After Rock Band…

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Rock Band!!

What an awesome game. Went over to Scott’s place with Megan and he had the whole sha-bang all set up. I only played for a couple hours before work started, and then for a 4-song set between deliveries for the WP, but after work, I went there and played all the way until now… 3:00 in the freaking morning!! Unreal.

I am so buying this game.

Laziness and procrastination, but is it justified?

I haven’t written a blog entry since last year (haha, that NEVER gets old), and no thanks to my 13-hour work days during the week, all the spare time that I do get is spent on other things, like reading, watching TV, and pretty much anything else that doesn’t involve an F for effort (sorry, Esmond). Why, even now, I’m writing this entry on my cell phone in the calendar so that I’ll have an accurate timestamp.

On the bright side, I finished my budget plan for my Visa, and as a result, I’ve gotten very goal-oriented with my spending. Nothing is spent without scrutinizing how it will affect my budget, and I don’t mind it. I can actually set goals for certain purchases I have in mind (and if they don’t work, I just schedule it elsewhere. Mind you, it’s all being done in an Excel spreadsheet, and I would ideally like to integrate Outlook so that my goals can be synchronized with the calendar, and in turn, my cell phone. I have become such a budgeting geek. ^_^

So, hopefully, my updates will become more frequent. I finally migrated my data from my PDA to my Motorola Q, now that I installed a hacked copy of Pocket Office for Windows Mobile. It’s not the best solution (I may even get a Palm Treo with Windows Mobile when my cell contract is up in May), but at least I found a way to consolidate my devices. The only thing I’m missing are my Notes, which I’ve converted to Word format. It’s a bit tedious to open and edit them (plus it’s slow – the Q’s processor doesn’t handle Office very well), but it’ll have to do for now. Anyway, the short of it is, I now have only one device to sync with Outlook, which makes typing up blog entries a breeze for sync and posting later. The downside – no more DSL access at work for a while so updates will only happen at night… for now.

UPDATE: One problem with this method – if I don’t sync my phone with Outlook, then I forget to update. For example – this entry was supposed to be posted last night. Whoops.