Adventures in Pumpkin Carving land

This is going to be more of a really long "photo blog" entry than a regular entry. Ladies and Gentlemen, I proudly present to you... the Hanging Hat's grand adventures in Pumpkin Carving land.


The pumpkins to be massacred


The implements that were needed in order to carry out the massacaring


The mini test pumpkin and test pattern


The massacre begins...


...and the result (mini test pumpkin with mini friend)


Now onto the big pumpkin...mwuhahah! First, the image we are going to use.


Putting the pattern onto the pumpkin


Cutting off the top and cleaning out the innards before getting stuck into the hacking and slashing


...And the eventual result from the hacking and slashing


Oh! And just in case you were wondering; The other pumpkin also got hacked and slashed


Thus ended the grand adventures of the Hanging Hat in pumpkin carving land for another year. Actually, that was so much fun I'm contemplating heading down to the store tomorrow when all the pumpkins will be going cheap due to post halloween pumpkin sales and getting another one to hack up.

Raccoons And Bears, Oh My!

I saw my first raccoon the other night as I was walking into my apartment. It was the first live raccoon I'd ever seen and it was less than 3 meters away from me walking on the fence.

Those suckers be big! It stopped momentarily and gave me the beady eye as if it was getting ready to hop off the fence and run into the building behind me so I promptly got inside and shut the door before it could make its move.

I wish I had my camera with me at the time. I'm sure the raccoon would have attempted to rob it off me but it would have been worth it. Now every time I walk outside or into the apartment I'm always on the lookout for raccoons.

Also, in the last couple of days, just walking around I've noticed an increasing number of signs outside shop windows advertising "Bear Spray"! Is this a necessity in Vancouver in the Autumn months? Do the bears start coming out soon? And is a little spray bottle really good enough to keep a big hulking bear from charging you down and ripping you to shreds?? I for one will take my chances without the spray and on the odd chance of ever bumping into a bear will use the time tested method of running and screaming like a little girl.... or was that lie down and play dead? Those two always confuse me.

Simple K

It's 4am and I'm sitting here not ready to go to bed yet. Back home in Ireland if I was still awake at this hour I'd go and pour myself a nice bowl of Special K (or "Simple K" as an American friend keeps accidentally calling them) as a post post midnight snack. I'm not much of a cereal person. In fact I wouldn't really have cereal at all but every now and again I do really enjoy a bowl of Special K.

As luck would have it I bought myself some Special K yesterday while out shopping. Oh how unprepared was I for the disappointment that was to follow.

Now, to say that some things are a little different in North America than to things in Europe would be putting it mildly here. The Special K in North America tastes nothing like the Special K in Ireland. It is essentially just Rice Krispies. In fact if I blind folded you and fed you a bowl of Rice Krispies and a bowl of North American Special K you wouldn't be able to tell the difference. In fact, you can hear the "Snap, Crackle and Pop" from the Special K flakes when you add the milk! Imagine Rice Kripies being a little bit flatter instead of roundish then what you have is North American Special K. I wonder does the "K" in "Special K" stand for "Krispies"? Hmmm... Now I know why my American friend keeps calling it "Simple K".

I've just had a thought, if Special K here tastes like Rice Krispies perhaps the opposite will be true? Must go buy myself some Rice Krispies tomorrow and put that theory to the test.

Still Here And Gone

I'm still around. Just haven't bothered updating this blog in a loooooong time due to laziness on my part.

I've moved cities and countries since my last update. As of 3 weeks ago, I'm now living in Vancouver, Canada. That's right, I've sold almost everything I own in Dublin and upped and moved several thousand miles across the world. So as a new beginning I'm going to try once again to keep this blog active and update it more often than once every 3 months or so. That should hopefully keep my 3 faithful readers happy... you know who youse are ;-)

So, Vancouver in 3 words.... Lovely, Relaxed, Rainy. OK, that last part isn't entirely true. The first 2 and a half weeks I've been here its been really super sunny. Its only really started to rain in the last couple of days and according to the weather its going to be like this for the rest of the week. I was warned that it rains a lot here. I guess I was just lucky in terms of the weather when I landed.

I've spent these last couple of weeks here looking for a place to live and a job. Just got a place to live this week after a slight chicken and egg problem. It seems that you can't get a place to live unless you have a bank account and you can't get a bank account without a place to live. I finally managed to find a nice place where the landlord understood the problem and agreed to rent to me. And with a place to live, presto! I also have a bank account. Now all I have to do is find a job... hopefully that little problem will be solved sometime soon this week. I got my fingers, eyes, legs and toes crossed.

Other than the above mentioned I haven't really given myself much time to do much sight seeing. I figured I'll have plenty of time to do that later on.

Dream job

Having recently given in my notice I'm on the hunt once again for another job. As luck would have it it seems that I may have found my dream job (pun intended). Apparently NASA are looking for people who are willing to stay in bed for them. In fact they are offering $17000 for you to stay in bed for 90 days! As demanding as that sounds I think I could manage that. I wonder what the qualifications for such a position would be. If "lazy bastard" and "not a morning person" are in the requirements section then I think the job is practically mine.... now where is that application form?

The end of an era

Today I handed in my notice. It was a sombre affair. The angels cried as I broke the news(well not really but it sounds good). Having stuck at the job for so long I was getting kinda institutionalised so its probably a good thing that I've decided to move on. I originally only planned to stay in the job for a year but then they offered me more money and I ended up staying a year and a half more than I originally intended.

As I gave the bad (or good news, depending on how you look at it), my boss turned around and said to me: "I thought something was up when I saw you in so early". Have things gotten so bad with my time keeping in work lately that I can't even come in early anymore without someone suspecting that I'm up to something?

So, from next month onwards I'm going to be an unemployed bum. I can't say that I'm going to miss the work but I know I'm going to miss the money ;) The big bad world with the big bad lions and vultures await me once again. The inevitable job hunting and the interview processes are going to be a huge pain in the ass. However, I'm not too pushed about getting another job until at least August so that should give me plenty of time to motivate and psyche myself into getting another job (and hopefully one that I'll actually like).

Thus beginneth the new grand adventures of the hat...

I h8 fckng txt spk!!!

As I was browsing the cinema listings in entertainment.ie to see what was out this week a review in the "your reviews" section caught my eye. It wasn't the fact that the review was profound or anything, it was more the fact that I thought entertainment.ie's page was faulty and was spewing out random symbols. Then I realised it was someone reviewing "Step Up 2" writing entirely in text speak. Given the movie in question being reviewed I guess I shouldn't have been too surprised.

In any case, I decided to click on the "more" link to see if I could decipher what the said individual had to say about the movie since I wasn't in the mood to do work and wanted a bit of a puzzle to solve to pass 5 minutes of my time. To my horror I find that the public reviews page is just a mass of text speaking reviews of said film.

It would seem that "kids" (I'm presuming that it's kids here even though I know I'm wrong on this occasion) these days are incapable of writing properly anymore. I wonder is this how they write when asked to write an essay in school/college? If so, does the teacher/lecturer just dismiss this little "phenomenon" or does he or she give them a deservedly big fat zero mark for not knowing how to write properly, never mind coherently. When these "kids" submit their CV for jobs I wonder is the majority of their CV written in text speak as well. Do they have things like "Nme : D8co d" and "Adrz: 4 me gaff"?

If this is a sign of how society is going I despair for society. These are the people who will one day (if not already) be running our country and services and more than likely have children (if not already) themselves. I'm not looking forward to the day when someone finally gets a book written all in text speak published because its now the accepted way to write.

The early bird gets...errr... stuff fast

I've been stuck in Cali time ever since I got back from my little trip to California a couple of weeks back. For some reason my body clock just dosn't want to adjust back to Irish time. So as a result of this I've had a good few nights/days where I've stayed awake for 24 hours in a vain attempt to get my body clock back in synch with Irish time. Also, anytime I've fallen asleep I've fallen asleep super early due to being really tired and then waking up super early again. At this stage I've just come to accept it as the norm.

I finally got my full driver's license on Tuesday. Yay me! I actually got it surprisingly fast. I went down to the motor tax office on Monday afternoon and threw in my application form and had the license in my post box the following morning/afternoon. Now if only everything was always that efficient.

I just subsequently found out that there is a little flaw in my grand plan of being able to rent a car during the weekends once I got my full license. It seems that you are unable to rent a car with any car hire company in Ireland if you had not held your full license for at least 1 year. This in my opinion is stupid. What is stopping me from sitting on my arse for a year then going back to a car hire company to then hire a car. By that time I would be rusty behind the wheels, being more likely to crash the car all because I haven't had the chance to practice my driving due to the fact that I was unable to rent a car and too poor to buy a car. In my opinion they should just introduce higher rates for those that have not held their license for more than a specific time rather than down banning them.

This week I also got myself a brand spanking new laptop. I figured it was time to upgrade my current laptop. The old laptop is about 4 years old now but still has a lot of mileage on it but I figured 4 years is a good turn around time for most things. The new laptop, like my driver's license arrived super quickly. I got it in just under 3 days. I ordered it late on Sunday evening/early monday morning during one of my sleepless nights and i got it delivered to me first thing on Wednesday morning.

Now if only my police certificate would get here sometime soon. Six almost seven weeks on from the time I first asked the gardai for it and I still haven't seen head nor tail of it. The gardai told me that I'd have it by the end of this week. It's now Friday and i haven't checked my mailbox at home yet but I'm willing to bet a large sum of money that the mailbox will be empty (except maybe for bills) when I get back later on this evening. Stupid gardai.

D&D Co Creator Fails Saving Throw

Yesterday while sitting watching TV I oddly felt a chill run down my spine. As it turned out this was the result of the collective mourning cries of millions of gaming nerds worldwide as they learnt of the passing away of Gary Gygax, one of the co creators of the grand daddy of all role playing games, Dungeons & Dragons! Alas, it would seem that the health potions have run out and no Clerics of high enough level were to be found to cast a powerful enough resurrection spell to help Mr Gygax :(

While I wouldn't classify myself as a nerd in the traditional sense (though others may disagree with me on that point) I do admit to playing (and enjoying) a little bit of D&D back in my younger, "wilder" days. Yes, I even admit to owning a few sets of 20, 10, 8 and 4 sided dice at one stage as well.

As such I felt that Gary Gygax deserves an honourable mention on this blog. Putting aside the spotty misunderstood nerd stigmatism associated with role playing games (or any other type of games of this nature), the man did help to come up with a fairly complex but yet easy to follow rule system, concept and set of universes. The game itself was simultaneously easy to get into and inevitably quite fun if you gave it half a chance. This not only gave many a... erhem, "socially challenged" child (or adult) another outlet to express themselves it also spawned a multi millon dollar industry in fantasy literature, computer games, movies and other such merchandise. For that you've got to give him some kudos.

Here's a little tribute from the blog of celebrity Star Trek TNG character and nerd, Will Wheaton, about Mr Gygax.

Hobbling Hat

Last Friday I was down at the hospital for a routine checkup when the nice doctor lady noticed a blood clot looking thing on my leg. Told her that I'd had it for a while and wasn't too concerned about it. In either case she got a few of her colleagues in to have a quick look at it just to be on the safe side. One of them (who happened to be one of the top dermatologists in the country) had a look at it and confirmed that it was an arterial bunching and wasn't too overly concerned about it. However he then pointed down to a smaller similar looking mark further down my leg and said that he'd be more inclined to remove that one as it looked more abnormal. As luck would have it he had a spot free later that afternoon and said that he'd remove it for me if I popped in to see him at 2 to save me having to make an appointment and waiting 2 months or so.

I figured why not. No harm having the bunching removed just in case there might be complications down the line. I figured it was small enough, I'd just pop in and he'd do his magic and that was that. Little did I know that it involve minor surgery which took up to about 40 to 50 minutes. The waiting room was full when I went in and when I hobbled out again (with my head spinning from all the local anesthetic I had gotten the doctor lady who was hacking me up to inject into me) it was completely empty. I ended up having a thumb size chunk of meat cut out of my lower leg and then given 16 stitches to help cover up the nice big gash that was left over from the hacking and slashing.

So as a result of that, I'm now hobbling around very slowly in a bit of pain desperately trying not to tear my stitches. It now takes me about 45 minutes to walk to work in the mornings (usually only takes me 20 minutes max) with grannies speeding pass me on the path with the look of frustration that I usually give when I'm stuck behind a really slow walking person for ages. On top of this humiliation, I've even been beeped by a few cars as I've hobbled across the road at the pedestrian lights, as if to tell me to "hurry the fuck up, I'm really important and want a clear way so that I'll be able to drive away before the lights actually hit green". Like beeping me will magically make my leg feel better so that I can run across the road quicker for them. Fecking stupid Dublin drivers!

I'd take the week off to properly recover but I'm off to California in about a week and a bit so would just feel guilty in taking time off so soon before my trip. On the plus side, at least my leg isn't bleeding as much as it did on the first day I decided to try to walk to work so it must be getting better.

I had grand plans of skiing and attending a big swing weekend event in Sacramento while I was in California but now it looks like I'll just have to confine myself to tour buses and other things that don't involve a lot of walking or any sort of physical activity :(

And to top all of this off, the bathroom of the people living upstairs from me has begun to leak, leaving lovely water marks on parts of my ceiling and wall. (Mental note; must call landlord soon to sort this out). I told yous the last time that Sod the bastard was just warming up. Lets just hope this is the worse of it. Bring on the good times.

Stupid Sod's Law

The last few days have been a good few days for yours truly. Everything just seemed to be going my way. So much so in fact I was preparing for the inevitable heap of pure bad crap that usually always follows a run of good fortune. It's just Sod's Law. It's his job to kick you in the nads when your on a high and least expecting it. As expected and right on schedule, Sod came alone and did his job.

So, where to begin? Well, lets start with the good stuff first. Last Saturday evening I went along to a charity event held by a swing dancing friend in aid of Habitat for Humanity. It was an Oscar themed swing dancing event. Before you went into the event you were asked to fill out a sheet predicting best actor, best actress etc. A big prize was then given to the person at the end of the night who managed to give the same predictions as that of the local resident "film expert" in Filmbase Ireland. It just so happened that I was that lucky person... yay me! I won myself a lovely big hamper of goodies and a weekend for 2 away in Galway. I knew all those misspent late nights watching crap movies would one day pay off. Up to that point in time I have never ever won anything in a raffle or anything of that nature before.

Roll on Monday morning. I had a driving test scheduled for that afternoon and had borrowed a friend's car over the weekend for the test seeing that I didn't possess any wheels of my own. The test was in Rathgar which was not the original test centre I had applied for (still with a 6 month wait I wasn't about to complain). I had previously checked the pass rate at the Rathgar test centre and it stood at 44.5%, the lowest pass rate in all the test centres in Dublin. So needless to say I was not looking forward to the test and was preparing myself for failure. On top of that, I managed to stall the car every single time I went out in it over the weekend which was not doing anything for my confidence. In any case, roll on Monday afternoon and the test... Low and behold I passed!!! First time and all. Didn't stall the car once! Of course on the way back home I stalled it again :)

So at this stage the Sod's Law alarm bells were starting to go off in my head. Too much good stuff was happening to me without any bad stuff. Now the bad stuff.

About a month ago, on a whim I applied for a position with a particular animation studio in the States (lets just say the name of the studio starts with a P and ends with an R). Not thinking anything of it, 3 weeks ago I get an email from their HR department asking for a quick phone interview. So since I was to fly out on my ski trip at the time I scheduled it for the Tuesday that I was back. Of course, I didn't tell anyone about this interview cause I didn't want to Jinx it. The interview itself when I finally had it was a short 20 minutes or so chat with one of the software engineers in the place. They basically wanted to talk to me to see if it was worth flying me out to California for a proper full interview. The guy at the end of the phone seemed nice enough and he didnt' really ask me anything that I couldn't answer. He basically described the position and what the job entailed and asked if I had done x,y and z before to which I answered yes to, promptly followed by long winded examples of using x,y and z in current and previous work (it's what I tend to do when I'm nervous, I babble). In fact the position from what was described to me was exactly what I always wanted to do and just seemed so perfect for me. In anycase, at the end of the "little chat" I was told that I'd be contacted shortly about their decision. All in all, despite my ramblings I thought the "interview" went quite well.

So a week later on Monday evening, the day that I passed my driving test and when Sod's Law alarm bells started going off in my head I received a PFO letter from the HR department :(. It wasn't entirely unexpected. I did get my hopes up there for a while after the initial interview but overall I guess it was just nice to know that my background and qualifications were good enough to warrant being noticed among probably the dozens of other applications I'm sure the studio gets everyday. I'm just going to put it down to that they decided at the end of the day it would be less hassle for them to interview and hire someone local. Besides, they are surrounded by some of the top ivy league universities in the states (i.e. Stanford and Berkley) so it would make more sense to interview and hire graduates from there and save the inevitable headache and cost of potentially hiring someone from abroad. Still, I'm glad I got the initial interview if nothing else. At least it shows that I'm more qualified than I've given myself credit for in the past.

So, now I'm expecting Sod to continue his "good" work and I'm bracing myself for a lot more crap that he's going to throw my way in the next few weeks. To Sod, all I'm going to say is : "Bring it on!".

Ski dancing week

Just got back from a week of skiing in St. Anton's in Austria followed by a kick ass weekend of dancing in Herfordshire in good old merry England. My legs ache, my arms ache, my neck aches, in fact my entire body is in a considerable amount of pain at the moment.

Mental note; "do not go directly to a 3 day all day all night dance festival straight after spending a week skiiing. You are not as young as you once were" :(

All in all, the skiing was good and despite the fact that the "Aprés ski" was better in Austria than it was in France (and also ignoring the fact that everything was almost twice as expensive as would have been in France) I think I still prefer the usual resort in France that I usually go to. Speaking as a person who dosn't drink (well hardly ever anyways) and/or generally likes really noisy pubs and bars the "kick ass aprés ski" thing is meaningless to me.

This time around I went with a rather large group of people. There were 11 of us in all but there might as well have just been the 2 of us. We rented 2 apartments (each one about 5 minutes from each other but a good half hour walk to the slopes) since there were so many of us. 7 in one apartment and 4 in the other. The majority of the people were all the new post grads from the new lab which meant that I really only knew about 1 and a half people there (I say half because I know one of the post grads but only on a friendly hello basis). So as a result of this, they all went off and did their own things with each other for the most part and never made an effort to include myself or Chris (the other oldie) in any of their activities. I didn't mind so much as I was there for the skiing but still a token gesture towards the "old folk", no matter how meaningless, would have been nice, otherwise we might as well have gone on our own (which wouldn't be too far from the truth in this case).

As for the ski runs; we were lucky enough to have good snow fall for most of the week but a lot of the ski runs at the resort just didn't do anything for me. Instead of having the usual 4 marking systems (i.e. green, blue, red and black) for piste difficulty levels, the pistes at St. Antons' did away with the super beginner green and just started at "improver" blue (probably presuming that only menly men go skiing at St Antons and thus would never be caught dead on a green slope). This I later found out was a bit of a misnomer. Some parts of the blue runs I would probably consider easier red runs and the black runs (the supposedly most difficult runs) were nothing more than what I would have considerd a hard red. In fact some parts of the red runs should have been blue runs. The marking system overall for the pistes were a little erratic.

I left the ski resort a day earlier than the others so that I could catch a plane from Zurich to London and then onto Haileybury College (home of Harry Potter) in Herfordshire for a long weekend of swing dancing. I arrived at 11pm just in time for the evening soiree.

Haileybury College I must admit is actually quite a nice place. You can definitely recognise the locations used for the filming of the Harry Potter movies. You could also see that it is quite a rich, posh school. Fortunately, the students were all on mid term break so we were given make shift accomodation in around the common areas of the students' usual accomodations; for example the students' tv room (which incidently had a huge 46 inch flat screen plasma tv in it). Because we got there a bit late all the good spots were already taken so we had to make do with laying our sleeping bags inside one of the small corridors outside the students' rooms. The only problem with this solution was that the corridor lights were controlled via a motion sensor. This meant that everytime someone turned in their sleep they would set off the motion sensor and thus switch on the lights and wake up everyone else :D This problem was promptly solved the next night with some tin foil and selotape, McGuyver style.

Caught the 6am flight back to Dublin on Monday morning to be nicely on time for work (after having danced all night the previous Sunday evening till 4am before getting a taxi from the venue straight to the airport). Luckily I fell asleep for a few hours (ok it was a lot of few hours) after dinner on Sunday so work on Monday wasn't as bad as it could have been.

Oh, and did I mention I had a driving lesson straight after work? Now that was a loooong day :)

Back with a bang... of sorts

After over a month of silence I've decided to give this whole blog thing another try. You know, with the new year and new resolutions and all that other jazz. It's not that I've had nothing to share or say, it's just that I got lazy.

So, in another attempt to get my literary juices flowing again, may I be so bold as to suggest the topic of the humble "rail gun". Why do I bring this up I hear you mumble? Well, other than getting the chance to play with one in Quake, it now also seems that the US navy get to play with one in real life as well. It's not as, erhem, "portable" as the one in Quake it would seem but I'm sure the US navy boys/girls are going to have just as much fun with it. The lucky gits.