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.