Empty Chairs and Empty Tables

Today is the last day for one of my coworkers. She was hired at the same time I was. She has chosen to continue to study the arts of cutting........gem cutting.....*OOOOOOOoooooooo* *Aaaahhhhhhh*.
Ever since I was very little, there has been some sort of dark aura that surrounded me. I felt as though time had stood still and all that surrounds me just went on.
In elementary school, I went to an extra curricular "cultural" school on Saturdays where I learned move of my native tongue and history. People came and went, year by year, until the final year there, I was the only original left. All my friends left me.
In highschool, I was part of several extra curricular groups. When I joined the groups, they were filled with people that wanted to participate. Especially the Yearbook committee, my pride and joy of my highschool carrier. I was trained by THE "Hannah Sung" (I can't believe she's on Wiki). But as people like Hannah left, the committee became smaller and smaller until most of the work fell upon 4 core people.
As life went on, I was accepted into a University of my choice and again, I joined a group (actually two groups but they were pretty much one). I joined the cultural group that had a radio portion of it. I became the director of the radio division. I was on air every Sunday night. As the terms went on, I saw members come and go, there were some weeks where I was the only one on the air.
Today I'm part of a first responder brigade. It seems so hard to retain people. A few months after I became a member, resignation letters flew in from left right and centre. People left for job opportunities around the world. Some had to return to school out of town.
Is it me? Why is this happening to me?

Defective products, too late for a refund

I'd like to make a formal complaint to M&M's for their defective bag of Milk Chocolate M&M's I bought. Actually, every bag I bought was defective, I've had enough and I really think something should be done. I bought the bag and was very anxious to open up the bag and pour out a handfull of the contents within. To my disbelief, I saw a bunch of defective ones. So I just sucked them in and ate the bag, went back to buy another bag to confirm my suspicion. Maybe I was just so unlucky to buy that one defective bag. So I buy a 2nd one the following day, again I go back to my desk, gently tear open the mouth and pour out the contents..........MORE defective ones. Well, I wasn't going to take this from the big candy corporation. So I pick up the phone and dial their customer's satisfaction line. When I reach the representative, he introduces himself as "Red" and continues to ask me what I called for. I started my complaint "In my bag of M&M's milk chocolate, only 20% were really M's, I got a bunch of 3's, E's and W's. I think I should be fully compensat..." *click* *dooooooooooooooooo*. I can't believe it, he hung up on me. What kind of service is this? Geez, that's just.........gosh......I'm going to try to call them again later..........the nerve of them.......

So I recently got an upgrade for a really really cool address finding system. When someone tells me that I need to go to 555 Redridge Ave it just zooms right into the location by path.....I mean location. The upgrade has a small defect to it, for some strange reason now it finds the address for all the houses on Redridge, and even the the street beside Steepes Rd. Then after getting all he houses, it goes to each house and asks me, "Is this the one you're looking for?" "No? How about this one?" The worst thing is, there is no order to this. What kind of upgrade is this!?!?!?!? I complained to them but I got this from them.

I seem to have really bad luck lately with products. I got this financial tool that allowed me to do all these really funky things like plot 3d graphs, project into the future with random numbers, generate false entries so that when you do bank reconciliations it would be hell, magically complete the tax forms on April 1st of every year then delete the entries on April 2nd while popping a message "SUC-KAH!!!!", and it makes toast with strawberry jam. There was a clause at the bottom, "All the above functions available if you program it yourself". I didn't realize this until it was too late. Anyhow, these wonderful functions, it can't do the simplest of things, it can't add numbers, it can't round numbers to 2 decimal places, it can't even truncate the values. After emailing the company, they told me that no plug-in/fix was going to be issued for this because they just aren't going to give it at all. So I'm stuck with a $499.95 (& tax) OEM product that looks nice and collects dust. I should've just bought a warehouse of tissues.

BTW, it would seem that today is the happiest day of the year.

Listen, and you may learn something

If you talk and no one listens, is there still a point in talking? Sometimes I just feel like I'm talking to myself but the problem is, there is no response......maybe I should just take up talking and answering myself or I can just take up wrestling myself like Graham Chapman in Flying Circus, at least that would keep me entertained until I put myself into a sleeper hold...........
Well, it would seem that Maul doesn't really listen to much then comes back 10 seconds later with the same questions and the same comments that were said already. How many times do you need to confirm something? really....does it need 5 times? "Are you sure this is it?" "What are you sure of?" "Is that really true?".........yeeesh.......waste of time.

So I went to watch the The Lake House last night. The movie talks about a Dr. Kate that tries to rent out her house by the lake (really?....I would've never guessed.....The Lake House....house on the lake...wow....) and somehow rents it out, but to a dude Alex W........and here's the twist *****NOT SO SPOILER AHEAD******** Alex is from the past....2 years in the past to be exact. This movie is supposed to have some paralellism to a book called Persuasion by Jane Austen. The two are unable to meet up but love each other so much. Such a tragedy. As the story unfolds, certain "truths" are told and may get you wondering, why? Hmmmmm. Well, that's for me to know and for you all to find out. =P

Masters and the Apprentices

Lately it's been a bit of a rough ride. The Emporer and Darth Maul have been coming in strong and hard on us. The Emporor keeps using mind tricks on us telling us "It will be done......"...."yes......yes........it will be done....." But I have no freakin idea how. Maul is breathing down our necks every other turn. While Maul is watching the worlds podraces, we were all being strangled by Maul's Death Grip.
On the other side of the world, Quai-Gon and Obi-Wan fought desperately to fend off the peons from the Emporer's wrath. For each wall that Obi-Wan brought down, Maul errected another one.
As the peons struggled to get things in shape for Maul, Leia seemed to want to stay political so she remained neutral and swayed to whichever side had the upper hand on the conversational pieces. In order for Leia to keep her neutrality, she ordered for an open information policy, every piece of info must go before her eyes.
In all this......Jar-Jar just snickered in the corner as life crumbled to the ground.

4 8 15 16 23 42 EXECUTE

**BEEP BEEP** **BEEP BEEP** *BEEP BEEP**
Dammit, the alarm is going again. I'm still at work right now...yes...indeed....and the alarm goes off every 108 minutes I think. Either that or I'm getting delierious right about now. So every 108 minutes, either Mark or I (we take turns) run to the panel and swipe our access card on the black sensor and the alarm resets itself. Is this real? Or is someone just running an experiment on us to see if we'd keep at it not know what the real reason behind it is............dun-dun..........

Have I inadvertently said some evil thing?

I had to blog this piece. This was the weirdest pre-exam.......no....make it weirdest conversation piece I've heard before. All names used are fictitious because I don't really remember the names after my stressful exam.
I was sitting in the hallway waiting for the exam room to open (with the other examinees). The lady sitting in front of me looks in my general direction, slightly tilted to me left. She proceeds to say to the person beside me....

Across - "Do I know you?"
Beside - Look of deep thought on face
Across - "Yes.....I think.......you're Randy's wife Emily right?"
Emily - "Yes, yes I am, and you...."
Across - "I'm Randy's ex." *Huge gleeful smile on face*
Emily - "Ooooo, Randy has said much of you, you're Christine right?"
Christine - "Yes, oh how are you doing?"

By this point of the conversation I was really REALLY confused. Since my exam was in 30 minutes, I decided to tune them out and continue to read my textbook as a last minute attempt to cram one more sentence into my puny brain. I did pick up bits and pieces of the conversation but they were all just "What have you been up to?" "REALLY? Noooooooo....REALLY?" and "What course you here for?.......OH....MY......GAWD........we're in the same course..........WOW" Ok, this is when the examiner came out and told us to go inside and sit down. This is absolutely the weirdest conversation piece I've ever heard of.
For a good reading of thrilling podcast poems, head over to Mark Leslie's page and listen to his podcast. And I'm waiting for the next LOST podcast.....even though the season is over, there is going to be a few more podcasts I hear.

Look Down, Look Down, It's Hot as Hell Below....

So for the past little while it's been around 28+ degrees celcius. I really like the weather being nice and toasty. The only problem I have is that the building I'm in has this temperature gauge that will adjust to the external temperature (my guess). This is because it's FREEZING HERE!!!!!! It's like an ice box here. I fear that I may catch a cold sooner or later.
So we're in a new age of PodCasting. I've been listening to some podcasts here and there but the only ones that have really perked to me are only by Wil Wheaton and my good friend Mark Leslie (writer/blogger/soon-to-be podcaster). I used to be part of a local radiostation when I was in University. I guess I could say that I did somewhat of a podcast....because it sure felt like a podcast more than live radio. The radio station was in a very very remote area. You had to first trek on unpaved dirt/little rocks road. The surounding are uncut grass, a huge pond, and traintracks on the other side. You walk on the unpaved road for around 1.5km and finally reach an area with high trees surrounding an old warehouse with rusted windows, some wooden boards over some windows and a huge signal tower on top of the building. This.........is the radio station. This place is one of the most fearful places I've been to in my life. For 5 years of my University career, I would trek to this isolated location every Sunday at 1700h, and leave around 2000h. Let me try to paint the picture (because I can't find online a picture of the building). The building is built with huge grey slabs of concrete, it runs 50m long and 25m wide. The forest acts as a barrier of some form (from what 3v1l that lies beyond the line on the ground in front of the forest entrance). Ravens and Crows all perched on the tree branchs, cawing happily in chorus while staring intently on the activites of the building. There are two entrances to the building (actually three), and I would randomly choose one. The western entrance leads you to the office area and the southern entrance leads you strait into the "library". Normally I would enter the southern entrance because it is the faster route to the broadcast studios. As you open the rusted door with the "I-have-no-idea-how-the-knob-still-works", a strong musty smell overwhelms me. Everytime I open that door, I have to hold my breath and let the dust settle. Once inside, there is a door on the right. There is a huge chain on the door with a pad lock that looks like it came from the 40's or something like that. Passing by the door always gives me the shivers. Cobwebs have formed in front of the doorway and no one every cleans it. I have asked maybe people that worked there and no one seems to know what is behind the door. This is the weirdest thing, the building as I said is 50m long, but the entrance is at the 10m mark, and this doorway leads to the back of the building somehow which would be the remaining 80% of the building. But no-one knows how to get in or what is in there? Wouldn't someone want to know? I hope that it's just some storage room for old equipment, but the chain and old padlock really scares me. Anyhow, I might finish up my description of the warehouse, but the bottom line is, sometimes during broadcasting, I hear funny noises from behind the door, maybe mice, maybe something else, I'm not too sure. But I'm happy that I don't really have to trek there in the winter anymore.
Ok, a couple of things.....I'm a Lost fan and have been perked on the mission to decypher the Dharma Inititive password. If anyone knows, please enlighten me. I've also been investigating the Hanso Foundation website. It's very very interesting and lots of easter eggs. Anyhow, I'm also listening to the podcast and I find it's really really funny. I only have 5 more podcasts left from Lost, what will I do after I've read them all?!?!.......