Duanerism 1.0

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Someone convinced me last time I was at the bar to start posting the best of my cell phone text messages to my flickr account. So without further ado. Yup, that’s a mistake I’m not likely to make again. If anyone has any wicked ones as well, let me know. Maybe we can start a cool Flickr group. ...

Duanerism 2.0

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I’m guessing I wasn’t having a good time there. ...

Hump Like You Give A Damn

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Any questions? ...

Blind, Once Again

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Today I had a specialist appointment to fully quantify the damage to my vision from my accident last year. The appointment was about an hour of waiting in the waiting room, twiddling my thumbs, and an hour of experiments. They were forced to dilate my eyes, which means not only am I totally sensitive to light right now, but I’m having a very hard time reading anything. Not sure the verdict, but it’s looking pretty likely that my double vision in my upgaze is probably permanent. I can potentially compensate for this by changing my eyeglass prescription to have a slight upward taper in the ...

Christmas

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For some reason, I seem to get a lot of flack for getting ready for Christmas this early. There are those who can’t possibly believe that someone would put their decorations up in November, instead waiting until the last minute to put theirs up. For me, I love Christmas. I love coming home and flipping on the strand alongside my main window. I love being curled up on the couch with my duvet and a good movie, having no lights on except for the dim glow of my tree. My Christmas setup last year I guess part of the reason is that while in university, Christmas always went too fast. By that time, ...

Mad World

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So, I’m not sure if this is a good idea or not, but whatever. I’ve been messing in garage band for about six months now, wanting to record something but just not sure what to record. I used to be in choir over 20 years ago, and I can sort of carry a tune. I know I need to have a ton of practice to get anywhere close to where I used to be as a kid (and most of my practice was pre-puberty, so I have to re-learn a deeper voice), but I decided to get over the hump and just quickly record something and take my beats for it. When I was out in Toronto visiting everyone, Raymi pointed me at this song ...

Honesty, Can I Really Get Much Cuter Than This?

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I don’t think it’s really possible. Clearly a $5 Santa hat is what I was missing in life. Normally I’d just leave it as that, but I just did a semi-buzzed iChat with Rebecca and John, and we all just laid the smack down on the word CUTE, so I’m gonna post it here. Yah, you might as well logoff now because you got nothing on that. ...

When To Let Go

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So, something happened tonight that kind of irked me a bit. It was completely offset by the fact that I went out and did a pile of Christmas shopping, but all the same. When I was 17, I was at a summer party in Chilliwack at this guy Geoff’s house. Of course, being in a small town, we were all drinking our faces off at that point. Thankfully, most parties back then were in houses and everyone just spent the night, so for the most part we were all safe. Anyways, in walked these two girls, one of which completely caught my eye. I spent a bit of time talking to her and her friend, and ended up ...

Gonna be some changes around here

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I’m pretty beat, having spent a good portion of the day traveling again. The flight from Montreal to Vancouver, with the strong head winds, was almost six hours long – thankfully it was extremely bearable up in business class, thanks to my hot towel and my tasty meals. Despite all the perks associated with business class (and there are many), I think the main one I enjoyed is that the flight attendants and people you encounter all automatically treat you with respect. If you have a problem, they’ll help you solve it. If you don’t like your seat, they’ll help you move. Worried about your ...

Father's Day

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Today I made the trek out to Chilliwack for a mini-BBQ at my sister’s house in honour of father’s day. It was great seeing my family again, and I hung out long enough to play a few board games. My dad and my nephew, Derek Happy Father’s Day buddy. ...

Back at Home After Surgery

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I’m not up to writing a full blog entry, but just wanted to let everyone know I made it home and that I’m recovering. The whole hospital procedure was far harder on me this time than last time, and I still feel really shaky. Hopefully tomorrow I’ll feel alot better. ...

Home Sweet Home

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Last night we had a mini drinking event at work where we said goodbye to Chris and Hanh. After consuming a few beers, we sat down and started to watch a bit of the hockey game. After the second period, Hesty and I ventured down Robson street on our way home and met up with John and Rebecca for a drink at a local restaurant. This morning I woke up around 11am (and man, was it nice to sleep in), had a quick shower and hopped into the car headed for Chilliwack. It seems like it’s been a really long time since I’ve been back home. My dad and I went halfers on some homemade wine a while ago, and ...

Master's Thesis

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I’ve had a few requests lately from people asking if I could send them a copy of my master’s thesis. So in the interest of saving time, I’m throwing it up here in case anyone wants to download it and read themselves to sleep. My research was primarily in the area of high definition video compression, specifically on a new codec called H.264 that is used in the new HD DVD formats such as Blue-Ray and HD-DVD. I proposed a novel scheme to combine concurrently broadcoast MPEG-2 standard definition (SD) streams with H.264 spatial difference information to create a HD broadcast stream at a ...

The Aftermath Of My 30th Birthday

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Well, it’s now official — not only am I officially 30, but I have also survived my 30th birthday party. Thanks to everyone who came out to enjoy a few beers. In my case, thanks to all the shots, I drank way more than I’m used to. While I had a great time, unfortunately I slipped down the stairs at Honey and lost my glasses long enough for a few people to step on them. So, apparently I’ll be visiting the eyeglass store this week to put in a new order. Thanks everyone who popped by. I have a meeting with my plastic surgeon on Friday, and from there I’ll know when I’ll have my second ...

Turning 30

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Well, in just a few hours, yours truly will be turning 30. I originally set out last night to write something memorable, and spent a few hours writing a blog entry that I hoped would detail the last ten years of my life. However, upon waking up this morning, I realized that it wasn’t really what I wanted to say, probably because I think it was heavily influenced by the events of the last six months. The truth is, this has probably been the hardest year of my life. Between a big breakup, that assault in November, a surgery and some other personal things in my life, it was really quite a challenge ...

Piggy Banks

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I actually came home with the intention of writing two separate blog entries, but I’m so frickin tired that I’m only gonna be able to get this one out. This is a pretty crazy little time at work right now, and I’m on day two of a pretty hard two week push. Yesterday was a 12 hour day at work, and today was pretty close to 14. By Friday I’m definitely going to be ready for a few drinks (or maybe a long nap). Anyways. I was chatting wtih my brother-in-law on MSN earlier today, and he let me know that their house was broken into in Chilliwack this morning. The guys made away with most of ...

Going To Sleep With A Macbook Pro

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So last week I decided that I was going to try and break my whole staying up late, getting up late routine and actually make an effort to go to bed early and get up early. For the most part (except for getting in a bit later today, which is excusable but unfortunately not bloggable), I’ve been keeping to a routine of hitting the sack around 11, reading on my laptop until 11:30 or so, and getting up at 7am. Now, I have a queen sized bed. I’ve had one for years now I guess, ever since university. But the funny thing is, I will never ever be able to sleep like I have a queen sized bed. For the ...

When Email Just Isn't Enough

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So last night I headed down to the Alibi room for Keri’s 29th birthday party. I got the official invite via a myspace bulletin a while ago, and slotted it into my calender. The piece I apparently forgot I guess was the “RSVP via Email” thing at the bottom. So tonight, I got all dolled up, and headed down there for 10pm. Only problem was nobody else was there.. So, I got myself a drink, and waited. After an hour I realized there were a few holes in my original plan.. Unfortunatley, my cell phone was recently fixed, and I don’t have many numbers in there yet, so I had no way to contact any ...

Stupid is as stupid does

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As i mentioned in one of my previous posts, tonight I went down to Future Shop and picked up a new MacBook Pro. Before I detail what the buying experience was like, I’m going to talk a bit about me. I do stupid things. Quite often actually. And maybe Forest Gump would say it’s because I actually am stupid, but I think it’s mainly because I’m absent minded from time to time. One good example is the day I went to work with my short not only on backwards, but also on inside out. It didn’t really have any distinguishing features on it, and after three weeks of late nights working on my master’s ...

Valentine's Day Wrap-up

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Well, this day is finally over, so I can write about it. I cracked a bottle of wine at 6:30pm and started going through some old photos for something to do. I decided about mid way through that I would use the opportunity to try out some wines that I’ve been meaning to check out for a while. At around 10pm Tiffany strolled by and helped me on the drinking front. It was a pretty decent evening. I gotta get to bed for a 9am conference call tomorrow, but here are a few photos from today. ...