The Life of Keenan

HIV+ Foreigners Allowed

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 01:56:56 GMT

Woohoo! I no longer need to get my HIV tests done at an anonymous clinic: U.S. Lifts Ban on HIV-Positive Foreigners.

Free Bookshelf

Sat, 12 Jul 2008 08:57:36 GMT

IMG_1530, originally uploaded by Keenman.

Anyone want a good bookshelf? It was my last upright bookshelf and I don't need it anymore, as I've moved everything in it into my main wall bookshelves. It's a sturdy Billy bookshelf from Ikea that's lasted me awhile, and it's in great condition. Approx. dimensions are 42" (H) x 24" (W) x 11" (D). Free to good home as long as you can pick it up.

Ockham's Razor

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 06:26:50 GMT

A friend and I are going to see Ockham's Razor on Thursday at 8 at Kells Irish Pub near Pike Place Market. Anyone else interested in coming with us? We can meet up at my place and walk down from there or just meet at the pub. It'll be a roaring good time for sure!

Internet Regional Encoding

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 05:55:03 GMT

So I was just trying to share a cool YouTube video with my brother, and it took me about 15 minutes to get him going, which was really frustrating, to say the least. Short story: if you're a Canadian and want to watch an awesome video on YouTube that's marked as US-only without having to use a proxy server, just go to http://youtubeproxy.org and enter the URL of the YouTube video on that page.

Also, if you want, you can fake which country you're in by using a proxy server listed at http://www.xroxy.com/proxy-country-US.htm (by editing your proxy settings via your browser's connection settings); however, many of these proxies have sites such as YouTube banned, so you won't be able to access them through the proxy. There can also often be a significant lag as all your browsing is redirected through the proxy.

I also found out my brother was using IE, so I informed him of the surfing benefits of Firefox with Adblock Plus. :-)

Things that make Keenan happy

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 19:22:37 GMT

I just had a meeting with the Excel developer who's been reviewing all my code and he randomly, out of the blue, called the code I've been writing brilliant. :-D

Puerto Vallarta

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 04:29:14 GMT

Woohoo - I just figured out my Puerto Vallarta itinerary. Thanks everyone for your suggestions and info. :-)

I won't give more details here because I'd rather not reveal too much online about dates I'll be out of town, but if you're curious, feel free to give me a shout.

Free stereo

Mon, 26 May 2008 22:31:04 GMT

Anyone want my old stereo? It's a good system, but I've realized it's been simply sitting in my closet for far too long. It's a Philips FW-M55. More info can be found at Amazon.

Short DRM Rant

Wed, 23 Apr 2008 08:52:23 GMT

I am *so* freaking sick of DRM. DRM is the main reason I refuse to use the iTunes music store. (They've made their DRM-free tracks traceable, containing such things as e-mail address and full name of the purchaser so that's not even an option.)

And if you think that this would never happen to [insert company here], there's this article as well. I should buy something from Amazon MP3 just to make a point. If I buy music, I should be able to do whatever I want with it, and I should not have to worry about stripping personally identifiable information from a track I bought either.

P.S. Actually, when iTMS first came out, I did try it out and bought three or four tracks with a gift certificate I was given from a friend. The next time I formatted my machine, I didn't realize that iTunes had put my iTMS music downloads in a folder separate from my main music folder. I didn't think to copy this other folder over and I lost the tracks I'd bought (admittedly for free). Of course, I couldn't get them back without purchasing them again. Yeah, silly me, and not DRM-specific, but I had never had to worry about special downloads before. Though I've since made changes just in case I do decide to download an American Idol performance (David Cook ftw!) or something.

Mexican resorts

Fri, 28 Mar 2008 06:17:48 GMT

Does anybody have any experience with good Mexican resorts? I want to take a week off to relax in April. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. :-) The resort doesn't actually have to be in Mexico, but warm, sunny, and in North or Central America. Thanks!

Politics of Nations

Fri, 28 Mar 2008 03:23:25 GMT

Whoa - I just discovered I can make US political donations now that I've got my green card! I had assumed that because I couldn't vote, I also couldn't make political donations, but I can now do anything politically I want except vote itself. Now the question I must ask myself is, "Do I want to?"

Indeed, I could have even participated in the Washington state caucus discussions. I don't see much point in that, though, seeing how I couldn't have voted for or been a delegate.

Edit: Okay, I've made my decision.

Taxes

Sat, 22 Mar 2008 18:01:44 GMT

For the first time ever since I moved to the US, I'm actually getting money back. Having a condo switched me from having to pay about $2500 to getting about $800 back. Woohoo!

Frig

Wed, 19 Mar 2008 06:31:29 GMT

I'm not one to post obituaries, but this one hit me: Arthur C. Clarke; Sci-Fi Writer Foresaw Mankind's Possibilities.

His 90th Birthday Reflections. It made me feel good that the video view count showed exactly 16 384 when I watched it.

Robotics

Tue, 18 Mar 2008 08:45:24 GMT

The coolest thing I've seen all day: Boston Dynamics Big Dog. 1:25 into the video is an especially impressive demonstration. Lots of buzzing though.

Crazy dream

Wed, 12 Mar 2008 16:31:19 GMT

I'm married, my wife is pregnant, and we're sitting in a parking lot. We have some kind of argument and I get out of the car, and she drives right towards me and tries to run over me. I run as fast as I can. She gets out of the car and chases me with a butcher knife she's somehow acquired. I call 911, frantically explain the situation and they say they'll have someone right over. Luckily, at this point, I wake up.

Yeah, that's definitely the craziest dream I've had in awhile.

iPhone SDK

Sat, 08 Mar 2008 07:59:00 GMT

So my official position on not yet getting an iPhone has been that I've been waiting for an SDK to come out for it. But it looks like I'm going to have to wait a bit longer: I really want to play around with the accelerometer, but Apple has made it so that only devs that have a license can physically install apps onto an iPhone, and they're currently limiting the number of devs who get licenses. Also, they only released the SDK for the Mac, so when they do expand the SDK licensing program, I'm going to have to get myself a Mac laptop as well. Except for some minor debugging of http://office.microsoft.com a few years ago, I haven't really used a Mac since I wrote a column for my high school newspaper back in OAC (Gr. 13). That wasn't a very pleasant experience; however, the O/S may have changed a little since 1995. I wonder if they ever got around to adding a second button to their mouse. ;-)

The other two problems I have with the iPhone are that I really want 3G support and usage in Canada will be pricy. Ah well, I guess I'll just have to wait and see. Between the cost of a new laptop, a new phone and a dev license, that adds up to quite a bit. It'd be so odd owning a Mac. At least Microsoft offers an employee discount on them. :-)

Sci-Fi Museum

Thu, 06 Mar 2008 05:37:54 GMT

I have a couple of tickets to the Sci-Fi Museum (part of the EMP) that expire on March 13th for anyone who wants them. The museum is open daily from 10a - 5p, and I'm pretty sure you can use them as a discount for the whole EMP / Sci-Fi package if you're so inclined.

Random musings (for want of a better title)

Wed, 05 Mar 2008 12:26:35 GMT

Though a dated article and an even more dated exhibit, here is a fascinating take on the psychological boundaries of performance art: Performance: Chris Burden and the Limits of Art.

And yeah, I should be asleep, especially since this month's experiment is getting up at 8:30 every day. My last two experiments have been largely successful: the first was to drink two litres of water a day, and the second to bring a lunch to work every day. Each time, I only missed a couple of times, and as a consequence of the first two experiments, I am now drinking more water and am still often taking a lunch into work. My goal for this month is to start getting to work earlier. Lately, I've been getting in later and later which has been hindering my productivity. It's fun to switch something in my routine each month, though the experiments are generally going to get progressively harder. Next month's experiment will be capping my e-mail response lag time to 24 hours: yet again, I find myself a month and a half behind, and it's a bit annoying. There are a few e-mails in there that I especially want to reply to, yet I keep putting it off.

I downloaded the free tracks of the new NIИ album tonight from http://ghosts.nin.com/main/home. It's quite artistic, makes for good background music, and it is not at all what I expected. I've decided I'm going to buy the whole album. At only $5, you really can't go wrong. Ever since I first heard Pretty Hate Machine, NIИ has gradually grown on me. Indeed, it was whilst listening to Something I Can Never Have that I decided to accept the fact that I was attracted to guys.

I had a good dinner with Josh this evening, over at Mayuri. We had some heated conversation and he helped me gain some perspective, though I'm still not sure I agree with him.

I am totally skipping out on my experiment tomorrow morning: there is *no* way I'm setting my alarm for just over four hours from now! At this rate, I won't be getting up until after eleven.

Weird coincidence

Fri, 22 Feb 2008 08:18:18 GMT

A few minutes ago I ended up on the Forbes website, where they show a quote with an ad below it before going into the site. The quote happened to be one my high school friend Troy used to say all the time: "If you can't run with the big dogs, stay on the fucking porch". (The Forbes quote didn't have the profanity.) I hadn't heard this expression for awhile, and it reminded me of building 'The Keen Machine' with him for our OAC Physics project: an insulated car that would safely transport an egg when launched ten feet. Oddly, every contraption built by every student passed twice except for ours, which failed our first run. It had looked like it'd passed though, but there was a crack on the bottom of the egg which the examiners failed to see. We decided to be honest and used the broken egg for our second run, knowing it would fail. The egg yolk made quite a gooey mess of the car.

A few minutes later, a faint recollection of a friend of mine named Craig in University randomly popped into my head. Amazingly, I remembered his last name quite quickly, but I couldn't remember how I knew him. I did a search of my old journals and found a reference to him: he was a coworker of mine the first term I worked at the Canadian Passport Office back in 1996. I'd had a bit of a crush on him. I did a quick search and discovered he works (worked?) in Germany as a mobile game developer. I went back to my journal, read a couple of entries before the one I found him referenced, and there, right in my journal, was Troy's quote, bringing me back full circle.

Ah, memories. I ended up reading through quite a bit of my journal from 1996, and some of it was pretty rough. A bunch of fighting my sexuality, issues between my parents (my Mom wouldn't let my Dad see my brother), coming out to roommates (and then quickly going back into the closet when it didn't go over to well), wanting to be a Scheme programmer :-). What a better place I'm in now.

Obama Hype

Thu, 21 Feb 2008 10:33:45 GMT

Here's a fascinating, in-depth article I found in The Daily Kos today: I Refuse to Buy into the Obama Hype.

Arrgh

Tue, 05 Feb 2008 12:34:50 GMT

Arrgh. Sometimes life really isn't fair. After being rather sick and lethargic last week and for most of the weekend, I was finally all raring to go today and did quite a bit of investigation at work. Now I find myself wide awake at 3:48 in the morning after trying to sleep for ages, but not able to because of the worst migraine I've had in years. I even got out my oxycodone a few minutes ago because nothing else has ever helped. :-(

The first migraine I ever had, back when I worked at Corel, was preceded by some rather nifty bright and colourful visual effects, but they stopped being quite so nifty when the effects covered up the majority of my vision -- having never experienced it before, I thought I was going blind. Luckily the effects went away relatively quickly, but then I got the worst headache I'd ever had.

The worst part is that reading seems to intensify the pain. I really shouldn’t even be writing this.

(4:23 am) Frig, the oxycodone didn’t do a thing. I need to be productive this week, and I probably won't get to sleep for another hour or two yet. My only saving grace is that my one and only meeting today isn't until 3.

Ah well, now that I've written this, I might as well post it instead of tucking it away in my private folder, even if it is just a lame rant.

EDIT: Luckily, after almost an hour after taking it, the oxycodone did indeed kick in and I'm pleasantly reminded why it's a controlled substance (though, like most drugs, I believe it shouldn't be). The pain is almost entirely gone now, and I'm in such a happier state. :-) (Incidentally, to be perfectly clear, this is a legal prescription.)

2008

Mon, 07 Jan 2008 08:46:43 GMT

Woohoo! I survived 2007! For a bit I wasn't sure if I was going to make it there, but it is now 2008 and I'm happily on my feet again. I've been looking forward to this year for so long now.

Things were great over the holidays: I went back home to visit my family for a short, but relaxing visit. We played a bunch of Fluxx (which my Mom is totally addicted to), and I got to see my first girlfriend from high school again, after a 9 year hiatus. We'd lost touch before I finished University, and I'd tried searching for her a couple of years back, to no avail: I don't like it when I lose touch with people I've been quite close to. Definitely a successful visit overall - I even got to hang out with my Grandma for a bit. (I believe she's 86, but I'm not sure.) Flying home sucked though: I ended up being stuck in Toronto for 7 hours altogether. My flight was delayed for 4 hours: the original plane I'd been scheduled to board was leaking fuel. Though it was a bit of an inconvenience, I'm glad they caught it. I'd already gone through US customs, so visiting friends while we waited for a replacement plane was out of the question. :-(

I'm thinking about getting a cat, though a stinky litter box is a non-starter. Anyone have any recommendations for good litter boxes that don't smell and are easy to clean? I miss having a pet: from the time I was six weeks old in my crib until I was 12, my cat Tabatha slept with me almost every night. Though aother concern would be my travelling: I wouldn't want my cat to be too lonely while I was gone, though I'd probably be able to work that out with friends.

I'm pondering about trying out some experiments on myself where I change some aspect of my regular routine for a month, and perhaps indefinitely if I like the change. We'll see how it goes.

Hope everybody's 2008 is a great one! It's the last year of Dubya!

Pachelbel Rant

Wed, 07 Nov 2007 07:41:26 GMT

Ahh, I couldn't help but break my silence and post a YouTube video of all things.

Oh why not -- I'll post a real update. Overall, life goes well. I got myself an Xbox 360 last week, thereby increasing my consumerist score by quite a few points; however, I didn't get myself a copy of Halo 3: I'm not much of a fan of the FPS genre, though I did like Doom 2 and Duke Nukem 3D. I'm playing Final Fantasy Online again too, reuniting with the group I left three years ago.

I'm a little annoyed with the writer's strike, but perhaps it'll get me away from the TV. It'll blow though if Heroes doesn't finish the season.

I was happy when the Canadian dollar hit par with the US$, but it just hit $1.10 a couple of hours ago in overseas trading, and that kinda sucks. It's doing quite well against the Euro & Pound as well. I decided to not go home for Christmas because the prices were so high and I didn't want to deal with freezing rain this year. I figure I'll go back when the weather's nicer and this way I won't have to deal with crowded airports and potentially cancelled flights.

I'm heading to LA for the weekend to visit my friend Dakotta and go to Disneyland for the first time too. Should be fun, though it looks like it'll be a tad cooler than I thought it'd be.

Work is going well, but we're going to be in milestone coding until February. My goal is to not work any weekends for the rest of the year and remain on schedule -- we'll see how that goes. It'll require me focusing more when I'm actually at work, but I think I'm up to the challenge.

By the way, Pachelbel's Canon was one of the first "real" pieces I learned on the piano, and it was really this piece that got me hooked on improv piano because the melody is so flexible. I still enjoy playing it from time to time, though always in my own style.

Busy weekend

Sun, 01 Jul 2007 13:24:31 GMT

It's 5:46am and I can't sleep. It's my own fault though: I purposefully stretched out the day to pack in a lot of activities by having an energy drink, and I ended up stretching it out a bit too long. It's been a good weekend by far. Straight from work, I dropped by Tarin's to waste away some time because there was no point going back to the west side just to be back at Wyv's in Redmond for his booze and wine sipping party. I got a couple of huge scratches from playing around with Tarin's border collie, Riley, and we watched a boxing match (what else?) where this one guy, Wilson, brutally knocked out his opponent in the 10th round.

Then I headed over to Wyv's around 9 and had a good time there, getting myself rather toasted in the process, and all pimped up in a wifebeater, bling, etc, for a bit. Needless to say, I ended up crashing at his place because there was no way I was driving. Slept in at Wyv's, had some lunch with Wyv, Duncan, Kyle & Michael, and then went straight to Nightcat's with Michael to swim in the pool for a couple of hours or so, what with the perfect weather we had today for it.

After that, Michael & I headed back to my place so that I could freshen up and head over to Trey's BBQ. Saw a lot of CAMPers there and a few people talked to me about my condition that I didn't expect -- I guess word gets around. Around 8:30, we headed back to Capitol Hill and Michael & I went over to the Egyptian to pack goodie bags for the midnight showing of the Buffy Musical: Once More with Feeling sing-a-long where I got to experience what it'd be like to be an assembly line worker. I didn't mind doing it for the short time so that I could get the free ticket to the sold-out show, but I couldn't imagine people doing the same type of repetitive tasks for 30 years. The show itself was great -- it was a lot of fun singing along and playing with the trinkets, including a kazoo, bubbles, and a monster finger puppet, along with the other 600 people in the theatre. We went to the Cuff afterwards and then I hung out with Michael a bit more before I drove him home.

I think I'm getting back into the swing of things, but now it's time to relax and hopefully get some much-needed rest. :-)

Work

Fri, 15 Jun 2007 03:52:57 GMT

It's official: I'm back at work on Monday! :-) Only part-time for now, but hopefully that'll change soon. This condo has definitely made me a bit stir-crazy.

A good night

Sun, 10 Jun 2007 09:41:42 GMT

Boy, I've had a good night. Best night I've had in a good while. I was out being social, celebrating sashapup's birthday. I was a wee bit anxious going into it because I knew it'd be a decently large group, but I knew everyone there and I knew that I'd made quite a bit of progress in the past couple of months. By the end of the evening I felt alive again, back to my old self, willing to talk more, keep track of and take part in conversations, even when multiple people were talking. (I know it may not sound like that big of a deal, but it's a big deal for me because it's been so frustrating to not be able to do such a simple thing.)

I think one of the core issues may be one of risk: this year, I've feared taking any risks because I haven't trusted myself at all. Also, I didn't think my words had any value: that there wasn't anything I could add to a conversation, or that if I did, I'd say the wrong thing. But I simply have to accept that sometimes I'm going to fall flat on my face, that I'm going to say or do the wrong thing, but that it probably won't be that big of a deal. I'm not John Kerry, after all. Sometimes I'll win; sometimes I'll lose, but hopefully I'll have some fun in the process. Playing a game where you pretty much know the outcome in advance tends to get boring rather quickly.

Googling for the phrase "tiny interesting choices" that queueball introduced to me, I was able to find a good comic strip: http://www.xkcd.com/c267.html.

It's been a long six months, but I am finally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. I just hope I'm still feeling this way when I wake up tomorrow.