Friday, October 31, 2003

Why I don't like living alone:

I'm home sick today. I really want to watch a movie. But I don't have any movies, so I'll have to go get one myself.

I'm also going to run out of juice soon, and I'll have to go get that myself too.
Okay, here's the plan: If they can't audit the outgoing government before the election, if they find non-transparent accounting in the post-election audit, the outgoing party has to pay a fine. The fine should be significant enough to be punitive and the amount of the fine should be geared towards the dollar amount of the accounting deception.

Thursday, October 30, 2003

I have a Sylvania microwave. After seven months, it suddenly stopped heating one day. However, it was still under warranty, so Canadian Tire was willing to exchange it for a new one.

I know this is of no concern to anyone reading this, I'm just putting it in the public domain for people who happen to be googling to learn about the quality and performance of Sylvania microwaves.
WARNING: Gator is changing its name! Constant vigilance!

Tuesday, October 28, 2003

I was watching this really cool documentary on string theory. I didn't understand string theory when they taught it to us in OAC, but I understood what was going on in this doc and I haven't had any further physics training since (and that was five years ago) so they could explain things well. It turns out that I can believe in photons under string theory (I can't believe in them under quantum or general relativity), but I'm not sure if I can actually believe in string theory as it stands now. It's a lot more plausible to me with 11 dimensions than with 10 though. Ten is far too neat for a theory of everything.
Yeah, the article and the work it's reviewing are both stupid and over simplistic. But I can't help but wonder what they'd think about me. I'm 22 and childless. I don't ever want to have children. I don't want to advance too far in my career. I don't want to be in management at any point, never mind be an executive. I don't want to add more stress to my life to earn six figures when I can easily get by on less than half of that. I don't want to have to think about my work out side of 9-5 M-F. I feel no need to change the world myself, although I will spend time pressuring my elected representatives to do so. And when I die only those who knew me personally might remember me.

Analyse that!
I am so depressed. I so have SAD! I wanted to blog about a couple of articles I read, but I'm just too grumpy to go find them. I wanted to buy coffee and a flashlight, but I was feeling too antisocial to carry out the transactions. I need to write my grandmother a thank-you note, but I can't summon the appropriate enthusiasm for three lines of profuse thanks. I had my spaghetti, I had my Harry Potter fic, and the grumpiness hasn't gone away! It's only 6:30 but it feels so much later. All I want is for it to be light out when I leave work! I could really use some good phone time, but there's no one around to call right now.

Monday, October 27, 2003

Whenever I see a car commercial, it makes me wonder how bad a new car could possibly be. They all talk about how great they handle and stuff, but do new cars ever handle badly? I know that some last longer than others and some have better safety ratings than others, but is there any difference when they are brand new?
Anyone out there know what truffle essence is? Is it animal or vegetable?

Sunday, October 26, 2003

Either my hands got fat or my rubber gloves shrank. Can rubber gloves shrink?
It is so dark so early! On nights before I go to work, my habit is to have a glass of wine around 8. So when I noticed that it was pitch black outside, I turned on the TV to watch the Simpsons and was about to pour myself some wine, when I realized that it was only 6:20! GAH! I am not going to get used to this! I shudder to think of that point in the bleak midwinter when the sun will set before I even leave work.

The extra hour of sleep you get at the end of daylight savings time was of more value to me as a student. As a student, I'd catch up on as much sleep as I needed to, and I'd still have plenty of time to do my chores and catch up on homework before the end of the weekend. Now that I don't have homework that needs doing, this extra hour was nice but not nearly as necessary. However, it did result in my "sleeping in" until 8 am, so hopefully that will give me the push I need to get through the week.

Saturday, October 25, 2003

Either my current mental age is 9 years old, or my mental age has been 22 ever since I was 9 years old. Since the age of 9 I have developed various skills, ranging from effectively communicating complex technical concepts to clothing and grooming a female body that fits no template, I have not grown mentally or emotionally in any way whatsoever. Either I was very precocious, or it's surprising I can get on in the adult world. Or maybe both
Why I love living alone: right now my bathtub is full of various items of clothing hanging up to dry. And no one is going to complain about them!
I have become One of Those People Who Don't Vote. In the upcoming municipal election, I will not be voting for a city councillor to represent my ward.

Why? Well, in my ward, there are two candidates for city councillor: the incumbent and a challenger. The incumbent has a website on which he sets out his platform. None of his platform issues are of any particular concern to me, and he has stated no position on issues that I care about. I honestly don't care either way whether the actions in his platform get done or not. It doesn't affect my life at all. I have only been living in this ward for six months, so I have yet to see the results of the incumbent's work.

The challenger does not have a website. She is ungooglable. I have not yet received any literature from her campaign, so she is a completely unknown quantity.

I obviously can't vote for the challenger because I know nothing about her, and the fact that the incumbent is the incumbent and has a website is not enough to make him earn my vote. The incumbent has done nothing to make me actively vote against him. and the challenger is so unlikely to win that I have no reason to go to the effort to find out if I should be voting against her.

Therefore, I am leaving the decision up to the rest of my ward. If my ward has reason to hate the incumbent, the challenger will win. If they have no problems with the incumbent's work, he will win. Those who have been here longer than I can decide.

And you know what? Even though I'm not voting for a city councillor, I still might complain about the work of whomever wins! I don't know the challenger's platform, and none of the issues in the incumbent's platform affect me. After the election when an issue that does affect me comes up, I will promptly contact my councillor and let them know what I think. If they act contrary to what I think, I will complain.

If anyone out there thinks that I still don't have the right to complain because I'm not voting, I would really like to know what you'd do in my position.

PS: I am voting for mayor, I do have opinions on the mayoral candidates.
I've been thinking about financial planning lately (what an exciting person I am!) and it occurs to me that the current financial planning industry might not be prepared for my future situation.

Taking into consideration my retirement date as per my pension plan and the longetivity of my ancestors, it is not unreasonable to assume that my retirement will be 50 years long. I have a pension that, initially, will be able to provide quite a comfortable annual income, but this is not adjusted for inflation. If inflation over the next 50 years works out like inflation over the last 50 years (a broad assumption, but I don't know how to predict economic trends), on the day I die my pension will be providing me with the equivalent of $5,000 per year. Of course, I need to save up some money myself, and over 30 years of work it should be easy to save up a nest egg which, if prudently invested, will be able to return enough interest on which to live in a year, but again I doubt I can save up enough to stand up to 50 years of inflation. I won't be getting any inheritance because my parents will have a similarly long retirement so I must assume they will spend all their money, and even if I do end up with an inheritance I will be retired for at least 20 years before that comes to pass. This also means that I might be caring for elderly parents in my retirement. I realize that this is what OAS is for, to keep older people from sinking into poverty like this, but we can't assume that all our social safety nets will be able to survive the baby boomers.

I certainly hope the financial planner people figure out a workaround sometime within the next 30 years!

Friday, October 24, 2003

This is a survey:

Suppose you decide to go sit down in the stall of a public bathroom for reasons other than to use the facilities (ie. to cry, hide, freak out, squeeze your zits, pick your nose, read secret documents, sleep, or otherwise decompress). Do you take down your pants before sitting on the toilet?

Thursday, October 23, 2003

Just found a silverfish. I was walking towards the bedroom (for reasons which I now forget) without my glasses on, when I looked at the wall and saw a shadow. "Strange", I thought to myself, "There isn't usually a shadow there." Then the shadow started walking along the wall. I screamed, and by the way it moved I could tell that it heard me. I always find it weird that they can hear. Then I found my glasses and was relieved to see that it was only a silverfish. I don't like them, but they don't freak me out nearly as much as some other unspeakable things. Now my apartment smells of raid, which is gross. And because they're attracted to humidity, I'm now hesitant do various laundry stuff in the bathroom, which I would have to do to prepare the clothes I was planning to wear to work tomorrow. Luckily tomorrow is Friday and I can wear jeans. Well, technically I can wear jeans any time because officially there is no dress code, but the building we're in has an unspoken dress code, and anyway if I wear jeans I'm more likely to be mistaken for a student and I hate when that happens.

Time to vacuum up the corpse! SENTENCE!
So my mommy came here and exchanged my microwave for me and now I have a functional microwave. And she brought me the scarf that my grandmother made for me and it's so perfect! It's big and warm and perfect! The style is inspired by Harry Potter, but it's red, black, and charcoal to match my winter clothes and no one else in the world has a scarf exactly like it! I'm so happy! I'll post a pic if I can convince my barbie digital camera to do it justice.

I'm so glad tomorrow's Friday though. I spent 2.5 days so far this week doing urgent work and that is so mentally exhausting. Blah. Time for a nice cup of tea, or perhaps hot chocolate now that I have a micro
For some reason I can't sleep, but for some reason I'm not bothered by this. Even though intellectually I know how gross I'm going to feel tomorrow, I just don't care, I'm contentedly awake.

This might be why the Canadian dollar is doing so well lately. This is also why I don't trust any politicians who say that they can have any effect upon the economy.