Webpage Review; FriendFeed.com

If you like to share things on the net, but don't want to have to send links to different services to all your friends, FriendFeed is the site for you. It can take information from 43 different services, including Twitter, Digg, Google Reader, YouTube, and even personal blogs, and display it on one page. You can set what services get shared, and if you share them with everybody, or just your friends. You can view all of your friends feeds on one page, and yo ucan also see what everybody is posting. As long as a feed is made public, you can view it and comment on anything thats posted. It's a great way to get all of your stuff in one place.

I've been using it for about a month now (view my feed here), and it's great. So far nobody I know has setup a feed, but I have found a couple interesting ones to follow, and I always find interesting stuff by looking at what everybody is posting. It's kind of like Digg, except that it does alot more than sharing webpages!

Software Review - VirtuaWin

I spend a lot of time on the internet, both at home and at work. At work I'm mainly on it looking up solutions to problems, or finding out information about new software and products. At home I'm on it for fun, looking for random pages that I can enjoy. No matter where I surf the net from though, there are always three blogs that I check religiously; Gizmodo, IO9 and Lifehacker. Gizmodo is a gadget new blog, but also features other geek related news. IO9 is a sci-fi blog that covers anything related to sci-fi news. Lifehacker is a blog to help improve your life through different methods, including health tips, general how-to's and more importantly software to help make using computers easier and more fun. Most of my new software comes from articles I've read at Lifehacker, and they've even lead to a few other web-pages that I get some from also.

I was looking at some articles on Lifehacker one day and I came across an article on VirtuaWin (here). I always have multiple windows open on whatever computer I'm using, so I decided to try it out. I have been using it ever since that day, and I love it!

VirtuaWin is a virtual desktop application. It creates upto 20 separate virtual desktops. On each desktop you can have different windows open so you can organize your windows into categories, and view then separately. For example; at work I always have Outlook, Firefox, MSN Messenger, ICQ, WMP, and upto 3 different work related programs. One one desktop, the taskbar gets very cluttered and hard to find what I'm looking for. With VirtuaWin I now have one desktop for Outlook, one for Firefox, one for MSN and ICQ, one for each work program, and one for WMP, with my music list. So I can have all my programs open and maximized, without taking up tons of room on the task manager.

VirtuaWin's main control is in the taskbars notification area. Depending on how many virtual desktops you are using, it either shows up with the number of the current desktop, or a square divided into either 2 or 4, and an indication of which desktop your viewing. Double clicking on that icon brings up the setup menu, where you can customize it to what you prefer. You can control how many virtual desktops are available, and how many rows and columns they appear in by changing the X wide and X deep numbers. I find that 9 virtual desktops are adequate for my needs, and I have them setup in a 3x3 configuration. You can change that to one long line if you wish, or any other combination. That configuration defines how you will navigate through the desktops. When you first start up VirtuaWin, you need to navigate through the different desktops either using hotkeys (which can be configured in the setup menu) or right clicking on the VirtuaWin icon in the taskbar and clicking next or previous.

Once you have some windows open in different desktops, you can now use the window list to jump straight to any window in any desktop. To access the list, by default left click on the icon in the taskbar, or setup a custom hotkey for it (I have a hotkey setup for it, and have mapped the search button on my mouse to that hotkey, so I can get the list right from my mouse). The windows list has three section: Switch To, which will switch to a window in a certain desktop when clicked; Move Here, which will move any window from any desktop to the current desktop; and Always Show, which will make the selected window appear on every desktop (handy for IM conversations).

So far I havn't run into any major bugs or annoyances with VirtuaWin, although there are a few minor annoyances I've run into. I recently joined iLike and added the iLike bar to WMP. For some reason, this automatically shows up on every desktop, even though WMP doesn't. I've solved this by putting WMP to the very edge of the screen, so I can't see the iLike bar. Also, when loading up a program, you have to make sure you stay on the desktop you wish it to be on until it is fully loaded for it to stay on that desktop. A couple of programs will move desktops on me if I change to a different desktop while it is still loading, so I've had to learn to be a little bit more patient when programs load.

Overall I give this software 9 out of 10. You can learn more about VirtuaWin, and download a copy from their page here. Or, if your like me and you use different computers throughout the day, you can also get a portable version from here. Full installation instructions can be found on the page. It works exactly like the main version, but it's small enough to fit onto a USB key. Very handy!

Well, there it is, my first software review. I hope you liked it. PLease leave comments below if you found it helpful, or if you have any comments on the software. Also, leave any suggestions you might have if you thought this needed any improvments. At first I was going to try to do one review a day, but now that I have finished my first one, I think I'm going to start off a little slower, and maybe only do a couple a week and see how that goes.

Time for a change

Well, it's been over 3 months since my last post. It's not that nothing has been going on in those three months, it's just that I haven't really wanted to sit down and write about it. That's why I've decided to change the reason for this blog. Instead of it mainly being about the things I do, I'm going to try to make it a review blog. Lately I've been trying out lots of new software, and I've decided that I want to start writing reviews for them. So I'm going to try to write a review a day on a new piece of software I'm using, or of a new site that I've discovered, or even new gadgets that I get.

I've been finding some new sites the past couple of days, and one of them is Tumblr. It's basically another blog, but meant for shorter posts, and also allows posting of other items easily (like images, links, quotes, audio clips and videos). So I'm going to try to use that for my random stories and updates on myself instead of posting them here. Check it out at http://mindfreak66.tumblr.com. Hopefully I will keep it more up to date than this one has been.

I'm working on my first review post right now, but I don't think I'll get it up until Sunday.

Have a great weekend.

Cat Hotel

Amanda and I have opened up a cat hotel in our bathroom. It wasn't really something we decided to do, it just happened. We decided to take the stairs down, and go for a walk. When we got to the 9th floor, there was a cat sitting on the steps. We couldn't just leave it there, so we brought it to the apartment, and called the super. Apparently this type of thing happens often. Tenants decide they don't want their cat anymore, so they put them in the stairwells. That means that more likely than not, this cat isn't wanted. The super couldn't do anything tonight, but he's going to see what he can do by the morning. I'm thinking that means that he's going to see if he can get somebody to take it to the pound. So we're going to be keeping the cat overnight. We don't want it running around the apartment with Pixie, so we're keeping it in the bathroom for now. Amanda took a look at it, and it's a male and she figures it's around 1 year old. It doesn't look like it's been fixed, so we're assuming that it doesn't have any shots either.

At first Pixie didn't seem to know what was going on, but now she's staying outside of the bathroom door, wondering who is in there. I don't know whats going to happen to it, but if anybody wants a free cat, just gimme a call!

==UPDATE==

So the super came up this morning and took the cat away. Apparently there is a lady in the building that takes in cats and looks for a home for them. We let the cat run around this morning, and he and Pixie seemed to get along. Pixie followed him everywhere he went, but didn't trey fighting him. We're glad that he's gone to a good place, and not to the pound.

The evolution of Buddy's cage

I've had Buddy since May 27 2007. Since then he has lived in 4 different 'cages', and he has just moved into his fifth! Heres what he's lived in:

When we first picked him up, he was in a small plastic container, about the size of a hamburger container. He was only in it until we got home. Then he upgraded to a small plastic fish tank about 10" wide by 7" deep and 8" tall. He stayed in that for a few days, until Amanda was able to grab a moth holder from the lab. It was about a 1' cube, covered in mesh with a velcro opening. It was a good sized cage for him, but only for a little while. I liked the width and depth of it, but it needed to be taller. Chameleons are arboreal, so they like to be up high.Ideally chameleon cages should be above eye level, and his 1' cube was below eye level. Amanda offered to build a new cage for him at the lab. We bought the materials, and she built his next cage. It was still 1' wide and 1' deep, but was 25" tall. This seemed to be a good size for him. It was tall enough that he could climb to the top to be above everything, but wasn't too big that he would get lost in it.

He's been in that cage since Jul of last year, so I decided it was time to upgrade him again. This time I decided to go really big, and use the 175 gallon Flexarium that I bought when I got him. This one is 30" wide by 30" deep by 4' tall. Upgrading his cage this time was harder than before. Because he was moving to such a large cage form such a small one, I needed to get alot more stuff for him. First thing I needed was a a tree for him. He has a plant already, but he needed something taller and bigger. He also needed some new vines, fake leaves, and I decided to get some substrate for the bottom of the new cage, and a water dripping system. I of course didn't realize that I needed this stuff until after I had set up the cage, and put in all of the stuff from his old cage. So Amanda and I headed out to Wal-Mart last night to see what we could pick up. We looked at the plants, but they didn't have any good trees, but we picked up a nice little plant that hopefully will grow bigger. It's not the best, but it'll do until we can get something better. We then went to Petsmart to look for the rest of the stuff. We picked up some substrate, some vines, and we also got a parrot ladder (it's a good way for him to travel from the top to the bottom of his cage). I picked the rest of the stuff up today, and his new cage is fully set up (apart from a tree).

Here's what it looks like;

Crazy laundry lady

So I know it's been awhile since I've written anything (I'm working on an update post this week while off of work), but I just had to write about this!
So I'm on my week off of work, and I decided to do laundry today. So I head down to the laundry room in the basement, and as I suspected, Wednesdays are a good day to do laundry, there's only the first two machines being used. I head to the last set of machines, and use 5 of them. I head back down after the 26 minute wash cycle is complete expecting there to be no-one down there. To my surprise theres an old lady there, standing by the washing machines I'm using. She's just standing there, with a cart full of laundry. The machines I'm using are the only ones in use, so there were about 6 free machines at the front of the room, but she seems to be waiting for these machines. So I start taking the clothes out of the machine farthest from her and transferring them to the dryers. It felt like she was watching me the entire time. When I had emptied the first three machines, she moved over to the sink next to the first machine I was using and filled a spray bottle with water and got out a sponge. Then she just stayed at the sink and continued to watch me transfer clothes. When I had finished, and started loading the dryers with money, she moved to the last machine and started cleaning it out with the sponge and spray bottle. It was by far one of the most awkward times I've ever had doing laundry, and that includes the times I had to study people in laundromats for a sociology project in university! I've got about 15 minutes until I have to go back down there to get the laundry, and I hope that she's not there waiting for the dryers that I'm using!

==UPDATE==

So it turns out I underestimated the craziness of the crazy laundry lady, who I am now officially renaming the f#@*ing insane laundry lady! Apparently she can only use the last few machines in the laundry room, cause she waited for 35 minutes to use the machines that I was using, while there were 5 free machines! She had her washing machines open, and ready to go, but she was just standing there, watching me empty her precious dryers, waiting until I had closed the door on the last machine so she could start her drying. I wouldn't be surprised if half of her laundry was already dry from her waiting for her dryers to be free!! I guess I just don't understand some people.

Why Wal-Mart is awesome

I've never really been a big fan of Wal-Mart. Sure, some of their prices are better than anywhere else, and you can get pretty much whatever you need there, but I still never really liked the place. It's always really busy in there, and none of the staff are really that helpful (although occasionally you can get lucky and find someone that actually wants to help you). Today though, I have a new reason to like Wal-Mart; their customer service desk.

So for Christmas Amanda bought me the first season of Heroes, but she didn't realize that it was on HD-DVD. Unfortunately she bought it at Music World's going out of business sale, so it wasn't returnable. I was thinking about getting an HD-DVD player, but that idea quickly went away when I saw the price of them. Then somebody suggested trying to return it to Wal-Mart, and see if they would exchange it for the regular DVD version. I decided to give it a try, so I headed over to there and went up to the customer service counter. They told me that yes I could (even though I had already opened it up, and didn't have a receipt for it) and to grab a copy of the regular version and bing it back to them. I went to the DVD section, but couldn't find it anywhere. I tried two more stores, but it was the same thing there.

I decided to leave it for a couple weeks to see if they would get any stock in. So today I went there, and decided to look and see if they had any in stock before going to the counter. To my luck, they had a bunch there, so I grabbed one and headed to the counter. I got the same person that served me last time I was there, and they actually remembered me!! I told them that Amanda had bought it for me a couple weeks before and didn't realize that it was an HD-DVD (which is the truth, except that it wasn't bought at Wal-Mart), and that I would like to exchange it for the regular version. They said that it would be no problem, and they scanned the HD version, then the regular version, and asked if I wanted the balance on a gift card. I was shocked enough that they were actually going to exchange it, but even more shocked to find out they were going to give $43 also! There were absolutely no questions asked about it! I've heard stories like this before, but didn't think that they were actually like that! So now I have my Heroes DVDs (which Amanda and I are currently watching!) and $43 to spend at Wal-Mart! I'm thinking I'll probably use it for a Wii game, but maybe I'll find something else instead.

So if you have something that you bought somewhere, and you need to return it, but for some reason you can't return it to the same place you got it from, then I suggest you try Wal-Mart! It worked for me!!

Time management course

So this entry is a little late being posted. It was originally supposed to be posted on Thursday while I was at the time management course, but welce been having some problems with the BES at work, and I had written this post on my blackerry, so it didn't hey sent out right away. I only just discovered thud until now while I was looking through some emails from the other day, and noticed this still sitting waiting to be sent out.

So the first part of the course is over. The continental breakfast wasn't that continental in my opinionl but I don't really know what makes a breakfast continental. There was fruit, muffins, croissants, some type of bread and bagels. The course itself is alright. I don't know if I will actually take anything away from it.

Lunch was definately the best part of the day so far. It was a buffet with coleslaw, rice, veggies, roast beef au jus, turkey and pasta in a rose sauce. It was awesome! Dessert was tiramissou (I think that's how its spelt) and small dessert cakes.

There's not really anything super exciting being taught here, so there's not much for me to write about. Except that ive discovered  that people hate spam, and they blame me for it, because I work in IT. No matter how many times I tell them that we do the best we can to stop the spam, but that some will always find its way through, they still think that we're doing nothing about it. Oh well, that's just one of the things I have to deal with being an IT guy.

Time management courses, are they a waste of time?

So for the past week I've been getting the same question from a lot of people at the office; "Are you going on Thursday?" and my reply is always the same; "What's going on Thursday?". It turns out that half of the office is going to a Time Management course, held at the Centurion Center. I assumed I wouldn't be going, because I had heard anything about it. So today whenever anybody would ask me "are you going tomorrow?" I would then answer, no. And when they ask why not, I would tell them that nobody had invited me. Then about half an hour ago I get an e-mail from Matt saying 'I'm sending you in my place'. Reading further down, it was the e-mail about the course. So now I am going. It'll be fun, because it's all day at the Centurion Center, with a free continental breakfast, and a buffet lunch, so it should be a fun day. The downside is that I won't be able to take my laptop, so it'll be a full day without it, but I'll have the Blackberry, so I wont be completely without some form of electronic mind-melting apparatus. After writing that last bit, I realize that I am addicted to technology and gadgets, which probably isn't a good thing. At least I'm not addicted to the point that if I don't use them, I will go absolutely mad, or am I? I guess I'll find out tomorrow! Speaking of which, I'll probably do at least one blog entry of how my day is going, or if it's really not that interesting, I'll do a couple more.

Finally, I found a Wii!!!

I've been looking since a few weeks before Christmas, and I have finally found one!! Most of my 'looking' has been refreshing 5 web pages and waiting for the availability to change from 'Out of stock'. I have done some searching at stores, and asking when shipments might be coming in, but it was always the same response: 'I think we might be getting some in on Tuesday, but I don't know for sure'. I was going to start calling the stores on the days that they get their shipments in next week, cause I figure they would finally hagve gotten their inventories up to date from Christmas (Wall-Mart told me they have no way to track inventory right now, because of the chaos of Christmas).

Last week Amanda and I went to a birthday party for Jeff at their place. One of Catriona's teacher friends was there with her husband, and we got talking, cause he works at Dell. At some point we got to talking about the Wii, and he said that they sold. I thought it was kinda weird that Del would sell them, but apparently you can get almost anything from Dell. So Dell got added to my regular web page refresh list along with Future Shop, Best Buy, HBC and Toys'R'Us. At first they only had games and accessories in their inventory, but this morning I was surprised to see that they had a Wii bundle available! It came with the Wii, the Wii Zapper (which includes Link's Crossbow Training) and Medal of Honor Heroes 2 for $345! I looked up everything separately at Best Buy, and it's about $5 cheaper than buying everything separately.
I looked all over the page, but didn't see an 'Out of Stock' note anywhere! So I ordered it, and it should be here within 15 days!! I can't wait!! Now we have to start thinking about what fun accessories we want to get! I'm definitely thinking the Nerf foam sports kit, after seeing too many videos on YouTube of the regular accessories flying out of kids hands and smashing the TV, or someone's face. And after we've had it for a bit, and gotten some more games and controllers, we just might throw a Wii party!!

If anyone else is looking for one, click here for the Dell page.

My new watch, and how it's supposed to help me sleep.

I've always found it hard to fall asleep, and even harder to wake up in the morning. I hate beeping alarms so much that whenever I hear anything beeping that even remotely sounds like my alarm, I get this dreaded feeling in my gut, and think that I've been in a dream and it's time to wake up. But I can't ever wake up when I set it to a radio or CD alarm. I'm one of those people that will hit the snooze alarm for an hour before I get up (and only then it's because I know if I sleep any more I'll be late for work). It makes it even worse when I set the snooze time for every 2 minutes. Then one day while reading my favorite blog Gizmodo, I read about the Sleeptracker watch. It looked really cool, so I went and read more about it on their web page. I really liked the idea of the Sleeptracker watched more and more as I read. And then I saw the price. I soon put getting it out of my mind, and forgot about it for a month or so. Then I got my bonus at work. I then decided to look back into the watch seriously. My other watch had broken a week or so before Christmas, so I was looking for a new watch, and this watch was going to help me wake up in the mornings, so I decided to go for it. It was probably a bad idea ordering it on Christmas Eve, cause it didn't actually arrive until Jan 4th.

So here's the idea behind the Sleeptracker watch; instead of having an alarm that goes off at a certain time, with a snooze feature, this watch actually has censors inside that monitor your body while you sleep, and can actually sense your sleep patterns. Instead of just setting a time to wake up, you set the time that you wish to wake up by, and a 10 - 90 minute window where the watch will monitor for 'almost-awake-moments' and wake you up during one of those. So instead of waking you up while you might be in deep REM sleep, the watch will wake you up during a lighter moment of sleep, when you will enjoy waking up more. Also, you can choose between a beeping alarm, a vibrating alarm, or both. The watch doesn't always monitor you body, only when you set it to. When you are going to bed, you set the 'To Bed' time to be half an hour after you plan on sleeping, and the watch will start monitoring then. The Pro model of the Sleeptracker can also hook up to your computer and show you a graph of your sleep patterns so you can see when you were in deep sleep, and when you had an 'almost-awake-moment', as well as the average time between your 'almost-awake-moments'.

I've been using this watch for just over a week, and it sort of works for me. Yes, it wakes me up at good moments and I feel good about waking up, but then I just lie in bed because it's so early, and then fall back asleep. Luckily I've been setting my regular alarm also, so that wakes me up at a later time. I think that in a couple more week I'll actually start waking up when the alarm goes off. I really like that it can show me on te computer what my sleep patterns were. It also lets you put in any factors that may have affected your sleep, as well as what mood you were in when you woke up. At the top of the data, it gives an average of all of your data, and you can view your worst or best sleep sessions, with separate averages for each. Here are my sleep sessions from the past week and a bit (click on it for a larger view, where you can actually see all of the lines!). The first little vertical line is the 'to bed' time I set, and each smaller vertical line after that is an 'almost-awake-moment'. The orange vertical line at the end is when the alarm is set for, and the horizontal orange line to the left of that is when the Sleeptracker is monitoring your body. When the horizontal line is white, that means that is when you are awake before the alarm time. On the right hand side are all of the different factors that might have affected my sleep (napping during the day, eating a late meal, drinking, drinking caffeine late, smoking, exercise, stress, waking up due to noise, waking up due to lights and waking up due to temperature).



As you can see, I have a fairly consistent 'to bed' and wake time (except for the weekend). My average time between 'almost-awake-moments' is pretty low compared to what they say on the Sleeptracker web page (average 90-110 minutes). Using this watch I'm slowly changing my sleep habits, and trying to go to bed earlier (guess that hasn't happened tonight, oops!). The watch doesn't help me get to sleep though, which is a big problem for me. Maybe in a few years they'll have one out that can do that. Until then, I'll have to figure out another way!

Buddy, the not so amazing escape artist.

Buddy has enjoyed his cage that Amanda made for him. And when I used to feed him grasshoppers, they enjoyed it also, but in another sense. You see grasshoppers like to eat, and don't like to be in cages. If that cage happens to be made out of plastic netting, they will eat their way out of it. So now there are a few holes in his cage (also, I've stopped feeding them to him cause there would be no more cage if they were still around). Most of them are pretty small, but one of them is rather large ( I think they started learning that if they all concentrated on one spot, they could get out faster). I had some tape on it, but that doesn't seem to stick very well on netting.

So on Saturday I spent most of the day on the computer and heard some weird noises at some point coming from Buddy's cage. I look over at it, and see Buddy halfway out the big hole! I freaked out, and tried getting him to go back in. But of course ever since his accident a few months ago, he hasn't liked any human contact. So my method of getting him back into the cage was basically putting my hand near him and scaring him back into the cage. This worked, but made him extremely upset. I had been planing to try to get him out this weekend to clean his cage (I haven't cleaned it since his accident), but gave up on that quickly.

Then, Sunday morning Amanda comes into the bedroom while I'm still sleeping and tells me that she's going to open Buddy's cage to try to get him out so we can clean it. I mumbled something, and about 1/2 an hour later she comes back in carrying Buddy on one of his sticks. I'm still asleep at this point, but soon wake up quickly when I see him. By the time I'm fully awake and head into the office to bring Buddy back into his heat/UV lamp, Amanda pretty much had his cage cleaned out. I sat with him for awhile, and took some good close-up pics of him. I then started working on fixing the whole in his cage, and letting him walk around Amanda's chair and desk. He didn't really like the desk, cause there was no grip for him, but it was funny to see him try and walk around. Amanda soon had his cage sparkling clean, and set up with his new BioVine he got for Christmas, and I had the netting fixed, so we put it all back together and Buddy went back home. I don't think he's too sure about the new thicker BioVine, cause he doesn't seem to go on it, but I'm sure after a few days he'll be fine. So now my goal is to try to clean his cage at least once every two weeks.

My next project for Buddy is getting his new lamps set up. Right now he has one lamp that does the heat and UV rays, but a lot of web pages suggest getting two fluorescent type bulbs so that he can go to different parts of the cage depending on what he needs (different types of UV rays). I have the bulbs, but I can't seem to find any fixtures for them. The places I've been to only seem to have 18" fixtures, and I got 15" bulbs. Does anybody know any good lighting places I can try?

*EDIT*
You can now check out pics of Buddy's cage cleaning adventures by clicking here.

New updates at work.

So remember before Christmas I was really excited about getting a new office, then found out it wasn't going to happen?? (If not, check out the blog here) Well when I got back, I heard that the renovations would be happening, but not until March probably. This really sucked because we got a new server just before the holidays. The server was supposed to be a tower server, but somewhere someone got messed up and we received a rack mount server. We were going to return it, but then we wouldn't get the new one until after the break, and we wanted to get it setup right away. So we ordered a new rack and some new equipment (rack mounted UPS, rack mounted KVM switch, and a new 48 port switch). The rack was supposed to be in the Friday before we left on break, but of course it didn't. That meant that I had to keep the server on my workbench, which didn't give me much room if I needed to work on any computers. Well, finally last week we got the rack in, and all of the extra equipment. That meant that I needed to clear out part of the server room to fit in the new rack, seems how we weren't getting the new office. So now the server is even smaller than before (and the rack wasn't even n place yet) Matt and I decided that we were going to wait till the weekend to install the rack, and all of the extras for it. The plan was to come in this Saturday and get it all in place and working.

Then all of a sudden last Thursday I find out that the renovations are actually going to be happening, and they're starting the next day! So now Friday morning I had to move 4 offices upstairs temporarily into cubicles. When I get that done, and go downstairs, the kitchen outside my office is pretty much gone! The majority of the cabinets had been taken out, and I had to climb over tools and loose wood to get into my 'office'. I thought it was going to bug me with all the construction going on Friday, but knowing that I was actually going to be getting a new office in a couple weeks made up for it. I went over all the plans with Mat about how the new room is going to be setup, and I'm pretty happy. Soon I'll get an actual desk!! Yay!

So this Saturday Matt and I were going to install the new rack. Then, at 7:30 Saturday morning I get an e-mail from Matt saying don't bother coming in, cause there are no lights in the server room! There were some electricians in working on new wiring and checking out everything. I was kinda disappointed cause I wanted to get everything setup so I can get some room back.

When I came in this morning, the workers were already gutting some of the walls in the payroll section of the office. When I got into my 'office', Matt had moved the rack into place, but hadn't installed anything into it yet. So now we're going to come in one night this week possibly and get everything installed.

Meanwhile, the construction is still going on, and theres lots of cutting of drywall and the such, which of course creates a lot of noise and dust. And I just happen to be in the middle of it, and have to try to make my way trough it anytime I want to enter or exit my 'office'. So it was decided to move me out of there, so I could get away from it (also, we wanted to keep the door closed to minimize the amount of dust that would get into the room and muck up the servers. But the question was, where could I go? There were no free cubicles upstairs, cause payroll was occupying them. So it was decided that I could move into the back boardroom for the time being, until the construction has calmed down a bit. It's actually pretty nice up here. I get a massive conference table to use, and a really comfy chair with arms, and I can close the door if I want more privacy. The only bad thing is that this boardroom serves as a way to get to and from the garage, so every now and then I get people walking through. Also, we are selling safety jackets to our employees, and those just happen to be stored in this room also, so every now and then, Chris comes in to go through the boxes and get peoples jackets. Other than that though, it's nice. But I still want my own office downstairs.

Best holiday ever!

This post has taken me a really long time to write because things have been crazy at work. Read my upcomming post to find out what!

This year was an awesome Christmas. Two things made it especially awesome: some great new gadgets, and a surprise at the cottage. One of the best gadgets I (well, really Amanda and I) got was the Magic Bullet. I used to laugh at the infomercials for it on T.V (actually, I still do, but now I make fun of them while using the Bullet!) but it actually works very well. Not exactly like in the infomercials, but still pretty good. Another fun gadget I got was a scrolling LED message license plate holder. I saw one awhile ago, and had completely forgot about them. I haven't got it installed yet, because I'm not quite installing it the way it's supposed to be installed. It's supposed to be installed into the break lights, so it only comes on while your breaking, but I figure more people will see it if I have it on all the time. So dad and I are going to try to hook it up to the stereo power, so that it runs as long as the ignition is on. I haven't tried it out much, but it's going to be fun.

Those gadgets (and others that I got) are fun, but by far the best part of this holiday was the cottage. We went up with Catriona and Jeff Friday morning, stopping at the Alpengruss in Wakefield for some lunch (if your ever driving through Wakefield, definitely stop in there, they have great poutine or grilled cheese, and ice cream in the sumer). We got up there around 12:30 and only Gail was there (Charlie and Erin were off skiing), unpacked, then Jeff and I went out and shoveled off some of the ice for a skating rink. Charlie and Erin came back around 1:30, followed soon after by mum and dad. After a bit of a rest, everybody decided to head outside to do some skating. Amanda and I didn't have skates, so we decided to borrow Gail and Charlie's snowshoes and go snowshoeing on the lake. I had actually been planning on doing this (well, not exactly the snowshoeing part, but going off just the two of us) for about two weeks before heading up to the cottage. I had chosen this moment to ask Amanda to marry me.

Before I continue on, I need to o back and tell some other stories. So about two weeks before Christmas, Amanda and I went to St Laurent to do Christmas shopping. I decided I wanted to get her a really nice piece of jewelry, so I went around all of the jewelers. I found a really nice necklace, and decided to look at engagement rings while I was there. While looking at some at Charm, I found the perfect one. It wasn't too big or too small, and it was white gold, and I knew Amanda would love it. I got the lady behind the counter to write down the SKU so I could make sure that I got the right one (cause I was going to go back later to get it). The next week I went back and bought it. I had to keep it away from Amanda until we went up to the cottage, but I didn't want to leave it at home, so I put it in my jacket pocket and carried it with me for the next two weeks. When I got the necklace, they asked if I wanted them to wrap it, and because I'm horible at wrapping gifts, I went for it. Little did I know that they wrapped it in a ring box. So of course Amanda sees this every day of December under the tree, and starts thinking that it's going to be a ring. Well, on Christmas day when she opened it, she was extremely disappointed that there wasn't a ring inside. She tried hiding it, but it was still pretty obvious.

Now we fast forward back to the cottage, on Friday the 28th in the afternoon. Amanda and I strap on some snowshoes and start walking around the lake. I was really nervous (even though I was pretty sure she would say yes, but it's still a big question) so I kept stopping and looking at Amanda. She would just keep walking after a few seconds, and I would catch upto her. Finally she commented that I was acting really weird, and I told her that I was acting weird for a reason. We stopped again, and I told her I had a question for her, and then I asked her. Her first reaction was; 'Are you actually doing this here?' (because I hadn't taken the ring out yet) so I took the ring out and gave it to her. Of course she said yes, and we headed back to the cottage. When we got back around the corner and could see the cottage, I saw that Cat and Jeff were still out, shoveling part of the skating rink. I knew they were just there to see how it went. We got up to them and didn't say anything (because I knew they were wondering, but weren't going to ask), and then we decided to go and make a path to the toboggan hill for the next day. After we got there, Amanda had to take her gloves off to wipe snow from herself, and Cat saw the ring, and got really excited. We then headed back to the cottage where mum and dad were waiting to see what happened (the Moore's didn't know anything was happening). We got in and busied ourselves in the kitchen getting some snacks and drinks while mum was waiting in the other room. Amanda didn't want to make a big show out of it, so she just walked into the room normally, and mum noticed the ring and everyone got excited. Luckily theres always champagne and other booze at the cottage, so we had a good celebration that night. We ha fun playing Cranium WOW! and other games. The rest of the cottage was just as enjoyable, with more skating, snowshoeing, sledding, and we even made a giant snowman on the lake! It was definitely one of the best wintertimes at the cottage.