Closing Time... that ruined me. Shouldn't have read it in public. Apologies to the riders of the Toronto Transit Commission subway system. I grew very close to some of the characters ... and wasn't prepared to lose some of them.

I am happy to report two things: 1) Last night your son graduated. Officially. Ceremony and all. I have my degree. Honours BSc. I kicked the day off in celebration by going to Tim Hortons, the very first Tim Hortons I went to when I first came to Toronto. I was about to order my usual large Double Double and plain bagel, toasted, with plain cream cheese when I thought "Let's go all out" so instead I ordered a large Double Double and an Everything bagel, with herb and garlic cream cheese. Good call. I feel like I deserved it. 2) I've (re)created a database for my blogg.  ..finally. The site doens't fully use it just yet...but soon it will, and things will be just peachy... If it wasn't for these websites, I'd get nothing done.

So I've begun to read Closing Time, as I promised. It was an interesting...seeing character names again. I may have only read the book just over a year ago, and yet for some reason I have felt the 40-some years pass in the course of the novels. Old friends are popping up again. I read about Snowden and thought "Oh yea... Snowden, I remember him." A year and a few months have passed, but 40 years in my mind. My characters are older and dying. I'm trying to figure out just what to do with my C64 site because lately I've sort of seen little server issues here and there. I'm not sure if anyone else is experiencing them. If you are please let me know and I'll do something about moving servers or something. The weather is getting colder... ... love it.

I'm very tired today. Got very little sleep... which explains the incessant yawning. I'm not sure where to take this website... I want to take it somewhere big, and huge. Take it somewhere which will result in little children running to gather around me and not even to ask for my autograph, but to look up at me with such reverence and respect that they just remain in silent awe.  I guess my biggest problem is that I'm giving my site the look of an OS that is so out of date that Microsoft, the company known for sticking out its releases well passed their expiration date (see IE6, Windows XP) , has completely removed it since the release of XP. There's only now the 'Command Prompt' a cheap rendition of dos. But can you boot into dos? No. Control-F8, boot into dos... exists ... no ... more. Maybe I change it to a C64? Surely that has some more longevity...

I finished The man in the gray flannel suit last night. Very good book. I have a problem with finishing books... I really get to missing the characters. I think about them sometimes, wonder what they're up to, wonder what they'd do in certain situations...and then I realize that they're fictitious. At times, it's choked me up. The character that's stuck with me most is the main character of A Confederacy of Dunces. His general obliviousness was endearing. Another one that stuck me for a while was Yossarian from Catch-22, which puts the following book next on the line to be read: Closing time. Closing Time is the sequel to Catch-22, some 40 years later, where the characters that survived the war are learning that they still haven't survived death.

I love payday. It's a glorious day today. I woke up a little earlier than usual, so I managed to make a stop at Tim's to get some coffee before work. The weather outside is oh-so-unfrightful. A beautiful autumn day. The kiddies must be very pleased for this day to be their hollow's eve. I'm becoming more and more of a Tom Rathe I'm finding. So I said To the man who knew: "Where are they going? And what do they carry? And why do they hurry so?" A.F.W. ... Does anyone know who A.F.W. is?

My goal, before this weekend began, was to have a successful one. Last weekend sort of flew by. I didn't have much time to recharge the ol' Duracells before the long week of work that lay ahead of me. So this weekend began with a dreams success, and oh how I achieved it! To begin, my goal was to make my weekend feel as long as possible, but also as enjoyable as possible. Friday night I began coding DosPrompt2.0 (what you are seeing at this moment.) I coded until 3:30am. Growing a little tired, I went to bed and read my book and fell to sleep. As an aside: I'm currently reading The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit. It's a fantastic book, I highly recommend it. It gets better and better, and I'm just about 3/4 through it. It's a bit of a wakeup call for just how hard life can be when you're trying to build something better for yourself and family. I'm currently back-loading old blog entries. I've loaded a lot, but it's getting late and your son needs t

I've created a new website (again). I know it doesn't look new...well maybe the blogg section looks slightly different. The point is the back end of all this is different. Very different. It's now all created in Flash as opposed to Swish. I did this for the pure and simple versatility of Flash, while Swish has more limitations (though was easier in the initial code process). The point is while things may not look so different now, they will. Oh how they will...because, as I said, Flash allows me to do much more. I can code games in properly, pictures, and I can throw in more Blogg features (soon) like clickable link tags, and oh sweet goodness gracious so much more. Before I go on to other things, I'd like to throw in some key behind-the-scenes things I've coded into this baby. Like how all these blogg entries are being pulled in from a delightful little XML document, so that I can manage and properly maintain all my posts. The reason for this: Load times. Have you

By some strange miracle, your son has landed a job. He is working in the adult world. I am a professional now. Exams done, and a week later I've landed my first job (a miracle because for all the news I've been reading about the difficulty recent grads are having in getting employment, the fact that I have a job 7 days from writing my last exam, I have to consider myself lucky...) Lately I've been thinking about how I live in a very strange world. I'm in a transitional time. I'm currently in a period in my life, where I'm transitioning from university student to a 9-5 professional, and wearing a tie I bought with the last of my cash, until I get paid. I wrote about this before - but the unfortunate timing is I'm having this experience on my own. I wish I could trade notes with someone. My closest friends are still students. All my colleagues (that's a fun word) are...full time adults. I end my work day and return to my apartment where all my roommates ar

MySpace seems to be trying to condense the internet under a single domain name. Pearl Jam has a MySpace account. Weezer has one. Just about every band has a MySpace account to host their music, and operate as a fan club. Their own websites used to do this, but with MySpace their websites have become redundant.  I'm thinking this will cause MySpace to collapse. It's trying to offer too much while not offering much. It's trying to BE the internet, but by simplifying it down to what the majority of users want on a website. Thinking back to websites of 1997, 1998, the more personalize websites which may have had a lot of dancing hamsters, midi songs playing in the background, silly scripts that changed your mouse icon and had stars that followed the mouse, and yet offered no real content. That feels like what MySpace is today, only now it's even easier to set up, and even less likely to house meaningful content (he wrote on his all important website; I get the irony.) Many

How late have you stayed up? Sometimes it seems that sleep just won't cut it. There's so much work, and rather than sleep, you'd much rather just get it all done. It can be a little overbearing, but also quite exciting. Nighttime, I find, is a great time to get some work done. It's especially impressive how much work you can get done, even when you've already worked throughout the day. The only bad thing is you have to make sure you have no early morning commitments for the next day. But the quiet of the world, the fact that it is dark out, so you're not drawn by the beautiful day, it all tends to being very productive. Plus there's something quite seductive to the thought of being that quiet genius, huddled in his room, working frantically until hours in the night. I suffer because I'm a night owl, but also a early-bird. The night can be magical. I don't quite mean it in the childish sense, but more in the sense that it allows for possibilities. Eve

I think I was wrong about the internet. I'm only posting right now because I found out about something, and thought I should make a post... In the 60s, kids across the world tuned their radios to listen to a constant beeping emitted by Sputnik, as it hurtled across the sky at incredible speeds. Then they'd rush outside to see a tiny dot streak across the sky. In the 70s, they watched launching's on TV. Nothing much happened in the 80s, except there was lots of hair. In the 90s the world lost interest in outer space, and was more interested in the possibility that Michael Jackson was from Mars. But then the internet came, and the world got closer...and so did space. Suddenly, we can now watch what's going on in space and in the shuttles. We can listen to Mission Control talk to the Discovery crew. We can see Earth, from space, as the astronauts are seeing it. We can see sides of the ship, constantly firing little jets to realign. We can listen to Mission control play wak

Have you heard about the mentos and Diet coke craze that's been going on around the internet lately? I for one have just heard about it, which is remarkable considering the amount of time I spend looking for random stuff. This mentos thing is pretty weird though. The way it works is this: Take a 2L bottle of Diet coke (I'm not sure why it's Diet...it doesn't really need to be, I imagine) and drop about 4 or 5 mentos inside the diet coke bottle...and stand back. You'll suddenly have an eruption of coke. And I'm not talking a baking soda and vinegar overflow...I'm talking Old Faithful, geyser still. It will probably shoot up in the air about 10 feet. If you heave the bottle at the ground, the bottle itself will shoot up in the air. I kid not, just google up Diet Coke and Mentos and you'll see what I mean. You may be wondering why this happens. Chemical reaction perhaps? Wrong. I did a little research and found that this occurs actually by a physical proces

As I'm sitting in my room, the blistering heat of the day still lingering into the night, I'm wondering what I could possibly write about that could possibly be of any interest at all.  I'm also getting a little tired of this current website layout.... I do like the Science Headlines and the quotes and stuff, but I really feel as though it draws back from the content of the site, which I hope would be the most interest. Thus, I may in fact revamp the layout of this site... That being said, expect some changes... Also, just recently found out that I lose my webspace after graduation. A bummer. I'll have to move my website and all its content. Ugh.

Working on websites and essays. Such is my summer. So far your son is building two different websites for clients. I would like to take on a third client, because one client of the current clients is taking up so little of my time. Anyone know someone who needs a website built? I'm also working on a flash soccer game on the site called Fancy Footwork. Needs a little bit (a lot?) of work still.

There's a gap in between, There's a gap where we meet where I end and you begin. So my little gnome, the school year comes closer to a close (more or less). Classes are done, essays are done, exams...not quite done. And then, with that, what will come? Summer classes... ...and then? Graduation. And your son meets the world. So I realize that I haven't made any substantial changes to my site recently. It's mostly just been blogg entries (if that!) The reason, of course, is because your son has been immensely busy with school. And now that the university world has come to more or less of a close, I'm not quite sure how often my updates will be. Maybe there will be many. Maybe few. I'm not quite sure. I've got a lot to do. I've got my TheDosPrompt.com website going. I've gotta get some games done to a completion though. So far it's just a bunch of things that aren't very playable. I really need help with it too, so if you're a sweet game pro

Lately, reading Descartes, and Plato has got me thinking back to my first encounters with certain things.  Two memories come to mind: My first encounter with the Parallelogram. I'm sure I encountered it in younger years, but I came to appreciate it in in Mrs. Crookston's 6th grade math class. I was excited about this shape. I knew big things were in store for it - but I marveled at how I had clearly been blind to its existence. I was quite familiar with the square, and its less perfect brother, the rectangle. I'd seen parallelograms (as a kid, I loved flowchart template rulers) yet I had never considered the ramifications of creating a similar shape in which there are no right angles . When I speak of parallelograms, I speak of shapes which are strictly parallelograms and not squares or rectangles. All it really ever was was a rectangle viewed in perspective. I had been drawing them in my pictures, but now that I had discovered how to apply perspective to drawings, it trigg

Today is my brother's birthday. I watched the sunrise today on a dock, while reading a book. It was very surreal saying the sunlight pour into the city. Microsoft is releasing a new version of IE, after 6 years of not really updating IE6. You can download the beta version off the site. It's pretty decent, very secure, tabbed browsing, and a sleek design, with some nice features like a zoom function for websites. The birds are chirping a lot these days. I like it.

With graduation and adultlife on the horizon, I'm a bit nervous. I'm reading more and more in the papers about graduates who are having a hard time getting jobs. They don't have the talent, experience, or are just ill-equipped for working in a professional world. I fit that bill. Worse yet, the other day as I was crossing Bloor street  I heard a honking. I had the right of way, so paid it no attention. But the honking continued. Looking up, I saw a tour bus. I continued on my way despite the persistent honking. When I'd finally crossed, and the honking continued. Then the tour bus wiped around violently, parked and opened the door. I stepped up to the bus trying to figure out what was going on - and there I saw a friend of mine driving the tour bus. He had graduated a year prior, with a degree similar to what I'll be getting - and, despite his relentless searching, he was having trouble finding a suitable position. In the end took the first think that became availab

There's a place, just down the street, round the corner, 12 blocks east, stop, wait three minutes, walk south two blocks, stop, turn three times, tap on the building to your immediate right, a soft tapping, not too soft though. Tap three times. Then enter. It's a place that doesn't allow your body to enter, only your mind. In there, your mind can do and achieve what it pleases. Minds gather there, and discuss topics to incredible detail, accomplish the unaccomplishable, and push boundaries past their limit. There's another place, north 3 blocks, west 7 blocks, down a staircase, not the entire way down, only go three steps...no, four. Okay stop there. Now, back up two. Jump the rest of the way down. Look up. Open the door that is above you. Now you've entered the dream realm. Here nothing makes sense. People with legs too long, arms too short, heads too big, mumbling incoherently, quietly yelling, running slower than a walk, turning a oddly blue shade of red (but not

I walked across front campus this year, across the frozen dirt and mud a thought occurred to me: For more than half of the school year, front campus cannot be walked on. Either fenced off to protect the new seedlings, completely muddy, or otherwise covered in frozen ice. If you're taking a summer semester, that is probably the only time when you're fully able to walk across front campus. Then a new thought hit me, this would not be something I would have to deal with in a year's time. In about 7 months, I will be done my undergraduate career. Suddenly I was overwhelmed with nostalgic feelings of my past four years here. And I was hit with that feeling all adults feel, one almost cliché. I felt this saddened feeling that the possibly the best years of my life are coming to an end. Despite all the debts, the disappointment with grades and tests, from here on, nothing will ever be truly like these past four years, let alone the past 21 that I've lived. Then I recalled myse

Well, it's a New Year. It's finally happened. We're in 2006. What a year it shall be! This is the year where I will finish my schooling (unless perhaps, I decide to return for grad school), this is the year where I will get a job, learn to be fully independent, start paying off my student loans, maybe get a lawnmower, and start living my life. At least that's the plan. I'm also moving downtown. No more nights in libraries (hopefully). Though, I did spend the last night on the floor of my new bedroom because I won't have a mattress until Wednesday. It was uncomfortable, but not so bad.  I also just out about: I'm going to be an uncle!! Baby's due in August. In other news my Starbucks came with a rude reminder:  My two older brothers are two people I will never surpass. I'm ok with that.