I am a huge Garfield fan. I have spent many hours reading that comic and consequentially, many hours laughing out loud. Last night (at about 5:30 a.m.) I felt like I was inside a Garfield comic, but not in a good way.

One of the themes that is revisited in many Garfield comic strips is Garfield sitting on the fence in the middle of the night 'singing' (or doing stand up comedy for the dogs or whatnot. While he is singing people are throwing flower pots, boots, and other items at him as, after all, it is the middle of the night and people are trying to sleep.

I was sleeping quite contently last night until approximately 5:30 a.m. when I awoke to the sounds of cats 'singing' very close to my bedroom window. Seeing as it was 5:30 in the morning, I was impress at how quickly I connected my situation with Garfield. I also instantly found the afore mentioned thread in the comic less funny. Then a feeling of irony came over me. Then, as it was now just after 5:30 a.m. and the choir of cats was wrapping up, I went back to bed.

I hope they find somewhere else to hold choir practice in the future.

Side note: my spell checker does not think 'contently' is a word, however Google does. Here is one link to an online dictionary. Perhaps the work I want is 'contentedly' but I'm not sure.

I have been watching Hockey Day in Canada on the CBC today and the longer I watch the more I am getting annoyed with the commercials. I don't know if it is the same in the US or not, but in Canada it seems that companies only get one idea for a commercial at a time. The result, you see the same commercial every single break in the show to excess.

Then, if that was not bad enough, networks further compound the issue by sometimes playing the same commercial multiple times a set. There was one commercial break where the same commercial was shown 4 times.

I understand that companies might purposely go for this approach. Show a commercial so many times that it gets burned in to peoples mind's. This is get their brands stuck in your head. The problem is that while I'm watching, it just gets me mad it see the same commercial so many times. What the companies hope for is that later on, when you are shopping, the only thing you remember is their brand, not that you got so mad watching the commercial repeat itself over and over again repeatedly time after time...

This is one of the reasons that I try to take my time when shopping. I try to ensure that I really want / need whatever it is I am about to purchase and that I'm not simply getting the item or brand simply because I have it stuck in my mind.

I'm not asking for an end to commercials on television. All I'm asking is for a bit more variety. Yes, it costs money to make commercials, but it is a cost of doing business. It is not something you can only do half way and expect good results.

For anyone in Canada that has been living under a rock for the past month, we are nearing the end of an election campaign. Tonight was the second English leaders debate and while I don't want to get into a full blown political rant, I will make a couple of comments.

I think that if Peter MacKay was leading the Conservatives they would do hugely better in Ontario and have a much stronger change at forming a majority government in this election. I was going to say that the Liberals might do better if Paul Martin was no longer their leader, however I am no longer sure of simply because I don't know of any other big names in the Federal Liberal party. It is hard for a new person to get a lot of support in an election campaign. It would be better for a change in leadership to happen when a campaign is not being threatened so that people get to know the new party leader (this goes for any party, not simply the Liberals).

The NDP did not have a particularly strong debate (in my opinion), it was not really weak, maybe simply a little below average. The Bloc did alright and were able to hold their own for the most part.

I have one quote from the debate:

"...Quebecers are also polite..."
- Paul Martin

My final comment is that Stephen Harper's 'smile' throughout the debate was hilarious.

In late December I order more RAM for my computer, on January 3rd I was finally able to install it. There was a delay due to the Christmas break and the Post Office being closed the day I got back to town. I was very excited to finally be able to get it into my computer. Upgrading RAM is very simple, I did it in a couple of minutes and booted up. The results were even better then what I had hopped for.

I went from 512megs of RAM to 2gigs. I don't think I will ever be able to own a Windows machine with less then 2gigs of RAM again. Linux makes a bit better use of memory so I would go for 1gig. I very often have 5+ programs running at any one time. That is exactly the situation where more memory helps. With less memory the computer has to keep referencing the hard drive for information as there is not enough room in memory (with 512megs) to store everything that is required. With 2gigs, there is plenty of room.

The rule of thumb is, hard drive slow, RAM fast. A computer's CPU operates in nanoseconds. Memory also operates in nanoseconds. Hard drives however operate in milliseconds. While that is all fast for us, for computers milliseconds are very slow. Having more memory is so important that if I was getting a new computer I would get one step down in processor speed (save the money) in order to spend it and get more memory. Having a faster processor will do nothing if the computer has to continuously do to the (slow) hard drive for information. RAM is where its at.

Well, I seem to have gathered a fair supply of interesting / useful / funny links in the past little while. Here they are.

Unix Guide - For anyone interested in Linux or Unix this is a very useful list of some of the most common / useful commands.
Microsoft Lawsuit - Microsoft ties to sue a student and gets put in their place.
New SD Card - This is a not totally new, but this particular design appears to be new. It is a SD card for your digital camera and a USB thumb drive. Cool design.
Short Drinks at Starbucks - I don't drink coffee so I have no clue about any of this but this site claims that you can get short drinks of certain things are Starbucks that are not on the menu and are better then what is on the menu.
Algorithms Directory - yes, a geeky link. This site has a list of a fair number of useful algorithms. Useful for when you remember that an algorithm exists but don't remember the details.
The Ultimate Showdown - a very funny (at least I think so) flash animation.
Rounding Algorithms - another geeky link, exactly what it says.
13 Things that do not make sense - a short list of things that the site claims science can not explain. Some of them are fairly interesting.
How to tie knots - ever wondered how to tie certain types of knots? This site has a good list of knots and animations showing you how to tie them.
29 Good Foods - a list of some of the foods that are better for you then others along with a short bit about what's in them that makes them good. Also, another site on why bananas are so good for you.
MPAA Overboard - A personal account on a not so pleasant trip to the theatre.
Dangerous Thoughts - Not the thoughts you might think. Some interesting and thought provoking items.
100 things we did not know last year - an interesting list from the BBC

Comments on the sites are welcome.

So, it's that time of year again, the time when I dust off the good ol' resume and start the hunt once again. Yes, I'm back in job hunting mode. I can only hope that I am not doing the same this time next year. The big difference between this time last year and my current situation is that this time I actually have a degree (as opposed to preparing to graduate) and I have some paid work experience (about 8.5 months worth, can I round that to one year?).

I am currently working as a web developer for the Faculty of Applied Science (at Queen's University for anyone who does not know me). My contract concludes at the end of April and I am keeping my options open as to what I will do next.

While I will consider any opportunities, I am focusing my initial search on other web development positions. My strongest areas are in the development of PHP/MySQL web applications, I have also been working with JavaScript and a bit of Perl. JavaScript is a bit harder to work with but there are many interesting and cool applications such as AJAX which I now have some experience with.

If you hear of know of anything, drop me a line:) I would be happy to move just about anywhere if the job is right.