Yesterday was team meeting day at my work. We were told of changes that were being made, and we were encouraged to voice our opinions or concerns. Many of us expressed some concerns over the changes and they (management) said they appreciated our feedback. I’d like to believe it will make a difference, but I’m not all that optimistic.

So, I would like to take this opportunity to identify how management in any organization needs to treat their employees:

1. If your staff know more about a subject than you do, don’t tell them how to do the job. It makes you look ignorant, useless, and your directions will only be adhered to when you’re nearby. Deep down the staff know they can handle the situation better than you can.
2. If your staff tell you of a concern they have, don’t trivialize their concern with easy answers. Admit it’s an issue, and have a brain-storming session.
3. Management only looks good to the outside world when staff are picking up the slack. Your staff are the ones who keep things running – don’t piss them off.

Now, I know that employees have responsibilities too, but I am currently feeling a little resentment towards management, so I’m going to side with employees for this post.

I haven’t made any progress on the house for about a week – no painting, baseboards aren’t done, and there’s still a lot of junk over at the apartment.  For some reason my energy level is not where it needs to be (for today that’s due to a long, difficult yesterday).  Also, I find myself easily getting discouraged when I see how much stuff my wife has…  I look at her stuff like, ‘what is this?’, ‘where and when did we get this?’, ‘what do we need this for?’  Some of the problem is the fact that even though she works with children out of the home, she has a lot of her work-related stuff at home.  It really won’t be so bad once we get it over here, I’m just really tired of moving things on my own.

As for the house, I guess it really isn’t a huge deal.  I’m going to see if my father will come up on the weekend and finish our baseboards (he enjoys that kind of thing), and the upstairs is just kinda empty since we don’t have a lot of furniture.  Oh, but I really hate the paint colors in the upstairs…  they’re all very blah…  and it’s more noticeable because we used such rich colors on the main floor.  It frustrates me to think about it…  so I guess I shouldn’t.

Today I purchased 2 years worth of web-hosting from bluehost.com. As great as my free account with wordpress.com was, I wanted a little more control over things. Bluehost allowed me to install wordpress very quickly and easily, but I’ve noticed some of the cool features I had on my free account are now gone. Most likely they can be found as plugins that just haven’t been installed yet. Bluehost will also come in handy if I ever get a little more serious about web design (which I’d like to do), since I can use PHP, Perl, and all kinds of databases (including MySQL and Postgres). Bluehost has also given me a domain name, gowashyourhair.com, for free! Actually, after registering my domain, I realized I had named it ‘gowashyourhait.com’ – but a fairly quick call to their IT department straightened that out for me.

I have a new fixation and it’s called M.U.G.E.N. I can’t remember what it stands for (or maybe I never knew), but it’s an engine (computer programming library you could say) for building fighting video games. It sounds like a lot of work, and I’m sure it is, but the cool thing is that people all over the world have already gone to the trouble of creating characters, backgrounds, music… but what’s even better is that people have ‘ripped’ characters out of other games like all the ‘Street Fighter,’ ‘Mortal Kombat,’ ‘X-Men’, etc. games and you can add them to your game. In like 5 minutes of surfing the web I was able to find a cool Ryu (from ‘Street Fighter Alpha’) and tried him out. It also looks like you can alter them yourself if you feel so inclined. Anyway, as a fighting game purist I thought I’d hate the idea, but it’s really quite fun. There isn’t an official location for where to find this stuff, but search for yourself and it won’t take you long (there are Linux, Windows and DOS ports available).

As for the house, I have officially hit the wall (I’m being figurative of course). I feel as if I don’t have any interest in working on it anymore. I would like a few more things done, but I don’t have what it takes to do them myself. Oh, I do plan on posting some before and after pictures fairly soon – maybe that will rekindle my passion.

I’m not working today but there are always jobs to do on the house. I haven’t decided whether to be productive today or just have one of those ‘who cares’ days. One thing I’d like to do but am having trouble justifying working on it until other things are done is setting up a computer to media center hooked up to my television. Now, most people assume when I say media PC that I’m talking about games, surround sound, and… well, I don’t know what else. Here’s what I mean by media PC – a way to watch all of my downloaded shows, or watch things online, from my television. I’d like to give Linux MCE a try (it’s 100% free), but it feels a little like overkill since I don’t have a nice TV, or home automation abilities. Still, check out these videos comparing it to Windows MCE:

Now, knowing me I’ll probably just end up installing Ubuntu on the PC and just using a wireless keyboard – since I’d like to be able to surf the net and I like the feel of a mouse and keyboard.  Either way, I’m looking forward to (1) watching my downloaded stuff, (2) getting all of my DVD content onto the PC, and (3) being able to go to youtube to show my friends the latest stupid videos going around.  Oh yeah, I also bought a cheap TV tuner card the other day and would like to capture TV shows too – but I have no idea whether the card will be Linux compatible or not.  If not, I’m sure it will be eventually.

Well, I brought over my computer, modem, and router and presto! – we have the Internet in our home. So, I would like to take this opportunity to take back some of my Nexicom frustrations, and admit that perhaps I don’t have an understanding of how ISP’s work. I’m now assuming they only have to verify your home number before they’ll allow you to connect (PPPoE) and it has nothing to do with your home address. When Bell came to hook up my phone service he mentioned that he was hooking up our high-speed as well… which confused me a little bit since our ISP was Nexicom. He seemed confused as well and said that he had received orders to set up ‘dslab,’ to which I mentioned that we do pay a network fee of $4 a month for a ‘network charge.’ So, even though or Internet is delivered by one company, we are still required to pay Bell for the ability to use it. If anyone out there understands this better than I do, please fill me in. At any rate, we have the Internet and I am no longer edgy.

We’re about 75% moved in now – there are only small items remaining at the apartment, though this includes my wife’s extensive warddrobe. We do have a phone, but no cable or Internet. I’m not too antsy about the cable, but I am about the Internet – mostly because I haven’t been able to get a hold of anybody to help me. You’d think getting them to move your DSL service from one home to another would be a pretty common thing. But, I’ve had great difficulty (1) getting people to answer the 1-800 number, (2) getting patched through to the right division, and (3) getting anyone to call me back. I’ve been doing my best to remain positive and recognizing how counterproductive judging can be (some wisdom from Wayne Dyer), but I’ve decided to name the ISP in question – it’s nexicom! This isn’t the first time I’ve had difficulty with them either. Hmm… here’s a thought – maybe if I’m keeping the same number, and I have Bell’s DSL capabilities enabled at the new place, they don’t need to do anything for me. If that’s the case I feel quite silly, but they could have at least let me know…

Since we don’t have the Internet at home right now, I’m actually writing this post from work – how horrible huh? Actually, my work affords me a fair bit of down time. Right now I’m watching the Leafs/Senators game with one of the individuals I work with, while the other one listens to music.

It’s moving day! We’ve actually had a few moving days in mind, but we’ve always been behind schedule. Today the power gets cut off at our apartment so we really don’t have much choice. I’m going to need some help but so far everyone I’ve talked to is busy today. I’ll likely have a little more luck in the evening, but I’d like to get it done during the day. As for the work on the house, we’re doing fairly well. Everything that’s left to be done can be worked on after we’ve moved in (trim, cupboard doors).

Haven’t been to the gym for four days but it’s really not a priority for me at the moment. I’m so tired every day from working on the home that they wouldn’t be very good workouts anyway. Now, although I’m very tired, I’m currently up at 6:30am because I can’t get the move off of my mind.

My father and I spent all of yesterday working on the house, and a couple of my friends helped me out in the evening.  There are still a ton of little things to do, but it’s feeling very close to being done – I think many of the little things can wait until we’re actually moved in.

I finally was able to paint my kitchen the red colour (antique red) that I’d been fantasizing about for weeks.  The primer we used for the kitchen walls had been given a grey hue to it, since this apparently helps a dark colour come out better – it almost looked like it was a solid paint colour after only one coat.  It also made the red come out almost entirely in one coat, though we’ll need to do some more cutting in.  So, my advice to anyone painting red is to colour your primer gray first.

I was able to get out to the gym today, though I was pretty sore from working on the house the day before, and working out the day before that.  I’ve read that working out while your sore can be counter-productive, but if you’re working a different muscle group it shouldn’t be an issue.  For some reason everything in my body was sore today, even though I can’t figure out why.  Painting ceilings can really mess up your back I suppose.

I’ve decided that I’m going to make it to the gym today. I think it’s been over a week since I’ve been there, and I’m feeling all soft… I’d also like to start heading to the gym five days a week. I’ve been doing three days a week for a long time, and I think I’m ready to step it up. I’ve been having a problem deciding on what to aim for – size or tone. There are many people out there who say you can do both at the same time, but there are equally as many people who say you have to pick one or the other. In my experience, I haven’t been able to do both simultaneously. So, since the weather is going to be getting colder for quite some time, I’m going to go for size – it’ll help keep me warm anyway.

Ah yes, the house… I don’t think I have any interest in going over there today. I suppose I should take some things over though if I’m heading out anyway. There is still a lot of painting left, but my father and I will be over there all day tomorrow, so I think I’m going to just do my own thing for today. Yesterday I finally took advantage of having our own washer and dryer and I got caught up on the laundry. It was a very nice feeling being able to do laundry whenever I wanted, without having to pay for it. Also, our dryer is huge… very nice!