Sorry for not posting, I’m lazy and nothing is really happening. I did land a new job here in Toronto at Salesdriver.com - props to my holmes Robin for that one. I start on the 8th of November, so I have nothing to do until then except play GTA: San Andreas. Which is working out quite nicely.
My parents are coming down to hang out this weekend (in like 10 minutes actually), and we’re going to stay with my aunt in Oakville. So I’m out until Sunday.
I’m back in Toronto, and utterly exhausted. I’m going to eat and then sleep. Anyone who wants to give me a call tomorrow can reach me at 416-580-6009 (until I switch from Bell to Rogers :-)
Heading out now. Chie and I are going to Yokohama, where we’ll catch the Narita Express train to the airport. At which point I’ll be going back to Toronto. James, I hope you’re home when I get there - if not, no more foot massages for you! ;-)
I found a great video of Jon Stewart’s appearance on CNN’s Crossfire, where he absolutely hands the hosts their asses. Grab it with BitTorrent if you’re into this kind of thing. There’s also a direct download and the transcript for the bandwidth-impaired.
Continuing today’s trend of bitching about corporate suckage, I just got screwed by Skype. Skype seems to be an interesting Voice-over-IP application with Linux, Windows and OSX versions that I thought would be extremely useful in talking to my wife when I’m back in Canada. So I tried to buy “credits” for about $15, and the Skype payment processing system showed the transaction as cancelled. So I figured maybe I fucked up the Verified by Visa phase of the process. I try again, same thing.
I then called CIBC’s VISA department, and surprise - the payments both went through! I immediately tried to contact Skype, but the only method of doing so is their “Live Person” support chat. Which is horrible. So I get into the chat with two different “people”, who miraculously resond to my queries with the exact same answers, word-for-word. Then I find someone else complaining about Skype payments, and sure enough, I see the same fucking support conversation.
I really, really want this system to work out for me, so I’ve not given up just yet.
Bell Mobility has - I guess - revamped their billing system. I know this because I haven’t received a bill for three months now, and my parents aren’t able to get anyone to cancel their cell phone. I would like to use my phone when I get to Toronto, and I always pay my bills on time, but judging from the clusterfuck that’s going on there I have no idea whether or not it will work. And I’m not alone; other people are having the same problems. Maybe I’ll switch to Rogers (since I like the whole SIM card thing).
The BBC has pretty good coverage of the final Presidential debate right now. I gotta admit, listening to Bush makes me fairly angry. He was confronted about jobs being outsourced. The big jobs to be outsourced to India, Singapore, etc. are tech jobs, right? So Bush answers that he’ll help the people who lose their jobs get education. If a programmer in India can do the job of an “educated” programmer in the States for 10% of the cost, there’s no reason not to outsource. Education doesn’t even enter the picture.
Of course, I’m sure that his campaign will insist he was talking about factory jobs. Even then he’s ignoring a growing, pissed-off segment of (potential) voters.
Anyways, I wish I was an American during this election just so I could vote. Kerry isn’t really anything special, just the lesser of the two evils.
So the story on the weddings that took place on Sunday. Yeah, plural.
We got officially married on Sunday morning at Kamakura City Hall, and that was fun and quick. Basically it was just submitting the application, and boom - married.
The other weddings though… So, Chie’s mom has a friend who works at a wedding hall. They needed actors/models to act out two ceremonies, so we agreed to do it. It happened to be on the same day as our marriage, so we were able to have two fake weddings on the same day. Pretty cool stuff. As I’ve said before though, the full wedding ceremony is next May, but these two were fun :-)
The fake ceremonies were in front of audiences of potential customers for the wedding shop, and we had to do a little act, read our vows (in Japanese), and get the flower shower. We even had a fake mom and dad (though they were no substitute for the real ones).
We did it, and we’re actually married now! Pictures will follow probably tomorrow :-)