Monica’s Grad
Posted by Pavan Chander | Filed under Events
Well Monica had her Grade 8 Graduation this past Wednesday, and it was a pretty fun experience. The event was held at the same location as mine was oh so long ago, so that was a little interesting. And I also knew the DJs which was completely unexpected.
Of course I switched into “Paparazzi Mode” and took lots of pictures which should be up on Flickr shortly.
Near Miss
Posted by Pavan Chander | Filed under Events
I was on the bus today, coming home and we were sitting at a red light behind a small red car. This is a pretty busy intersection, so there are lots of cars going every which way. When our light turned green and the red car started to move forward, out of nowhere a silver Range Rover comes barreling in from stage left.
The driver had tried to run his yellow light and failed miserably, and not only was his light red by the time he got into the intersection, ours was green. As you can imagine he was going extremely fast because of his red light problem, or his mental problem we don’t know, and so sitting in the bus we heard a huge screech of his brakes. He managed to stop the SUV with less then six inches of room between him and the red cars driver door!
Due to that incident all traffic at the intersection ceased for about 20-30 seconds (you could clearly imagine both drivers barely catching their breathes). 30 seconds doesn’t sound like much, but it’s one of those “you had to be there” moments. Besides it was long enough for out light to turn back to red.
Unfortunately I can relate with what the red car driver must have felt as he heard the brakes. Four months ago I was in an accident on the highway where the car barely missed hitting my door window, and instead hit us on the right side just in front of the passenger door (our car had done a 180 degree turn due to ice).
Los Angeles Convention
Posted by Pavan Chander | Filed under Events
Well I got back from LA on Sunday, and man what a trip!
View the Flickr Set for pictures of the trip.
The trip started out normally, drove to Hamilton and met everyone else, we all got into our mini van and off to Buffalo!
The flight was supposed to leave at 7:30 PM, but because of a huge ice storm, the flight was canceled. So in order for us to arrive in LA in time for the start of the Convention we had to drive down to Rochester and catch the 5:40 AM flight, because we had our own car it wasn’t too big of an issue to drive down, and we actually drove another stranded passenger, Gary Hohler, there as well. Gary introduced himself as “working for a small company called Adobe“, and so we hit it off pretty well.
After getting around 2 hours of sleep in an airport that was getting renovated Gary and us parted ways, we caught our flight to Chicago, and our connection to LA.
Upon arriving at LAX we had very limited time to pickup our rental car, check into the hotel, and have quick showers and change into something presentable. Which we managed to do in reasonable time, but unfortunately we forgot about the line to pick up our registration packages. Which was so long that it went all the way down the length of the centre, and around the side, we decided to go grab something to eat because it had been quite a few hours since our last real meal. By the time we came back the line had diminished a little and we got in relatively quickly.
We had quite a few entertaining drives, from finding Indian restaurants that only served Chinese food, to getting lost in downtown looking for a 7/11 that we had been to only the night before, and having people walk into an airport terminal carrying car tires.
Tags: convention, Flickr, Los Angeles, Photos, trips
Merry Christmas!
Posted by Pavan Chander | Filed under Events, Friends
For the first time, in quite a long while I managed to see a White Christmas, in the 11 Christmas’ I’ve seen in Canada, only 2 or 3 have been white. That too, they were mostly all in the first couple of years.
My Christmas news is:
- Andrew’s back from Carleton but I’m sure the break will go by too fast to really enjoy it.
- The 540 site design is more or less done, now it’s just a matter of content, oh and actually getting the “people in high places” to notice it.
- My business is starting to really take off, and I expect to see some very solid results by the end of Jan - infact 2008 is promising to be an excellent year, can’t wait.
- Caught up on 2 old time nerdy movies, Blade Runner & Hackers.
I found Blade Runner to be a much better book than a movie, as it went a tad slow for me. But Hackers on the other hand, I saw it and went “Wow why have I not seen this before”. The movie is full of all the 1990’s stereotypes about computer nerds/hackers, which I love for their naive humour.
I learnt two things out of Hackers, thank god for cable modems, and the demise of the 28kbps world. And that I hope to heaven that your password isnt still “god”.
Tags: Cadets, Holiday, Media, Movies
Power outage
Posted by Pavan Chander | Filed under Events
So there I am at 5:45pm
Sitting on the computer plugging away at an online practice exam, only to be greeted with an announcement that the site would be down from 5:30pm - 4:00am.
Now I am all for online downtime, as it usually means something interesting is going on behind the scenes and there’s always the slight chance that when the site does manage to get back up there will be improvements.
But seriously, who the hell conceived the idea to wait till 15min after the site was going to be taken down to announce their intentions!
OK
Breathe, it was only a practice exam that was being a pain in the ass anyway..
[15min go by]
And then, like a flick of a switch…I’m left staring in darkness (well, more than usual) at one of my screens with a little popup saying that my network had been disconnected.
Shit
The only thing I hate worse then having the power go out, is to have it go out in the middle of the night when I’m not around.
So as calmly as I can I shutdown my computer and sit in the silence of my house and brood on how much better my life would be at that this point with an Asus Eee PC.
If anyone’s curious about UPS‘, APC has an online wizard to help you figure out your power needs.
Tags: Events, Technology
Spent the last 21 hours in bed
Posted by Pavan Chander | Filed under Events, Friends
And what a time it was!
I went to Leah’s engagement party last night, the food was definitely amazing but I had a couple of drinks more than I should have. We ended up going to a bar in the evening, I was surprised there was still a couple of people who were sober enough to drive us there, and I don’t know who picked the bar..but it was definitely a poor choice. It was basically a hole in the wall with annoyingly loud music. I grabbed another drink, which ended up costing me $5 compared to $3.50 at the Beer Store.
I did get ID’ed for the first time so I guess it counts for something.
After the bar my dad came to pick me and Maria, and on the ride home I started to feel sick and ended up puking into a bag. Passed out for the rest of the ride, got home and fell into bed. The quote about “falling asleep before your head hits your pillow” seems very appropriate.
Spent the last 21 hours asleep and woke up around 10, to realize I didnt know where my glasses were. So I was sitting at the computer squinting at the screen and not knowing whether I was typing English or just Mumbo Jumbo. My dad came down to give me my glasses after he realized I was awake.
All in all it was a good night, and I was left wondering why the hell do I enjoy drinking.
Tags: Events
My day
Posted by Pavan Chander | Filed under Events
Well as the day officially starts at 12:01 AM, mine started with me going to bed at 2:30, and having to wake up at 7.
I had to be at Staples at 7:45 to open the Computer Dept, ya well that didn’t happen as I was stuck at our crappy Tim Hortens. At its worst I’ve seen that Tim Hortens with only two employees on the night shift (its a 27/7 place), now that’s not all that bad - till you realize they’re both wearing “in training” badges. At its best I’ve seen it full of staff all doing random things with their coffee filters and bagels…but no one taking orders.
So I manage to get my order, end up half walking/half running across the parking lot and managed to get the lid of the cup filled with coffee (it was sealed). I missed the morning meeting, which was primarily focused on the copy centre - so nothing important :P
After all that I get back on the floor and notice an abundance of people on the floor already. So I ask one of the guys in the laptop area if he needs any help, he turns out to be one of those “Nah I’m just looking around..ill let you know if I have any questions” kind of customers. So I think nothing of him till I see him walk away and go up the stairs to a meeting that was being held by the GM’s of various Mississauga stores.
Damn him, he could have let me know he was a GM and not a customer…
