The more things change...
15 hours ago | Random | Comment [1]I went down to the C+DE office today to find out where I’ll be teaching my class this time next week. The office is right across the street from the college, and the idea of being back in the Exchange for the sake of education made me both a little happy and a little sad.
As I stepped out onto the street after my meeting, I could see into the Learning Commons and saw students with Macbooks and heavy-laden backpacks working hard on big projects.
Bus shelter seats are now heated in several spots in the downtown. The buses now go from the Concert Hall stop to Riverbend once every half hour instead of every hour. This was wonderful news considering I had missed my last bus by two minutes; however, I only wish they had implemented it sooner.
And yet, as I walked by a creative arts student holding the exact same art portfolio as mine was not even two years ago, I couldn’t help but smile a sad little smile.
So much is different now – I have a career, not classes; an apartment, not my aunt’s spare rooms; personal projects, not professor projects; teaching, not tutoring.
So many things have shifted to another tier in my life, yet some things are still the same as they were left. Creative projects remain unfinished, animations remain lifeless, friendships and romance remain still and broken. Bank accounts lay stagnant and cameras remain unpurchased, and happiness is still a too-distant-to-see-on-the-horizon goal.
The more my life changes, the more the things I really feel passionate about seem to stay the same. And that makes the sad little smile become just sad.
Part of a healthy lifestyle
3 days ago | Random | CommentI need to stop eating.
This is ridiculous, I need to start exercising again.
Comic con process complete; recommencing course process
4 days ago | Random | Comment [1]The Central Canada Comic Con 2009 site is done finally.
More or less, anyway. It still needs real content, and I’d like to set up a CSS rollover for the top menu instead of having an image swap.
However, overall I’d say it’s a moderately good build.
The only compromises:
- I had to have a bit of head CSS because of one of my Textpattern plugins, the banner up top is randomly pulled from a group of images (there’s only one there right now though) and that can only be accomplished in page templates and not CSS.
- Still no forum, but that’s their call as to whether they want me to transfer over the old one or start a new one.
- Tiny tiny little problem with the drop shadow near the top because I just don’t want to deal with background PNGs in IE6.
- I advised against that domain name, but it was already registered so we’re using it. That’s all I’m going to say on that.
Comic con websites are a funny bunch. For a group that has such a technology tie-in, the sites usually… suck. They’re awfully built, awful to use, and completely user-unfriendly. I tried to make a really good one to contrast the dreadful bunch that’s out there for both Winnipeg websites and comic con websites, and I think I made a reasonable compromise.
Plus, this site has the advantage of a complete CMS backend and I have control over it. That’s one thing I wasn’t permitted to have until this year, so it made my life a lot easier.
The comic con is now the second-largest one in Canada. That’s a pretty neat deal, I guess.
Plus: Adam West. I’m no celebrity follower, but having a man who’s known for just how weird he is across the globe coming here is kind of neato.
Weekend Reliance and Unlife Compliance
11 days ago | Random | Comment [3]I’ve come to a point in my life where I literally live for the weekend. Not because I get to relax and enjoy it, mind you – but because I get the opportunity to work on my other projects I just can’t do at work.
When I arrive home, I either have headaches so severe that all I can do is go to bed and sleep until the next day comes, or I have so little time between a reasonable sleep and the next day’s work that I can’t really do anything.
9:00 AM – 8:00 PM is completely occupied by work (including travel time), 10:30 PM – 7:00 AM is taken by sleeping, and it generally takes me an hour and fifteen minutes to get ready for the day (usually from 7:30 AM to 8:45 AM). As you can see… there isn’t much time for anything else.
I’ve got meetings, preparation, organization, cleaning, everything under the sun to deal with right now, and of course winter has come and so my productivity plummets again.
Even though I did get something accomplished, I still feel like I wasted my weekend. And I hate that.
Even if things did get better, I wouldn’t have the time to work on it. And that just makes me feel even worse.
Abandon hope all ye who enter here (here being winter)
12 days ago | Random | CommentThe first snowstorm came, and so did winter – not with a whimper of a few Charlie-Brown-like flakes, but with a bang of wind that literally took the breath from your body and with shards of ice rain feeling as if it ripped through skin as it fell.
I missed my bus thanks to the combination of several factors.
The first was Winnipeg Transit neglecting to post any sort of delay on their “new improved site” (the only features of which are any use whatsoever being the ones that still existed in exactly the same form on the previous site) and reporting a ten minute delay on their Telebus service, then neglecting to respect either and the bus driving away five minutes late from its normal schedule.
Another contributer to my delay was a broken watch. How is it that my last watch from Walmart (shudder at the thought, yes) lasted two full years and only needed retiring because of a broken glass face, yet my new Zellers watch lasted less than eight months and the silver wore away to reveal the dull coppery colour of coated cheap metal in less than two months?
Yet another addition to my morning was the unfortunate discovery that the city had neglected to fill a foot-deep hole on either side of the sidewalk directly across from my aunt’s house this morning. The snow had nicely smoothed out the ground, and so I nearly broke my ankle. As is, it’s fairly sore, and will most likely get worse as the day goes on.
At least if I were at my apartment I could walk to work (or better yet, not be stuck with one bus an hour going anywhere but here). It might take me longer to get there, but I try to arrive twenty minutes early anyway and would just show up on time instead.
I woke up early, dressed appropriately. I did everything right to deal with the oncoming horrible season. And yet I’m still going to be late for work for the first non-scheduled time ever. I feel awful about it, and don’t even have a lunch packed so I can work through lunch to make up for it.
I despise winter, I despise the fact that the malls are already completely bedecked with gaudy holiday cheer, I despise the snow, and most of all I despise the fact that from now on, nothing will change for at least seven months.
This horrendous beginning does not bode well for the rest of the season.