Hidden Pugmarks

It’s raining. Grey and cold. Today is one of those days best spent in bed beneath a mountain of blankets away from the world.

One more day until the weekend. Surely I can make it one more day. Today has just been one of those days. Where everything goes wrong and you just wish the day hadn’t happened.

I’m so exhausted. Unfortunately the only time I feel tired enough to sleep is when I’m at work. Is this just the lingering effects of my bout with food poisoning this week? I hope so.

There have been a lot of people backing out on or just flat out not helping me lately. I’m one of those people that when I get it in my head that I’m going to do something, I go all out and do it. Unfortunately, not everything can be done alone. No matter how much one might wish it could be.

I think “weary” is the right word to describe me right now. So tired and weary.

Thankfuly the day is over and it’s time to go home now.

So I’m finally done with my Software Engineering Boot Camp. Thankfully I only had to go to two out of the eight days. A big thanks goes out to my manager for that!

As horribly boring and uneducational as it was, I still managed to find a couple of unexpected ways to make it tolerable enough to enjoy.

One way was constantly beating one of the other senior guys there who had to take the course. He does the exact same job as me on a different team and he has about 10 years more experience than I do. So yeah, fun

The second way was finding out that I have “street cred”. The instructor, who is about the number five guy around this company remembered me. Which is good, because I didn’t remember him >.> Anyway, we were doing this test where they gave us a bunch of broken code. They gave us about an hour to fix it. I had it done and tucked away after about 30 minutes and no one else finished it. Quote from the instructor “Well, I expected YOU to get it.” So that’s all good.

I also lucked out and ended up sitting between a couple of interesting people. Art L. and Jessie Z. They made it feel like we were the kids who always sit in the back in high school and cause trouble.

It was after the debugging test mentioned above that I came up with the idea of Digital Channeling. At the end of the class they went through the program and showed all of the corrections that needed to be done and how to fix them. I honestly couldn’t remember which crash was tied to which fix I did for a lot of them. I just fixed them. That’s just how it works for me. I look at code and I simply *know* “this is wrong!” and I fix it. I’m sure that this is just some skill that I have honed to perfection of thousands of hours of programming. Still, it’s interesting.

The Boot Camp has been making me late for my raid group all week. I was amazed to find out last night when I got home that they hadn’t even attempted the two last fights in Blackwing before I arrived. I thought for sure I was going to miss our second ever Nefarian kill. However I got to be there for that and finishing Molten Core which marks the first night we have ever finished off Ragnaros, Nefarian, and I believe even Onyxia(I wasn’t there, but I think my character did do the tanking…) in a single day. I think we are finally hitting our stride as one of the best raiding groups on the server.

This weekend I have promised myself that I am going to get serious about unpacking and try to finish it. I’m getting tired of having boxes all over my place.

I saw the aftermath of a terrible car accident on the way to work. Right outside of the Burrard SkyTrain station. They had Burrard Street completely blocked off near there. Even to bus traffic.

From the looks of it I would guess that someone definitely lost their life in it. The car looked like a crushed aluminum can. The top had been cut off to get the occupants out.

I truly hope that everyone survived.

There is nothing quite like witnessing the after effects of, or being a part of, a disaster, no matter the scale, to help bring into focus exactly what your priorities in life are.

I followed the fallen blossom petals to work today. I walked with them along the sidewalk as they danced and ran with the wind like a meandering stream of white and pink. I watched them through the window of the bus as they swirled on currents of air.

I think that today is the coldest it has ever been since I moved to Vancouver. A frigid nine degrees celsius… I may never need to wear a jacket again. Perhaps the trees were fooled into thinking that fall was on its way and shed their blossoms.

Life out here is good. It’s laid back. It moves slow. I can see myself here for a long time. I still smile everytime I see the mountains. Such ancient majesty. Towering peaks wearing scarves of white snow.

It’s funny. I loved Montreal because it was so fast paced. Everyone was in a hurry all of the time. I enjoy Vancouver for the exact opposite reason. I guess it just boils down to enjoying a life that isn’t empty. I wonder if my four years of living in nowhere will ever leave me? Four years of waking up every morning and my first thought being “I don’t want to go to work.”

I have never worked anywhere else where they have asked me “Are you working at the capacity that is right for YOU? (i.e. putting in a balanced number of hours, appropriate to your workload, and in alignment with your task commitments, career interests and personal priorities)”

Happy first day of the fifth month everyone out there!