Dave Kellam

It’s been an ace week I must say. I picked up some sort of viral infection about 7 days ago, being sick is shitty. The sickness thing is starting to look more like mono, most of the symptoms and it’s lasted longer than most viruses tend to. And my dog died.

It’s kind of a funny way to end a pity paragraph, but it’s even funnier when your dog actually did die. Or more tragic, either way – more pity! Taffey was getting old, she’d been getting progressively worse since last summer, just getting old. Couldn’t run as fast, go as far, jump as high. Then, more breathing problems, blackouts and seizures. Despite that, she was still happy and alert and had the will to live. Pain overtook this week and she was putdown. I’m kind of sad but not too much, it was expected and she gave me years of happiness, a great pet. The cat on the other hand, I’m surprised that it’s lived as long as it has, it seems really stupid sometimes.

The virus makes me want to sleep, i guess that’s why it’s a virus. It leeches all the energy out of you.

The government has tabled legislation that would decriminalize minor possession. The artlice has another insteresting tidbit thrown in:

Cultivating and trafficking marijuana are major businesses in Canada, run by biker gangs and Asian organized crime. Marijuana is estimated to be the third largest agricultural crop in both Ontario and British Columbia.

You’d think if all these people are growing it and smoking it, you may as well legalize it. That would be a heck of a lot of tax dollars that you’d pull in from farmers and people buying. Besides, alcohol and tobacco are legal. Given the choice between dealing with someone who’s high and someone who’s drunk, i’d much rather be with the high person. You might here something somewhat intelligent come out of their mouths, they won’t be stumbling around (maybe they’ll be a little bit slower) and you wont have to deal with them vomiting or getting alcohol poisoning. At least decriminalization/legalization will bring some tourists in, SARS doesn’t seem to be doing much for it. Maybe all of the American’s planning on visiting places like Kingston, or Montreal are worried that they might end up at one of the two Toronto hospitals that cases are linked to.

As always, the plan to update more frequently is thwarted by the exact opposite behaviour. Work was busy for awhile, that was followed by an extra-long weekend that I spent enjoying the sun and trying to avoid sitting in front of the box.

I managed to get out and see The Matrix Reloaded. I’ve heard that pirated copies are floating around the internet, although I wouldn’t know where to start looking. You never know, having a copy might come in handy if you wanted to catch up on dialogue or story points that you may have missed (maybe what the architect had to say). I’ve read a fair number of comments about the movie, some negative, some positive. Lets say that I have both types as well. But I had that for the first one as well. I enjoyed it, and can’t wait for the next one. The To Be Continuted… was one of my complaints, but that’s not big… it just felt like half a movie. The next one will be here soon enough, it was nice to see a trailer after the credits, just to remind you that there will be more soon.

Saw Belvedere play at the Scherzo on Tuesday night. They were alright, fairly generic punk rock but they had a clean style. It was obvious that they had some label power behind them and were able to parlay that into better equipment and sound quality. The show was worth seeing, but i didn’t buy a cd.

Lastly, the article Computing’s Lost Allure is worth reading. Or at least worth skimming if you’re thinking about a future in computing. It really just reiterates a lot of the points that I have witnessed as someone caught in the middle. I like computing, I love knowing about computers and how they work. I’m not such a hot programmer. I tend to only get really motivated by assignments that I’m interested in and I never seem to have the motivation that it takes to start a program from scratch. It’s interesting being at the tail-end of a degree that has gone out of style, as the article indicates. I’m looking at grad school as a way to avoid facing an uncertain future, as well as looking at fields outside of business-style computer programming towards places that are looking for people with logic backgrounds. There’s awhile to figure it out still. I’m not too concerned. I know that I haven’t made a poor choice, computers aren’t going to disappear, the world is going to need people that know how they work.