Ronica and Bianca doing "Whatta Man" by Salt n' Pepa
Yours Truly and Alyne doing "Bring Me To Life" by Evanescence feat. Paul McCoy
Bianca and Lisa doing "I Feel Good" by James Brown
Kat doing "Hotel California" by The Eagles
The final Thursday night Public Relations class was marked by yet another night of karaoke, thanks to the fine folks at Scruffy McGuire's. Having long since ditched the last creepazoid karaoke guy in favour of a guy who doesn't monopolize all the microphone time by dedicating ad nauseum renditions of "Here Without You" by 3 Doors Down, we essentially owned the mic that night, from horrid renditions of "She Bangs" by Ricky Martin (done in the style of William Hung) by Yours Truly to the ultimate group song, "Bohemian Rhapsody" by Queen.
I'm really, really going to miss you guys. All of you guys.
Friday, March 31, 2006
It's official. I have officially conquered the need for sleep.
It's been argued by many people in many places that I probably shouldn't be drinking coffee. By some definitions (i.e.: those that are really quick to push psychoactive medications), I probably display some symptoms of ADHD (see archives for more details). Indeed, I probably talk a lot faster than I should, am a lot more high strung than I should be, and I'd probably be a really bad wreck if I started drinking coffee more regularly.
I've developed a taste for coffee over the past couple of years, mostly black. However, since $2/cup isn't really doing it for me, I figured it would be more cost effective to just make it myself and bring it in a travel mug. Since Thursday morning, when I received my shiny, brand new Braun KF 600 Impressions Coffee Brewer (it comes with a Brita Filter), I'll be able to do that.
I can say that I've never gone overboard to the point that I was twitching and getting caffeine headaches from withdrawl. If I do get hopped up over anything I drink, the worse I've ever gotten was from a watermelon flavoured Slurpee. Slurpees have inordinately high sugar content, which can really, really mess up with your body chemistry and boost your level of aggression. And this substance is LEGAL.
I still remember a pick-up game of basketball played with a friend, when I was so hopped up on sugar that when I went for the jump ball, I put one hand on his chest and shoved him to the ground before I grabbed the ball. I got the technical foul, needless to say.
I actually find that it increases my ability to concentrate and I can get significantly more done in a shorter amount of time when I have a cup or two inside of me.
Saturday, March 25, 2006
We have become far too dependent on technology these days, which seriously underscores how far up shit-creek we will become in the event of a total collapse of social infrastructure.
Case in point: over the past five days, I have had two pieces of technology spontaneously go kaput on me. First, my iPod goes down. No major loss, as I can't exactly use it to do my homework. Mind you, my workouts at the gym have been subjected to listening to a bunch of crap music piped through the gym speakers, but considering the added time and expense (thankfully covered by Apple and Hewlett-Packard), it's something I'd rather do without.
And then my computer spontaneously goes piff. While plugging in my USB flash drive in an attempt to get some work done, the computer just freezes all of a sudden. No longer responding to keystrokes, I reset it. Assuming that the hard drive has overheated, I turn it off and leave it to sit overnight, then try again. Still nothing.
This is somewhat remeniscent of my last computer, which had a hard drive failure that occured slowly over the course of several months, giving me plenty of warning time. Today, after sending it to the shop, a quick diagnosis reveals that either the motherboard or the CPU has spontaneously bitten the dust. This is somewhat good news, as this means that I don't have to go back and reinstall of those programs while kicking myself for not backing up my programs and documents. But either way, I'm out a couple hundred bucks for replacing either the CPU or the motherboard. Dammit.
The problem with a lot of technology is that impending failure is not indicated with compromised performance or whatever (eg: stuff takes longer to load, tends to overheat, etc.). Instead, it'll just spontaneously go under, just like that.
As a result, I am now typing this on my mom's computer and I'm in the process of hooking up my hard drive, but but probably shouldn't boot up from it, given the completely different computer configuration (much slower CPU and graphics card, to name two).
Which means, technically, I don't have an excuse for missing deadline. Double dammit. But at least I got an extention. But I'm still gonna have to do all this crap at school.
Friday, March 17, 2006
In a previous installment, I was talking about karaoke and my said addiction to it, being the first one out of the group to jump up to the mic and sing ("Wonderful World" by Louie Armstrong, FYI). While I can't really claim to the best singer out of the whole bar (that honour goes to Joel), I have as much fun as the rest of them. Regardless of how badly I might sing or how bad the song is to begin with (previous nights had me singing "At a Medium Pace" by Adam Sandler and "My Ding-A-Ling" by Chuck Berry), I make sure I give it my all, so I have no regrets.
Tonight for instance, I sang "I Get Around" by The Beach Boys and made a point of dancing on top of one of the tables to emulate a surfboard. Being that the previous week, my group and I had a 90's theme night (my songs: "Ice Ice Baby" by Vanilla Ice, "I'm Too Sexy" by Right Said Fred, "About a Girl" by Nirvana), this week we went with the 60's and 70's.
And then we got the guy who ran karaoke night fired. I didn't quite get to "Brown Eyed Girl" by Van Morrison or "Magic Carpet Ride" by Steppenwolf. This has a long and complicated history. While I'm not usually one to slag a person through the mud and kick them when they're down, if you're gonna pull shit like this, you deserve whatever you get as a consequence.
One of the people in my group attracted a little unwanted attention by the person who runs karaoke night. It started out okay at first, although after a while it got kinda weird. While we could excuse the fact that he consistently sang the same three songs over and over again while everyone else is waiting for their chance to sing (FYI, it's "Behind Blue Eyes" by The Who, "Losing My Religion" by REM, and "Here Without You" by 3 Doors Down).
And then when this guy volunteered to escort her to the Skytrain platform and then got a little too..."friendly" a few weeks ago, things got weird. And then he started dedicating "Here Without You" to her. Two weeks in a row. "By request," as he kept saying. Uh...no it isn't.
The head bartender started noticing little things, like the fact that we actually sat far and away from our usual spot (although we actually did so because one of the non-regulars decided to join us for a drink). Plus, he noticed the fact that the karaoke guy dedicated the song to her for the second time, coupled with the fact that the friend in question decided to move well out of line-of-sight when "Here Without You" came on. So, he came up to us and wanted to know how many songs we had left to sing. I had about three more I requested, while everyone else at the table had at least one more song each.
The bartender approached the karaoke guy about this and needless to say, he isn't going to be doing karaoke anymore. At least not at Scruffy's. My $0.02? I feel sorta bad, although not for the guy in question. If I do feel bad, it's for not doing or saying something earlier.
Sunday, March 05, 2006
According to a recent article on United Press International, 10% of telecommuters work in the nude. I haven't decided if this is a good thing or not, although it's at least not as bad as what I initially thought it to read...I first misread it as "10% of telemarketers work in the nude." I'm wondering if this elevates those annoying calls you get during dinner time to obscene phone calls.
In previous posts, I have referred to working at home as "Work at home in your underwear and don't bother to shower or shave day," although that's where I draw the line. Maybe because I'm severely lacking in body hair, I can't really go sans clothing for very long periods of time, especially since it ain't exactly temperate climate outside of the walls that surround me.
According to the article, people feel that they are more productive when working at home, and that their supervisors agree with them. This sorta makes sense...the two or three hours that you lose stuck in rush hour traffic could easily be put to better use. But on the other hand, there was the problem with "Casual Fridays," which actually led to a decrease in office productivity.
Maybe it's from the years of slumming it in t-shirts and jeans that I actually feel more comfortable in a shirt and tie, although at least I look more professional, if anything else.
