Just a quick administrative note... the transfer to the hosting company is complete, and I didn't notice any real outage or unavailability during the changeover. Hopefully you didn't either. Look for a new template next week as well.
I've got a pretty busy weekend planned, so don't expect to hear much from me before Monday. Have a great weekend everyone.
You're going out for a meal today, right? To do the socially responsible thing? Maybe even two meals?
Today is the annual Dining Out For Life day. Nearly 300 restaurants around the British Columbia area are donating 25% of their food revenues to a couple local AIDS/ HIV charities. And even if you don't live in BC, chances are that a city near you will be doing the same thing in the near future. For a complete list, visit the Dining Out For Life home page.
...is the local blogosphere ever quiet this weekend. There's very little being posted and I hope you're not expecting me to fill the void with anything too serious or meaningful.
The purpose of this post is to give you fair warning... I'll be moving this site to a hosting company at some point in the next day or two, and turning off the dual-processor, multiple hard-drive jet engine known as my server (which has been showing signs of illness lately). The new company has a habit of being unreachable from time to time though, so it may happen that you try to get to the blog site and it doesn't respond - if this happens, just wait about 20 minutes and come back again.
As I mentioned a short while ago, I received an invitation to join the Joost beta test program, and I've spent a few evenings poking around, and playing with the program. And lacking any other serious material to blog about right now, I thought I'd give you my two bits on what I think of the app so far.
NOTE: This one is a little long, so if you don't care about Joost at all, then just skip this post. If you're interested, everything is after the jump - first the bad stuff, then the positives. And no, I still don't have any invitations to hand out.
But wait! There's more!... and one of my birthday gifts was motorbike insurance. It's time to ride.
That is all.
So now that I'm officially unemployed, I've decided to start working for myself. I've had some input and help from friends (MUCH more on that, and them, in a later post) and things look promising; I've already had some billable hours.
But before you can go into business for yourself, you have to get your priorities straight, and you have to know where you want your company to go... so I bought this...
But wait! There's more!Today is the last day for me at my current job (or at least current for a few more hours... hah!). not that I'm excited or anything... not me.
Bwahahahahahahahaha. 
In what's an uncommon move for me, I don't have a job to replace it yet though, although I have some ideas along those lines which I'll get into shortly. But for the time being, there's a whole raft of changes coming... new hosting company and new template for this blog, new cell phone, new email addresses, new ISP. I'm excited about all the changes that are coming up, and what potential the future holds...
*UPDATE* It's now 6:00 pm. And as Tanya so eloquently puts it... I'm free. Insert contented sigh HERE.
*UPDATE 2* It's now 6:30, and I just got off the phone with a guy I met a couple weeks ago. My contracting starts on Friday.
Remember how I said that I was quitting my job? Well, for the 6 of you who have a cell phone number for me, you should know that it's a company cell. So as of about 4:30 pm tomorrow, I will be officially cell-phone-less for the first time in about a decade. If you need to get in touch with me it'll either be through my home phone or via email.
Don't expect this condition to last long. 
In other news, spring has apparently sprung. Trees everywhere are in terminal bud, and the cherry blossoms are starting. I love spring. *contented sigh*
For what is likely the final time, I'm writing from our office near Seattle today. And this time I don't actually mind the fact that I'm here.
I gave notice with my employer this last Monday that it's time for me to move on. I don't have anything in particular yet for a new job, but the one I'm doing now just isn't doing it for me any more. I need something new.
So even though I'm away from my home, apart from my friends and family, and tired from a poor sleep in an unfamiliar bed, I'm quite happy today. I'll definitely miss some of these people, and there are others I wish I had a chance to see who haven't been in the office. For me the saving grace for the trips here have been the people I met and had fun with. I'll miss them, and that, but not much else.
A few people I know have told lately of having difficulty with their debit cards, related to skimming of some sort or some other nefarious form of fraud. The common thread is that things got sorted out fairly easily, albeit with some small amount of pain in some cases. And I thought I would mention my own dealings with this issue, which also happened not too long ago.
I received an unsolicited call from my bank, and they left me a message identifying themselves as the security department (which immediately turned on my bullshit radar), but instead of asking me to phone them back, the message instructed me to go to a local branch for an "important message".
At the bank I was informed that there had been some 'unusual activity' on what they thought was my bank card. They asked me to verify recent transactions (which were all normal) and then they shredded my bank card in front of me. The info given to me was that there was some activity from back east that looked like password guessing on the day before the original phone call from Security, and so they had immediately dropped my purchase and withdrawal limit on the card, and called me to come have the card swapped out.
Now, normally I have only limited faith in Humungous Bank, but in all fairness I don't think they could have acted better on this one. They acted on a suspicion of something wrong, instead of waiting for it to actually go wrong, and I respect that. I appreciate the idea that they're prepared to take proactive steps to help safeguard my money and the access to it. But most of all I appreciate being kept informed. It's rare that a large bank earns kudos and I thought it might serve to reassure some folk that sometimes the banks can get it right.
Like a lot of people, I'm fairly well connected to various media sources and digital info streams. And as much as i sometimes resist being too connected, there are other times where I enjoy being able to get the daa, info, or entertainment that I want.
So I was really intrigued when I read a recent issue of Wired magazine, where they featured an article on an application called Joost. It was created by the same folks that wrote KaZaA and Skype, and their goal this time around is the same as it was for the other products... they want to change the way the world thinks about the medium.
Think of Joost as a television version of Pandora, delivered over a Bit Torrent style network. Except that the program streams from the swarm, instead of being downloaded from the swarm. You can switch programs as easily as turning a channel apparently, and it has all the features of a PVR, (pause, fast forward, rewind, etc). Throw in the ability to rate shows a la Pandora, mix in some social networking, and you've got the general gist of things. The Joost folks are confronting the TV networks head on. They've already signed a content agreement with Viacom (remember a news story a few weeks back about Viacome asking YouTube to remove some content?) and there's no doubt that other media outlets are not far behind. It's interesting to note here that the Joost authors are committed to doing this whole thing completely above board, and are being quite fastidious about avoiding any legal quagmires.
This whole idea is something that really intrigues me, and I'd like to take a closer look. So if you have an invitation to Joost then I'd love to snag one from you. But between Joost, Pandora, the Torrent streams, and all the other content available online, I'm really starting to wonder what the hell I'm doing paying the cable company and the phone company so damn much money.
*Update*: About an hour after I originally posted this, I received my invitation for the beta test from the Joost folks directly (as opposed to being invited in by a current user). When they come available, invitations will go to those whom I know personally, first and foremost. If there comes a point that I have extras available, I'll make it known at that time.
So I've now seen two movies in very short order, and I don't think I could have seen two more diametric opposites if I'd tried.
First was Pan's Labyrinth, which was a marlvelous film. It was deep, it was meaningful, and it was extremely well done in so many different ways, I can definitely see why it won several Oscar awards. It was also one of the most depressing movies I've ever seen in my entire life. Not what I was in the mood for when I decided to go see it.
Tonight's entry was another Oscar winner, this time Happy Feet. And while sweet enough to induce diabetes, the words ringing through my head were 'Grand Fromage'. I mean, c'mon... dancing penguins changing the world's business practices? But it was funny, and there were spots where I laughed out loud.
I feel much better now. I needed some laughter therapy.