gushue.net

Ah, WoWInsider wasn’t lying to me after all – my client is finally downloading the 3.0.8 patch. It’s about damn time. It’s another “extended” maintenance day – which we’ve had pretty much every week except for one since November sometime. It’s becoming pretty normal. I’ve been looking forward to this one – my Death Knight will be able to tank better with all the changes, and some crafting changes will be nice. Won’t be long before I have a level 80 healer and level 80 tank!

I recently bought an EDGE card for my Nintendo DS and a 2 GB microSD card, that thing is awesome. I can have a bunch of games on there, plus homebrew apps/games, and it works great. Already my sister has found it useful – there was a game she was considering buying, but after checking it out she definitely doesn’t want to get it. Saved some cash right there. I’ll probably check out some more games I’ve been interested in once I finally finish playing through Final Fantasy IV. I pretty much only play it during lunch (sometimes, not always) at work so it’s slow going. I don’t want to start playing it on my EDGE card, since I’m about six hours into the game already. Definitely don’t want to start over at that point.

Not much else new on the gaming front… I picked up Guitar Hero: World Tour. Some things I like, some things I don’t. Too much duplication of songs with Rock Band, though. Some play quite differently in each game, too. It’s interesting.

It’s a pretty good month for television, too. 24 Finally started up again, Battlestar Galactica is back, Lost is starting this week, and Hell’s Kitchen starts a new season as well I think. There’s some interesting looking new show too, Lie To Me I think it’s called? I’ll check it out.

I’m thinking about ordering a new hard drive for my laptop this week, too. Right now I have whatever stock 120gb drive that Dell offered when I got it (just over a year ago), but I want to get a fast 320gb drive for it :) And I’ll probably devote most/all of the drive to Ubuntu again. I miss it. I’m not sure if I’ll be able to get Quicken working properly there, but I can still use that on my desktop at least. Maybe I’ll stick that 120gb drive in my Playstation 3 then – not that I really need the space tehre. I don’t use it for much other than a Blu-Ray player. My Xbox 360 and computer are for gaming ;)

I also added a Flickr plugin to my Wordpress installation, but it needs tweaking for my template. I decided to look for something like that after my old Gallery installation had massive amounts of spam being posted as comments – Captcha wasn’t working, and I couldn’t even find a way to disable comments completely. Oh well, I never liked that software that much anyway. Flickr is nice though, and doesn’t cost very much a year for a Pro account. Once I get that working better I should start taking and uploading more pictures again.

Yesterday morning I placed an order on Futureshop.ca, for a Christmas gift for my sister and an iPod for myself. For some reason before work I just checked on the status of the order to see if it had happened to ship already, but it wasn’t even processed! As part of their “extended” customer service they phone the number you give them for the credit card holder, and they need to talk to that person about something or other. Screw that, I don’t answer the phone if it’s a number I don’t recognize, and I order things online to minimize the hassle of dealing with people. I’ll just have to get that stuff from somewhere else, I canceled that order.

So, I’m still alive. I’ve just been spending less time on LJ and IRC – focusing on WoW and chatting with my guild/friends in the game. And having fun with it in general, of course!

I updated my Wordpress install on my own server today, along with installing the Live+Press plugin, so I can crosspost things to LJ. It’s not like I post to either site very often these days, so I might as well do both at once :)

Starting my Christmas work rush now, too. I didn’t take my days off last week, and I aim to not take any days off until Christmas. That’s only a month more, nothing serious. The last few months have actually been pretty good at work, having a different job code and things to do now. I think the actual job name is Instock Associate, 3rd Shift. Or something like that. Essentially, I work out back in the warehouse doing different things and that’s pretty much it. Much much better than stocking shelves. Mostly, I decide what I do in the run of a night, unless there are specific things to be done.

I’ve been having a lot of fun with the recent WoW expansion, Wrath of the Lich King. Slowly questing my way to level 80 on my priest (almost level 74 right now), enjoying the scenery and lore along the way. My other chars coming up behind will likely use some addons to help speed the process, once I see it for the first time. And after playing the new class (Death Knight) a little bit – I’m having a lot of fun. My end goal is to have it be my tanking character, but it’s just a blast to have so much dps and survivability. I think this is going to be my second level 80 (currently 61) instead of my hunter (currently 71).

No promises on future updates, but I’ll try to post a little more often.

I love it when I’m able to arrange extra time off without actually losing any days. This weekend coming up is my normal weekend off (Fri/Sat/Sun). I have Thursday off for the holiday. I have Wednesday off for my personal day (we get one paid day off a year). I would normally have Monday (tonight) off, but instead I’ll be working tonight and taking Tuesday off. That gives me six days off, almost like a week long vacation!

I haven’t found a decent theme that I’m happy with for Wordpress, I guess I’ll have to make my own one of these days. And finish moving my existing old pages to a dynamic WP format. Then I can just edit them online – which is actually something I had written to do myself previously, but it’s nice that this is built into WP. Maybe I might actually get around to writing some of the pages I had been thinking about, too.

I just switched over to Wordpress – my other pages are still around, the links are currently next to the blogroll links on the side. When I get the time I’ll move things around, change themes, etc.

My site is in need of a major overhaul anyway.

Well, maybe not back, but at least making this entry! :)

This year I’ve decided to finally start doing something about my (bad) financial situation. In the past, I’ve had a bunch of debts that I haven’t been very good about paying back. Hardly saving any money at all, even when I have plenty of extra cash after paying the necessary stuff. When I had credit cards back when I started university, I abused them for stuff I didn’t need and never paid more than the minimum amounts, if that (not surprisingly, both of them went to collections eventually). Fiddling with info on my student loan applications (not quite lying) to get as much as I could. And then wasting most of that on booze and other things you would when you’re 18-20 and in school with your friends.

So, I’ve been working and living at home for the last five years. And what do I have saved? Practically nothing at all. Well, now I do, but that’s pretty much all from the last few months. I received a decent sized bonus cheque at work yesterday, and I’m quite pleased that most of it went towards some bills that I’ve been putting off. Well, one wasn’t really a bill, but my web/email hosting renewal was there. Spent a little on myself, but nothing extravagant. It sure was tempting to get a nice home theatre system or big LCD television. But I resisted! :)

Now, I’m aiming to get an apartment of my own this summer, by August (or maybe even July). Of course, this will reduce the extra money I have, but I can deal with that. I wasn’t really spending a lot of it on anything useful anyway (I’m afraid to go back and check to see how much I spent at the liquor store between Thanksgiving and New Year’s last year). My plan is to really bump up the amount I’m putting into savings (ING Direct – ask me about the $13 bonus for new accounts referred by me, for each of us) until then. Which I’d use for basic furnishings that I don’t already have access to, security deposit, etc, plus having a chunk of money set aside for emergencies.

After I get a certain amount put aside for an emergency fund, I’m planning to start putting that much money into whatever debts I have to get them paid as quickly as possible. At this point though, I think it’s just my student loans that are left. One of which might never get paid. The smaller one I’d like to pay off. Then I can build up my emergency fund to something that could last 6-8 months if really necessary, and then start putting a lot more into RSPs and a little into another account for gifts to myself (stuff like a new tv, etc).

So yeah… a bit of a long and rambling entry there. Just typing as stuff came into my head. I’m pretty dedicated to this, I’m tired of being in debt and “broke” (well, spending/wasting every extra dollar I get at least).

Oh, I never did post any pictures of my custom poker chips. I’ll have to do that sometime. Another thing I’d like to do sometime is possibly switch over to Wordpress from Movable Type. A redesign of my web page couldn’t hurt either. I’ve been uninterested in playing World of Warcraft for the last 3-4 weeks, compared to before when I was playing it constantly. Gives me a little time to fiddle with things like that :)

Pygmy Surfer and Bones both suck. That is all.

Congratulations from a fellow (not directly related) Gushue to Brad Gushue and the rest of the men’s 2006 Canadian Olympic curling team on getting the gold!

I really haven’t been updating this at all lately. I’ll just quickly go through some of what happened since last summer…

I started taking three courses at SWGC in September, which was technically fulltime – the first time I’ve done so in quite a while. I ended up finishing the semester with a 79.3 average, which is pretty good considering I also work fulltime.

I stepped down as support manager at work, mostly due to school and lack of time to concentrate on that. They still haven’t filled the position, and probably won’t post it again until they can find someone else that wants the job and is competent.

I’ve gotten more poker chips and good playing cards (Copag, Kem, etc) over the months. I currently have an order for 1000 custom chips from a special offering with choices not normally available. That should be here in April sometime.

I’m taking this current semester off school. I just need a break – the last 6 or 7 months were quite hectic/busy/stressful/etc. I did well last term, and want to continue to do well. I think that if I kept up with this semester doing another three courses, my marks would suffer. I may drop back to just one or to classes in September, or I may do three again. I’m not sure yet.

Hopefully my next entry won’t be after such a long break :)

Yep, another week off for me. I don’t really have anything planned at all. Should be enjoyable just to have the time off at least. Especially after maybe… 105+ hours of work in the last two weeks.

The poker chips I’ve been babbling about in various places finally got here a few days ago, they’re really nice!

And now I’ll subject you all to pictures! Muhahah!

My camera has been annoying lately. And/or my batteries. Plus, the battery cover on my camera broke a while back, so it doesn’t really stay in place without holding onto it, or taping it in place. Which sucks.

The new job is going pretty good so far, I’m enjoying it much more than I expected. I was really nervous before I started, and even while thinking about applying (and before my interview). But there’s not much to it, really. And I guess I’m a bit more vocal/whatever now, should get better at that eventually, too.

Long hours though, at least I’m kept busy the whole time. There’s never enough time to finish everything you’d like to get done. Last week I think I had almost 44 hours, and about the same this week. That’s a ton of overtime. I’m afraid of the taxes…

Off tonight and tomorrow though, which is cool. I’ll get to play some poker tonight with the guys (need to have a regular Thursday night game, since I’ll always be off!). Too bad my clay poker chips from ASM won’t be here, I ordered them last Friday and mailed my payment on Monday. I doubt I’ll have them before next Thursday, but should have them before my vacation at least. I’ll be sure to post pictures and an update when I do get them.