Friday, January 27, 2006

Managers Meeting

I have just returned from an interesting managers meeting with my boss.

Reaffirmed Truth (I am normal):

So I get to the meeting early and the first to arrive is my boss and another manager. My boss begins commenting on the fact that since he’s been on vacation he has not had 1 week were he has not had to come in to work, at which point the other manager pointed out that vacation only means you don’t have to come in at 8pm and that you get to wear whatever you want.
At that point I started laughing because I remember telling Basschocolate that very same thing and him telling I need help. Its good to know my Entire division.

This also made me realize that I probably wouldn’t mind working over by head office where the rest of the IS dept is, it would be nice to be surrounded with like-minded people.

Work Is Fun:

As the meeting progressed managers had to give their plans for the year. Our Security guy listed his objectives and ended by saying that he’d just continue to have fun”. It the occurred to me that if most of the other ppl I know made that statement they it would be just them being Sarcastic. Not here, this guy was serious.



All in all, this meeting put a lot of things in perspective for me. I saw first hand some of the challenges facing managers and began to see that it was not quite a bed of roses.
Still, I think I am up for the challenge, I hope I get more opportunities to learn and grow here. I do enjoy my work environment. There is a little voice in my head that warns me not to get too comfortable as that leads to stagnation but I think I should be safe for now.

Wednesday, January 25, 2006

2 Current affairs issues

British Spy Found

When I first heard the newscast I was wondering why the newscasters were more surprised that there was a spy rather than he was caught on video. I actually began to question the avg IQ of a reporter and felt sorry for the ppl watching the news who (because they live in a cave and were raised by wolves) thought that spying does not happen between countries, especially if they are allies.
Having said that, I find Russia's Move interesting. It is amazing how powerful today’s media is. Can you imagine, back I the days of the cold war, I would expect if a spy was found he would be tortured to death for information, Or thats what Hollywood would have me think. I either case, back then you never heard too many cases of spies being found and even then it was always hush. Nowadays it seems you can inflict more political damage to a country by turning them over to there own media than get information out of the spy.


Nuclear Panic

Now I am not in league with Iran. But who gave the world superpowers the right to determine who is allowed to have Nuclear weapons and who isn’t. Who are they to determine which country is ‘stable’ enough to have such great responsibility? In a sense If I were an Iranian I would P*ssed . I mean just because of the ‘possibility’ of creating Nuclear weapons, you are preventing from finding means to deal with My countries Energy crisis in a sustainable manner. What? Iranians are all terrorists and should not be allowed a basic utility such as Electricity because of what they might do with the power source. That’s Hogwash, the is clearly a case of superpowers being a bulling another nation. You wonder where Anti Western Sentiments run so high in the Middle east. We let or fear and paranoia dictate or actions, leading us to oppress these ppl, the sad part is this only fuels the very same Ideals that makes us fear them, It’s a never ending cycle.

Personally where as I am opposed to the reactions of the Superpowers, I am fearful. I am sure, however, there must be a middle ground. It almost seems as if the Western powers that be would have them rely completely on oil which is purported to run out in the next 50 to 100 years

Anticipating Carnival

As most ppl can tell from my MSN name I am eagerly awaiting the start of the carnival season. I have promised myself I will not miss any of the Friday Mass Camp fetes.

My excitement seems almost childish, even to me. From August of last year I was aching for Soca fetes. It reached a fever pitch right after Hard Wine (a fete on campus)
Where I had a blast, as far as I was concerned Feb could not come fast enough.

In the midst of all this I have wondered if my expectations are too high. Last year was the first time I had ever participated to such an extent in the carnival season. I must say it was great, and from then, I knew I couldn’t wait till the following year to do it again.

Really though, even though I know I will have fun, will it be as fulfilling as last year?
These Questions pop up because of one previous experience; My first Session.

I had never been to any party or function where there weren’t at least 2 pastors and the music (if any) provided by the TV commercials because it was left on.
I can say unequivocally that that $50 fete in Irving’s Reading Room In November of 1999 was the GREATEST Fete I have ever been to. I stayed until the selectors were packing up, I essentially stayed by myself and enjoyed the music giving ‘gun’ salutes to the big tunes as Base Xs Tore the place up.

I realize that this was due to the fact that that fete kind of symbolized for me the fact that I was no longer in my parents house and that I was Free to do as I chose.

By extension I am wondering if My expectations of this year’s
Season is fueled by excitement of last year because it was a novelty. In any case there is only one way to find out, and I have every intention to. Like I sad before, there is no Question, I will have a blast, but will the blast match up, or even surpass last year is yet to be seen.

Friday, January 13, 2006

Guys had to share this.

So apparently AMD had issued a challenge to Intel to compare their 64bit processors. Intel, off course declined the invitation, in response AMD put on the sight this list:-

Top 10 Reasons Intel did not Participate in the Dual-Core Duel
10.Tried to follow their own roadmap to get to the duel
9.Decided to take the "front-side bus" to the duel; got stuck in a bottleneck
8.The "Intel Inside" stickers they used to package the cores together keep melting
7.Too busy rearranging the deck chairs on the Itanic
6."Hey, we don't expect anyone to actually buy these things!“
5.Didn't want to compete when they realized that the duel would involve actual "rules" of fair competition
4.They couldn't get a permit from the fire department to emit that much heat
3.No systems available yet --protective clothing used by manufacturers only safe for up to 149 watts
2. Dell told them they weren't allowed to participate

And the number one reason Intel didn’t accept the dual-core duel:
1. Moore's Law has been replaced by "Paul's Paradox": the number of canceled products per year at Intel will double every year after the introduction of the AMD Opteron™processor.

Wednesday, January 11, 2006

Naïve Am I?

In a discussion I was having with a friend of mine recently, it was let slip that she thought I was ‘Naive’. Of course being blessed with Testosterone, I thought I new the ‘game of life’ well enough to survive out there. She went on to say that I was easy to manipulate.

Now of course this severely threatened me ego, so I went around asking a few other of my female friends if they too thought I was Naïve. Needless to say the answers I got were not reassuring, those who didnt look away and refused to answer (I am assuming the didn’t want to damage my ego any further) tried to pretty it up by calling it something else.

Boy what a wake up call. Of course for a few days after I was worried about this; am I really that naïve? I know that looking at myself a couple years ago now, I would call myself naïve, and sheltered, not by my parents, but rather sheltered by life.

I have basically have been living a charmed life, nothing exceptionally great, but at the end of the day I have to be happy, its hard to find things to complain about at times. Even though I may worry a bit, I have a somewhat childish view that things will end up in my favor some way some how, and the great part is it usually does (Thank you Lord :D) But I digress…..

Now a days I really thought I was no longer clueless, that I was getting the hang of this hole life thing, but apparently, I have been fooling myself.
Having thought long and hard about this, however, I have come to realization that it doesn’t matter, the whole point of life is that you learn as you go, along, I figure my track record shows that I am definitely improving, maybe not at a pace that I should, but at least there is progress.

I have also learned there is also a value to being clueless, its highly underrated.

In any case, I realize this is just one of those pins to keep me in check.

Stargate Writers are Atheist?

Now for those of you who don’t know about this most magnificent of series, Stargate SG1 is about a secret Govt. military organization that uses a ancient relic left by the ‘Egyptians’ to travel to distant plants. The Series follows the Adventures and exploits of the team named SG1.

Now for the first 7 seasons the main antagonists in the series have been creatures who, without going into too much details, proclaimed themselves to be false gods. As a result our Heroes find themselves fighting these ‘false gods’ and religious zealots while trying to convince the people that serve them that their "gods" were not real.

Throughout the entire ordeal, there has been an undertone of a lashing out against religious fanaticism. However due to the fact that from day one we saw that the Goa’ulds were nothing but parasites that use their advanced technology to fool people, and also the fact it was clear that they portrayed themselves as being the Pagan gods we know in our histories, the fact that they were fighting them went well with everyone, even me.

I mean we all know the Egyptian gods were false, so if they make a show that has them being revealed as frauds then hurrah :)

But alas the writers did not stop there. In the later seasons they introduce a the Ancients; A group of ascended beings. At this point I thought I had found the true religion of the writers, but alas there are subtle differences.

Where as many Asian religions speak of enlightenment and ascension, it is usually used in conjunction with some Universal Consciousness, whether collective or a sentient being.
In the case of Stargate, the ancients have found ‘enlightenment’ but its not entirely a spiritual process. The writers portray it as more of a fulfillment of potential, a natural progression for any sentient race.

Hmmmmm

Of course at the end of season 8 the Goa’ulds have been defeated and everyone seems to be aware that they are false for the most part. However Season 9 (the current Season) sees the introduction of a new set of villains.
These antagonists, more than any other, seem to spit in the face of most religions today.

Apparently the ascended beings have a split in the camp, one set being ‘good’, who don’t interfere in our mundane plain existence, and those who believe they should be worshiped, seeing that the have discovered how to ascend and ‘we’ haven’t.

These 'bad' Ancients call themselves the Ori, and the ‘religion’ they teach is Origin.
Interestingly their High preist (who are imbued with Impressive powers I must say)
are called Pryors (sounds familiar?). To top it of there doctrine of ‘believe or die’ makes one wonder if they are Crusaders Fighting Ji-Had, or just they feel it is the right unleash Genocide on the ‘philistines’.

In any case, it is clear to me that the writers of the show
Have little respect for religions, or rather, believe that choice and rational thinking is superior to blind faith.