Oh Boy!
:: I am happy my name is not: John Allen Williams

Poor guy! Go to this page and refresh the page! Look at how fast the people counter keeps on climbing. I was visitor 10,000... Don't be surprised if the counter gets reset soon! Poor servers at Loyola University. They must be on the *weight loss cycle*, spinning and humming on a night they were hoping to simply be snoozing...

wow! Too scary!

p.s. I know, I know - I am going to bed now! Ciao!

wow! what a great day!
:: things are going great!

Well, well! I have a cold and my throat is killing me... I must have a cold or fever. But that did not keep me from having a terrific day! Great crowd at our Industrial Alliance BSF Training (bureau des services financiers), a quick visit of my great looking new office (still no phone and Internet - argh!) and off to my Italian class! It sure was great. We had a great debate about the northamerican prospects for the best and most popular sport in the World: CALCIO... what we call soccer and the rest of the world calls futbol!

Anyway, things are really shaping up to be real swell in the upcoming weeks.

Bene, quello è tutto per ora. Eventualmente, invierò i blogs molto più interessanti! (well, I have to justify these Italian classes ;)

Ciao!

buona notte
:: ci vidiamo domani matini!

i want a new digital camera
:: who can help me choose a cool one?!

I wanna buy myself a nice little digital camera. What do you folks suggest?! I have a PC with a USB port (can't splurge on an iMac just yet) and would like to start taking digital shots of a bit of everything to feed my blogs and later on my grandchildren! Why not?... I will start doing Top 10's! Uhhahaha: I am feeling mischievous!

... more to come! // à suivre!

Sweet Lisa
:: You should try Blogger Too!

nuit blanche
:: not a good idea :(

I did not see time fly last night and early this morning. Hence, I had less than a half hour nap instead of my complete 6-hour beauty sleep. Not smart, indeed! I feel quite weak and obviously, my back and legs are aching.

At this point, I am going to get ready to pass out and write a nice juicy, smart and nice blog MANANA!

Buenas noches amigos! (I hope)

less is more
::this is really the last one before catching at least one or two trailers before waking up!

Hey - there are really some really kewl sites out there [ such as turbanhead - fred's head - adnan ]. Every new site I see and the new features and tools [ok, gadgets!] makes me wanna add something else!

At this point I am really becoming as excited as a 14-year old girl! Well, I don't really know how it feels to be one, but I have seen many excited 14 year-old girls - mmm... when I was around 14 years old [nice catch, dude - yeah - thanks!]

Anyway, to quote a former colleague, a little voice of reason [mine!] reminds me that "hooman, less is more" and I tell myself, true, ture, I better relax.

But then, I wonder, what is up with my *boys* and what are they really upto with PR1 and PR2 :) (!?)
[make sure you see this before moving on to PR1 and PR2!]

Cheers! Talk to you in a few hours, if not minutes!

please someone - shut this pc off
:: I've got to get some z's

Ok! Playing around with all these newly discovered tools is really fun (blogger, enetation, blogchalk, imood, html gears...); but I need to go back to life, or is it sleeping. Gotta be up in a few hours and I am still trying to re-learn old forgotten html code?! Why?! Could someone please tell me. Christ - I still have not had a chance to spend a whole 90 minutes staring at CNN on the tube to hear "... and we are speculating, but we think at this point, the sniper may actually be... please, remember that at this point we are speculating, and I need to remind you that we do not know..." - um... ok - I guess it is not too bad and this is much better than resting after going god knows how many times and up and down stairs with like over 50 Archivex boxes this evening...

Whatever - if you guys don't shut this pc - I will...

moving day (again!)
:: what a great day! - what a great feeling

I know it says Tuesday - but it is still Monday to me! Monday the 21st! It is so good to be back in Downtown Montreal! Montreal is really beautiful and it would be idiotic to rot in the suburbs. I would never go and waste my time on highways ever again!

Anyway - good to be back home after a crazy day of helping our movers move [I always thought it was supposed to be the other way around!]. Anyway, the guys at Le Clan Panneton did a pretty decent (careful, hence annoyingly slow) job! What a workout, indeed!

Well, that's it - more to come in a few hours! After a couple of whinks, obviously!
{scary thought: I still have no activated phone line nor [gasp] high speed internet access at the new office - how will I live... for the next little while?!}

Procastination
:: fellow bloggers - we're onto something sweet!

I have known about Blogger since March but it really took me 8 months to start blogging! Some of the best sites I have stumbled upon must definitely be jish.nu | zuberJish is definitely a kewl guy who seems to like poutine twice as much as I do in regular times; but half as much as I do saturday nights at 4 AM - unless I have pleasant company ;) The similarities are pretty much over after that!

But seriously, this blog phenomena gets me as excited (in IT-related history, obviously!) as the first time I sat at McGill's Faculty of Management Sandiford Lab in 1993 and started fooling around with IRC. I remember chatting with Pofak and other universities students around the world in Australia, Sweden, Israel, Boston, Toronto and San Francisco. Heck it was one of the reasons that I ended up spending seven years in IT Consulting and dropping the field of Audit (that's a great thing!!!) Probably as important as the day I got my first IBM PC (an expensive PS2) in the mid-eighties. Playing around with MS Basic and recoding BlackJack is as fun as hunting new tools to add to my blogs - thanks to blogger, doteasy, enetation and blogchalking I have been having a blast discovering fellow bloggers' world. I never thought snooping at others people's diaries could be this fun!

Anyway - I am happy I found this new distraction to replace the old tube that was upto now my main *preferred* tool for procastination! Oh by the way, this is my new blogchalk:
Canada, Québec, Montréal, Monkland Village, Persian, Spanish, Hooman, Male, 26-30, salsa - partying - clubbing, business - helping friends. :)

Talk to you soon!!!

Light at the end of the media tunnel
:: these guys are definitely on the ball

Friends and relatives will tell you and I openly admit it: I am a news junky. I used to consume tremendous volumes of financial and business news magazines and publications during the [old nostalgic] new economy.

The Economist, Fortune, BusinessWeek were at the base of my voracious business news diet and the other food groups consisted of all kinds of sweets such as Fast Company, The Industry Standard [RIP], Business 2.0 [hated all the articles discreetly placed among my favorite stack of useful [not] dot.bomb adverts] and Wired magazines only to be topped off with snacks such as fuckedcompany.com [so passe]and multimedium.com [RIP]...

Well, if anything, the event that changed our sector is the dot.com meltdown of March 2000. With the dot.bomb depression [remember pets.com ads on adcritic - Whazzup?!] and the precipitous fall of the bull market [remember Nortel at $120], I guess our attention had to be shifted from bad economic news, to worse bad news...

So naturally, my news diet has had to include a bit more world politics because financial news is just pretty desperate. Going through all the major news sources and tightly strangleheld world media, I have stumbled on a few competent foreign correspondants that I truly respect.

Naturally, my keen interest in world news and obviously due to my background, I am often asked about my opinion on world events. My answer: you should not care about my opinion because I am truly not experienced enough to have one in the complicated deceptive intertwined field of world affairs. However, I do suggest that people look for competent sources: foreign correspondants who have lived and covered the struggles that shape the current state of world affairs. Not the debutant and neophyte journalists that do not dare to ask tough questions. Journalists should challenge their minds and preconceptions.

Ultimately, freedom of press was intended to be fully practiced in order to challenge potentially authoritarian regimes. The Fourth Power was not meant to be abused and concentrated. Maintain l'esprit critique: dare to question motives, consequences, legitimacy and logic of the ruler.

So in recent months, I have identified the following journalists that I truly admire. In my humble opinion, they are fountains of light in this dark age of gullibility.

Robert Fisk
Eric Margolis
Gwynne Dyer

the squeeky wheel gets way too much oil
:: yelling louder does not make your arguments stronger

Last night, a friend of mine suggested to dine-out at Casa de Matteo in Old-Montreal. I had always heard good things about the Mexican restaurant long established in picturesque Old-Montreal, near the Centaur Theatre. And since I had seen their ads running during late night talk shows, I had a good idea of its warmth and charming decor. As usual, in order to reserve, I jumped on montrealplus.ca to get the phone number. As I was calling the restaurant, I noticed some negative comments posted on the restaurant's profile in CitySearch.

After hanging up, I noticed that there are 23 Mexican restaurants registered on restaurant.ca. Casa de Matteo was ranked 20th overall! I was surprised. I suddenly started worrying about the choice of restaurant for the evening. I noticed that there were a whole bunch of sad insatiable people out there! Several complaints about the price, variety of the meals, the quantity served, the lighting of the place, and even the ethnicity of the owner...

I was about to call back to cancel my reservation, when I decided to look at the other restaurants ranked as well, in order to compare. I noticed similar comments, by mostly he same people on the other restaurants. Puzzled, I decided not to cancel and go forward with our plans, and judge the resto on my own!

Thank god I did, and goodness gracious I read the comments. Like a bad movie that you've been over-warned about, I really enjoyed myself! True, it took a while to be seated, but the service was good. The food was a bit greasy but better than expected, it was pricey but cheaper than I was warned and the whole experience was definitely worth it!

I realized that a lot of the comments posted on restaurant.ca probably were right, but not as alarming as the site made it sound!

morale: it is good to ask for opinions, but rely on your own abilities and judge for yourself!
real lesson learned: people will take the extra effort to go sit down and write a comment about a bad experience, but not necessarily for a good or average one.
afterthought: how come the same people complain about the same problems at all the other restaurants?