Geek'd: online dating is hokum

So I'm currently attempting the trials and tribulations of the online dating world. Partially out of boredom, partially due to the fact that I work in a career that doesn't allow the luxury of going out at night very often, get a bit drunk and meet new people.

So the first thing that I learned when I got online is that I'm an utter idiot when it comes to online dating.

But I'm learning quickly.

For one thing, I learned that while it's a nice, somewhat considerate thing to send every guy that sends you a nice, well-thought out message a little message back, it's a bad idea. Guys treat responses to messages like bits of hope that maybe the girl actually is interested in him ... at the very least. And they cling to that belief until the girl shoots him down... in which he then becomes offended and sometimes nasty.

Better to hold your silence for guys that you believe may actually peak an interest in you. It saves you a lot of trouble and a lot of grief on both ends.

Also I learned that to treat a profile as if it can tell you everything you need to know is insanely retarded.

And so I take you to the story of a guy that turned out nothing like his profile. Instead he was every bit the kind of person that pisses me off the most.

So I met this guy, lets call him Jimmy (not his real name though). Now we've been talking for some time online and via text message. He seemed okay, but nothing inherently special from our conversation, but I didn't get any bad vibes off of him which was why I agreed to meet him at some point. Some people are just better to deal with in person after all.

But it was right after I agreed to meet him that he starting blowing up red flags.

For one, we were conversing on our favourite hockey teams and he happened to claim that he's a die-in-the-wool Leaf fan who happens to also cheer for the Montreal Canadiens.

For context, that's like claiming to be a Yankee AND a BoSox fan; it's just not done. You can be one or the other, but not both in this world. Otherwise, you're not a "true" anything.

So I asked him to justify being both and yet calling himself a "true Leaf fan". And either he misunderstood me or whatever but after nailing him to justify his stance he got really offended and upset over the line of questioning saying, "well I AM a die-hard Leaf fan and I'm insulted that you're saying I'm not."

I actually had to tell him to take a chill pill. First warning sign.

And then later that week, I revealed to him I have two male roommates, and his next text was "have you dated any of them??? lol"

Second warning sign.

Then after the whole "chill pill" incident he kept texting me something like every four hours asking if we're still on for our getting together thing right up until we meet.

Really I should have just ditched the guy after the second warning sign and cut my losses, but I'm a person of my word and I'm not about to leave a person hanging just because I was getting a bad feeling from text messages from him.

So we met.

Now I admit, I went into this with a rather negative opinion of him after the whole mess of text messages. By the time we said hello in person, I had in my head that he was an overly-sensitive and insecure individual. Not that I told him that, for those reasons.

And nothing he did in that meeting changed my mind about it. In fact, he continued to demonstrate his over-sensitivity to most things by taking way too much shit too personally and making excuses for just about everything.

And I felt pity for him.

And because he was an overly sensitive idiot, I couldn't bring myself to tell him anything close to the truth. That he was overly sensitive, that he took shit too seriously, that I worked in a male-dominated environment filled with men and all my best friends are guys. Shit like that.

And that also irritated me. To the point that even I knew I was becoming more and more bitchy the longer we talked. To the point that it made me feel bad for him, honest to goodness bad for him.

And I felt bad for him when I said I don't think we should see each other again, although I couldn't exactly tell him why in any honest fashion for fear of his hurt feelings, being that his attempt to hide his insecurity through terrible jokes and his takes-shit-too-personally attitude drove me utterly up the wall and brought out the absolute worst in me. The bitchy, impatient, want-to-slap-you-in-the-face-for-being-an-idiot side of me.

After it was all said and done, he showed his true colours. He sent me a nice little message, basically blaming me for how it went down. And there I realized. He was a guy that always blamed everyone else for his problems and never looks at himself as an issue in of itself.

So what'd I learn from that?

I'm more upfront with the fact that "I WORK IN A MALE-DOMINATED ENVIRONMENT" on online dating sites as a method of weeding out guys that frankly can't handle that. And for guys who seems to gloss over that fact because they see a pretty face, I've decided to be more brutally honest about my life before meeting people in person. Also, more brutally honest about whether things will work.

I'm still an idiot when it comes to online dating sites. But at least by doing that much, I can at the very least keep special guys like "Jimmy" from being that much of an issue in the future.

Still, I absolve to Sheldon Cooper's line of thinking when it comes to online dating. It really is a load of hokum.

Geek'd: The end of a chase for an upgraded laptop

After a month of chasing, begging, pleading and pain, I finally got my new laptop! An ASUS with a 15.6 inch screen, AMD Dual Core and 320GB HDD.

So awhile ago, I dealt with the saga of not getting a tracking number sent to my email and therefore having my purchase shipped and then returned for a refund.

I ran into the problem of not being sent a tracking number. Again. And that was with a different shipping method (I expressed the shipping).

But this time I was aware and prepared of that inevitability. So I called NewEgg and got my shipping number handed to me so that I could keep track of it via Purolator and have at the whole terrible experience.

But I was wrong. Oh I was very wrong.

I called Purolator the next day as soon as I saw that they were having difficulty sending to my address, as usual. I needed to know why (it was the buzz code problem as it always is) and where the package is being left to be picked up, because for whatever reason they couldn't even leave a note stating they tried to send me something and failed for whatever reason and here's where I can find it. In this case, was on the other side of town a good two-and-a-half public transit ride to the location.

Normally, these issues are easily fixed. I call  Purolator and get them to relocate my shipment from that god-awful spot to a commercial Purolator centre close to me.

But... it's not the case this time.

See, the wholesale company that got the order from NewEgg and shipped it out had apparently placed a special designation on it that said, even if the customer requests the relocation of the shipped item to a convenient location, it cannot be relocated without the expressed permission of the company that shipped it.

So I got the number of the company and called them. The customer guy goes on to tell me that because they have no access to personal accounts sent by NewEgg and that I'd have to talk to them.

So I did. And I got a "We will contact you in a few hours to tell you the results of our investigation."

24 hours later, nothing.

So I called them again and got a, "We can't actually do anything for you, once it's shipped it's out of our hands."

Basically saying, we can only relocate the package ONCE YOU REORDER YOUR PURCHASE.

To summarize, they have created a system where if there is a problem with delivering the item to your home, THERE IS NO REASONABLE SOLUTION TO FIX IT SHORT OF PERSONALLY PICKING IT UP AT THE HIGHLY OUT-OF-THE-WAY SHIPPING CENTRE.

At this point, I had enough.

First I extended the hold date on the laptop. Then I called in a massive favour to get a ride to the location to pick up the package within operating hours.

And now it is finally home, and just in the nick of time. Over this weekend, the left hinge finally gave way on my old laptop, leaving the plasma screen hanging loose on that side. And with the wiring of the laptop to the plasma screen largely situated on said side, it now requires extra special care.

It definitely is no longer easily transportable in any case.

Geek'd: the rant of the obnoxious odyssey of having to get a new laptop

So... as of this past month, I had decided to get a new laptop.

Over the summer, my computer has really begun to show its age. And I don't mean in the software, or even the hardware that runs this 4-year-old Toshiba model. Of course that also is contribution to the decision to upgrade.

No. The issue is the construction of the laptop itself.

The frame that holds the plasma screen together has cracked and is being held together by hockey tape. Because it is cracked, the computer doesn't close properly over the keyboard and actually, closing it causes further damage. The corner of the bottom has fallen apart, the CD drive doesn't close properly and the whole thing is about a few bumps and bruises from becoming scrap plastic.

Basically the only thing that isn't falling apart is the keyboard in which to type my rants.

Ever since my first laptop purchase bombed like you wouldn't believe in 2004, I've bought my laptop at your usual big box stores like Best Buy or Future Shop.

Which is all fine and dandy except that it's often a lot of money. My current broken baby was easily close to $1000 four years ago.

So on a friend's very very very strong recommendation, I decided to go ahead and try buying a new laptop online for the first time ever from a website called NewEgg.Ca. He raved about the site, telling me how it's so much more cheaper than your regular store because it cuts out the middle man by selling straight from the warehouse and that the speed in which it sent your electronics was very very fast.

So I ordered a $535 dollar laptop.

And then waited. And waited. And waited.

Sept. 17, it informed me via email that my package was shipped and the order was processed. I wanted to see when the package would arrive, so I looked up my account to see if I could find a way to track it.

They had a spot on the site to track it but you needed a tracking number. I couldn't find mine.

I haven't ever shipped from here before. And because I had picked the cheapest option to ship for, I thought maybe they sent it through Canada Post.

Also, I've had packages that took up to 2-3 weeks to ship something as well. So I took it in stride.

Until Oct. 1st, when I had had enough of waiting and was seriously beginning to wonder what the heck was tacking so long. I called Newegg's customer service to figure it out.

That was when I found out that a massive fuck up had occurred.

So my package was shipped on Sept. 17. By Purolator.
That was the first problem.

Purolator and I have a hate-filled relationship: I have always had problems with them shipping me stuff, from not having phones with their drivers to call me to problems with establishing my address because I live in a bloody apartment complex. It's not a nice combination. One time, they left a package of mine to be picked up in bloody West Etobicoke a good two-and-a-half hour bus ride from my home!

In this case, they got to my apartment but couldn't get to me because I didn't have a buzz code, despite the fact I was actually at home at the time. So without even leaving a bloody slip to inform me that a package arrived for me from them, they sauntered back to the bloody warehouse with the rule to call me.

EXCEPT THEY DIDN'T. Their justification: the package didn't have a phone number attached to it so they couldn't call.

I checked my account: my phone number was right there. Why didn't they bloody well call Newegg and ask for the number attached to my account???

You may be sitting here now and asking: "Wait a minute, why didn't you just use the tracking number to see that you could pick it up?"

Well... BECAUSE I DIDN'T HAVE ONE. Basically, NewEgg's system fucked up on me and failed to send me a tracking number when they shipped it. And the best they could do was put in an error report to figure out why that was happening.

So not only did Purolator not call me OR leave a notice to tell me that I had a package with them, I DIDN'T EVEN KNOW THAT I HAD A PACKAGE WAITING PERIOD.

I trust this friend enough that I was willing to re-order the laptop from there. But I'm a rather unhappy person about the whole issue.

Geek'd: sheldon's ocd calendar

I was sick this past week. And had to go to work.

And it sucked.

Now I really really love my current (and soon to be ending for the season) job in sports, and I'm really proud I have it and can execute it.

But when you're sick as a dog with the common cold, it can be very very difficult to enjoy being at work, as it was this past week.

And don't get me wrong; normally, I can handle the common cold without issue. Because normally, my worst enemy is congestion. So I pop a few pills, wait a half hour, throw in a bag of Halls and I'm good to go.

But this one was different, in that it gave me the world's worst runny nose ever. And sneeze a lot And nothing, not even a bag of Halls, can keep that from getting annoying when you're doing a job that generally requires you to use both hands.

And before you ask, it is next to impossible to call in sick to this job. And I'm not saying you can't - you can technically - but you put everyone in a bind because it means in a limited amount of time they have to track down a replacement for you. And because of that, doing so bodes very very ill for you going forward.

So short of death or dying, you're expected to show up to work.

Anyway, one of the things that pulled me through and tided me over during the whole ordeal was, of course, the Big Bang Theory. Largely for its whimsy, but also because the Comedy channel here in Canada had a "Labour Day Weekend Marathon" this weekend where they played The Big Bang Theory.

And only the Big Bang Theory.

All three days nonstop.

It was awesome.

And I dunno if it was the fact I fell asleep to it or anything, but I woke up wanting to chart out Sheldon's Calendar of daily monotonous routine.

So I looked it up and apparently the writer's for the show made a version based on what we have seen so far from the show for its fans on Google Calendar.

There are obviously a few holes (though I'm pretty sure Tuesday night is Klingon Boggle night), such as the evening's activities for Thursday, breakfast for all the mornings but Monday and Saturday among other things but it's pretty complete as far as what the episodes have revealed.

And yet another way for me to revel in my nerdism of this show.

Geek'd: the convention survival guide

As all things in the world, there is a certain way in which to best survive the stresses and exertions of an event.

Conventions like FANeXpo 2012, which is due to open tomorrow is no exception.

Hence why there exists the world famous convention "Rule of 6-2-1" that everyone ought to adhere to when attending a multi-day event. Especially one that would generally mean that there would be a huge convocation of people under one tiny roof.

So what exactly is the Rule of 6-2-1?

It means: 6 hours of sleep, 2 meals a day and finally, 1 shower a day.

Anyone who has been to a convention knows that the temptation to stay up at all hours of the evening for fear of missing something is often strong and overpowering. But it's not a good way to go about your weekend.

6 hours of sleep is important to allow for you to be well rested and alert while posing for photos or simply walking around or standing about in line for long periods of time. Keep yourself under control and don't get overly excited. Keep to your schedule and sleep.

Keeping busy and doing things at the convention may mean you'll forget to eat or drink. Don't.

Seriously, these things aren't worth starving yourself. Much less dehydrating yourself for.

And yes, the fare at the convention itself may be overpriced and all around unappetizing for those that didn't pack a meal with them (more on that later). And the lines for food everywhere is long and painful as over 50,000 people descend on the event and pack the places around it.

But seriously, you do no one good, least of all yourself by getting sick and requiring medical attention.

And finally... 1 shower a day. Why is showering part of the rule?

Because you're packed tight with a huge number of people indoors and in costumes that probably have never been laundered in their life that they wore riding downtown in a stifling bus or subway, sweating out of every pore in their body in the meantime.

No, this may not describe you, but it certainly describes enough people that attend conventions that the mythos of "Convention Body Odour" is rampant and prevalent at every convention in the world. And proximity is enough to make you carry that smell home.

Seriously, shower. For the sake of those that you stand around.

Here are some other rules for you to consider before you head to FANeXpo - or any convention for that matter.

PACK LIGHT

Conventions were originally created as a place for people to get together, exchange ideas and find rare, hard to find cult items back before there was something called the internet.

Yes, conventions were originally a place for fans to buy stuff, not for weirdos to dress in weird costumes. That kind of came as an afterthought to the whole phenom.

And that premise remains today, with a exhibition floor that takes up the majority of the space reserved for the convention. But because of this, inevitably, you will be toting around a lot of stuff by the end of the day. And as any shopper would be able to tell you, the more stuff you tote, the easier it is to lose something and the harder it is to get yourself around.

So what's the sense in showing up with a lot of things without even getting into the convention?

This is particularly true for people who show up in costume. The more you carry, the harder it is for you to get into a pose for a picture, or the more cumbersome and ultimately damaging it can be on your costume.

If you need to carry more than your convention pass, a camera, phone and money (like a change of clothing) then bring a backpack with you for ease of conversion. Otherwise, leave it to pockets and side bags.

PLAN, PLAN AND MORE PLANNING

Except for the 6-2-1 Rule, planning your weekend is probably one of the bigger things you have to do before and during. And if you're serious about your events, your autographs and your merchandise, you make your schedule and you stick to it.

And it goes beyond taking into consideration long line buffers and picking events, it's about planning where to go to eat, knowing where the washrooms are and what entrances you can use that will get you into the floor faster.

It all streamlines the event for you and allows you to maximize the fun.

HAVE A MEETING PLACE

Conventions are not conventions unless you are there with some friends. But you and your friends may not be interested in the same thing. So you will inevitably split up at some point in pursuit of different passions.

But how will you get in touch with each other afterward?

And before you pull out the trusty cell phone, the service can be spotty at FANeXpo and whatmore, the place is crowded and noisy. It's incredibly difficult to hear cell phone rings or text pings.

That's why, ahead of time, prepare a meeting place for you guys to go to once your event is done and over with. This way they know where to track you down if you're holding their wallet for instance. AND STICK WITH IT.

Happy FANeXpo people!

Geek'd: another job related post!

I so rarely get days off in my life these days, that when I finally get one, I really utilize it to... do absolutely nothing!

Which is precisely what I did.

I wasted away my day off like a boss on Sunday! 

But... 

I paid for it on Monday.

I slept terrible that evening, resulting me in sleeping in until practically noon. Then I found myself having to deal with a resume and cover letter to write for a job that I decided to apply for at the last minute, had to edit (basically rewrite) a feature article while also securing a photo for said photo, (which a friend of mine was so kind to give me to use) and then go to work by 3:30PM. Yeah, I had 3 hours of time to do all that.

This also saw me fail to make it to my tax office to FINALLY get my taxes done, given that my student loans application needs the numbers from it so that I can apply. Which was the original plan for Monday.

Anyway, yes, despite having a handful of jobs that keeps me busy and overwhelmed, the fact is, one of them is only good until the end of September. And current events in the industry dictate that I may not have work for awhile in my follow-up gig.

So... I need new to help pay for the rent in September. And the job posting as supplied by my course coordinator seemed to fit the bill for me. Not that I have too many hopes of making the cut, but it was worth a shot.

But it also meant I had to go over the dreaded resume.

Updating my resume is something that often only happens when necessity dictates (as it did this week and will again tomorrow). This is purely because I find updating my resume very difficult work, especially when I have to add a new position to my list, which was the case on Monday.

I thought for a bit and figured it was because I used a chronological resume. A chronological resume is best utilized when you have plenty of positions to fill it and it lists your jobs in reverse order of you performing them, with the most recent one displayed first.

Also, I always fashion my resumes to target the employer.

But as a result, I'm constantly changing, deleting and adding things to my resume.

This constant headache and the frustration that derived from having to work on it reminded me of a friend who told me about a "skills-based" resume (otherwise known as a combination resume) that had given her great results in the job seeking industry. Instead of listing skills she learned in each individual job, she simply listed her jobs last, instead using most of the space in her resume to highlight all the skills she had from all the jobs and education she has.

In this way, she could prevent repetition of similar skills under various jobs, but she can also focus more on what she can provide the company rather than "what kind of jobs she once did."

There is a downfall to this style (and is why I'm hesitant to personally utilize it myself) and it is in the case you have a job that is particularly impressive or strong in the industry. It fails to highlight said job and may give you a disadvantage as a result. For example, I went to Vancouver to volunteer at the Olympics there in 2010. The fact that I made the effort to travel to Vancouver to partake in an Olympic is impressive and is something that deserves to be highlighted out. But in this style, it is not, and it is likely that the dedication and eagerness that was involved in going there is lost.

Anyway, Tuesday is looking to be a tough nut to crack with interviews and stories to relate and school to follow up on. And then work soon after. But I have to find time for life. There really isn't any other choice.

Money can only wait so long after all.

Geek'd: a diving disaster

I like diving. A lot.

It's a complicated sport that is also rather simple in observation.

A big splash is bad. A tiny splash is very good (provided you go in head first of course. You'll understand why later)

Anyway, since one only really gets the chance to watch diving during an Olympic season, I spend a lot of time watching it.

So today I was following the Men's 3m Springboard preliminaries on the CTV Olympics website as part of work (I'm a multi-tasker. I was doing several other things at the same time) when, in the second round, a string of 0s came up on the board for Stephan Feck of Germany. 

Now for those of you who don't know (or don't understand diving), a 0 score by any judge basically represents a catastrophic fail in diving. A dive so bad that it can't even be called a dive.

So I of course had to find out what happened. 

After fiddling around with CTV's World Feeds (which at that moment decided to magically bug itself into oblivion) I finally found the dive at 14:31 of the feed.

How catastrophic was it?

It was so bad I had to show my neighbour next to me. Then my supervisor was shown, who overlooked the fact that I was watching a sport other than the one I'm supposed to for the sheer awesome of the failed dive. Who then announced it for the video team to cut a clip of the dive for the website. Which prompted everyone else to want to take a peek at the video.

Why was it so incredible?

Well, for starters, every one of us has done one of these. It's embarrassing, it's painful, and frankly it makes us rethink attempting a dive later on.

But these are the Olympics. 

One would think that to get to this level, one would be able to avoid this kind of "splash" in a literal sense.

And while we feel for the athlete and his very human error, still one can't help but react in awe and humour at the mistake as well.


Diving may not look like the most strenuous sport out there, something that appears more acrobatic than athletic.

But don't be fooled. A lot of pain, and ability to manage said pain, is involved in this sport.

As Australian veteran Loudy Wiggins said after she competed last week: "I'm pretty sure it is a young person's sport for a reason. You travel at 60km/h and the water feels like concrete when you hit it."

Then there are the divers who actually hit the board, or the platform, on the way down - Canada's Alexandre Despatie did it. He was concussed, which caused some to wonder whether he'd even be able to participate in these Olympics after all (General side note, both Despatie and fellow Canadian Francois qualified for the Men's Semi-Final)

If that seems careless, then consider that the closer a diver stays to his or her launchpad, the higher the score from the judges. They are encouraged to take risks.

It depends how you hit the water, really, according to one Australian diver. 

"You get this big sort of burning, stinging sensation. A bit of bruising, some blood vessels can pop, but overall that's sport."

Geek'd: sheldon cooper is the reason i've heard of the higgs-boson particle

That sound you hear is Sheldon Cooper celebrating with joy.

Or maybe screaming in rage that he wasn't the one to make the discovery.

That is, if Sheldon Cooper was an actual person and not simply a character in a very popular comedy series on CBS.

So apparently the real "Sheldon Coopers" of our reality - specifically those working in particle physics at the CERN super-collider - has made one of it's biggest actual finding since Einstein's days of genius.

The Higgs-boson particle, a.k.a. the "God" particle has been theorized since the 1960s, and is a theoretical particle that is considered to be the key to understanding why matter has mass, which when combined with gravity gives objects weight.

It's the missing piece in the Standard Model, a theory that explains electricity, light, perhaps even gravity.

In layman's terms, it is this reality's version of the number 42; that is, it is the answer to life, the universe and everything.

(And yes, I did absolutely make a Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy reference)

They've been searching for it since it was theorized. But it has only been since the creation of the CERN super-collider in Switzerland that scientists could seek it out in actuality rather than simply write about its necessary existence.

And this week, they have announced that they have discovered a boson that may be "the" Higgs-boson theorized, a discovery that would certainly make every physicist in the world drool.

Now, they haven't definitively declared it "the" Higgs-boson, simply that it is "a" Higgs-boson, but they say that there is only a one in a million chances that they are wrong because of all the repetitions they have done smashing particles together to find it.

Now, I am not a fan of particle physics, or any physics of any kind. I quit that subject in Grade 12 and has avoided it ever since.

But... I really like the Big Bang Theory and its nerdy physicists (and one engineer) so despite caring not one whit about physics in general, you do pick up some knowledge here and there about the topic... mostly names and some ideas. And in this show, names generally indicate some kind of significant aspect of the subjects they study.

Case and point: Schrodinger's cat.

So reading the word "Higgs-boson" in the newspapers this week definitely triggered the knowledge that osmosis'd into me by watching said show and led me to read the articles where in most other situations I would probably have not bothered with making that time to read and learn even more about it.

And then there's the CERN Hadron collider in Switzerland. While yes, Big Bang Theory plays a role in me knowing why it's amazing and important in the physics world, it isn't where I first heard of or discovered its existence and what it does.

I have, admittedly, Dan Brown and his book Angels and Demons to thank for gaining that knowledge. (The movie did nothing for me)

Although, and this is no lie, Brown decided to explain the search for the "Higgs-boson" in layman's terms, simply calling it the "God" particle with no actual mention of it being the theory of the Higgs-boson particle. So until this week, I didn't realize both were one and the same.

All I knew about the Higgs-boson was that Sheldon Cooper used it in Pictionary and therefore is an important theory in theoretical physics.

The things you learn (or is ignorant of) thanks to the media and its ways of speaking to its audience.