The beaver is a proud and noble animal

I found a piece of chopped onion in my coffee this morning. I feel this will set the tone of this day.

That's it, no more programming for me for the next 24 hours. My mind is zonked out from the stuff I'm currently fighting with for Shibl. It's working, but some things are just really, really frustrating – like any sort of internal consistency in the Office XP object model…. gah.

For you icon moochers out there:

I just came back from spending the evening trying to fix a computer. Not even my own, if you can believe it. Katy reminded me this morning that I'd promised to help Khaled's mom & brother fix their internet connection that's been acting wonky for the last few weeks. I'd completely forgotten. To make a long story short, everything works fine when the modem is plugged into my laptop, but nothing works when its plugged into their computer. Best guess is that the NIC is fucked up. Spending 15 minutes on hold with D-Link tech support didn't do anything good for my morale. There's nothing more I can do at this point except to tell him to buy a dirt-cheap network card to see if it's that d-link one or his board. Meh. I just remembered how much I don't care to debug hardware woes anymore.

On a higher note, after a few false starts, Katy got the flannel jammies and silky undies I'd sent her :) YAY I'm going to be seeing my kitten in 18 days now, woot! If anybody has a special request of something to be brought back from the UK, you have that many days to let me know.

I've been working on the installer for the project for shibl for roughly 10 hours this weekend. Microsoft has some of the most convolutedly twisted logic out there… Figuring out how to create a link in %USERPROFILE%\SendTo that would be recognized as a working shell extension was an exercise in pain and frustration. I can't use the mechanisms provided by visual studio, that would be too easy.

I just spent the last 4 hours devising a way that the application that is being installed can determine WHERE it is being installed and create its own shortcut. This is not easy, as it involves delving deep into the guts of the windows shell API, as well as having to deal with the clunky installer protocols. Anyway, it's done, I got it to work, Visual Studio is my bitch. *does the tired happy dance*

Went to the salon with Nat today. I called her up round 11am to see what she was doing. She sounded like she was in need of a bit of a distraction, so I convinced her to meet me for breakfast and then a little trip to the exhibit hall.

Turned out to be a fun way to spend the afternoon. I have some really cool pictures of the show. I brought my camera so I could take pictures for Katy, cause I wanted to get something for her mom there and wanted some feedback to see if she'd like it or not. I'm glad I brought it, cause there were some really cool booth. My favourite was one straight out of Nightmare Before Xmas. Imagine furniture all warped and bendy a la Tim Burton, handmade with brushed aluminum accents. Kick ass. I also got some really nice pictures of Nat with huuuuuuuuuuuuuuge puppets. It's amazing the things that will happen when you have a bit of cloth wrapped around your hand. People suddenly go nuts :)

Most people didn't mind me taking pictures, some were quite happy about it. One or two people however lost their friggin mind. One was in a stand where I was seriously considering buying something. The guy was impolite and rude, so I didn't buy the thing I wanted to buy. Screw you buddy. The other one was this neurotic lady. I was taking a picture of something in the kiosk next to hers, with the vendor's blessing, when she told me I couldn't take a picture of her stuff as I was walking by her kiosk. I mean, wtf? My camera is around my neck, and I'm not even looking at the crap you're peddling. Mind your own business woman.

Anyway, rant over. I'm going to post some of the pictures later on tomorrow cause I find them really cool. Oh, and i think I found Katy's mom's gift. Happy dance.

I might have a little side-contract with Sequence again. I was putzing around with C# to do a little something for myself – basically a little application that allows me to right-click on a file and send it directly to a remote webserver (usually for images I want to link on my blog, of all things) – and realized that, with a bit of polishing up and tweaking, I could make something that the guys really want/need for their new product. Over lunch, I told Shibl that I'd be working on it just for the hell of it and, if he likes it, he could buy it from me. I think he's going to go for it. If he does, all and good. If not, well, I get some satisfaction of having done something quite spiffy anyway.

Today's going to be a rough day, I can feel it in me bones.

Met up with eniran and judyna last night at Hurleys. I think Sara and I scared Judyna with our stories of boob grabbing and food shopping. We didn't see the time go by (I'm getting hungry, what time is it? oh relax, it's only 7:30. Um, no, your watch stopped again it's quarter past 9). We dropped Judyna off at the metro and then headed to my place for food.

We did a quick pitstop at Metro, to pick up foodstuffs and kitty litter for stinky. As per our usual habits, we scared other metro patrons with yells of The Scrunge and butt slice! and hmmm, lard!, as well as a little incident of boobie plungering. Basically, your average grocery shopping trip.

We ended up eating at a fairly late hour, so sara crashed at my place after we got tired of watching TV. Woke this morning after too short a night. Hence, today will be a pain. The fact that the batteries in my cordless mouse are dying and it keeps disconnecting from its base station really is not helping my mental health today.