The excruciating wait was worth it. I've become the proud new owner of an HP Pavilion DV6000 laptop. What a machine! I'm so glad I have a computer again.

Jeff had a party last night, so I went. And I got smashed out of my mind. But that's a part of being young!

One more thing, this video is really, really good. It's an ingenious commercial developed by Pepsi Co. that aired during the Superbowl earlier this year. It incorporates deaf culture, which is why I love it. It's smart, witty and funny. I'm still laughing!

I got in touch with Bureau en Gros yesterday. What a disorganized bunch. Anyway, to sum up the meeting, the pieces needed to repair my laptop are unavailable now, and it's going to be sent back to the store eventually. A rep is going to phone me on Monday morning to discuss a method of compensation. I just want a laptop, preferably a Sony Vaio. Affordable, sleek, name-brand and powerful (I don't do anything other than surf the web, chat, listen to music and type up work on it, so power isn't that important.) This setback has put me in a slightly bitter mood and all of this snow isn't helping, either.

On the other hand, I discovered Kaiser Chiefs about ten minutes ago so I'm not in that bad of a mood. I have good music to listen to.

I neglected to mention in yesterday's post that 8 days ago today, I became a licensed driver. I've jumped on every opportunity to drive around by myself, but since I'm not the one paying for gas, it ends up being only for errands or if I really have to go somewhere (ex: school, karate.) This was a huge deal for me last week, but I've gotten used to it now. I also noticed today that after being in the car with people who like to talk, driving by yourself is awfully peaceful.

I'm going to Vanier tomorrow, and am supposed to get my computer back then as well. Also, I have to feed and let out my neighbor's dog at supper time and visit Iris at work sometime before my parent's paranoia induced, lack of insurance enforced curfew, which is the instant the sun sets below the trees. All of this I have to do tomorrow. But this is all in preperation for Saturday's forecast, which is another 15-20cm of snow on top of the mountain we already have on our property. So Saturday will be a do-nothing day, and Sunday, well, Sunday is my last day of spring break, so naturally I'll be sitting in my room half-dressed (or possibly not dressed at all) doing less than nothing all day long.

Hoo-rah.

For the past week I've been driven slowly but surely to the brink of bordom-induced insanity all because my computer decided it would break down for no apparent reason. Long story short, it worked fine the morning of the crash until I rebooted it, at which time it promptly warned me that a crucial system file was missing. Being the genius that I am I attempted a system recovery, which only made the problem worse, because after every failed recovery another "crucial" system file went missing. Partition managers and other OS' didn't work, so I phoned the retailer, who took it off my hands and shipped it off to be repaired. Having phoned said retailer a few days ago, they informed me that the problem was both my hard drive and my motherboard, and that the pieces needed to repair the unit had been ordered days prior to my call. All the while in my head I was shouting "Forget the replacement pieces; it's just going to be the equivalent to a new unit!" If all is well on their end I should have my computer back by this weekend at the latest, which will make everything well on my end. Win-win, now give me my laptop.

v.  To cause to be overcome with astonishment; astound.

Guess what? I almost got screwed by Vector Canada.

Vector's the company who is so eager to hire me; the one I posted about yesterday. I scheduled an appointment this morning, but did a little digging this evening, about an hour ago. It turns out that they are an exploitative company. Colleges and universities all throughout North America are trying to take these guys down for exploiting their workers, offering high salaries but deliver little pay, and exploiting personal relationships, to name a few. I'm very glad I did more research into them. So I phoned them back and left a message, politely and calmly telling them I had accepted a job that started this Saturday, while in my head I went through every explicit word in my vocabulary. I lied, of course, but their lies are on a whole other plain.

I applied at Future Shop afterwards.

n. A point of convergence of light (or other radiation) or a point from which it diverges.

Various occurrences in my life have kept me up for countless nights, pondering the... ah, who am I kidding. I've been sleeping like a log.

What's true, though, is that there has been various occurrences in my life important enough to be worthy of a few lines of text here. For instance, and this is the most recent of occurrences, I've quit my job. "WHY?! You lazy sleaze bag! Go back there and beg for your job back!" some might shout. Actually, despite being somewhat of a lazy sleaze bag, I didn't like the job. I'm still a corporate puppet until next Monday. Then, temporary freedom until I find a new job I like. Speaking of which brings me to occurrence #2: I applied for a job yesterday morning before going to work. I said to myself, "What the hell. I have nothing to lose." As luck would have it, they phoned me back that afternoon, and have phoned me again today. I haven't spoken to them yet, though; I'm always at work so I keep missing the calls. In a nutshell, the job consists of meeting with potential clients and try to buy them into our company. All one-on-one. Training is done on location, they are in apparent need for people in my area, and they went through the college, so it must be legit. I'll have to phone them back. I want to have a little while to myself, though. Well-earning me time.

I started taking sign language courses last week and it was amazing. It's by far my favorite language. The teacher is such a nice lady, too; the whole 3-hour class was either signed or written on the board. I've never sat in a class that quiet in my entire life. Just the experience of communicating without worrying about pronunciation or how you sound... it's amazing. Go out and hug a deaf person, then sign, "Let's be friends."

Yup, that's about it.

A couple of "events" have transpired and are in the process of transpiring:

1. I've been given more time off work - Surprisingly, I wasn't met with the least bit of resistance when I asked for less hours at work. So I got what I asked for, for two reasons: first because I'm your average teen who doesn't want to be working, but being lazy one day and partying the next, and second because...

2. Classes start on the 21st - I built my schedule on Tuesday and managed to get most of the courses I wanted. I say most because the system wouldn't let me progress to French level 4 despite having passed French level 3, but for some reason it let me progress to Universe of the Arts 2 despite having failed Universe of the Arts 1. Besides that cumbersome detail, I registered successfully for all of the courses I wanted, including two music-related courses and mountain biking for Phys. Ed. As an added bonus, my classes fit together in such a way that allowed me to have Fridays off, which we all know I'll be spending most of them at Vanier with the gang.

3. We're considering moving out of the village to embrace city life once again - I'll call this one our New Year's resolution for 2008. We want out of Rigaud, for the obvious reasons that a) it's far from everyone and everything and b) we're always traveling to the West Island for school, which costs $100 per day for gas. I've always been a city boy at heart, so I'm very much looking forward to the move. However, we will most likely be moving into an apartment, which is fine by me given that it has three bedrooms. Because we (as people) don't usually keep our New Year's resolutions, I'm not packing my things just yet.

Those would be the headliners of my life currently. In other related news:

• I've recently purchased a new camera.
• I've recently purchased Tarja Turunen's latest solo album entitled My Winter Storm and I find it to be divine, despite not hearing the rest of Nightwish performing with her.
• I'm preparing for my road exam on the 27th of February, which will either see me as a full-fledged and legal driver if I succeed, or one to be ridiculed if I fail.
• I almost bought two turtles today. Very small ones, that in ten years would become rather large ones. Why I didn't get them is because they recommended a 20 gallon tank, which was out of my price range for today. However, in due time I will get my two turtles. I'll name them Edgar and Poe.
• I've recently seen my interest in David Bowie's music increase tenfold.

Post Script:

Yes, my previous posts have been removed. It's a new year! Time for new things, including posts. Let's not dwell on the past.