Month: June 2006

Years ago, when I first began working on the 4th floor, I always wondered what was in the door attached to the bathroom stall.

Then a few years later, I ended up having discussions with Benoit about what it could be. The girls involved with the conversation were intrigued that there was a random locked door inside the men’s bathroom, let alone, inside a stall.

Benoit thought it was a secret passageway for covert government operations, whereas I thought it was a mere janitor’s closet. Benoit even took a picture of the door with his cellphone to show the ladies what we were talking about.

The mystery was solved today when I came back after lunch to open the bathroom door and to discover the door was open!

I freaked out. There it was…the answer to our five-year mystery. Inside was a passagway with a lone lightbulb inside. My mind exploded with a myriad number of thoughts:

“Where does it lead?”
“Where is the janitor’s closet?”
“I need a camera for proof!”
“I need to go tell everyone!”

I ran from the bathroom to ask people for a camera. Finally, Pierre had one so him and I and Shawn went inside to take a look and a guy came out of the passageway. We chatted nonchalantly and told him we were interested in seeing what was inside. He said “Go ahead” and it turns out that it’s an access passageway to the plumbing to the toilets and sinks. Unbelievable! Well, totally believable, but exciting at the same time.

We then took a few pictures and snuck Maren inside to check it out which was probably overwhelming since it was her first time seeing the guy’s washroom at the same time – “Urinals? What are those?”

Pictures to follow!

So, Eric has been raving about this last.fm website for quite some time now and I have taken a little notice but never dug my fingers into it. After hearing about it again, I decided to take a look.

Last.fm essentially is a music service which tracks what you listen to, then compiles charts and whatnot, but also recommends similar music tastes that you may have.

Much like Pandora, if you type in an artist you like, it will let you stream music from similar artists so that you may discover new music.

How does it track what you listen to? Well, in my case, it installs an application where it links to iTunes and keeps track of whatever you listened to and then uploads it to the last.fm system. Within this database, you can also see other stats like how many times this song has been played throughout the dbase and whatnot. Heck, if you just wanted to stream a song, chances are they have it in their database.

On the right hand side of the blog, you’ll see that I am currently displaying what I have recently listened to. I can choose to publish different lists such as weekly top 10, or overall top 10, but I thought you would be interested in seeing what I am currently listening to. However, this list would only update when I have been listening to iTunes on my computer. Please note that over at work, you can’t see this…must be blocked. Sorry fellow colleagues.

I was talking with Claude today about his upcoming wedding and asked him about a bachelor party. He was undecided about his bachelor party and said he didn’t really feel like partaking in the classic events (such as getting sloshed drunk and becoming a fool).

I was telling him that we live in a new era of bachelor parties. Gone are the days where you tie up your buddy onto a chair, pelt him with eggs (and whatever other god-awful things that would stick to him) and throw him in the back of the pickup truck for a night on the town. Or the days where you MUST make a trip to the gentlemen’s club for a night of debauchery.

Personally, upon hearing these stories of old, I think of how awful that must be for the bachelor and that a new order should emerge in the times of friendship, hence, I present ‘The New Bachelor Party Order’.

What does this order consist of? Well, the most important rule is to do whatever the bachelor wants to do. This is his last time of freedom boys, he should be allowed to just sit and watch movies all weekend with the boys, or play poker on a Saturday night and just enjoy the moment. Or, if he really wants to get ripped and go out to the gentlemen’s club in Montreal and discover he’s in Los Angeles by morning, heck, that’s fine too. Don’t get me wrong, Palmer is a fan of the ladies.

I’ve been to many bachelor parties in my day and I appreciate that nowadays, it’s leaning more towards whatever the bachelor wishes to do. As a friend, I don’t feel that I should pressure my buddy into doing something he doesn’t care to do. Do I want the bachelor to hold a grudge against me and then have him take it out on me in the future? Heck no!

I remember Eric’s bachelor party and how we went into his apartment, taped him up and dragged him out in front of his wife to be. That scared him a little, but in the end we told him we were just trying to scare him and that the weekend was his to enjoy! We drank beer, watched some movies, went bowling, went out for dinner, played some Tagzone – all in all, a good weekend out with the boys.

Enter the new Bachelor Party Order gentlemen. Do what the bachelor wants to do, even if you think it’s lame and you want to get pelted with tar and eggs when your time comes. Your time will come. YOUR TIME WILL COME.

Aww man, there’s something wonky with Blogger today and I cannot attach a great picture of a moustache here!

So Katie’s cottage party is coming up in August and entry fee for this year consists of growing a moustache.

Not one to grow much facial hair, I decided to start growing one last week, along with a goatee so Vero doesn’t have to be embarassed walking next to a moustachioed man.

So far, so good. It’s probably been this long before on a lazy week…I’ll be starting to enter new terrain soon enough…where Ryan’s hair has never gone before!

What will it look like? Will I realize that I could have grown a pretty sweet moustache all these years ago, and that I am on my way to being a true Ladies man?

Who knows? Unfortunately, it dawned on me that I’m the usher at Shannon and Maureen’s wedding in a few weeks so the experiment will have to end there, and start up as soon as the midnight bell rings that Saturday night.

Well, I received word that after six months of waiting, the appeal on my competition has been dropped. Yeeha!

Granted, I won’t believe it until I sign a piece of paper saying I accept a permanent position at my level. NEVER TRUST THEM.

Here’s an interesting article about how rats not exposed to a super hygenic lifestyle have better immune systems.

Click here for the article.

I totally believe in studies like this – I think that everything is out of control when it’s ‘hygiene this, hygiene that’. I remember Mom telling me about how there was a cup near the sink to get a drink of water. Everyone used it. Everyone didn’t get their own cup, that was silly! Nowadays, it’s a sin to drink out of another man’s cup (unless he can’t finish his beer).

“Attention, there is an electrical storm entering the area. Please get out of the water.”

That was the start of our first night of Petrie Island Volleyball. We could see this wall of black clouds coming closer but we decided to set up the net and play for awhile.

Once the lightning was getting close enough, we decided to pack it in and run for the cars. Less than 10 seconds of us all driving away, the torrential downpours hit us. Unbelievable. I’ve probably never seen anything like it.

Continuing up the road, we saw a lightning bolt hit the gas station up ahead of us. CRACK! The lights flickered as they tried desparately to take one final breath and then stopped.

By the time we got up the hill, I couldn’t see clearly out of the car windshield and I was thankful I was close to home.

Mike, Vero and I got drenched just running from the car to the safety of the house. Incredible force.

I proceeded to see probably 20 other lightning bolts in the sky, one of them smacking the lamppost in the parking lot behind my house.

The beautiful thing about this storm was the fact that I got to see our walkway in full force and I am proud to say that no water was collecting near the house! There was an area near far corner which collected a pool, but we figured that would eventually happen, and Mike noticed that after five minutes of the rain stopping, it had trickled into the lawn. BEAUTIFUL!

I also found out that the only reason my eavestrough was leaking was that there is a leak somewhere in it, not the fact that when it rains hard, it splashes over the eavestrough. EXCELLENT!

Electrical storms are a wild time. We could even see the hair on the girls heads starting to go up while packing up the volleyball net.

Volleyball itself was decent although it only lasted 15 minutes. We had a good turnout and next time we’ll know how to set up the net a lot faster.

Went to Joelle’s to catch the first two periods of the hockey game and then called it a night.

Unfortunately, as soon as I went to bed, the power went out so I had to remain awake for 20 minutes to set my alarm. THEN during the course of the night I noticed that my alarm clock had lost power again and was flashing. I reset it 3 times and I finally took it downstairs and proceeded to smack it (always the greatest troubleshooting technique there was ever was) and it seemed to work fine after that. This was around 1 AM so I was feeling pretty tired this morning.