You asked for it, and you're getting it. A new geek-stuff-only blog from yours-truly. What's the address? http://geek.derekmartin.ca, of course! I'm not sure what to call the blog yet. I'm not even sure it needs a name. My buddy Chris' blog is called "At The Keyboard". I'm not sure mine needs a name, since the address is fairly descriptive... but maybe it does. If you have an opinion, go over to the geek site and post a comment with your suggestion. Don't worry, though, I WILL continue to update this blog with my non-geeky thoughts & personal life details.

Man, this has been a long time coming. Way back in 2000 I changed addresses, and forgot to tell my bank. I stopped getting my student loan payment requests in the mail, and kind of forgot about it. I think I missed 2 payments. I caught up my payments the day they had a collection agency call me, but the damage had already been done, and my credit has been shite ever since. I couldn't even get a credit card without giving the credit card company a deposit! The good news is that this state of screwedness only lasts 7 years, and it looks like my day has come. The other day when I was out buying my shiny new iPhone 3G (that's another story), the Rogers guy needed to run a credit check on me before he could let me sign up for a 3 year plan. I warned him that my credit was bad, but when he ran the report, he said "Actually, according to this, you have really good credit." I was blown away. I've waited so long to hear those words! I'm going to check with Equifax just to be sure, but it was still awesome nice to hear :) The even better news comes today, though. Ever since 1996, when I got my first student loan (OSAP), I have been in debt. My big screen & projector & surround sound added a few thousand to it. My trip to Peru was totally worth it, but it made the hole $5,000 deeper. I'm happy to announce that as of 10 minutes ago, I owe $0. Nothing to Rogers. Nothing to MasterCard. Nothing to OSAP. I am debt free, and from now on I'll be paying off my credit card in full each month. No more profit for them! My girlfriend and parents gave me a lot of good advice, which helped me get back on track. Thanks guys! xoxoxo

Ok, quick but huge update. I've been dating a girl named Ula for a while now, and she's amazing. She spent this past weekend at my place, and I think I drank like 20 cups of coffee. So, I didn't think TOO much of it yesterday afternoon when my pee was tea-coloured. But it got darker last night. And this morning it was darker still. As of 5 minutes ago it looks like a dark blend of coffee, with a tinge of red. So, right after lunch, I'm going to the hospital. With kidney issues, I can't risk waiting any longer. I'm waiting until after lunch because I know this hospital, and there's nothing edible there, and the wait time will be long. I'll be lucky to get home by 9pm. I'll update again once I know what's going on.

Ok, so about a week ago I was bored and perusing Craigslist for something fun. I found a post by a television production company looking for an "internet geek" to be on a new (yet-to-be-named) reality tv show. I sent them an email saying "Hey, I'm an internet geek", and they wrote back something to the effect of "Sure you are. Send us some photos and then we can talk." It was kind of like internet dating -- you don't get anywhere until the girl has your photo. So, since it was a geek role, I sent them a pic of me in my orange geekunity wear, a pick of me dressed as a commuter zombie, a photo of me in indiana jones mode at the top of machu picchu in peru, and a photo of me all dressed up in my 'good clothes'. About a day later I received a reply: "Please come in on Thursday for the casting call." So, I went. When I got there I waited for a while in reception. I saw some other geek come down the stairs, say he was done, and leave. I was then told to ascend the stairs... like a stairway to... well, tv. I walked up and into the room, where I was met by 3 guys: a camera guy (with a big tv camera that was trained on me the entire time), the producer, and the expert/concept guy. They asked me what I like to do, and what my interests are, and what my day job is, etc. They asked me a few high level technical questions such as "If we needed you to find X, could you? and how would you go about doing that?" It was pretty damned cool. But not as cool as today, when I received the following email: Hi Derek: I tried calling your cell phone but it keeps going to "Fido's messaging center"?! Anywho, good news: the guys loved you and want to cast you for the demo shoot this coming weekend. We're shooting a few scenes here at the office on Sunday and wanted to be sure you're available. Fire me back a line or give me a call at the coordinates below. Congrats! Ms. Nameomitted Associate Producer Nameomitted Entertainment Group Inc. XYZ Street Toronto, Ontario

The weekend was a blur of bands -- I spent the ENTIRE weekend in the mosh-pit of the main stage on Toronto Island, at the Virgin Mobile Music Festival (V-Fest). I didn't even leave my spot to go to the bathroom, I just did't go, or eat. My pockets were full of granola bars, and I had a 2L canteen of water. Whenever I felt like I had to pee, I just waited a little while, and my body got dehydrated enough to re-absorb whatever liquid was available. It was awesome. If you don't care about the bands or my anecdotes thereon, scroll right to the bottom and read Epilogue. Oh, and I bought an Action Kit from FlickOff.org. It's the ONLY money I spent on Toronto Island :) Highlights: Being stuck in a 10,000 person mosh-pit, pressed right up against a Natalie Portman/Angelina Jolie hybrid (face of Natalie, etc of Angelina). Nobody could move, so neither of us could leave, and everyone was jumping up and down and sweating. It was just totally insane. The pressure was so intense that when Metric (?!!) came on we actually broke the METAL barrier at the front of the stage. My friend Frank Yang of Chromewaves.net was in the photographer pool during Jamie T. I thought that was pretty cool. He had a big honkin' lens, too. Another friend of mine, Chris Loyal Johnson, was ALSO in the photographer's pool!!! He got a shot of me in the midst of the mob. His lens wasn't as big as Frank's, but I'm sure he can still do great things with it. Also, they replaced Amy Winehouse with Kid Koala (DJ from Montreal). Lowlights: It was SO HOT that Kid Koala's records melted on stage, and he had to cancel the rest of his act after finishing just 20 mins of a 1 hour set. Having to wait nearly 2 hours for a ferry back to Toronto after Bjork's encore, finally arriving home at 1:30am. Highlights/Lowlights: The drummer for Earl Greyhound threw his drumstick AT the crowd instead of TO the crowd, hitting the girl directly to my right square between the eyes with the pointy bit. Yes, blood spurted everywhere. She was evacuated by a friendly team of medics. Unfortunately, some bastard ran off with the drumstick, so she didn't even get to keep it as a momento to match her new scar. Lights: They were very bright, and very hot. Thoughts on the Acts (in order from most favourite to least) Bjork - Ridiculously well produced & energetic awesomeness. I think everyone was unprepared, and totally blown away. Her DJs were using some of the highest tech gear I've ever seen, namely The Reactable. This video shows the reactable in action right from the beginning. Also, she had the energy of a 17 year old, not a 42 year old. She was also the ONLY act to have big explosive fireballs, confetti cannons, and lasers. She played 3 encore songs (during which the confetti cannons fired), including Declare Independence. Click that link to read the lyrics. I'm pretty sure it wasn't written with her fellow Icelanders in mind. I AM going to make my own flag, and raise it. I want to see her again ASAP. Jamie T & The Pacemakers - Young & inspired, rollicking & fun. Dude is like 20 years old, but has great lyrics and original rhythms. His tunes are the mutant spawn of White Stripes, Sid Viscious, The Streets, and Bob Dylan all rolled into one. Love it. He's now in my regular rotation. The Editors - Wicked awesome. Their vocals are the bastard-child of morrissey and magnetic fields, and what a glorious bastard it is! I ditched the Smashing Pumpkins to see The Editors, and I'm glad I did (I saw them live at EdgeFest anyway -- you know, a DECADE ago). Arctic Monkeys - They were, quite possibly, the best concert band I've ever seen. Yes, this was a surprise. I don't even have any of their albums. Their sound was perfect. Their energy was infectious. The crowd went wild. Just wow. It was enough to make me want some of their albums. Metric - on both days it was the band plaing at 6pm that saw the MOST crowd surfing & moshing. Yesterday it was Arctic Monkeys, today it was Metric. Absolute insanity. We actually broke the barrier at the front of the stage, and security had to push us all back so they'd have time to fix it before The Killers. Anyway, Metric was great. She played with the audience a bit, in a fun way, and got us to want her to give us more. And she did. And people just went apeshit. The Killers - I have to put them above MIA just for the sheer production value of their show. They had an actual set, and their costumes were great. Actually, a really great live show. i was impressed. oddly, the title track from their new album was my least favourtie of the bunch they played. M.I.A. - While it wasn't as intimate as the time I saw her at the Phoenix 2 years ago, this show was still really good. Her beats were phatter than usual on teh mega-speakers, but she still managed to keep things friendly & fun. I think she garnered a few new fans (her first album and diplo's remix are both better than her new album, though, IMHO). If I could date any act, though, it'd be MIA, not metric or dragonette, or the girl from stars. She's got that activist power, and spunk that I find so alluring. Ok, wait -- if Bjork was 5 years younger I'd date her... but since she's not, it's MIA all the way. The Stars - the vocals were so quiet that you couldn't hear a lot of them (this was typical of the main stage, but not the 2nd stage). Also, I think they forgot to mic the lead singer's instruments because his trumpet and kazoo-keyboard-thing were dead silent. Too bad. That being said, it was a good set. Wish i'd listened to their new album more before the show so i could've made out the lyrics aided by memory. the crowd was happy to see Tokyo Police Club, but Stars are were the first band of the day that everyone went totally wild for. I was happy to finally see them live. Tokyo Police Club - They played the 2 songs of theirs that i like, so i was happy. Most impressed with their spastic keyboardist. Wow. I'd wanted to see them live ever since I'd heard them on the CBC Radio 3 podcast (or was it The Ongoing History of New Music?). Dragonettes - The first band I saw on the first day. They had some killer beats and I'll definitely give them a proper listen now that I'm back online. Kid Koala - not his fault that his records melted. I KNOW he's awesome because I saw him open for K-OS at Hillside Festival in Guelph a number of years ago, and his skills have only gotten stronger since then. What a bummer. Louis XIV - Not bad, but didn't tickle my fancy. Earl Greyhound - Nothing expected & nothing lost. Better than Interpol. BELOW THIS POINT LIES ONLY DISAPPOINTMENT Interpol - Will someone please tell me how this high school band got famous? Every song sounded hte same, and they had no presence. Bunch of nonsense. K-OS - WAY more of a bummer than Kid Koala's technical issues were K-OS's alcohol issues. He was totally hungover for the show, and left it up to the audience to fill in most of his lyrics. Unfortunately, he hadn't pumped us up enough yet to make us want to do that, resulting in most songs being just the pure beats with no vocals. Booooooooo. WEAK SAUCE, K-OS! NOTE: The music I like to listen to and the music I like to see live are TWO DIFFERENT MUSICS! I like to listen to stuff that's not *too* loud, and has a soul. BUT if I'm at an outdoor concert, I totally *want* loud. If it's not loud, I don't get into it. This may account for some of the rankings above. Epilogue: I moshed all day Saturday, and got all sweaty, but passed out the moment I got home at 1:30am on Sunday. On Sunday I woke up and went right back to the island, still wearing yesterday's sweat (but it was supposed to rain, so I didn't worry -- my deodorant would cover anything until the rain). Except, it never did rain on the island. It rained downtown, but not on the island. So the sweat continued. On Sunday night I got home and passed out right away AGAIN. While I was moshing (for 16 hours) I decided that I would start each new day by listening to a Deepak Chopra meditation CD that my friend Jen gave me. On Monday morning I got up 2 hours before I have to leave for work so that I could listen to it for 1 hour, have a quick shower, and then spend the next hour in the cafe. So, I got up and put it on at 6am. I listened to it, not realizing that it was on repeat (you can't tell just by listening to a meditation CD - it all sounds the same). When I finally looked at the clock it was 8:05am, and I had to be at work for 8:30, which meant I'd have to bike FAST after a very brief shower. I ran to the bathroom and BOOM. Guess what? Our water was turned off. Fuuuuck. I had to BIKE FAST to work, working up a sweat, to layer on top of 2 full days of sweat. Grossss. I went to the gym at lunch and washed it all away, but the first few hours of the day were NOT cool. Ideas I had While Moshing: Moshing turns off your intellect and makes your creative juices start flowing. I had the idea of making a hat that says "TEXT ME @ 416.876.6197". I'm gonna do it and wear it all the time. I'm gonna make my own flag, as Bjork suggested. I'm gonna suggest a new iTunes feature to Apple - When I'm listening to an album by MIA in Coverflow mode, it should show the cover when the song begins, but then it should look through iPhoto for any photos & video I have tagged with the artist's name, and show those as a slideshow. That'd be ultra-cool for any concert-goer. I'm gonna make & seed a torrent of "Songs for Revolution". I also want to tell my gym that I'm sick of waiting nearly a year for my locker and that I want it now. I'm sick of lugging my stuff all the time.

Ok, sorry I haven't posted in a looong time. Lots of shit has been going down. First things first, Mom's CAT-SCANs were clear -- PHEW! Also, Breslin's flesh eating disease has *finally* subsided. Granny went in for surgery on her heart and is now well on the road to recovery. So, all health issues turned out okay... for my family. Two Tuesdays I had a fever and headache. On Wednesday the left side of my back was sore. On Thursday it was so sore that it was hard to sit up at my desk. On Friday it was a bit better, but by Friday night I couldn't stand up straight. I spent Saturday & Sunday flat on my back in bed. On Monday I went to the emergency room at St. Joseph's Hospital. I waited there for hours. According to my symptoms, they thought I had a kidney infection, but the doctor decided to do a CAT SCAN just to be sure. The technician did THREE CAT SCANS and told me the results would be ready in an hour. Four hours went by with no information. Not a good sign. Eventually the doctor called me to the back and told me that a kidney infection was what was hurting my back, BUT that the CAT SCAN had picked up something else -- I have autonomic dominant poly-cystic kidney disease. It's not catchy or preventable -- it's hereditary/genetic, and I guess I've had it since birth. There's a 50% chance that I'll be fine, and a 50% chance that I'll eventually need dialysis or a transplant. I feel like I'm in the first 50% though -- the good-luck percent :) Anyway, they made me come back the following Wednesday to the "Urgent Care Clinic" where the doctor assigned me a specialist that I'll meet with every 3 months for the rest of my life, to keep an eye on my blood/mineral levels etc. My kidneys are fine right now, but this way they'll be sure to catch any spikes/issues ASAP... So really, it was my lucky day, having that infection and catching this thing before it becomes problematic. They gave me some cipro for the infection, and acetaminophen for the pain, and sent me on my merry way. BUT I don't entirely trust Western medicine. They just don't seem to care. So, on the Thursday night I went to see "alternative health" Doctor Rudy Enns at ProActive Health in Oshawa. He's awesome. I need to cut down my protein intake by 2/3. I also need to completely stop drinking alcohol forever. And finally, I need to avoid acetaminophen (which St. Joseph's Hospital had prescribed for the pain), and go for ibuprophen instead. Apparently, acetaminophen aggravates the kidneys. Anyway, Dr Rudy gave me more attention in 30 minutes than I've received at Hospitals in the past 3 years, and believe you me, I have spent a LOT of time in hospitals in the past 3 years. Ok, so, next... the other day at work they gave us each a gift. There were 4 choices: a digital camera, a gift pack (dinner & 8 movie passes), something else, and a nintento DS with a game! I chose the nintendo ds, as I had been wanting one for quite some time. Brain Age is addictive. Why did they give us this gift? Because it's "Christmas in August" of course -- just a thank-you for being you, from the company. Nice! Lastly, at this past month's rewards & recognition lunch, I received the "Communicator of the Month" award. The pic attached to this post is me wearing my "megaphone" as a hat :)

Wow, has it EVER been a long time since I blogged!! So long, in fact, that I didn't realize that my host had corrupted and lost my 'users' table for this blog, which is why I hadn't been able to login for a long while. I assumed I had forgotten the password, but no! MediaTemple lost part of my database! Grrrrr. Oh well, I guess $10/month hosting doesn't get you as much as it did in the early 1900s ;) Anywhoo, I'm still dating the same girl, and things are going very very well. We spend most weekends together, despite the fact that she's in London, and I'm in Toronto. This past weekend, we played quite a bit of Grand Theft Auto IV together, which was *awesome* :) Recently, we destroyed a helicopter full of mafiosos. w00t. In other news, my employer has changed offices and fired 25% of its staff. Counter-intuitively, our new offices have 300% the square footage of our old ones. We signed the lease before the layoffs :-| Also, the iPhone is coming to Canada this Friday, courtesy of Rogers & Fido... only, some people aren't too happy with the monthly plans. I sure would like them to be a bit more affordable, but I'm planning on getting one anyway. I've waited over a year, and I just cain't wait no morezz! Purely tangentially, I've got my "fully automated data back-up strategy" down to a fine art now. I never have to manually intervene, and I'll never lose another harddrive worth of data. If my computer dies, I'll always have a back-up that is no more than 24 hours old. Here are the details of how I do it. My only computer is a 160 gig MacBook running Leopard. On my desk at work I have 2 external 500 gig LaCie USB 2.0 harddrives. One of them is a single 500 gig partition called "External". The other has a 160 gig partition called "Clone" and a 340 gig partition called TimeMachine. TimeMachine runs whenever I'm at work, constantly backing up my "in progress" files. Every weekday at 12:05, SuperDuper! automatically copies my entire laptop harddrive to the "Clone" drive. If my laptop's harddrive dies, I can actually boot directly from the Clone drive and pick up work without missing a beat -- giving me some time to replace the drive. (Technical Note: It actually only copies over whatever has changed since the previous weekday at 12:05... not the entire drive every time. Works like a charm.) At home I have a D-Link DNS-323, which is a 1TB (2x500 gig) Network Attached Storage device running a Mirrored RAID, so that everything on the first 500 gig drive is automatically copied to the second 500 gig drive. This way, you always have a backup, and it's fully automated. This little puppy has a built-in Dynamic DNS client, and FTP server. So, on my WRT54G router, I forward the FTP port (21) to my DNS-323, and leave its FTP server up. After the SuperDuper clone has been made, ChronoSync launches itself and synchronizes my "External" drive with the DNS-323 at home, via FTP. That's it. Using 4 drives (2 external, 2 in the NAS) I have: 1) An always-bootable complete backup less than 24 hours old, Monday-Friday 2) A working-backup of all my in-progress files, which is never more than 30 minutes old, Monday-Friday 3) Access to all my mp3s at documents at work on the "External" and at home, on the NAS 4) Two complete backups of all my mp3s and documents on the NAS (External is original copy, both drives on NAS are mirrors via ChronoSync) Why do I do all of this? Because: 1) In 2000, I dropped a 40 gig harddrive 1 inch, and it cost me $2500 to get that data back. 2) In the past year, I've had to take my MacBook in for repair 4 times. One dead harddrive, two dead motherboards, and a dead webcam. On the 4th time, they replaced my MacBook with a newer better one at no charge, and I haven't had a problem since. Thanks to my daily backups, I didn't lose any work, or productivity. If I hadn't had them, though, all my work would have been gone, along with my mp3s, and my writing, and all the photos of my trips to Peru, Croatia, England, France, Greece, Netherlands, Italy, and all my family photos. Can you imagine? I'm sure you can, because I bet you have a pile of digital photos sitting on your computer right now... not backed-up in any way. Tsk tsk! How do you protect your data?

Remember how I started my last post with the words "Things have been going pretty well lately." Yeah, I guess I kinda jinxed myself. In the last 10 days, all this has happened: My sister got some kind of flesh-eating disease on her leg. If the anti-biotics work, great. If they don't -- leg amputation. It's likely that they'll work, but that's still a scary worst-case scenario. Plus, if she has to keep taking days off work she might lose the job she just started 3 weeks ago. Jobs aren't easy to come by in Petrolia. This one took her a year to get! [sigh] Next, my mom had some tests done, and there were some abnormalities on the x-rays. It could be just some scar tissue from when she hurt her throat yelling for me to come home for dinner 15 years ago (true) OR it could be cancer from 40 years of smoking. We're still waiting for the CAT scan results, and it's stressful. I told my boss this stuff was happening last Tuesday night, and asked if I could have the following week off, and he said "Dude, just go home tomorrow morning." He was very understanding, and I'm very thankful. I spent most of last week at home with Mom & Sis, just being there, helping de-stress. On my way to Petrolia, though, I lost my phone by leaving it on the train. Luckily, they found it... unluckily they didn't leave it at the Sarnia Tran Station, but at the London station, over an hour away. Still, it's better to get the phone back. I don't know anyone's number by heart these days... I was supposed to get a ride back to Toronto via London on Sunday, but the person who had offered the ride forgot to pick me up, so I had to get a ride to London to pick up my phone and then take the train to Toronto. Happily, this gave Jen and I a few hours to catch up and tour around Sunfest. When I finally got on the train back to Toronto, I was magically seated next to Kelly, who I hadn't really seen since high school. We got to spend the whole ride catching up, which was nice. I also found out that she's in HR now, so I tried to recruit her to work at I Love Rewards. As luck would have it, she had already heard good things about us! So, I got back at like 11pm last night, and got up early today to go to work and catch up on the 130 email I missed last week. Then at 11:15 we had our company-wide daily meeting, and I forgot that last Wednesday (when I was home) was my 1 year anniversary at ILR. So, today they did a little powerpoint presentation all about me, and my year with the company. Meagan & Amy each said some very nice things about me, and Jeff composed a limerick and 2 haiku for me. I will post them here very soon. They're awesome :) Needless to say, I was touched, adn this is just one more great reason to work at I Love Rewards (we're hiring a QA person, and programmers again, by the way, so if you're interested, let me know). Oh, one other cool thing that happened while I was home... I ran into a girl I had a crush on when I was younger, and we caught up. Later that day she asked my mom if I was single in a very inquisitive/interested way. :) Last time we hung out, though, was 15 years ago, before she got married, had 4 kids, and got divorced. :( I don't think I could handle 1 kid right now, let alone 4, ranging in age from 8-11. Still, it's nice to be asked about by a pretty girl. BUT remember how I said "bad things come in 3s" ? Yeah, well, I've only mentioned 2 so far. I was in an afternoon meeting today and my cellphone rang, disrupting the meeting... so I ignored it. It rang again almost immediately, so I excused myself and answered it. It was Mom calling to let me know that my grandmother had just had a heart attack and was being raced to the hospital. She had another one before the end of the day... but as of tonight she is stable, if a little disoriented and weak. Made me *very* glad that I spent some time with her this past week when I was home. We had some of the longest conversations we've had in ages. Maaaan, what a shitty 10 days.