The one with Megan and Cordelia, UFC 68, the stolen laptop, and good-bye to NexInnovations.

Who here remembers Megan from my old LJ days? Yes, the same Megan that used to be my roommate when we were all living in the town house with Fallout747 (James H). Things quickly went downhill after we had that huge argument and she moved out in a hurry. Anyway, she got married, had a baby, and totally dropped off my radar for a few years. Although we saw each other from time to time, we didn’t really say much other than the minimal formalities. Last Friday, I went to Chicken Chef with Pat-Man, Willy-boy, and Alex (I don’t have a funny nickname for him) where I ran into Megan with her mom and daughter. We chatted briefly – minimal formalities, as usual – but then we traded cell numbers and she said she’d call me later on that night. Sure enough, she called me (well, texted me) near the end of work. We hung out all weekend long (and I consequently missed hanging out with Candace). The main thing I noticed – Megan is a lot more grounded and mature than she used to be. Motherhood can apparently do that to you, I suppose. However, she’s become a total sex addict. Hahaha. Her daughter, Cordelia, on the other hand, is the cutest little thing ever! I mean, my niece, Ka-Ka is cute, but Cordelia is cute to me because she’s not shy – at least not for long. I never know what to do with shy kids – I mean, I used to be a shy kid myself, and it was hard to open up to people I didn’t know. Unfortunately, it taught me nothing because I don’t know how to get shy kids to open up and express themselves. Damn it. Talking about kids is making me miss Esmond. My baby brother. Tiny. Yeah.

Saturday was busy enough for me – getting several deliveries done and having time leftover to visit Megan and Cordelia – but I even managed to squeeze in watching UFC 68. It’s funny, I never used to be into UFC, but after watching UFC 66 with Jennilee and Eugene, I’ve started to get into it. The first fight I saw was okay (I don’t even remember it), but the main event was what really piqued my interest – the big fight between Chuck Liddell and Tito Ortiz. It just shocked me at how high-octane it could get. Liddell is one amazing striker, and I’ll definitely be following his career. As for UFC 68 – another amazing main event. Randy Couture came out of retirement to fight Tim Sylvia, winning the UFC heavyweight champion title. Another thing that really floors me about UFC – the majority of the fighters have such great sportsmanship towards both the sport and each other. I really hated the whole trash-talking drama of the WWE, and the UFC was a great breast of fresh air. I mean, breath of fresh ass. I mean, breath of fresh air. (Damn you, Scott Bakula.)

So, right in the middle of the third and fourth round of the Couture-Sylvia fight, Esmond called to tell me that the Dell Inspiron 9300 (formerly known as Aoi) I gave him got stolen that night. During a huge social in his dorm, our friend, Roddy, got (self-induced) sick, and Esmond had to watch over him while another friend, John, went to get security’s help. It only took 15 to 20 minutes, but when Esmond got back to his room, the laptop and his mouse were gone. The next day, the family and I went to Staples, picked up a new monitor and mouse (at Dad’s expense) and I shipped his desktop PC off to him. Normally, you’d think that after sinking $4500 into the laptop, I’d be mad, but I really wasn’t. I was actually thinking of selling it at a loss, but this way, I get all my money back from insurance (I hope).

Now that I’m only running one PC (Mitake) and my MacBook (Aoi), I need to get another PC to fill the void, because I no longer have a project PC to do stuff like encoding videos and music for this blog. Shitty deal, eh? At the same time, I was thinking about getting a gaming PC – nothing too fancy, as long as it has a decent video card like a GeForce 8800 GTX and a PhysX card. I actually priced one out on NCIX for less than $2300, so once things calm down with my new job and my bills, I’ll probably order it. Maybe the price will be cheaper when I finally do. Either way, I won’t be updating the Japanese Media portion of my blog until I get a new machine or clear up tons of hard drive space on Mitake. The sad thing is, I just got in tons of music to encode. Frak.

This week has been extremely busy both at home and at work. Although I didn’t get a chance to see Megan except for Monday, I was busy trying to get things prepared at work for the new guy, Trevor. I even took my last trip to Wabowden and Snow Lake on Tuesday. Wednesday was weird. Cleaned up as many calls at work as I could, and found out that Trevor wouldn’t be taking over for me – he was going over to INCO and Colin was coming to my office in his place. I ended up getting more calls done. Thank goodness. Thursday was wild – I started taking Colin everywhere, showing him as much as I could about GOM and other stuff. Today was my last day with NexInnovations – we all had a huge lunch party at Boston Pizza – Colin, Willy-boy, Jason, Trevor, Alex, and even Pat-Man showed up. Crazy. I cleaned up my e-mail, finalized my Scheduling database, closed my last three work orders, and turned everything over to Colin. I basically shadowed him and made sure he did okay. Marcia even called to say good-bye at the end of the day. It was an easy day, but still hard because I was leaving. It’s always hard to leave something you’re familiar with, but hey – that’s just the way it goes sometimes. I had fun there – good times and bad – and I will always remember my experiences with NexInnovations.

On the flipside, while we were at INCO so that Colin could do the warranty calls (ha ha – now he’ll see it from my point of view!), I went over to bring my safety gear to my new office. I got logged into the INCO domain for the first time on my brand-spanking-new T60 laptop, and I even configured dual-screen setup with my LCD monitor, and got my Blackberry working. As opposed to Nexi, who gave me the bare minimums, Design Group is pulling all the stops (it’s actually Wil that’s pulling). It’s definitely going to be a different experience, but I’m looking forward to it. No more being alone – I actually have a partner to work with! No more cramped closet – I actually have floor space in my office! No more pager – wait, no… I still get stuck with one. Crap.

以上。。。であります。