Fusion
I learned a new meaning of the term today. It is appropriate enough to share it with you all. It's from Jodi Picoult's "The Pact", which is a great (albeit rather cheesy for some of you with exceeding testosterone, but you probably don't read anyway) novel.
"... there's a specific term for the kind of relationship that had developed between Chris and Emily over the years"
"What's that?"
"Fusion." He smiled at the jury. "Just like the physicists. It means that two personalities have bonded together so strongly that a whole new personality is created, and the separate ones cease to exist."
Jordan raised his eyebrows. "Could you run that by me again?"
"In plain English," Dr. Karpagian said, "it means that Chris and Emily's minds and personalities were so connected there really was no distinction between them. They grew up so close that they couldn't function without each other. Anything that happened to one of those kids was going to affect the other. And in the case of the death of one of them, the other one literally would not be able to go on living." He looked at Jordan. "Does it make more sense?"
"It's more clear," Jordan said, "but it's hard to accept."
Dr. Karpagian smiled. "Congratulations, Mr McAfee. That simply means you're mentally healthy."
Nuff said.
A quote I like
From a great book, The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks:
I am nothing special; just a common man with common thoughts, and I've led a common life. There are no monuments dedicated to me and my name will soon be forgotten. But in one respect I have succeeded as gloriously as anyone who's ever lived: I've loved another with all my heart and soul; and to me, this has always been enough.
CloudRaker it will be!
I've been looking for a job for one full week, and it seems that I found a fit in this Montreal web company. They're called CloudRaker, and they're located downtown Montreal, just an stone's throw north of Ste-Catherine and De Bleury. They're pretty close, actually, 2.3 kilometers. I'll be able to walk/longboard/rollerblade it in summer, and take a rather easy bus route in the winter. Sweet stuff. I'll be working on basically the same kind of things I was working on back at NVI, with a little more frontend thrown in. Nothing I can't handle. They seem to be a pretty cool gang there. They've been around for 8 years, and they still have that startup feel to everything, which is pretty rare for expanding companies. Looking forward to seeing the challenges ahead and meeting everyone! Be sure to check out their blog.
On another note, I've been playing quite a lot with WordPress lately, namely, this WordPress. I've installed a few plugins and made some modifications of my own. If you intent to browse around, I'm sure you'll come across many of them: AJAXed WordPress (AWP), cformsII, and OpenID. They've all turned out pretty nice so far. Also added two pages (up top) - Links and Contact. One is a feed from my newly created Delicious account, the other allows you to contact me.
I've also been playing a lot with Zend Framework lately for a project I'm working on. I'll probably be posting snippets of code eventually, stuff that might be useful to the general public, so stay tuned.
Updates and Announcement!
Sooo many updates to post, so many things to say. Not sure where to start! Let's go with the fun stuff, that's always nice. I went to see a Canadiens game last Wednesday - the first home game of the season. It's been amazing as usual. I'd really love to be able to compare crowds throughout the NHL, I do believe Montreal fans are quite hard to top in terms of ambiance, involvement and general fanaticism - in the good way. It's always fun to see the Habs play. I went with my sister and a friend, we (and by "we" I really mean "I") managed to get tickets in the white section of the Molson Ex zone. For those of you who ever went to the Bell Centre for a game, you just know that's where the party's at. Every chant, every wave, everything that spreads throughout the attendance starts right there. Plus there's some ridiculously hot babes in equally ridiculously tight outfits doing crowd animation. We were sitting below the section with animation though, but we got to stare at her butt often enough were able to participate anyway - just couldn't win free beers. Anyhow, it was a fun time, and the Habs won, so it's all good.
On another note, I've come to an agreement with my bosses at NVI. It's been some time since I've felt challenged at work, and I was really starting to get bored and demotivated, so we agreed that it was better for both of us that I leave. Don't get me wrong, NVI is a great place to work, with great, great people. I've simply done my time there. I will surely remember NVI as one of the best places I've ever worked, and I've worked at a lot of places. So I'm currently looking for other opportunities. I have several interesting companies that I want to talk to in Montreal that I think would benefit from hiring me, but you know how that is - there's what you want and what you get! I'm hopeful though, and not stressed one bit about finding a new job. The market's in pretty high demand for programmers right now, even with the financial crisis, so it's all good. For those of you from NVI reading this article, worry not, I will keep contact with you. After all, I do live 3 minutes from your offices and have a relatively known interest in alcohol and parties!
I've also thought of continuing my project of self-employment. It's kind of difficult, to be honest with you. I really want to do it, but I know it's a lot of work, especially in the beginning. And I don't want to create something to end up with exactly the same feel to it as the company I just left. I'd like to do it. I love to code, it's what I do. What I don't want to do is everything that's not code, basically. Public Relations, Account Management, Marketing, Integration, Design, Sales... all of that is not for me. It's too early in the lifecycle of my company to hire people to do that for me, so I'm kinda stuck here. I'll have to think about it. Either way, I've started the process already. Registered the domain, hosted it, and will register the name this week so that if I want to go with it, everything will be ready. I also need to talk with some key people that might be interested in launching this with me, but all in due time...
On that my friends, I shall conclude my article with some wise words from a friend of mine...
Dream as if you'll live forever, live as if you'll die today.
Wise words indeed...
Last week recap, looking ahead.
First off, it's election time in Canada. We have the Conservatives, the Bloc, the Liberals, the NDP and the Green fighting against each other. I never was much into politics, to be honest. I subscribe to the school of people who think every politician is a corrupted one waiting to happen. They promise without delivering, and most of their campaign is based on derogating their opponents and making promises which everyone knows they won't hold. That being said, a nice site was launched this week, called I Believe In Open. It aims to be some kind of petition (without being one) for better government transparency. It allows voters (me) and parties/candidates to pledge for transparency and openness. So far no parties have pledged though, I'm thinking the first who does will get my vote. Alright, enough politics.
This next week will be exciting! The hockey season is starting, and I managed to get tickets for Friday's pre-season game in Montreal, which should be AMAZING. I'll be going with friends from work and the ambience will be insane.
I played with my iPhone a bit today, after having to implement a dual boot on my system (grumbles) because Apple doesn't support iPhone synchronization on Linux... I found a few good places for iPhone wallpapers, the best one being this Flickr group.
Aside from that, what's new? Nothing much. Been working quite a lot lately, trying to make my deadlines and side-line contracts at the same time. At least, work's fun! Hacking up Magento is a challenge, and it's entertaining. I can't say the same for the few OsCommerce emergencies that come up every so often...
Heroes season 3 is starting tomorrow! Yay! Everyone has been waiting so long for this, it should be entertaining. I'll miss the premiere though, as I'll be playing cosom hockey with NVI's team... but I'll definitely check it out Tuesday. We'll be facing Universal Media... which is already pretty ironic on its own.
So that's my week in perspective. Eventful and busy. Should be fun!
APP Party Recap
For Montrealers who've been living under a rock, Molson has launched a new advertising campaign focusing on a younger target audience using a (fake, but official-looking) sport federation sponsoring of a new sport, the party. They call it "Association des Pros du Party" (APP) which translates to "Association of Party Pros".
I was invited to one of their party at Montreal's ToHu last thursday. I took a bunch of pictures (mostly of half-naked paid models, ahem) but I won't be able to post them until I get my hands on a Windows or Mac machine, since Apple has no support for Linux, and it's the only platform I use right now. So no pictures for now, but I can manage to write up a quick recap of the party.
First, when you get at the ToHu, they make you sign a waiver basically allowing them to use your drunk ass face in their promotions. That's fine by me and the friends I had with me. In we went, only to be greeted by an army of pseudo-journalists taking pictures (with obviously empty cameras) of our group as we walked down the red carpet, by the APP cup, by the pseudo-interviewer and into the main room. That was rather fun, and somewhat impressive. Molson is paying a bunch of hot chicks to stand around with empty cameras and flash people. With their cameras, that is... But then, it's when shit got impressive budget-wise.
Small details can make your day
I'm a person who gives ridiculously great importance to small things. Sometimes it's a bad thing - I notice every little thing, meaningful or not, and sometimes it's a good thing - it doesn't take much to make my day or make me happy. I'll give you an example, and you'll understand a bit.
Today's Monday. Everyone hates Mondays, I'm no exception to the rule. I think that Mondays are life's way of getting payback for a nice weekend (I believe that's a quote from Sean Coates or someone else on Twitter). So I don't have high expectations for Mondays. However, I had a pretty good Monday! It started by getting to work, finishing in 3 hours a task that was estimated to 4 hours - then figuring out what I'd do for the rest of the day. I didn't have anything assigned, so I ended up working on my Subversion/TortoiseSVN talk I'll do on the 29th. So while working on that, I had to search for some stuff in the PHP Manual. I remembered I had seen a news posted on the front page that said a new system was online. I guess at that point the evil marketing influence took over, and I suggested on Twitter that someone should redirect all the pages to docs.php.net if we wanted to use that new system. I had it wrong though, but that's not the point. The point is that Rasmus Lerdorf, the PHP man himself, corrected me. It kinda warmed my heart a little that the big guy was talking to me. I guess that's a bit of fanboyism, but whatever. Last time Rasmus talked to me, he was autographing my laptop at the 2007 PHP Quebec Conference, so it's an improvement 
I know, it's stupid, but it's a little thing that just makes me happy, even if he's telling me I'm wrong and I can't read for shit.
