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.

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...

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!

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.

When we got in the main room, we were greeted by incredibly tight outfits wearing girls. I mean, girls wearing incredibly tight outfits. They gave us a bunch of APP gear. We felt like tools for a minute, but we played along and wore the bracelets, headbands and shirts anyway - it's not like it was a formal or BCBG kind of dress code. Then we saw what was in the main room: a bunch of APP logos projectors, 2 beer stands and a bar (YAY!) a bunch of girls dancing on podiums (wearing the same OHMYGODTIGHT outfits the greeters were). There was also a ring in the middle of the room. A fucking ring. The boxing kind of ring, with cables and all that. That's where the DJ was spinning, and we figured some event was gonna happen there - we all secretly hoped for a tighties mud wrestling match. It was a really cool setup.

So we started mixing up with the crowd - some would say scouting - and we slowly headed towards the "bar" which really was just an elongated counter selling chips (?), chocolate (??) and beer (!!!). The beer was obviously Molson (Dry), and we would've been insulted if they had tried to sell that for more than 3$. Fortunately, it was 3$ for 575ml bottles. Not bad. I don't care what people say though, paying 3$ for any kind of Molson beer is still stealing - but we played along, again.

So we had our beers, our swag, and our game faces on. We started looking around... and we found a body painting booth. It mesmerized us for a moment, we took some pictures and then moved on. There was a total of three body painted attention whores girls at the end of the evening, wearing only a G-String. So that's when stuff got rather normal. We chatted, looked around, and waited to be drunk so we could pretend we knew how to dance. Meanwhile, we got to have a peek at Molson's target audience. A bunch of hyperactive kids, mostly. People jumping around, making a train (!) around the ring and screaming "Woo Woo!" like some kind of unnatural Salt-N-Pepa, La Bouche and Quad City DJ's threesome.

Keep in mind that the objective of the night for many attendees was to obtain medals. There were referees, recruiters and coaches of the APP in the attendance, and they distributed medals to party pros -- basically the noisest, most annoying, hyperactive fools that could do stupid shit to get their attention. With 5 medals of any kind, you had a chance to go party it up in Prague. For some, that was a good excuse to act like attention whores, which provided entertainment for those who didn't.

Now let me describe our group. I was with NVI coworkers and friends Nicolas Cliche, Nicolas Cossette, Samuel Lavoie and "Stephane" (who obviously requested anonymity). The average age of our group was 24, maybe 25. We're not old. We're no strangers to parties. We found a group of girls claiming to be 18. They looked like they were 12, it was crazy. If I'd see that outside a club, I would make a mental note never to go. It's not the crowd I'm looking for. Maybe I'm a bit picky, but I prefer places where people dress nice, and know how to party with some dignity and class. That's just me.

So we spent the night dancing and drinking beer. At some point during the evening, maybe 1 AM, the "event" started. The crazy hyperactive VJ from MusiquePlus, Izabelle Desjardins (thanks @nicolask7), was the host. They called a "DJ Battle". I got excited, thinking they'd have locals or renowned DJs on a spinning duel, but it ended up being rather static. Still, it was fun to see Marie-Mai, Stefie Shock and Sans Pression come down the stairs dressed as boxers<, complete with the bathrobe-looking thingie, and jump on stage. There was one more guest, but I didn't care enough to remember his or her name or gender. The "DJ Battle" was basically a pre-made iPod mix from each of the contestants. Not their own songs, just random crowd movers. Stefie Shock was no match for Marie-Mai's hotness, who advanced to the "second round" against Sans Pression, which happened about an hour later. SP ended up "winning" basically because a bunch of guys kept chanting his name, which I found myself doing. Marie-Mai was hot though, it's a shame we didn't get to see more of her -- in every possible meaning. A day after, I wondered where the guests had spent their night, because I certainly haven't seen them mixed up in the drunk crowd.

So that was basically it. After the second round, we went out for a smoke and when we came back, the room was pretty much empty. We danced until 2:40, then we got tired of it and left. Molson was curteous enough to provide each of us with a 15$ taxi coupon, which is the thing that I will remember, I think. Associated with Molson anyway.

All in all, it was a fun night. I'm a bit disappointed by Molson though. They invested a LOT of money in props, guests and hosts, but they neglected the point they want to push through to their audience: the party. They relied on a few hired bodies (fucking hypers) to drag people in the party, but I'm guessing they succeded only to some extent. It was no different than your average club where you come across 16 years old getting hammered for the first time. I expected more, I don't know what, but I did. Or maybe I'm just too old for Molson's target audience.

I'll post my pictures soon. Meanwhile, Molson reps promised official pictures would be online Monday at ProDuParty.com.

With that being said, one thing I won't fucking tolerate is people who I call friends commenting on my blog using SEO techniques. Fuck you. That's fucking insulting. This is my private blog, one that if you don't have anything to say, I want you to shut the fuck up. Don't pull that shit on me - I will ban your ass and not give one look back.

I'm not gonna make this a rant about SEO, the state of the web today, marketing or the company I work for. What had to be said has been said, and if you can't respect it, get the fuck out right this second.

Thank you.

Edit: wanted to add that after talking it over with the person in question, I hold no grudge and feel no animosity towards him.

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.

Then, I tweeted about the Not Tested on IE Initiative, and people quoted me on it. It's always a nice thing to know (indirectly) that people value your opinions and interests.

Aside from that, I progressed a lot in my presentation for Subversion/TortoiseSVN that I'll present on the 29th to coworkers, so that they know the how, the what and the why we're (going to be) using Subversion for our projects. My boss (one of them anyway) said he was proud of me, so that's always a good thing. It's much needed, in my case and precarious situation, so it's appreciated.

I've been wanting to use the nvidev's twitter to post updates about NVI's development team views, opinions and general rantings. I'll be doing that as soon as Gnome-Do allows me to reconfigure my Twitter plugin...

I was also invited to be an author for NVI Solutions' blog, but with obviously a more technical take on things. I think I'd like that. I could keep this blog for personal rantings and use NVI's blog for everything technical, or programming. I'll keep you posted on what happens with that.

Oh. And.. I WANT CUPCAKES.