In response to his actions, I have changed the password on my administrator account, and made Alan’s account one with lower permission levels. He is free to post here, as long as it’s about how pretty or smart I am, or about how much he loves me, or other nonsense. He does have his own, quite neglected blog, so I don’t think he will be posting here often, and I, of course, reserve the right to edit anything he posts here.

So, all three of my non-Alan readers, welcome Alan to the world of the strangely-normal.com blog! I’m sure he’d appreciate it.

Update: I remember now what it is he did, he fixed the time for me.

But my luck is about to change. I have all the veggies cut up for tonight’s stir fry, Alan’s on his way home, and today is our soon-to-be anniversary. So hopefully we have a fun night of laundry and hanging out. Maybe we shall play some Trivial Pursuit and celebrate the end of the week with the addition of alcohol to smoothies.

This weekend, I think we have the following plans:

• Grocery Shopping
• Pizza Stir Fry and Laundry night
• Read a chapter of my Zend book
• Hang out with Brad and Lem
• Write a review of American Gods (finished it yesterday
• PI DAY!

Alan just walked in. He brought me a present. It’s in a brown paper bag. Happy weekend everybody!

Well, I spent most of this week sick with a head cold that knocked me down for a few days. Regardless, here goes my list for the week. One of these entries is sarcastic. Try to guess which one.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson: Death by Black Hole.
An incredibly interesting and funny interview with astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson. He talks about the process of dying in a black hole, defines one of my new favourite words, “spaghettification”, and tells the audience about the asteroid that may destroy the Pacific Coast. A fascinating discussion about some terrible things that may happen to the Earth.
“Ninety nine percent of all species that ever existed are now extinct. That is not the signature of a planet that is in love with life.”

Learning that none of my JavaScript works in Internet Explorer 6.
My boss went to Cambodia for two weeks after Christmas. The day she returns, we are to present her with a full, bug-free copy of our latest project. On Wednesday, we discovered that next to none of our Javascript works in Internet Explorer 6. I know it was rather remiss of us not to test, but we’re not the best at browser-compatibility testing.
Anyways, IE6 is a mystifying piece of badness. There are lots of things in it that make no sense at all, like how select boxes are drawn by the operating system, and not the browser. What this means is that modal dialog boxes, as well as mouseover-style menus, don’t draw themselves on top of those elements. Web 2.0 style applications use these sorts of elements quite often. The solution? Something called an iframe shim, which makes no sense at all. I have so far wasted a number of days attempting to make these elements play well together. We need to find a new way to draw modal dialog boxes, drop down style menus and a calendar widget. Before tomorrow morning at 830 am. I’m not expecting that to go well.

Secret Diary of a Call Girl
I loved watching Billie Piper as Rose Tyler in Doctor Who, so I decided to download the show Secret Diary of a Call Girl to see if she could really act or not, and I learned that she can. It is an odd cross between a comedy, a drama, and a softcore porn. I have now seen far too much of Billie Piper’s body, but I still found the show excellent. Her character is quite compelling and I enjoyed watching the two parts of her personality conflicting with each other. I would recommend this show to a couple of friends, though I’m not sure if it would be my friends who are obsessed with Doctor Who or not.

Getting our spare room set up.
Alan and I recently housed a friend of ours for about four or five months. In that time, he stayed in our spare room, which had formerly been our computer room. Since our computers were nice and cozy in their new home, and we wanted to hide our TV a bit more, we turned our spare room into a TV room. We put the TV and our gaming systems in the closet so we can hide it when we have guests, and the spare room now has our DVD shelf, our plastic shelving units, and our futon. The living room is fantastically empty, and will make a great space for dance contests and Twister. Or our cozy chair can go there for our new reading corner.

New Year’s Eve.
I was blessed with the ability to work from home on New Year’s Eve, which allowed me the opportunity to plan and execute a lovely celebration of the completion of another revolution around the sun.
On Tuesday night, I stopped at IKEA and picked up some wine glasses, candlesticks and candles, and two bottles of cheap wine at the LCBO. I went grocery shopping the next day and picked up a shrimp ring and flowers among other things, and spent the afternoon furiously cleaning the apartment. When Alan arrived home from work, we snacked on shrimp and some Pilsbury rolls and cooked up a very nice Beef with Broccoli and some mixed veggies. It was a really nice, quiet evening, which we don’t get very many of. We were both in bed asleep before midnight. Alan and I celebrated our five year anniversary on New Year’s Day by relaxing, napping and playing video games. New Year’s Day is kind of an annoying day to have an anniversary because so few places are open.

Hanging out with Brad and Lem.
Last night our friends Brad and Lem came over for dinner. We drank Brad and Lem’s wedding wine, had lasagna, caesar salad and rolls, and Lem brought a delicious cake. We played Wii games and watched Will It Blend? On YouTube, then went on a fruitless hunt for Wii games to rent. After we returned to the apartment, we played Killer Bunnies and The Quest For The Magic Carrot, and Trivial Pursuit. It was a fun night.

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles.
A couple of months ago, either Courtney or Kat recommended I watch Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, and it’s only been recently that I’ve been able to sit down a watch it. I was a little skeptical, and the show definitely has its flaws, but for the most part it’s quite good, especially the effects. I think Lena Headey, who plays Sarah Connor is a little stiff and robotic, especially in the first season, but the rest of the actors do a good job, and Summer Glau, who plays Cameron is excellent. I could do without the Heroes-style voiceovers at the beginning and end of the episodes, but that’s just a little quibble.

Invoice Entry Interface.
At work right now, I’m working on a fairly large chunk of a rewriting of our Business Intelligence tool. This is the set of screens where our employees enter invoices into the system. It’s very important that this part of the application works well, and I’m finding it more involved and challenging than a lot of the things I’ve been asked to do in the last month or so. My goal is to have all of the UI, including AJAX, Javascript and form validation written and debugged by the end of the week.

Getting Back to Real Life.
Christmas was fun, but it’s really nice to get back to your own apartment, sleep in your own bed, under your own sheets, and wake up to your own alarm clock. We were gone from the 24th to the 28th, and it was a busy time, with lots of people around, which isn’t something Alan and I are used to any more. Our apartment seemed like a quiet refuge after that busy time.

Honorable Mentions:
Making it to the gym every day I went to work. Christmas at Uncle Gary’s. Remembering the answers Alan’s passport hints. Doctor Who: The Next Doctor [the Christmas Episode, not Matt Smith]. Finishing Foundation. Will It Blend?

In June, two of my cousins had babies, and they are cute. I don’t anything important happening in July, but I’m sure something did. In August, I helped lead a national United Church young adult event called Kairos which rocked. Also in that same week, Alan and I got engaged. In September, I turned 26, and we set a wedding date for March 13, 2010. I’m sure something happened in October, and it was probably fun. In November, my brother got married in a fun small ceremony. And now it is December.

Yesterday, I accidentally blew away the database containing four months of development team daily logs. That wasn’t so great. Attempts at data recovery were unsuccessful. I have been listening to a lot of Elvis Costello’s music as of late. Christmas is coming up, and I think we’ve managed to create a good compromise regarding splitting time between Windsor, where Alan’s family is, and Forest, where my family is. We have been housing our friend Dave for about as long as I haven’t blogged, and he will be moving on and going to Humber College in January which will be exciting for him I’m sure.

Anyways, I do have lots to say, but I just wanted to post an overall recap before I jump into topical posts. I don’t think anyone even checks this page any more but I feel a need to blog about stuff, so I shall.

• clean out car – yep, I cleaned my car.
• go grocery shopping – yeah, I totally did that
• go swimming – no swimming. I did have a bath, but it’s not exactly the same
• read – indeed, I am literate. Currently reading Arthur C. Clarke’s The City And The Stars
• find something fun to do in Hamilton – We totally went to the recycling drop off. It was sorta fun.
• get rid of at least 2 monitors – as of last night, we got rid of all three
• clean computer room – well, we got rid of monitors… that sort of counts
• take over the world – yeah, I wasted a lot of time doing so… must remove this game
• cook something awesome – we made chicken lasagna which was great, a chili that was good, and some cookies that were pretty good.

8 out of 9 aint bad. Alan also let me win at Scrabble

• clean out car
• go grocery shopping
• go swimming
• read
• find something fun to do in Hamilton
• get rid of at least 2 monitors
• clean computer room
• take over the world
• cook something awesome

These are the sacrifices I make for love.

Just as a postscript, Martha Jones kicks ass.