Ryan J. Allen

As a transit rider and an Apple fanatic I own an iPod (actually, two!) and use it regularly. While I regularly have runs where I am listening to a particular album or band a lot, I find that a lot of the time I am selecting the music I listen to based on my association of the music with a person. As an example, when I was anticipating helping Adam paint his apartment I listened to Built to Spill; this morning, after reading a text message from my sister, I listened to Hanson.

Generally speaking, I like this system. Almost all of the people that I associate certain music with are very important to me. Listening to the music that reminds me of these people is relaxing and is especially helpful at times when I miss a particular person. As great as the system is, there are two imperfections.

Because I tend to select music like this a lot I tend to listen to particular bands more frequently than others. Bands that I associate with people tend to get listened to more frequently than bands that I genuinely like. This isn’t inherently a bad thing but it does mean that the play count on some of the songs on my iPod is not representative of how much I really enjoy the music. Of course, one could argue that I really do enjoy the music that much because emotional attachment to music is a part of the music-listening experience.

I do consider my circle of important people to be relatively small but it is large enough that not everyone has music associated with them. I suspect that this is because music isn’t really a part of some relationships or, in some cases, because musical interests severely clash. Again, not a bad thing but a limitation of the system. Although, again, one might argue that music association doesn’t make sense for relationships where music isn’t something that is shared.

Yes, I am posting this at 3:30 a.m. I had a long nap.

The meeting with my academic adviser went well today. He was full of advice and together we came up with a pretty appealing school year.

This fall I will be taking ADM2320 (Marketing). ADM2320 will open the door for ADM3318 (International Business), which should help guide me toward taking an option in either Management or International Management. This will be once a week, Wednesdays, from 7 p.m. until 10 p.m. This one night a week schedule is highly appealing and should result in a very manageable work load. Also, it being on a Wednesday may even help break up my week nicely. My lovely sister Alex will be on-call to help me with any Marketing related queries (I just volunteered her).

In January, for the Winter semester, I will be taking MAT1300 (Mathematical Methods I) and ADM2336 (Organizational Behaviour). This will be a slightly more time consuming semester, with class three nights a week, but I suspect the actual work load won’t be very great. On-call for these classes will be Evan (though I doubt I’ll have any problems with first year calculus) and Brad.

Next summer’s semester may see me taking a business communications class and a business statistics class.

I am very much looking forward to this school year.

In preparation for my meeting at uOttawa I created a “course map” of outstanding 1000-level and 2000-level courses that I need to take in order to complete my degree. It’s a sort of dependency tree, where a course depend on the one(s) to its left. In the case of a course being listed between two courses, the course depends on both. In one case, ADM2350 (Financial Management), the prerequisites could not be easily charted so it is listed twice (and highlighted in grey).

This program map is very exciting because it exposes the fact that I have ten 1000-level and 2000-level required courses that I could possibly take right now! It also quickly identifies the five courses that act as a gateway to other courses at these levels, which gives these courses a weighted priority. And in fact, one can further deduce the number of classes that each of these gateway classes makes available giving each of these classes a weighted priority among the gateway classes (for example, MAT1300 (Mathematical Methods I) is a gateway to three other courses while ADM2336 (Organizational Behaviour) is a gateway to only two other courses.

I am excited about the meeting.

It’s nearly 1 a.m. on Aug. 28th and I have just made my return from Kingston. Last minute plans moved me to the 9 p.m. train, which was delayed by 70 minutes. So I am home much later than I originally planned, which I’m not bothered by (all things considered), but I’m exhausted.

Up in 6 hours to get ready for an 8:30 a.m. appointment at uOttawa, followed immediately by work. 7 p.m. tomorrow (when I get home) I might just have an opportunity to enjoy being home.

This is one for my technical readers.

I think I would receive no argument in saying that virtualization is the “hot” technology of 2006. It’s something that we’ve all been using for a while but now hardware is cheap enough that small to mid-sized businesses are using it in their IT solutions. This virtualization push has led to processors that have virtualization “built-in”. What exactly does this mean?

I read an Intel white paper that was pretty scarce on technical details that suggested it was basically a “root ring” that sits below ring 0 on the privity level. It continued to say that, in the future, there would be hardware-level DMA remapping assistance to improve reliability and efficiency. So it sounds like right now it’s just this root ring, which does help reduce the amount of middle-man work the VMM has to do, but is it really that great of an advancement? Is this just more marketting hype coattailing on virtualization’s popularity?

Today at work Brian and I started praising our apartments. I don’t remember how or why it came up, but it was a fairly short conversation that can be summarized as “we like our respective apartments”. I would have never thought that this simple comment would turn into an elaborate dream.

I arrived home to my apartment. My apartment was now downtown, and I arrived home at the same time as Oneel. With him I went to the 12th floor and thought that we might live across the hall from each other. We both lived at the very end of the hallway. Oneel entered his apartment and I tried to gain access to what I thought was mine. It turns out it wasn’t my apartment; after inserting the key and unsuccessfully turning it a gentlemen opened the door. I apologized, exclaiming that I was on the wrong floor, and headed to the elevator.

I went up one floor on the lift to floor 14. I then entered an apartment that was directly over Oneel’s, but I didn’t think of that at the time. After I walked in a few minutes passed before I realized that my apartment had changed.

The Good
The apartment felt larger; I didn’t stick around in the dream long enough to really figure it out, but it makes sense that the apartment may have been a two or three bedroom apartment as it was now on the end (as is the case in my building). The kitchen was a more open concept, being visible from the living room and vice-versa. There was a bar-style divider that acted both as a place to eat, and as more counter space.

In the living room there were more switches for controlling lights. I think I counted three light switches–all dimmers–that were controlling three lamps in the room (lamps that I don’t own, so I guess the landlord gave them to me). The living room also had a volume control knob that controlled the volume of speakers that were mounted to the wall (again, speakers I don’t own so the landlord must have given them to me). When I turned the knob some music came on; I am not sure what the source was but, at the time, I wasn’t wondering (I simply assumed I could take advantage). I may want to consider wall or ceiling mounting speakers in my current apartment.

The Bad
Somehow, I was relocated to the second floor (or first floor if you’re English). I was located directly above a Subway restaurant. I was afraid that my apartment would smell of subs all of the time, though it didn’t at the time I was thinking this.

I lost my view. In Lincoln Fields my North-facing apartment on the 14th floor has a beautiful view of the Ottawa River. This new apartment was on the 1st floor and had a South-facing view of a downtown street. Now, it wasn’t one of those apartments that just has a view of another apartment building, which was nice, but it wasn’t nearly as nice as what I’ve got here. At least, not to me.

The flooring was different. I didn’t notice a substantial difference in the living room–or at least, I had nothing to complain about–but the kitchen now featured an ugly resilient tile (versus the not-so-ugly natural tile that I currently have). This may be getting picky–I never imagined I would complain about the type of tile on my floor–but it is something I remember noticing in my dream.

The Neutral
From my balcony there were stairs leading down to ground level. This was possible because I was on the second floor, and I was on the very end. While it was convenient to have easy access to the street, what was convenient for me is also convenient for thieves. In fact, when I was at my apartment a thief did walk on to my balcony but did not attempt to enter my apartment.

I was downtown. Downtown isn’t bad–I like downtown–but it isn’t very practical for someone who works in Kanata. It would have made for an approximately 1hr commute both to and from work which I would have likely gotten used to but still would be frustrated about. On the other hand, the convenience of walking to just about all amenities would be nice.

*****

In all, this dream has given me a slightly increased appreciation of my apartment and at least one idea for possibly improving it. I am glad that it was only a dream.

I’ve had an incredibly difficult time waking up this week. Now, in a couple of cases there is fairly good evidence to suggest a possible reason, though I’m not convinced that it’s the primary reason. For example, despite a nap on Tuesday evening, and a relatively decent sleep on Tuesday night, I still found myself buying doughnuts on Wednesday morning–and I face a similar fate today. Even considering that my sleep has been lacking, I believe that my allergies are the primary culprit.

Allergies are one of those wonderful characteristics passed on to me through my wonderful family heritage (along with my double-jointed thumbs and my stunning good looks (ha)). Each year I am subjected to them for a few weeks, or more, at a time, once or twice a year. I have, twice, volunteered myself for allergy testing in exchange for a monetary honorarium. While I typically do not experience allergy symptoms to the severe degree as I did during testing, they can still have a hugely intrusive affect on my day-to-day life.

The mornings are the worst for me; this may be true of all allergy sufferers. Last year I missed only one working day due to allergies, but I was able to recover most of the day by working from home; sneezing was abundant that day and I can remember rubbing my eyes and wiping my nose to a new layer of skin. On most allergy days, even after taking medication, I still find myself itching my nose and rubbing my eyes (I write after I pause to rub my eyes). When just getting back into the medication I also find it takes a few days to become completely effective–rather, as effective as it will be.

The point: I have none. The allergies have entirely encapsulated my mind. The allergies are writing this. (Odd that they wouldn’t shed themselves in a brighter light.)

After returning home from work I immediately had a nap. On the bus ride home I was nodding off. The nap lasted until about 7:30 p.m. when a phone call from Evan notified me that he, Keeves, and Kelly were on their way over. I was happy with the amount of napping that I had achieved, and with the quality of the nap.

The night was a relaxing and simple one. Some wine and cheese was enjoyed, some hockey was played, some music was experienced. We later had pizza from Milano’s which I was okay with–the pizza was good, but I did feel like something a little more home-made.

I am looking forward to going to work tomorrow recharged.

I made it to work this morning. It was a bit rough getting myself out of bed, and I’m not yet quite my chipper self, but I’m sure the arrival of my energy-filled co-workers will spruce me up a bit. It is supposed to rain today, but if that doesn’t happen I could see myself going outside at lunch and having a nap under the sun on some plush grass somewhere on work’s grounds.

I wonder how many times today I am going to say “enough is enough.”

I just got in from the post-Snakes on a Plane celebration at Biddy Mulligans. The movie was fantastic. It was way funnier than I had anticipated it to be. I saw the movie with co-workers, B-rian, Oneel, and Muis, and friends, Evan, and Keeves. In addition there were a couple of others that I thought I recognized but wasn’t sure about, and Kelly, one of Evan’s co-workers from this summer. Kelly went into the movie having never heard of it, so it was especially delightful to hear her reaction. She liked it, by the way.

Multiple times during the film Muis and I exchanged a high-five. The movie was more enjoyable seeing it in the theatre as a group, as the crowd fed off of the movie and each other. The theatre broke into applause when Sam Jackson delivered his famous line from the film. I would see that again.

After the movie Evan, Keeves, Kelly, and I went to Biddy’s where a few round of drinks were enjoyed before we headed for one of the last buses so that we could get home. Now I’m 3 hours away from the time I wake up for work and am very excited about the prospect. I’m sure I can ride the SoaP adrenaline for at least tomorrow.