My place of work is strange and wonderful. The perks are many and the hours are long. Being in close quarters for a long time with a group of people can breed a bizarre little sub-culture.

What follows is a post in its entirety made on our company intranet. The frequent and unproductive nature of my posts on this company intranet was part of the impetus for aov itself. I felt that this particular post was representative of my life at silverorange.

Subject: Bananas are way cool
Date: 2:56 AM Sunday, July 15
Posted By: Dan James

I was at the Ken’s Corner Petro Can doing some grocery shopping tonight (I barely escaped with my life) and I picked up some bananas. They were in suprisingly good shape for being at a Gas station for more than 10 minutes.

Anyway, while eating my second juicy banana of the evening I began to wonder about the nutritional value of this oddly shaped fruit. Google was able to give me a nice list of pages to look at. The most informative one was this one. Not only was it informative, it was halirious. I think we should hire this guy as our creative writer (sorry Daniel). My favourite quote (located on the nutrition page) was “Way to go Bananas!”.
This site, although entertaining and informative, is somewhat scary. It is owned and operated by Dole (fruit company) and is all about how you should eat 5 bananas a day (look at the web address).

Have time to waste? Me neither. Still, I managed to find time to play Tux Racer and so should you. I was searching for K-Meleon, an open-source lightweight web browser based on Mozilla’s rendering engine (which is quite good). Anyhow, the K-Meleon website is missing (if you know anything about the project status or where the website went, let me know).

A Google search for K-Meleon took me to SoureForge.net, a site where open-source developers can host their projects for free. One of these projects is Tux Racer. It’s a simple and fun little open source racing game (I’ve always loved racing games. I rule at MarioCart and loved F-Zero). It ran nicely on my machine (a PIII500/256MB/Voodoo3) at the bad-ass resolution of 1600 by 1200 (you have to edit a text config file to change the resolution).

The best part is there are only a few levels so far, so you don’t have to worry about a long term addiction (like matt has to flash mini-golf).

They’re just too dangerous to have wandering around untamed.

While complaining can give one a feeling of superiority, however empty and short lived it may be, good things do happen. A good thing for anyone purchasing computer components, especially in Atlantic Canada, is Robotnik Discount Computers.

Their website is, well, lively (as the hilarious graphic to the right indicates) but don’t be too quick to judge them. The have consistently competitive prices (ridiculously cheap RAM right now) and their shipping is prompt. They claim to have live help, but I have never needed it.

Treat yourself to some RAM while it’s cheap. For $32, you can get 128MB, which will make a world of difference.

Belated, as always.

I’m taking a week off!

I’m going on an all expenses paid nation-trotting voyage next week so there will be less Rob on AOV. Unless I can find some kind of net access on the road.

I trust Steve will keep it real in my absence, if not, go read some of Matt’s stuff at the greatest e-zine in the world. Feel free to read other content too, but think of AOV when you see Matt’s stuff.

In other news, I just saw AI and it was amazing. It was long though. If I was the world famous director, I would have cut it off at one point, but it kicked back up for another half hour or so. I’m being vague but when you see the flick, you’ll understand. It’s kind of like the new Godzilla (not 2000, just ‘Godzilla’), that movie had like 7 climaxes and possible times to end.

Ben Sankey had an excellent game for the Stamps last night, helping Calgary defeat the defending Grey Cup champs, the BC Lions, 35-28 in an exibition game.

Read “San-key!” at Forget Magazine.

In England, a Pony who had an “exotic past in a wildlife park” gave birth to what scientists call a “Zeedonk”.

I for one think it’s cute. Too bad about the scientist’s name, ‘Shebra’ is much cooler. Here’s hoping that someday well discover a squoctopus…

For those who participate in this discussion following a post here on aov about the death of the free web, you may find this comic interesting as it deals with the topic of file-sharing and micropayments.

The comic, by Scott McCloud is interesting for what it says and for how it says it. Check out I Can’t Stop Thinking #6.

Sundays I like to sleep in until 10. But I’m not today. It’s 8:30 now, not 10. And I can’t fall back to sleep, because I’ve moved around too much.

At about quarter after eight, I was rolling around on my bed when I heard my door crack open a bit, then close. I heard this, but decided to stay snoozing.

Two minutes later, my mom comes into the room and says, “Rob, 911’s here, but you’ve been asleep, you didn’t dial did you?”

I hadn’t. But I crawled out of bed to see a cop at my front door checking things out. Saying they got a call ten minutes ago from my line. We have two phone numbers, the one with the DSL did it.

The 911 guy (who I assumed was a cop, I was too sleepy and dumb to look at his uniform, but he was packing heat), said that something happened with a guy not long ago and they think it was the internet. “Something about email or something, but I don’t know that stuff, so I can’t say”.

This made me think, yesterday morning at about the same time, my phone woke me up by making a strange ringing noise. It ‘blipped’ once, and then 30 seconds later, ‘blipped’ again. I don’t know any more about phones than that guy knows about the internet, but that DSL line also rang a few times last summer and I answered to find a strange noise (not a modem handshaking). But my phone actually calling somebody seems a little strange. Has anybody heard of this? We’re calling Island Tel tomorrow to see if they’ve ever heard of this or if they’ll tell us we actually dialed the number without knowing.

I think I’m tired again, I’m going back for another hour.