The Long Road

Archives: February 2008

Friday, February 22, 2008

My imagination was sparked in 1992 when I learnt of Elvis Stojko, a world champion figure skater AND martial artist. "Shit," my 12-year old self told himself, "he's be unbeatable in a fight on the ice". This thought resurfaced the other day when my coworkers spoke about the Clint Malarchuk throat slitting. Here, then, is a plot-outline I came up with for an Elvis Stojko action film.

The film begins as an intimate, intense character study of Stojko. It is the year 2010, Stojko, now an ageing athlete, is unsure of what is left to him after having conquered the world of figure skating. He's left it all behind to younger, faster, nimbler, men to raise a family. But somehow, he still feels a little unsatisfied. The life of a suburban dad just isn't for him. Through his connections, he has been able to get a spot on the Canadian Olympic team. Vancouver 2010 will be his last chance to pull off the one move that has haunted him all his life - the quintuple axle.

But the world of figure skating is not what it once was. Skaters will now sell their routines to the latest pop hit for millions of dollars, a champion figure skater's endorsement means millions of skates sold a year. Souless capitalism has made it's way into the last refuge of artistic sports. The worst of this new breed of skaters is a product of the West's two greatest enemies - hardened from the arid deserts of the middle east to the frigid isolation of the Siberian mountains, he does not know doubt, does not feel the cold, and can perfectly execute a quadruple/quadruple on demand. His name is Vladimir Bin Laden, and he is the figure skater to end all figure skaters.

Bin Laden has just signed a tentative agreement with a skate manufacturer that could be worth up to 300 Million$ should he be victorious in the Vancouver games, but news of Stojko's return threatens to overshadow his own popularity and diminish his powers of endorsement. To ensure the value of his star power, Vladimir has hired the Italian mafia to capture and detain Stojko's family, forcing him to withdraw from the competition.

Act 3 is when the promise of this movie's premise is fullfilled. The final showdown between Stojko and Bin Laden on the ice in front of judges, a live audience, and televised to the world. They will stare each other down knowing that this will be a battle to the death with the very future of figure skating in the balance! At which point the best fight music western society has ever produced comes over the arena sound system: MORTAL KOMBAT!! And thus begins the most epic figure skating/martial arts extravaganza the world will ever see. The fight will be choreographed by Yuen Woo-ping and capped off with Stojko finally pulling off a quintuple axle but with 1 leg extended, thus slashing his opponent 5 times! Tatsumakisempukiaku!!

And then the ending sort of writes itself, Stojko wins the gold, everyone is safe, all the details of the plot is revealed to the media, Bin Laden is disgraced, loses his endorsements, and Elvis begins a Martial Arts on Ice show that appeals to both men and women!

Posted by Long @ 04:56 PM EST [Link] [Karma: 0 (+/-)] [No Comments]

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Invest 100 000 000$ to live comfortably for generations
Start a movie production company that only makes epic sci-fi films
-Produce the ultimate Deep Space Nine movie
-File for bankruptcy after 2 films
Fund a full sequel to Mysterieuse Cites d'Ors
Build a very tall condo building and live in the penthouse
-Have a huge library
-Own 1 copy of every comic ever made
See the world
Sleep with lots of very beautiful, shallow women
-Feel eventual dissatisfaction
Get an Aston Martin
-Learn to drive stick
Buy Jaques Hurtubise's Fanette from MOCAM
Buy your love

Posted by Long @ 10:49 AM EST [Link] [Karma: 0 (+/-)] [No Comments]

Friday, February 1, 2008

So last month I finished my project at work. Seven months of software development to create something that I think is pretty kick ass. It's a database driven, web app that uses .NET 2.0, C#, ASP, SQL Server, Stored Procedures, Windows Service, and the AJAX 1.0 Toolkit.

What is it and what does it do? It is as complete a HR scheduling system as I've ever seen. Through this software, you can schedule your employees across multiple locations, they sign in and out at each location (using 3rd party magnetic key tags) and you receive a live newsfeed about employees who didn't follow their schedules (late/early/look too long a lunch/took too short a lunch/left early/left late/didn't show up/etc!). You can then go in and make changes if you want to. Each employee also has their own set of rules, they have default schedules and late and early variances (some employees can be more late/early than others). The next part was a bitch to code, you can run payroll reports for anytime period you want. The software will calculate how much each employee is to be owed taking into account hourly VS salary VS flat rate, overtime laws, stat holiday calculations (holy shit!), bonuses, raises, vacations, sick days, etc. Another cool feature is that you can set up different "companies" to pay employees for. So if I should be working in the Garage one day but I'm paid out of the office, the Garage's payroll will indicate that they owe the office for my time.

Here is the user documentation I wrote for management, you have to download it to your PC to able to read it. Aside from some of you, this is the best thing I've ever done!

The frustrating thing about development, is that I was 90% done about 4 months ago. The vast bulk of the work took as much time as the fine tuning and deployment. As much time is spent coding/thinking about coding as it is not coding. I guess it's not really out of the ordinary for software development, or anything else really. Large swaths of work is easy, but its all the peripheral work that takes time. Like, when you're painting a room, it'll take you more time to set up, tape and paint the edges, and clean up than it will to paint the walls.

Posted by Long @ 09:10 PM EST [Link] [Karma: 9 (+/-)] [4 comments]

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