Rumours of my death are largely exaggerated. I have been busy with the visiting family, and in the rare spare moments I have had the past couple of weeks, I have been attempting to upgrade my system from Win98 to Win2K. Despite my ample research beforehand to avoid problems, I have still come across five apps on my install list that are incompatible or crash, and I have to replace my secondary video card due to Microsoft's removal of support for the Rage II card as a secondary display.

I have just gotten Perl working now, so the Noodles are up and running once again. We just dropped the family off at the airport a few hours ago - so sad to see them go - and now life settles down to something that might become normal...not that I know what that is, yet.

A description of my condition on weekday mornings en route to work would not include words like "enthusiastic", "energetic", "coherent", or even "awake". Certainly, the word "sanity" would have little to do with it. Nevertheless, if I leave Union Station and the first person I see is a man dressed as a giant "Foodland Ontario" logo escorted by two ladies dressed in green and handing out free peaches, my sanity takes a twirl around the block, amusing itself with some interesting architecture and a few attractive passers-by. I had to keep myself from laughing hysterically.

I did, however, eat that peach for hours.

Meet George. He is a large-footed monkey that has come our way via a couple of Portuguese travellers. He'll be helping us out here at The Noodles from time to time, assisting Chicken Noodle in his many duties as official mascot, public relations representative, and minister of cybernetic sauntering.

It's amazing what people will do to try to get my money. Apparently, actually reading this site and discovering it has nothing at all to do with kitchen appliances is not one of them.

I should be a super villain.

At work, I would seem to have the uncanny ability to take something that works perfectly and find an obscure, show-stopping problem that halts everyone's work in their paths. As well, I seem to be able to create these problems out of mere nothingness. Compilers give syntax errors at lines that don't exist, invalid symbols are detected within blank lines of text, and videos of my myself get broadcast demanding the delivery of ONE HUNDRED BILLION dollars.

Mwah ha ha ha!

Picture it: Every developer in the building standing around my desk staring dumbfounded at the screen wondering how such an error could possibly exist. "But it's just the term 'fork-nazi'," they all say. "How could it possibly cause the program to forward to the home page of 'Busty the Boobgoddess'?" They stand there for hours on end scratching their heads whilst I sit up in the rafters dressed in my Marvel-Comic Super-Villain garb wringing my fingers in a Mr-Burns-type fashion and laughing hysterically - a cackle that echoes throughout the building and sends a chill down the spines of those who hear it.

The only problem is that the villain isn't supposed to win. Otherwise, the cartoon would be cancelled - or in this case, I would get fired. And that would be bad. I'm the kind of super villain that likes to lose everytime, to imprison the hero in an easily-escapable situation such that he can thwart my plan in the knick of time, and to call out in the distance "I'll get you next time Software Engineer" as I make a daring escape to my secret hideout. The hero's bed-ridden mother - paralyzed at the hands of the evil-doer - is not supposed to say things like "Oh, just work around the collapsing building for now as it crushes hundreds of innocent people" or "Just hang out with this plump, pimply redhead instead of going to save the slender and busty brunette from the clutches of evil". Real life seems very lack-lustre when you hear things like that going on.

Canada beat Brazil at soccer.

Yes, you read that correctly. Canada beat Brazil at soccer.

Our U-19 ladies team now advances to the inaugural U-19 Women's World Cup, defeating a Brazilian team that seemed to forget that the theme of the tournament was fair play. Hats off to you, ladies; Canadian girls do kick ass!