Sorean's Virtual Home

After the initial surge it hasn’t been bad. Got a bit of a cold, a lot of “just in case” time which means that I’m not doing too much, but I am helping out my friend here in the UK. Today is the scheduled update of the second server so lets hope that goes better. It is a newer system than the other one, but let us all cross our fingers that this goes smoother

- Sorean

Today is Tuesday, 0932h local time, 0232h Calgary time, yes I’m a little tired today, reason will be explained shortly.

I arrived Sunday morning at 11 AM local time and got to the hotel around 2 PM. The most wicked part? My best friend made it up to the hotel to chill with me for the entire afternoon/night. It’s funny that the first time we see each other in 10 months is 1/2 way across the world in a country we didn’t plan on being in together at the same time. I mean I was pretty excited to see him here, had dinner, chilled, talked about anything and everything. Zombie holocaust for example. How to survive, different theories, etc. The funniest thing, Shaun of the Dead came on later that night. We agreed that we would shoot each other if the other got infected, wouldn’t keep each other alive and chained up so we could play games risk is too great. Better to off the other person and let them rest. Onto less morbid topics we covered his trip so far, relationships, work, future plans, careers, etc. We might not be where we are in a few years, but life is never the way we plan. I never planned on leaving Saskatoon when I was younger, not even until I was 18. And now, I’ve been in Calgary for the past 8 years, building a different life off my own. It was simply awesome seeing Xpower.

Alright, so day 1 was spent chilling with Xpower, slept for a total of 3 hours in about 36 and ended up crashing before Ed at about Midnight local time, which was awesome because I figured yes! I have this jet lag thing beat.

We get up the next day get a buffet style breakfast from the hotel and head out. My friend Albert drove me (bought him a bottle of CC this time around), he also drove me last time I was here to and from the hotel most of the days. I make sure my friends are treated well so I figured it was a fitting gift. Not too expensive out of my pocket and showed him my appreciation Anyway we dropped off Ed at Stonehenge on the way to work and the first few hours wasn’t too bad. Updating a few test machines and then the server….. oh how I hate that machine.

***Warning about to get technical, skip to TL;DR below if you’re not a geek***
Updated our client and admin software without a hitch, got documentation updated for the users here. Next was the back end engines on one of the servers. We have an automated tool that goes through and updates all databases when compared to a snapshot of the correct set up. Well the problem is the server is running such an old version of the SQL database it didn’t update properly, it for some reason was not recognizing the line breaks in the code of the updater and because the entire function was on one line, any update procedure that included a “–” would cause an error. So I had to update the entire database by hand. Luckily the application we use also spits out the raw SQL statements, if it didn’t do that I would have had to sit and manually compare the snapshot and the database. Even with that little bit of grace granted to me, I was working on the machine from about 1300h to 2330h. If it wasn’t for the fact that machine had to be ready by this morning I would have had a much better first day on the job here. It needed to be ready to go for 0700h and was just a bloody nightmare. Hopefully I’ll get to go home early today and rest up a bit and catch up on sleep.

The sleep last night wasn’t very helpful either, woke up at 0130h and 0315h. At 0315 I decided just to stay up for a little bit and make myself a little more tired. Luckily that seemed to work, slept until my alarm went off at 0605, snooze, woke up and rushed to get ready as Albert was due at 0630. Made it just in time.

TL;DR version: server upgrade didn’t work as planned and I had to manually do everything that was supposed to be automated. Went to bed at 2330h for a total of a 16 hour working day. Slept horribly. And had to be up and ready to be back on base by 0700h.

That’s it so far, more updates will come.
-Sorean

Current Track: Above & Beyond pres. OceanLab – Lonely Girl (Original)

I’m a Saskie boy that moved to Cowtown.
But now I’m done the partying and looking to settle down.
I’m trying to be a little more than unique.
Maybe, just maybe, I’m that guy you seek.

I play volleyball all year, it’s something I can’t live without.
I’m a Riders fan through and through, loyal and devout.
The Flames aren’t bad and I’ll cheer for them too.
But I will bleed for my Leafs, white and blue.

I’m a bit creative but also pretty humble.
I walk talk and admit my mistakes when I stumble.
Since the world isn’t a perfect utopia I do what I can.
I make life better for those around me, by doing so becoming a better man.

I’m a little bit of smarts, mixed with charm and wit.
If you can keep up with me, we’d be the perfect fit.
I’m by no means perfect, none of us are by design.
But if you’re that special someone, for you I’ll always find the time.

Just so you understand and nothing is amiss.
Let me put it simply as this:
You can call me your’s if I can call you mine.
Thanks for reading this and thanks for your time.

Bends over the body and checks for a pulse but he does not find one
Looks at his watch and announces, “Mark it down Sorean, Time of Death, July 6th, 5:55 PM”

In all reality, I’m not sure when my inner romantic died, but the above seemed to have a much more dramatic effect . Sometime in the past eight years of my life my inner romantic was killed and the corpse left hidden deep in the recesses of my mind that I do not wander into.

I simply know now that I am not the same man that I entered into this city in. I’ve become jagged and rough, no more rosy coloured glasses to which I gleam passing images of optimism. My life experience has granted me corrective surgery; years of erosion has claimed what smooth and polished finish I once had.

A friend of mine for some reason had some of my previous work stored on her computer, stuff that I’ve long since lost myself because of a hard drive failure many years ago. It turns out it was all my earlier works of poetry. Stuff I had forgotten that I had written. Emotions and images about certain people that I crafted with my own hands. One particular piece twisted me in a way I did not know possible.

There’s something I want to tell you Les,
The first time I called you a witch, it was simply a jest.
But now I swear that it’s true,
Because I’ve been enchanted by you.

It’s easy for me to write poems that rhyme.
I can do it over and over, time after time.
But when it comes to writing of you,
There’s something that is hard to do.

I’ve fallen for you somewhere along the way,
There are so many things that I want to say.
I don’t know where and I don’t know when,
But given the chance I’d do it again.

Every time you’re near you make me smile,
And it’s not just for a little while.
It’s like you’ve cast a spell on my memory,
Every time I close my eyes, its you I see.

I realize that a million poems could not suffice,
Because you are too sweet, smart and nice.
You’re more beautiful than anyone I know,
The feelings I have for you are more than I show.

I wanted to tell you all this before,
but now I’m only here for four months more.
I wish that I had more time,
but I’m traveling a very thin line.

I don’t deserve someone like you,
But the next thing I say is true.
If you say you’ll be mine,
I could love you from now until the end of time.

This is the first anyone outside of me and the girl mentioned in the poem will ever read it. Those that went to high school with me will know who this girl is. I may have shared it with one other person in memory. But reading it again today, made me realize what I had lost (not the girl). Of course it didn’t happen because I wrote that shortly before moving to Calgary, she was going to live her life, I mine; But reading it today I remember crafting that with a fine precision to let her know how I truly felt at the time. I could so clearly articulate what I meant and what I felt. But now, I try to find the author of those words and he’s no where to be found.

Maybe I think that poem is better than it really is, but somehow I don’t think I could ever put together the way I feel about someone as perfectly as I did in that piece. People say that romance is long dead, at least I know mine died somewhere in the past eight years. I’m not mourning the loss of a potential relationship, I’m mourning the loss of my creative ability to craft words into emotions, I’m mourning the loss of a skill that I could have developed into something so much more, and I’m mourning the loss of the romantic that may never see any relationship the same way as when I was eighteen.

Even as I write this I feel the urge to slap myself and say, “stop being so emo”. I’m sure the middle ground is in there somewhere.

Go ahead and flame on. I’m going to find a way to resurrect that ability.

/end emo.

Semi-fitting track: John O’Callaghan feat. Sarah Howells – Find Yourself