Warren Shea - World of Warren

Things I like/dislike about my travelling to the US

Monday, September 23rd, 2013 at 12:52 am

LIKE

The credit card machines are much faster and generally don’t require a pin – you swipe and you’re done asap.
If you’re in the left turn lane, there’s a traffic light on the corner…see the picture!

So basically, if I’m the second car, at the bottom, behind a truck…I can’t see anything in the red area. So I can’t see the traffic light: when it’s red/green, whatever. So they put a traffic light on the corner, within the line of sight. It’s so smart!!
Cheaper everything – cheaper food, gas, clothes, dvds. Not only is the price lower than usual, there’s also a smaller sales tax (6-7%?) instead of our 13%
Wifi – a lot more wifi everywhere. They have Internet/Wifi in the subway! That’s awesome!
Deep Dish Pizza :)

DISLIKE

When you pay by credit card, a lot of places don’t bring a machine to you – you have to go up to the front to use the credit card. Get with the times, Chicago!
RE: Driving – People accelerate faster and jam the breaks harder, in general. They also don’t signal that often. And they’re more rude, in general (and more prone to road rage). One of the things that I noticed is that many of the drivers are on their cell phones a lot. Like…I glance around and EVERYONE is on their cellphone, driving on the highway. Not only that…they don’t have like, bluetooth or a headset or anything, they do the classic “phone between shoulder and face” thingy…it’s crazy!! SO DANGEROUS!!
Dangerous neighourhoods/abandoned homes. There was a recent shooting in Chicago (Thursday Night) – Cornell Square Park – 3 killed, 23 wounded. It’s a 15 minute drive from where I was, Friday Morning (Midway Airport). Not saying “that could have been me” but the area is definitely dangerous.
Cicadas. Lots of them…..making a lot of noise!

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Chicago Part 2

Sunday, September 22nd, 2013 at 11:57 am

….there’s no Part 1.

I just went on my second trip (hence, Part 2) to Chicago – this time, solo! As you may/may not know, I’m not much of a traveller. I find the idea of going out of my comfort zone….uhh, uncomfortable. I also dislike the idea of going anywhere…uhh less safe. And the US scares the crap out of me. The fact that anyone, in theory, could have a gun – wtf is up with that?!

I must say, it’s pretty crazy travelling for work. I’ve got 3 developers on my team, 1 in Chicago and 2 in Milwaukee. That’s 3 people of my 15 person team. As such, I’m required to travel to the US roughly once a month.

With 4 nights stay at a hotel, car rental, round trip to Chicago and back, gas, plus food expenses ($45~/day allowance), the trip is like, $1500 total. I know it’s for work but I honestly feel pretty guilty, getting a ‘free’ trip and 4.5 days of food, expensed. And all I have to do is…well…work in a different office. I guess it’s cuz I’m still on a high of travelling – I’m sure it gets old – fast. But right now, I don’t mind at all.

I mean, I don’t have kids right now and I’m pretty much good and comfortable as long as I have an internet connection lol. So it’s not really such a huge personal burden on me. That’s probably why it’s okay…

I also really really like staying in a hotel :) The idea of…a nicely made king sized bed, unwrapping fresh, unused soap, seeing what shampoos are offered…the option of US channel TVs. It’s such a nice treat :D

I didn’t go out at night at all during the trip – I was home before it got dark each of the 4 nights (Mon-Thurs). Some of my co-workers totally scared me with ‘how things are in the US, after dark’. For example, I was saying I needed to drive to Chicago Friday morning and I might have to drive at like, 5am. They were like ‘do not get out of the car, for any reason – if a lady comes up to you saying her baby needs help or someone says their house is on fire, just drive away. They may as well be dead to you. I remember one time getting gas and I’m literally sliding a credit card through a pane a tiny crack of bullet proof glass’

When I was in Milwaukee downtown, it’s so eerily empty. Like, imagine the zombie apocalypse occurred, Milwaukee is like the deserted downtown. Seriously, I’m in the core of downtown, looking down in the street and I see like, 3 people walking around. Maybe 12 cars in my field of view. 12 cars! I would compare the amount of people of 9pm Milwaukee downtown with 5am Toronto suburb. If the zombie apocalypse were ever to occur, I’d go to Milwaukee. I imagine I’d be able to handle the zombie volume of that area.

I bought 2 T-Shirts from Hot Topic, a black shirt with a mini arc reactor on the chest. And a spider-man shirt.

I also bought 2 Blu Rays – Star Trek: Into Darkness and Good Will Hunting. Now that I go to the US, and can spend $800, I’m going to start buying all my Blu Rays there – there’s a mere 6-7% sales tax there (1/2 of Ontario) and the cases don’t have that French translation on the boxes, allowing for maximum design and…beauty!

My next trip to Chicago is Oct 21 – Oct 25. During that time, I plan to get a Samsung Galaxy 10.1 Tab (2014) :D Maybe 2.

As I finish writing this on the airplane as it’s about to land, I shall sign off.

Upon landing, I’m going to go home and then go hunting for a Zelda: Wind Waker HD Wii U!

Sunday I have family stuff but I want my Saturday to be just for me – whether it be web development or photography or maybe even work!

EDIT: Sept 22, 3PM – Added pics

My Rented Car – Chevy Sonic
An automatic (haven’t driven an automatic in a year!)

My hotel room at the Hyatt – pretty nice!

Braised Short Ribs
Smoked cheddar mashed potatoes, coilard greens, wild mushroom jus

Maple Pork Chop
Butternut squash risotto, caramelized apples, port cherry jus

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warrenshea.com…needs an overhaul.

Monday, September 9th, 2013 at 2:26 am

I did this site a 1.25 years ago (! time flies !) and haven’t really touched it since.

While it’s good and the pinnacle of my development skill at the time, I’ve still grown (as a developer) since then.

I think my next project may be to update it. And not just update it, also design something that’s modern (and/or timeless) whilst also improving the code (MVC/modular/JSON/JSONP…whatever that is) and CSS. I’d also like to add to the portfolio section – not just the stuff I’ve done in the last 1.25 years, but also maybe add everything somehow. Even the non-relevant stuff – like art. But I’ll try to add it in a discreet and unobtrusive way. Also, I’d like to add my new job responsibilities. It never hurts to give the resume a good ol’ update.

In August, I had 5+ LinkedIner’s contacting me. And my LinkedIn profiles haven’t been updated in a while too. I’d really like to see what would happen if I really get out there.

I feel that I’m past my young prime. I feel like I’m at the start of the second phase of my career. If the first phase were called “Executor”, the second phase would be call “Strategist”.
Going from Junior Designer to Junior Design/Developer Hybird to Junior Developer to Intermediate Front-End Developer to Senior Front-End Developer to Development Lead.
And while Development Lead also sounds like an executor, I think the title Development Manager also applies, which is a strategist/management.

Anyways, I think it’s time for a warrenshea.com redesign/redevelopment. Also, it’d be good to learn something new and keep my skills from rusting. I still debug throughout the day but I haven’t developed something from scratch in a while.

Very excited about this.

And yes, my motivation came from another co-worker upgrading his site. “You won’t upgrade your site without me!” I cry, as I shake my fist in the air! RAWR!

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Should I resurrect The Secret Project KB?

Sunday, September 1st, 2013 at 11:39 pm

When I left my Secret Project KB a few months ago, it wasn’t doing that well…some traffic, but overall nothing much.
I’ve started noticing more traffic to it lately….

(April 2012 to August 2013)

It’s not a huge spike but it’s pretty good overall.

One thing I did notice is that a few months ago, when googling “Kotobukiya Bishoujo”, my site wouldn’t come up for pages. Like, til page 3 or 5 or something I think.

Right now, that google phrase makes it come up #4. #4 !
It’s currently:
Kotobukiya USA
ebay.com
Facebook.com/kotobukiya
My site!
Amazon.com

…..my site is currently beating Amazon for this phrase!

I’m wondering, given that people are going to it more often, that maybe I should resurrect it.

I haven’t had much time for anything – my personal life has been kinda sh!tty lately (not cuz of problems, I mean cuz I don’t have time for anything lately) – but I’d like to go back and revisit my web projects.

Anyways, just some thoughts…. :)

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…I’m still alive….

Wednesday, August 28th, 2013 at 1:30 am

I apologize for the lack of blogging lately!

I won’t lie, I spent much of the last 3 weeks working. Working a lot (almost 14 hours a day…and a couple hours on the weekends)…it’s been really tough.
Was supposed to take 2 full weeks off work for vacation but work reasons made me have to cancel my vacation :(
Fortunately, I took yesterday and today (Tuesday) off to get a 4-day weekend :)
It’s been nice…I spent 7/8th of the time relaxing my ass off….spent the other 1/8 of tonight catching up on work emails so I’m okay for tomorrow. Probably have to work late tomorrow night :(
Didn’t do any coding or proactively working on work stuff during my days off like I wanted to…which is fine. Nothing wrong with relaxing, especially after such a tough 3 weeks.
I’ve been in my new role for 2.5 months – but I hope in 1.5 more months that things calm down. I can’t keep this up forever…

FanExpo
Didn’t end up going…and it’s okay. I’m up to date on both comics and toys, it’s hard to justify the admission price given that anything purchased would be impulse buys. That said, I’d like to go next year. It seems I go ever 2 years lately. 2010, 2012…and 2014? Also, going to go to Anime North next year…for sure! FanExpo’s been bothering me the last few years. When I went in my geek prime, admission was $20 and it was Friday, Saturday and Sunday. It was Comics and Anime and that was it. Now it’s Comics, Anime (which are both considerably smaller), Sci-fi (acceptable), Horror (I’d pay not to see Horror), Gaming (would rather not have that here), and SPORTS. SPORTS NOW?! Now it’s just a general, broad convention. Still brings out the stars but it’s not at all what it used to be for me. BLEH.

Comics
Read Crimson (1-24), Revelations (1-6) and I’m reading Out There (1-18) right now. Going back through some of my Humberto Ramos comics..love his art. Never really read those comics – just bought them for the art.

Shows
Watching the series of Malcolm in the Middle at the moment. It’s such an awesome show, written so well! Won so many awards….but I don’t think it caught on that well. Very underrated :(
Breaking Bad….has been as epic as always. Last week’s episode was okay, more just set up. This week’s was great. With only 5 episodes left this season…I cannot predict what’s going to happen next. The writers, like, 10 of them, spent thousands of hours coming up with the best, most satisfying conclusion. I don’t think anyone can predict what’s gonna happen next.
IMDB rates Breaking Bad a 9.4/10.

Wow look at this list:
http://www.imdb.com/search/title?num_votes=5000,&sort=user_rating,desc&title_type=tv_series&ref_=nb_tv_3_srs
3: Game of Thrones (Need to watch)
4: Breaking Bad (Watching)
5: The Wire (I was supposed to watch this! I feel more inclined to watch it)
6: Sherlock (Watching)
8: Arrested Development (Never watched)
8: Sopranos (Never watched)
10: Firefly (Joss Whedon’s….show I never watched)
11: Dexter (….this show’s not worthy of #11 imo…maybe the first 3 seasons…and a couple of seasons after that but much of it’s crap)
12: Avatar: The Last Air Bender !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WHAT?!?!?! THIS CARTOON IS RATED #12 of ALL SHOWS on IMDB. Not saying it doesn’t deserve it (it does, it’s a fantastic show), just saying I’m surprised and impressed. Technically, the best rated cartoon on IMDB :) That’s saying a lot!
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19: Seinfeld
20: Death Note
23: Batman TAS
25: Friends

….holy crap there are a lot of shows on this list I wanna watch.

Games
Spent a considerable number of hours playing 2003’s Initial D: Special Stage [PS2][JAP]. It’s still really fun :) Haven’t played my PS2 in years but playing this game is worth having it connected. I wanna play more :)

Expanded my house completely in Animal Crossing: New Leaf [3DS]. Been keeping track of the Stalk Market the last few weeks (have a Google Docs spreadsheet). Last week, I sold my turnips for 597 bells! About 6x more than I bought them for. The week before, 450 and the week before that, 207. At one point, I had 11 million bells but spent a lot of that buying turnips again as well as expanding my house. I expanded my house like, 6 times/days in a row.

Trying to get the 4 mannequins and also complete my costumes. Need to start impressing Gracie. Right now, I have the Samus costume but I want the Link and Mario/Luigi costumes. Currently, I’m dressed as a frog :)

Kotobishoujo
Sad this thing hasn’t been updated. I’m actually getting quite a bit of traffic lately. Every time a statue is released, my site get a spike in traffic. Kinda wanna start it up again but would rather do various figure reviews instead.

Movies
Totally missed out on movies once my job changed. Never saw Monster’s University, The Wolverine, Planes, or Despicable Me 2. *I* never saw The Wolverine! I should return my “Geek” card right now!

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That’s it for me I guess.
Going to Chicago and Milwaukee for work again during the week of Sept 12. It’s crazy, flight there and back, hotel, car rental, food…it’s like a free $1500~ trip…AND I get paid that week. I feel like I’m taking advantage but considering the personal sacrifice, I’m really not. Sadly, my Friday is all travel: 9-11 drive from Milwaukee to Midway Airport, 2pm flight and arrive in Toronto at 4:30. Basically 9-5:30 travelling. What a waste of time. I need to find a way to make it productive – maybe I can like, read or get an audio book. I bet a lot could be covered, listening to an audio book for 7.5 hours :)

Books I want to read
Game of Thrones
Harry Potter
The Hunger Games (Book 1 and maybe Book 2/3)
…..but I never read so even though I want to read them…it’ll probably never happen.
…..but I would listen to an Audio book of them :)

Okay, that’s enough for now :) Good night! I’ll try to write again soon!

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