After eight years of having my MSN alias as “shazow”, it has now been changed to “Andrey”. Many of you wont notice, some of you may freak out — like the illustration of Misko freaking out above (no, it’s not a girl with poor bladder control, whose bad perm caught fire).

This monumental event is for many reasons. Partly because I’m tired of having people ask me “who are you?” after adding me. But for the most part, I’m trying to embrace a wave of change that has been building for some time now. “Going off my beaten path,” as Maria put it. I’ll still be retaining my shazow.net blog and various instances of said alias on various services, but changing my MSN alias is a big step for me. Eight years. Hard drives don’t even last that long. I must have used MSN on half a dozen different computers, and the same number of different IM clients.

Identity is overrated.

People allergic to seafood can eat whale and shark and various other foods that live in the sea. Turns out that the seafood allergy only applies to shellfish, scaly fish, or crustaceans. Sure, that pretty much eliminates most legal choices, but where there is a will, there is a way.

Eating more than four saltines at a time is not easy because they devour all your saliva and you end up chewing on a hard concrete-turning paste. Highly recommended for a good time at the office.

i18n is a numeronym where the 18 is the number of characters omitted from the word internationalization. There are various other ones like L10n which stands for localization, and S12n for Scherpenhuizen. Here’s Mr. Scherpenhuizen’s story:

According to Tex Texin, the first numeronym of [this] kind was “S12n”, the electronic mail account name given to DEC employee Jan Scherpenhuizen by a system administrator because his surname was too long to be an account name. Colleagues who found Jan’s name unpronounceable often referred to him orally as ‘S12n’. The use of such numeronyms became part of the DEC corporate culture, with “i18n” being spawned there in 1985. (Source)

As a wacky penguinite, I’ve paid for my sins to our saviour by using an ATI videocard for the past three years. Now that I have a full time job, it’s time to buy a real videocard.

I’ve been a loyal customer of PCCanada and had three Sushi dinners’ worth of credits saved up. Now that I live in downtown Toronto, this will be my last trip to this wonderful store, with competitive prices and excellent service. I set out on my first bike ride since a decade ago, onwards to Ghettobicoke. All along Queen’s Quey, and onto Lakeshore, with various detours.

Overall, the mission was a success, with lots of gorgeous scenery indulged in the process. The only casualty was my buttocks, which felt like what Owen Wilon’s nose would feel like if an angry bodybuilding plastic surgeon had its way with it. *Rubs posterior*