Golden's Domain

Heading to Chicago and putting site on hold

2008-03-03T10:37:00.004-05:00

I'm off to Chicago tomorrow and can't wait. It's been a while since I was last there. I'm mostly looking forward to dining at Alinea on Wednesday night, but it'll be fun to explore the city tomorrow evening. A while back I mentioned how I have added security to control access to this site. I find it absolutely ridiculous the lengths people are going to in order to access my blog. Is it not clear

I've been acquired

2008-02-25T22:27:00.003-05:00

This morning, it was announced that PlateSpin (the company I work for) has been acquired by Novell. You can read all about it here. http://www.platespin.com/novell/ This is the result of 5 years of very hard work, put in by a terrific group of people. I've been with the company for 4.5 years and it has been a crazy ride. I was employee #14 when I started. Today, there are ~186 employees

Going to Alinea!!!!

2008-02-20T23:38:00.002-05:00

In a couple of weeks, I'll be going to Chicago for work. I decided to see if I could get a reservation at Alinea (http://www.alinea-restaurant.com/). It can be extremely difficult to get in, but I was shocked to find they had availability for the night I wanted! I can't wait!!!! On a completely different topic ... I think I'll be sticking around Toronto even longer. I don't have any reason

Questions from Readers

2008-02-18T15:40:00.004-05:00

I've been getting a bunch of e-mail lately from people who read this site. There are a few questions which are coming up on a regular basis and I felt I'd answer them here. Let's begin with a question that's all too timely. "There must be people who you'd rather not read the content of your blog. Is that why you stop posting occationally?" There's a limit as to how personal I get on here,

Living in Toronto ... Again

2008-02-14T11:20:00.003-05:00

Nope, I have no plans to blog about what day it is today. I'm trying to go about my day avoiding as much of it as possible. Instead, there's another topic to discuss. For the first time in over a year, I actually feel as if I'm living in Toronto again. It's a weird feeling. A lot of people ask me if I'm happier here than in Boston. That's actually a tough question to answer. If it weren't

It's payback time

2008-02-12T20:53:00.001-05:00

I spent most of the past 3.5 years travelling for work. Because of this, I'd been able to pretty much avoid winter. I'd tend to either find myself in the warmer, southern states or be somewhere in the southern hemisphere. I think nature's decided it's time for me to have the full winter experience. The weather in Toronto is definitely proof of

Snowy Toronto

2008-02-07T19:35:00.000-05:00

I drove to Toronto today. Other than a little bit of snow fall as I left Massachusetts, the weather was pretty good. Traffic was surprisingly light. The only traffic I experienced was once I got in to Toronto (but that's expected around 4pm). While I was aware of the difference in weather between Boston and Toronto, I wasn't quite prepared for it. I've been fortunate to have most days be

Heading to Toronto

2008-02-06T12:47:00.000-05:00

Tomorrow, I'm heading to Toronto for 2 weeks. I've decided to drive, as I'm going to start moving some of my belongings back with me. This will simplify my move back to Toronto in a few months. I'm still not sure when I'll be moving back. Some time in July is still the current plan, but I may move back as early as April. I'll have all this sorted out next week. I think the biggest thing

Unexpected responses

2008-02-04T09:27:00.000-05:00

Well ... I didn't expect the number of e-mails that came in from my previous post. I'm even surprised people even knew which e-mail account to send messages to, as I haven't posted it in a long time (webmaster@goldensdomain.com). Either way, I appreciate the support, even though I have no idea who most of you are. There were two common themes in the e-mails. The first were statements saying

Coming back to Toronto

2008-02-04T00:09:00.000-05:00

This weekend will probably go down as the worst of 2008 in my books. At least I hope so, as I can't really take much more. My girlfriend and I broke up Friday night. We'd been off and on for over a year now, but this is truly the end. No going back. I'm not going to get in to any specifics, as there are limits as to what I post here (especially when it involves another person). Bottom line,

Let's try this

2008-02-02T11:39:00.000-05:00

Due to being unable to sleep last night, I decided to busy myself with fixing this server. I don't know if I'll continue blogging much longer, but we'll see what happens.

Posting the old fashioned way

2007-12-24T12:56:00.000-05:00

It's been a while since I posted here. There's a problem with my site, causing the automated posting mechanism to fail. I'm still too lazy to fix the problem, so I'm posting this the hard way. A few weeks ago, my girlfriend and I went to The Melting Pot for dinner. For those not familiar with it, it's a national restaurant chain which specializes in fondue. We tried to go a couple weeks before,

DVD Collection Link Fixed

2007-11-27T21:48:00.000-05:00

I just realized the link I had on this site to my DVD collection was wrong. It is now fixed and shows my current collection.

The pics are back!

2007-11-26T15:52:00.000-05:00

I finally have a (relatively) easy way of updating the pics on my site. I just finished uploading all of them. Check them out by clicking the 'Pictures' link on the right and choosing 'Travel and Other Various Pics' on the following page. Let me know if you have any trouble viewing them. Note that there are videos in there as well. If one of the pages takes a long time to load, it's most

Off to Texas

2007-11-13T12:05:00.000-05:00

I'm at Logan airport, on my way to Austin, TX. I have an 8 hour transit ahead of me. This was a very last minute business trip that came up, which has unfortunately caused my trip to London to be postponed (okay, cancelled. I'd like to think I'll plan another trip at some point). It's too bad, as I was really looking forward to it. There are people I know out there who I haven't seen in quite a

Surprise!

2007-11-07T01:13:00.000-05:00

I flew in to Toronto tonight, surprising my brother on his birthday. It all happened pretty quick, with flights only being booked yesterday. There was actually a whole cover-up operation being put on by our parents and his gf, all to make sure he didn't know I was coming. I think we were pretty successful. I'm only staying for the night,

My ears are still ringing

2007-10-29T23:30:00.000-04:00

On Saturday, I met with a group of people to catch The Tragically Hip play at The Orpheum in Boston. It was a really fun show. I good mix of new and old material. Gord Downie is ... ummm ... a weird guy. The things he gets up to on stage is odd to say the least. One thing that really shocked me was how LOUD the show was. It was hands down the loudest concert I've ever been to. Until now, the

Yup, I'm actually taking vacation!

2007-10-24T15:20:00.000-04:00

I can't believe it. I officially have time booked for vacation in both November and December! This is a LONG time coming! This will be my first vacation since last New Years. I just booked tickets to London for November. I'm just going for a week, but that's enough. I miss London very much, so it'll be great to get back there! Definitely looking forward to my old walk through Hyde Park, across

You Pearl Jam fans are insane!!!

2007-10-22T00:28:00.000-04:00

OMG!!!! It's barely a couple of hours since I made my previous post and I've already got 15 e-mails from people about Bridge School. It seems there are a lot of people who were only going to the show to see Eddie Vedder perform and I've hit a nerve bringing it up here. It's not my fault he won't be there. Fact is, he would have only been on stage for 30 - 45 minutes. If you weren't interested

A great weekend

2007-10-21T23:00:00.000-04:00

The weather this weekend has been incredible! Other than my guitar lessons this afternoon, I managed to stay outside most of the time. Yesterday, I walked to Guitar Center to test some amps. I was initially looking at the Line 6 Spider III 75W unit ($299), but also wanted to try the new Line 6 Spider Valve 112 ($699). It didn't take very long to discover just how much better the Spider Valve was

My freezer's full

2007-10-18T22:31:00.000-04:00

A grocery store near my place is closing down this week, so they've been selling EVERYTHING for 40% off. I took full advantage of it and my freezer is now full. It doesn't mean I don't have any shopping left, but it reduces what I need to buy over the coming weeks. I'm going back and forth over picking up a new guitar amp this weekend. I found the model I want for a terrific price. I'm just

Not again!

2007-10-16T15:06:00.000-04:00

I just got a call from my bank, informing me by debit card has been cloned once again! For those that don't remember, this happened the first time back on April 1st of this year. So now my card is locked. It's a real pain, since I need to physically go to a branch in Toronto to get a new card. This is hard considering I don't expect to see Toronto again until the end of the year. Oh well ...

Back in Boston

2007-10-13T21:51:00.001-04:00

This past week in Toronto was great. I got to catch up with a bunch of friends in the city. I also had two friends in from out of town, who I don't get to see very often. On Thursday night, I went to my parents' for dinner and ended up going to meet the boys later in the evening. I had originally planned to call it a night when I got back from my parents', but even though I was pretty much

Oh my

2007-10-13T03:20:00.000-04:00

What a night ..... That's all I'm going to say.

No more AIM

2007-10-11T12:25:00.000-04:00

As of today, I'm no longer using AIM. I only had a few of you on my list. For IM, add me to your MSN lists. If you don't know my account, come find it on Facebook or just e-mail me.