The Adventures of Andrew Maurer

Having spent several days using Nucleus as my blogger, I am thoroughly unsatisfied. Sure, it gets the job done, but a website is a piece of art – design and functionality being equally important. I am now using WordPress. It is much easier to use, its potential is much greater, and there is much to it that I have still not explored. Installing it, on the other hand, was a nightmare. There were problems with Apache, PHP, the Mysql user accounts and databases, incredibly slow FTP transfer rates – the list goes on. I am very impressed with the company that is hosting my website – their support is outstanding. Even though much of my problems were unrelated to them, they went out of their way to help me. It turns out the support department is located in the Ukraine – talk about outsourcing.

Speaking of which, the other day I heard a rumour that some fast food chains are outsourcing their drive through spokespeople to India. Just imagine – cheap labourers in India asking for your order, typing it into the system, and then sending the order back to your location for the cooks to prepare – oh the woes of global disparity. Wage disparity will continue to be a vast tomb of extra revenue for corporations over the next few decades. Although it is nice to think that corporate social responsibility and the increasing ‘openness’ of which companies are faced will cause them to refrain from exploiting impoverished populations.

On another note, I completed my second day at the gym today. 2x60lb benching 3x(10,10,5), 7:49 2000m erg time, and the usual run alongside mosquito creek. I’m hoping to be able to bench 3 full sets of 10 repetitions of 60lb fairly soon. I’d also like to do a 20 minute erg at least a few times before the Sun Run. There’s only 3 weeks left, and I’m not nearly as fit as I’d like to be. I was also thinking today about when the Grouse Grind will open. With the weather of the last couple days it seems like it’ll still be a ways off. I’ve always thought very highly of the 2800 foot climb up Grouse Mountain – comparable to a 20 minute erg. The major difference is that with the Grouse Grind you can’t quit half way through – once you start, there’s no turning back.

Anyways, there’s only one more day of break left. Its hard to believe this is the last Spring Break of high school. I’ve got mountains of homework to do, and I’ve procrastinated, like always, to the very last minute. I’m hoping I can summon the strength to tackle it tomorrow.