Invite options

Relaxing Weekend? What relaxing weekend? It was a busy wedding weekend. We has activities booked both Saturday and Sunday… (which I don’t think we’ll do again. I need a down day on the weekends, gah….) That said, I think we got a lot accomplished and it was a productive weekend for wedding ideas and planning. Saturday we met with both a florist for our wedding flowers and a graphic designer for our invitations. Some of the fundamental decisions have to be made regarding colours for the event. We’ve looked at a bazillion fall flower combinations and we are certain about plum as a colour, but plum and what? Plum and Orange? Plum and Green? Plum and White? Yellow? Pink? I’m hoping bdot will survive this troubling decision. We had some thoughts going into the florist but he pointing our some advantages to certain colour combos which has derailed our initial ideas. Which is fine… I think the florist had some great ideas and I’m confident whatever they come up with will look fabulous darling!. We didn’t find it surprising that yet again in spite of trying to be modest with our selections, the florist will also be slightly over budget. I think we will look at a second option, even though we are quite happy with our local florist. After hastily scarfing down some food between appointments, we met with the Graphic Designer to discuss invitation options. The designer had an impressive home based business in her basement. I enjoy fonts, typography, layout, graphics, whitespace… so I’m going to be particular about the invitation’s design. I could certainly design the card myself, but she had all the paper, supplies and knows how they best work together outside of the digital medium. As with the flowers, we have ideas but we are still not certain what direction to go with the design. This graphic or that graphic, and again which colours to use… The designer was very helpful but I think we need to decide ourselves the fundamental direction to take the invite before we involve her and get charged $100/hr (gasp!) to design the invite.

While we didn’t finalize anything, we narrowed down a lot of details and have a good idea of costs and possibilities for two more aspects of the wedding. We are getting there. After a long afternoon of thinking and rushing around we chilled out and watched a movie.

The evening showing in the Great Room Saturday night was Contagion. (This was my second choice, my copy of Rise of the Planet of the Apes wouldn’t play :P) The movie was a little different than I was expecting… It focused more on the vaccine creation process and pharmaceutical behind the scenes politics than on action or characters. While I found this angle interesting and informative, I thought it made for a less interesting and entertaining movie. I did enjoy the film, but it seemed to be lacking something. The acting was bang on and the cast was impressive : Matt Damon, Jude Law, Laurence Fishburne, Gwyneth Paltrow, Kate Winslet… but the characters were disappointingly underdeveloped as the film followed several sub-plots simultaneously. I’m not sure how accurate the information in the film was, but how quickly a virus could ravage humanity is profoundly disturbing. The aspect I enjoyed the most of the film was witnessing humanity’s response to doom and death… Unfortunately, from the film’s point of view, We rarely showed our best side. I believe this would be true, from those who govern us, to our neighbours, friends and co-workers, when pushed to extremes, most people become selfish and ugly. Certainly was very little grace under pressure. ⭐⭐⭐

Right! A wedding requires someone to marry you! So the quest for an officiant began Sunday morning. Since the ceremony will not be religious we can essentially get anyone with the authority to conduct the ceremony. We drove across the top of Toronto to Markham to meet candidate one. For me, the main qualifications for our officiant would be personality and professionalism. I’d like the ceremony to be run smoothly, perhaps some humour, be meaningful for us (and ideally the guests) and not more verbose than it needs to be. The woman we met was certainly very professional but I’m not sure about a personality match. I like her, but I think I’d like to meet at least one or two more officiants to compare their message and agendas. Again, this was our first kick at the can and it gives us information to make decisions with. We shall see.

Since we were in Markham we reluctantly decided to pick up my Asus Transformer Prime tablet at NCIX. First off… WTF Markham? First Markham Place is a ridiculous zoo on a Sunday! in January!… it was like the week before Christmas in that mall trying to find a parking spot. Cars honking, people running out in front of cars that then honked….a madhouse. The NCIX visit was disappointing. Bdot had pre-ordered the tablet months ago… and had not heard anything from them since… even having placed a downpayment… So one would assume that once the tablet arrived, you’d get a call or at least an e-mail letting you know the tablet you’ve been waiting for over 20 weeks is sitting in the back room collecting dust and should fracking be picked up?! But no. No call. No e-mail. Nothing. Then she went to pay for the tablet and they wanted to take a carbon copy of her credit card? WHAT? What year is this? That is one shady business practice IMHO… needless to say bdot was having none of that (smirk – I think the clerks were not prepared to deal with an adamant female customer… I enjoyed watching them shrink away and run for their manager. The manager was out, so they pushed the issue no further…) *eyeroll* Seriously, 21st century AT A COMPUTER STORE and you want to carbon copy our credit card? Wow…

The next stop was at bdot’s sister’s. As usual, it was bustling with the massive toddler energy of our nephews. We caught up on the boys activities with her sister. It was short visit as we had a lot still to do at home.

After grocery shopping, walking the dog, laundry and making dinner … I finally had a chance to sit down with my new toy the Asus Transformer Prime. (Merry Christmas to me! Thanks bdot!) My first thought was that it seemed smaller and lighter than I was expecting. The small form factor was impressive. The screen is very sharp with high clarity, it is as good as any monitor I’ve seen. The first thing I did was update the tablet to Android 4.0 ICS. It was a snap to upgrade. A few clicks and I was enjoying the Android enhancements of ICS. ICS is really slick looking and the functionality additions make the OS feel significantly more refined. The update seemed stable all night long. No issues. This morning however it did suddenly reboot. Since day one it seems this cutting edge tablet has been rushed to market. I guess to beat the iPad 3? and it shows. Repeatedly ASUS has fumbled with the release and QA on this product. The Wifi issues, the GPS issues and now graphic driver issues. The device is impressive for sure, but ASUS’ half ass QA attitude is extremely disappointing and disheartening. I want to support Android but poor PR by ASUS and infuriating QA decisions over and over are making it difficult. That said, the issues are being addressed, patched and fixed. The wifi seemed to work as well as any other wifi device in the house. I was getting the same signal level on my phone and on bdot’s tablet from the various locations throughout the house. I’m a little surprised to hear some people are dumping this device after the first hint of a problem. You should lose your geekcard for that. I can see incredible potential with the Prime. It is very responsive and renders graphics quickly with ease. I expect the Prime will become my primary device at home for online social interaction and information consumption. And quite simply, tablet touch technology is fun. I find myself trying to swipe my old first gen phone all the time now. It responds blankly unamused and the screen doesn’t change at all. The main rear camera seems competent and was able to take a decent photo at night in poorly lit room. I’m sure I’ll have much more to say about the device as I use it in the future. I believe once it is patched it will be an fun little powerhouse that enhances my numerous geeky endeavours. *snort!*

And back to work… blah.