TGIT

Wooo long weekend starts now. Apparently those crazy west coasters are hittin the sauce a bit early. No reported casualties or anything so far, so I jest. Wouldn't be a very good way to start the long weekend. As usual I'm sure the weekend will fly by, but I intend to make the most of it and try to get some lazy ass friends out to play some soccer or baseball or SOMEthing. But it will likely end up being the typical chorus: "its too hot", "i don't like [insert sport]", or "i have plans".

Right now I'm waitin on goin out for some barbecue and beverage action. Have a fresh charge in the batteries, so hopefully some good photo ops present themselves. Been pretty dry on the images lately, and quite frankly pure text pages tend to be boring. Especially when they don't really say much.

On the not saying much theme, I realized I didn't have my plug-in installed that logs songs (artist, title, number of times played, etc.) in winamp. I turned that on, so in a week I'll post a site friendly version of the top 10 songs and artists or something.

Ride's here, gotta roll.

Shrimp 4, Me 0

Sometimes in cliche land people's eye's are bigger than their mouths, and their stomachs more coercive than the grey matter upstairs. That was apparently the case for me on Thursday night when I came home from work and had some shrimp that had been sitting in a bowl in the fridge since Monday evening. Sure I questioned its integrity. Sure a couple of the tails had turned slightly yellow and I threw them out, but I simply could not let the good looking ones go to waste.

Skip forward a chapter (we live in the DVD age now after all, no more VHS/Beta for you) to Friday morning. Stomach cramps, running to the bathroom every 10 minutes, and a general feeling of nausea.

This chapter had low budget, poorly scripted sequels on Saturday, Sunday, and today, with a decreasing frequency of the bathroom runs since I thought a reduced intake of food would give me some reprieve from the cramps and for convenience sake, the trips to the can. And now it seems like this anthology has come to an end 4 days later, although some reading of those handy dandy health sites all over Google and Yahoo suggested that food poisoning generally does last 4 to 7 days, so maybe I'm just par for the course.

MIT

The Days Grow Shorter

3 days into the astronomically defined summer, and the amount of daylight in the northern hemisphere is shortening again, but that's not doing anything about this gorgeous weather. Central Canada is getting either rained out, or in Northern Manitoba , snowed out, but here in Southern Ontario its been a gorgeous Friday to finish off the work week, and to top it all off, its payday. A lot of people find the humidity around here too much, but after having a couple field work terms in the winter, I have learned to appreciate whatever heat I can get when nature wants to give it to me. Granted, we've had like 30 smog advisory days already this year which probably isn't spectacular for my lungs, or anyone elses, and it is clearly visible from a high point at my field site, but unfortunately people are too stubborn to change. I'll keep trying to do my part by riding my bike to work whenever possible, and not using the A/C (since I don't mind the heat anyways), and hope in vain that it catches on with a few more people.

Apparently the Spurs won the NBA finals last night. I couldn't have cared less who of the Spurs or Pistons won. Baseball's the sport of choice right now, and although I'm goin nowhere in my Yahoo fantasy leagues, I'm still tryin to make a stretch run to get me out of the basement in the second half of the season. After looking so good on paper to begin with, most of my numbers have been destroyed by playing with half a roster on the DL, and in one case suspension for enhancing drug use.

The Jays are still relatively in a fairly tight AL East, as compared to past BoSox, Yankees runaway seasons. I'm pissed though that MLB has scheduled Toronto, the last remaining Canadian team, to play in Boston over the Canada Day weekend, Canada Day being Friday. I realize its the American Independance Day as well, but seriously, everyone knows teams play their weekend series' Thursday or Friday to Sunday, and then ship out for a new series starting Monday or Tuesday. Boston's not a cross continent flight. Schedule them to play in Boston on the 4th, and stay in country to play on the 1st. Really I'm just pissed cause I wanted to go see a game next Friday, but oh well.

I think the barbecue calls...

Needs

I spent about 20 minutes of this weekend not in my room. Its amazing how much reading and online poker playing one can accomplish when faced with an assload of nothing to do. I did a lot of browsing around the web too, got a couple ideas for things to do with the site. Might get around to adding some things this week, although it sounds like it might be a busy week, which will actually be a welcome change as compared to the last week or so at work, and the past few weekends.

I need to take off for a day and go hiking or biking somewhere new, get out and do something. I need to finish some renovations around the house. I need to save some money for a bit to make sure I'm in good shape in my 4 months not working September through December. I need to do a lot of things, but I find my lack of business making me feel lethargic. Of course, once I am busy again, I won't have the time to do these things. I need to stop bitching.

D-Street Memo

I first saw the Downing Street Memo mentioned on MBlog, and went to the linked site to read the source. Apparently this document is getting zero to negligible attention in American media, I know I for one have not seen it come up channel surfing through news networks. If telling lies to mislead a nation were receiving blowjobs, you know there'd be a full on inquiry into this already looking to have the U.S. President impeached. U.S. Democrats have now called for some investigation, although with seemingly less rigour than when Clinton was called to defend his actions. One can only hope that something will actually come of this, and the U.S. government will be held accountable for its actions.

A Canadian Live 8 show has been announced to be held in Toronto, but no artists are officially listed yet, only speculation. If they get some decent artists, I'd love to go, but work is slated to start getting ridiculously busy around then, we'll see what happens.

Foo Copyrighters

I've just spent the last 2 hours trying to get the latest Foo Fighters album, In Your Honor, that I legitimately went out and bought today ripped to MP3. Both discs are copy protected to the point that you can't even play the audio CD as straight audio without it first downloading a license. The first few times I attempted to do this, it had trouble reading the disc, but finally it went ahead and installed the license. A clean looking menu comes up with all the songs on the disc, but then wants you to play them using Media Player, and being a Micro$oft product I am against it. It also gives you an option to copy the tracks to .wma format, but as I found out upon transferring them from my laptop to my PC, these too are copy protected and encrypted such that they won't play in wma form without the license installed, and are impossible to convert to mp3 format, or at least one that sounds like a song. Now while I like the music itself on the album a lot so far, this bullshit to listen to the music via a computer is ridiculous. Yes I understand the music industry has taken a hit from file sharing and the like. Yes I agree that musicians should earn money for their work (although I strongly disagree with record companies themselves making as much as they do by basically riding on the coattails of those more talented). But come on, a person should be able to pop a CD in their computer and grab the tracks to listen to easily on any of their computers (within the same household no less) in whatever media format they like, on whatever media software they choose. I'm highly disappointed with the Foo/Foo Management on this one.

...Those Things are for the Birds and the Bees, I Want Money

Money, like the fall, is not the problem. Instead, like the abrupt stop at the end, it is NOT having money that's a bitch. The seatpost on my bike folded over on me, I assume because of riding so much with a full pack back and forth to the university, and so I walked my ass up to the nearest bike shop today and dropped 80 bucks on a new one. The one thing I am thankful for is that my bike isn't a car, in which I could multiply my spending by 10 no doubt. That won't be until January hopefully when I am hoping to get a vehicle to get an ideal co-op job for the January-August 8 month period. That said money doesn't buy everything. The Jays are still up on New York in the AL East standings, despite having 4 and a half times the money invested in their payroll, and with less than a month til the All Star break. I could care less if the Jays even come close to the playoffs this year if they end with a better record than the Yankees.

With nothing better to do lately, I've been spending a lot of time reading on my roof.

I think tonight will be more of the same along with a couple shots of liquid cocaine.

You wish you were me.

If the Air Were Any Thicker, One Could Swim In It

Just got in from a 13 hour day in the field...well, 9 hours in the field, 4 in the office...but we managed to time the field work on the hottest, muggiest part of the day. I am honestly still enjoying it though, having previously frozen my ass off for at least 2 months of the work term on my previous two work terms. And the eye candy one sees driving around in the summer more than makes up for the perpetual sweating and feeling like you could drink the Southern Ontario smog-air. And even the smog I can't really complain about. One of the grad students I work with just got back from L.A. where they actually find a clear day on which they see blue sky and maybe even the Hollywood sign an anomaly. That's what they get for havin all the sunshine and hot waitress/actresses.

Lost in boredom

Fun in the Sun

Well in three days so far this week I've worked 37 hours. They have been the most physically strenuous days of any of my three terms with my current placement so far, with the sun all day long playing a big role...and having destroyed the spots on the back of my shoulders I missed with the sunblock today...but that said, they've also been some of the most enjoyable so far. I certainly can't complain about being stuck outside all day with minimal bug attacks, and plenty of food and drink at hand.

With all the work though I have had limited energy on getting home to read up on current events, or really do much of anything except grab a bite to eat and watch a Jays game til dozing off. I did catch something on Deep Throat last night though, the obvious sexual suggestiveness aside, I wonder why now of all times since that the watergate opened on this story...obvious pun intended...I assume some political party somewhere had something to gain by it all...

That's all for now