Crickets

Well I went through the pains of reformatting my computer again last night. I'm in a good mood now, so I won't get into the enjoyment of all that. In a couple breathers though I went out on my balcony to enjoy the fresh night air, and was dismayed to hear a smattering of chirps in the grass. This summer's gone fast, and already there are crickets warning of its impending doom.

Tony's hot blonde machine linked me the other day, and my traffic for the past 3 days has at least quintupled...lets say sextupled just for the schoolboy giggles of the titillating word.

Anyways, plans for tonight hope to include:

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Long Plays

I tend to be one of those people that is considered an old heart. I like my classic rock on classic vinyls, I like sittin back relaxing with a book as opposed to goin out and clubbin it up, I prefer reading up on current events, news and so on as opposed to letting TV present it to me as the producers see fit. But at the same time, I find myself overwhelmed lately by just how many resources on various topics there are to be found on the interweb. Its the anti-TV really. Instead of producers and directors spoon feeding you, you are left to your own devices.

You've got your news sources, editorial and commentary sites, blogs, forums, and then people on your contact list (at least those who are prone to reading their own collection of said resources) sending you their own links to this that and the other thing. On some days it just becomes overwhelming.

I confess lately to just skimming headlines and filling in my own stories, although, with the main sources, you are safe in doing so and still knowing the general gist of what's goin down in the world. I've got to learn that there's just too much goin on out there to learn too much about one thing. There are some people out there that can rhyme off dates and names like nobodies business about various topics. I am not one of those people. I develop my own thoughts and fill in the details where necessary later, and so end up talking out of my ass a lot in the mean time, as is usually the case in these little nuggets.

I think this might be a function of the time and locale in which I've grown up, where the way of life is infact not to remember everything but to access whatever facts are needed as they come, and know how to deal with them. In my likely less than well informed opinion I think this is what the internet in the end has brought to us, a lessening of the burden of memorization, access the world as it comes, don't 'waste' your brain with trivial details, but understand processes, know how to get shit done with the nearly instantaneous resources available.

Perhaps it is my 'old heart' talking, or my being in the middle of reading Fahrenheit 451 (have I also mentioned that I am fairly easily influenced by my fix of the moment?), but I think, while making us efficient, it also makes us lazy. Less thinking, and more dealing with the world as it revolves into us.

Music Stats 3

Possibly the best idea in the world

Sitting at work today I realized that not only do I get paid at midnight, but this weekend is the Civic Holiday long weekend. Since I have a couple extra hours saved up, I think I will be taking full advantage of them and extending my long weekend by taking tomorrow off. In short, wooo its the weekend!

And what's the first article that catches my eye on BBC when I get home? None other than one on open source beer brewing although the fact that it was the first to catch my eye is particularly telling of my mood. Anyways, I love the idea these students have on shared knowledge. My favourite browser (Firefox), e-mail client (Thunderbird) and messenger program (Miranda IM) are all open source and because of that end up being very customizable and practical, all while avoiding the typical Microsoft built in annoying crap that also tends to be particularly prone to security breakdowns and the like. If it works for software, its gotta work for beer. Although I don't know that there's a particular shortage on variety in beer like there tends to be in certain software elements. Can't hurt though.

I read an article somewhere earlier this week suggesting that Doc Halladay might be back with the Jays as early as next week from his fractured shin suffered pre all-star game. That would be amazing as right now they're sitting 4.5 games back of first in the East and 3.5 arear of the wildcard, which is actually closer I think than when Doc went down. As soon as he went down I didn't expect to make it to the end of July still pretending like the Jays had a shot at the playoffs. On top of that, Jon Garland, and Johan Santana didn't take off with numbers giving them a much better shot at the Cy Young than Doc, who if he can bring back his pre-injury form should be a lock for his second Cy in two years. Randy Johnson seems to have found his groove though, and that's scary in the benefit to the Yankees (and so detriment to the Jays shot at the East), and Halladay's chances. Any way it goes, I have to get out to a game soon while they're still in it and give em my support.

Also in the baseball light, long time Brave Greg Maddux became a 3,000 strike-out pitcher the other night, solidifying his position with baseball's all time greats. Another one of those guys that kids grow up idolizing.

Post 69

Yea that's right, this is post 69, good things will happen. A good financial venture is in your future. Lotto: 3-14-19-27-31-36.

Anyways, haven't been up to much of anything lately, except catching up on the first season of the OC, the first half of which I originally missed. Hilarious comments + T&A + usually entertaining plotlines = success in my books, and I've been hooked on success for the past couple days. Once I get the season out of the way I have some work to do on here again, particularly comments that are apparently taking over a day to register right now.

I did manage to get out and play an actual game of soccer the other night, and to add to my personal surprise was the fact that I didn't hurt myself, or feel sore from it the next day as has been the case in the past.

I've added a link to Be a Witness in the sidebar; if you haven't checked it out already, its in your best interest. Blog trends from BlogPulse is also really interesting, one would think that there might be more attention given in the blogosphere to more relevant topics, but apparently not.

10:31 PM EDT

Well, its 22:31 EDT, and I am feelin right tired. I worked 55 hours in the past 5 days which is admittedly less than I thought I would be workin this week, but at the same time should feel refreshing. But really, waking my ass up at 6:35 every morning to bike my ass in to the university for 7:05 every morning takes it toll when you sit on the computer readin blogs, lookin at free agents in Fantasy Baseball, and readin the news, waitin around for the Daily Show at 12:05.

For my own mental health it would almost be worth buying the cable package I need to watch Jon Stewart et al an hour earlier, but hey. In another 2 months I'll be back in school and watchin every last cent as if it was my own blood (not that I won't spend that money to see Matty at least once in the fall). I can't complain about spending the money to learn in as laid back, yet as relevent a field as I'm in either. Everyone needs drinking water after all.

Anyways, following this week of field work I'll be spending a lot of hours in the office, which means lots of hours on my laptop browsing blogs and noting news sources and advocating alternatives (thus is my strained attempt at alliteration for the evening). Look for lots of random, short posts, sans photo content in particular, although, there should be an awesome shot of a group of us at work outside our prime (and yet overpriced) fast food lunch spot upcoming.

My glass has developed a hole, and the Jays are playin an hour behind me in Kansas, so I'm gonna go pay attention to the 8th and 9th. Cheers.

Frames of Mind

I've noticed over the past couple weeks, and the last few days in particular that my workday has a strong effect on the rest of my night. Not just in the typical "am i gonna get home early enough to do something" or "is it wing night at _(insert bar here)_", but in my overall frame of mind.

When things in the office are pretty lackadaisical, and I spend the day reading articles, drawing figures and organizing spreadsheets and the like, I come home and sit and read through the news, and a select list of blogs, and have a clear train of thought for the evening.

On the other hand, when I come home from a 12 or 13 hour day in the field, having busted my ass in 35 degree heat + humidex at 80%, I tend to be absolutely wired.
And moreso after a couple such long days. I skip through sentences of every article and blog post I see because I feel like I should be doing something else. And at times this is made worse by the fact that I have gotten a couple days behind in my reading, and I feel lost tryin to catch up on three days worth of material. By the way, Tony Pierce's awesome blog has been somewhat neglected in this regard lately. Generally I'm all caught up and lookin for updates, but this week I'm lost in the current symptoms of work ADD, and the added effect of being stressed out about having lost all my files and trying to set up my computer again in my picky way.

I am making myself write this right now in the latter, goldfish attention span, state in an attempt to calm my mind, and get a little more focus. But I gotta say, 10 minutes later I've been instead busy chatting with four different people, have updated stats on the Jays game 4 times (4-O t.dot in the bottom of the 4th), and have quick searched 3 songs in my playlist, as well as looked up the proper spelling of 'lackadaisical', which I typed myself the second time so I'd remember how to spell it next time. I need to find a way to lose this ADD frame of mind after a busy day, and apparently this isn't the way.

I guess I'll try turning on the TV to the baseball game now and try to relax with that on, and entertain the notion that because the Jays are playing some weak teams for a bit they MIGHT stay in the AL East hunt sans Doc Halladay. False hope is no fun when you're the one in the know....I dunno how Leafs fans do it every year.

One Year On

Well, this post was meant to be written to coincide with the 1 year anniversary of my first post on the 17th, but computer issues on Sunday, and still ongoing have kept me otherwise occupied. Apparently Window$ had issues with the, what I thought to be, trivial 'copy' and 'paste' commands, and did not copy my documents folder over to my storage hard drive before I formatted on Sunday night. Now obviously hindsight is 20/20 and I could have backed up to DVD, or copied everything to my laptop just to be sure, but no, instead I formatted my harddrive and wiped at least 4 years of documents and over a year of pics from my digital camera (nevermind the years worth of pics I had scanned before I got the digital). A couple file recovery programs managed to recover a couple of files intact, but bank records, timesheets for work, old essays, reports, presentations and course notes, all gone. So once again, I am late in bringing my anniversary post to the masses.

I've made a lot of changes, for the better in most cases I think, over the year, although I still haven't managed to figure out the background colour issue on old posts, or how to not make Internet Explorer suck my ass. But its Micro$oft, and obviously my standards for them can't be set too high.

Aside from my computer issues, I've been busy with work this week, 25 hours in 2 days so far, and nice and hot too. Can anyone spell B.O.? Eats up the hours though, and am in good shape for the vacation in August, and I have transportation for it now too, so I'm stoked.

With the heatwave that's been washing over Ontario, power consumption is at all time highs. And yet people still don't get it, a special on CityTV last night showed stores in downtown Toronto with the air conditioning blasting, and the front doors wide open to the street, my university insists on keeping our building about 5 degrees cooler than it really need be, and people in general not thinking about power consumption in general. I was however impressed with the LCBO who have taken to turning off a large percentage of the lights in store in an effort to keep heat and power use down, thus saving me money on my liquor and from a non living in the dark perspective. People expect science to come along with some new fancy way to provide power in a clean and efficient way, but people first need to learn to use what power they get efficiently themselves. Lower demand, less demand for supply, less of all the negative impacts that people draw for all energy resources.

This Just In: Micro$oft Still Sucks

Its come to my attention that IE isn't displaying my stats spreadsheets in nice frames as they appear in Firefox, which I will reiterate is free, very customizable, and doesn't have the same security flaws that you have to download Windows updates for every week. There should be no scroll bars or any kind of border around the frames containing the stats, but apparently there are in IE. If anyone using Mac based Safari, or Firefox at another screen resolution also see's scroll bars and/or a border, please let me know. As far as I know though, this is a Micro$oft issue.

Music Stats 2

In playing around trying to get the artist statistics since last week figured out I managed to destroy my database. I think I've figured out how I'm going to maintain this on a steady basis though, cause if no-one else, it interests me, and gives me something to do.

Geneva Need Not Apply

Ummm, say what? I just found this on the CBC.

The colonels will operate under rules laid down by President George W. Bush for what he called a war on terror after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington.

This sounds no different to me than when I was in Grade 2 and all the kids each pronounced their own rules to playground tag. Apparently since al-Qaeda is not an official nation there are no touchbacks. Okay, so they're not a nation. But where then does this justify those held in Iraq, and 'suspects' all over the world of various nationalities on apparent whims, or saying the wrong thing.

Apparently if things aren't going your way, you can throw a tantrum (a la unilateral, or bilateral I suppose as Blair bought into the whole thing, miltary invasion) and then do whatever you please, and use every loophole you can find to hold every person imaginable in an attempt to be free of terrorism. The irony here slaps one in the face so hard that you have to wonder where exactly the heads of those 'in charge' really are.

Furnace Friday

Well, I managed to not go to the Matt Good show in St. Catherines last night and apparently missed out on an awesome set, and am now kicking myself. So I went out and spent the money I would have spent there (plus some) on some new speakers to go with my new deck from last week.

I spent 45 minutes installing them in my aforementioned pimpmobile. Not that installing speakers is by any means hard work, but I had a sweat goin in there in no time with all the windows and doors open. I don't really notice it when I'm driving with the windows down all the time (A/C's busted). It sounds solid in there now though. Now I just need to find somewhere to go with it. The plan is to go to algonquin for part of the second last week of August, although there seems to have been an apparent change in enthusiasm for letting me have the van for that week so I'll have to take it as it comes, and offer to cover part of a rental or something perhaps.

Plans for this weekend are to do a little nothing, followed with a dose of nadda, and topped with a serving of zip before we start up drilling again next week, in which I'll probably pump out another 60 hours in 5 days. Especially encouraging are the reports which say this heat and humidity here is going to last thru til early August. While I've stated in the past that I love the heat and all, I tend to love it more for lounging around and not being particularly productive. Not bustin my ass doing rock sampling. It'll be good for me though.

Anyone paying attention will also notice that I've changed my formatting up a bit again. If you've got any comments and criticisms, throw em in comments. Still hoping to make a couple changes in the next little bit, including HaloScan for all those comments I get (and moreso as a new toy to play with).

Happy Friday!

Midsummer Classic

Every year in the second week of July the true legends of baseball come out, and the current star players, that aren't misfortunate enough to be injured at the time, come together and put on an exhibition of what makes baseball a great game. While the intensity of regular season, and moreso post season rivalries aren't desirable, its great to see the guys get together all smiles, with their kids around them, enjoying the game. Obviously, no-one enjoys all the advertisement and marketing involved now, but deep at the core of it, it brings a smile to my face to listen to Reggie Jackson, Joe Morgan and Chris Berman talk baseball, while Bobby Abreu puts on a derby clinic. And I'm sure tonight's game will be no worse.

I was privileged enough to go to the '91 All Star Game in Toronto. I was too young to fully appreciate that I was seeing some greats like Carlton Fisk, Dennis Eckersley, Kirby Puckett, and Eddie Murray towards the end of their careers, and recognize the up and coming, and already in their prime athletes like Cal Ripken, Rafael Palmeiro, Roger Clemens and Tom Glavine, but I still remember how different the atmosphere seemed from my nosebleed seat behind the right field foul pole. Baseball was a joyful thing for me as a kid. I had, and still have all the cards I could afford as I made money at birthdays and the like. I was too young and naive to understand the money aspect of the game, the big contracts, the trades to save money, perhaps because my Blue Jays circa 1991 were on their way up to back to back World Series'. I just thought these guys went out to play baseball because they were talented enough , and envied them for that, and because they seemed to enjoy it.

Now every other night on Sportscenter you can tune in to listen about doping, or teams threatened with moving because their home isn't marketable enough, or see a pitcher throw some cameras around. But at the All Star break, all that disappears under the stands for 3 days as the fun of the game comes out to play and have fun, and bring out the sandlot style atmosphere, that used to have us emulating our favourite players as kids.

Hot One

Today was something like 42 or 45 with humidex around here, perfectly gorgeous day for sitting around lounging, but instead I spent it in an over air conditioned office at the university. I cringe to think how much of my tuition goes to keeping the buildings at 20 degrees all summer long. I'm glad there's no drilling going on this week though cause today woulda been 14 hours of dust and sweat, culminating in pure exhaustion.

Instead I'm trying to get a game of soccer or something going, but of course everyone will pussy out, and say 'oh yea, I'd love to play, but I'm too tired tonight...blah blah woof woof'. I need to get some exercise after sitting around most of last week being too tired to do anything to strenuous after work. But really though, I just want an excuse to drive around with my new deck in my pimpmobile. Yes, that's right, a 1994 Caravan with body rust starting to take over is the definition of pimp. But it just needs some TLC, and I'll whip it into shape.

After working 60 hours in 5 days last week I'm looking good for having some holidays at the end of August to go camping and maybe do some legitimate work on the van. But that's still over a month away, and if I plan on something its guaranteed not to go down, so I won't set myself up for the fall.

Music Stats 1

I mentioned last week that I'd try to incorporate some of my music stats in here. I'll try to do this on a weekly basis, but we'll have to see what happens.

"...on days like these you gotta find it in some other way..."

Well this week I've gotten myself into helping with a borehole drilling project which means long days in the field, but outdoors. And while the Southern Ontario humidity still distinctly irks some, I am enjoying actually workin up a good sweat at work, even though I'm dog tired when I get home. By the way, if anyone can tell me how a dog gets tired lazing around a house all day I'd be grateful.

Don't have the time to post anything substantial. London won the 2012 Olympics, glad NY didn't get it, because even though its a global event, everyone knows it would turn into 2 weeks of celebrate New York, and further fuck up the city's traffic for those working there to make a living (not that elsewhere isn't similarly affected, but NY is always second city one thinks of when it comes to traffic congestion next to LA).

Found "Sweet Jesus I Hate Bill O'Reilly" via Matt Good. Matt also has a new music blog up.

I need a shower and some food, although I'm probably too lazy to barbecue myself something nice.

Has Anyone Seen Accountability Running Around?

Its been two and a half weeks since I first posted on the Downing Street Memo and almost 2 months since first brought to light, I admit I missed the first boats on that one. But it seems as though the entire American media, and rival parties in government who are supposed to challenge those in power over their actions have missed ALL the boats. The Bush administration didn't even deny the claims of these memos, and yet the whole affair of starting a war with no forseeable conclusion under false pretense has been shurgged off without even a slap on the wrist as though a child had innocently broken an antique vase.

Linda McQuaig questions what exactly it takes to have substantial evidence to hold the Bush administration accountable on. One would think with memos like this substantiated by members of both governments involved would hold some significant weight, but instead Bush keeps plugging on with non-fixed timetables, and doing the Bushy things he does like shrugging off global climate change solutions yet again.

With the impending retirement of Sandra Day O'Connor from the Supreme Court, and the possible resignation of William Rehnquist in the not too distant future, the Democrats if no-one else should be seizing the opportunity to apply pressure, and in doing so hopefully force Bush into choosing middle of the road replacements in the Supreme Justice bench instead of the far right leaning personality that many are fearing. Agenda following personalities, leaning strongly to either side of the political playground will only serve to damage the situation further I feel. What is required are intelligent, honest replacements that will weigh out decisions carefully and thoughtfully with no predisposition or bias, but obviously these days in politics honesty is far more than can be expected by the United States citizens, or observers anywhere.

Oh yea, and Happy 4th of July to my neighbours south of the border.

Improper Technique

I haven't been drinking as much lately as I had been, and it caught up to me Thursday night/yesterday morning. I had myself a mickey of Bombay, just enough to be in a happy daze, and didn't think anything of it, falling asleep watchin some infomercial. When it comes to harder liquor I'm usually in the clear for any kind of after effects, its beer that kills me, but apparently my body felt it should punish me for not drinking so much lately, and gave me one hell of a headache yesterday morn. Granted, I didn't have myself a glass of water or two before I crashed to rehydrate, but like I said, hard mixing usually is good to me. I have narrowed my situation down to two options, drink more, or drink more and accept that I'm getting old. Perhaps a third: drink less and accept that I'm getting old. But that should only be given consideration under the most dire of circumstances.

That said, I didn't much feel like posting about my buddy's fiancee's deformed fish yesterday. Black moores (which is quite the redundant name for a fish) turned orange, orange goldfish turning white, its crazy I tell you. But then the fish are something like 12 years old, so I guess like old people, we can ignore their slight shortcomings with age.

And while not having the motivation to post, I did some browsing around and found a couple gem sites. The illustrator of bunny suicides might be seen shortly on Dr. Phil, but has found a hilarious way to express a twisted personality. And since I find it hilarious I guess that speaks volumes about myself as well.

The second of them was this sweet piece of merchandise. How could something like this not have existed until now? How come I didn't think of this myself? Move over Bill Gates, there's a new kid in town, and they're selling the most flashy, gaudy, and yet stylish belt buckles you will ever see. Those big ass Harley Davidson and State of Texas belt buckles have officially been put to shame and are cowering in the deepest darkest corners of display cases across North America.