Coming Down From the Heat

Environment Canada says you should watch out for a greenish coloured sky and clouds that look like a funnel.

No shit eh? Clouds that look like a funnel are indicative of tornadoes?

There was some crazy frontal weather going on around here today, tornado watches and all. Not a single drop fell at work, but driving along the expressway back home it was a trip into a wall of black and lightning like flashbulbs at a Barry Bonds game. Living close to the downtown centres I get a bunch of nice close strikes, but it sounds like its waning now.

Stag and No Don't!

Since childhood I've never really been a fan of formal gatherings. I'm not talking 3 piece suits and 5 course meals, but get togethers that are planned well in advance with hundreds of people expected in attendance and the idea of mingling. I'm still not a fan of those kinds of things, but Saturday night's Stag and Doe for my buddy Steve went over almost as smoothly as one could ask.

A bit of nostalgia from being back in the club I spent much of my childhood in until my parents' less than amicable split aside, it was great. And I even managed to have that fun while relatively sober to sober and able to drive home.

Of course there were a few awkward moments with aunts and uncles and cousins I'd never seen in my life, and a Chem prof who actually taught my section (that I rarely attended) in first year. Some old highschool faces showed, few of whom seemed to recognize me. Some old friends of my dad's side of the family were the club bartenders. They didn't recognize me either, which is probably for the better. And for the best, I could only find one picture of myself still hanging on the walls in a dark dingy corner where, curiously enough, I used to spend most of my time sitting in the younger days.

There were of course the pictures of my grandfather and cousins everywhere, but the few with my grandmother probably brought back the most memories. It was after she died that that whole side of the family, my dad included started coming apart. She was the glue...or the doughy goodness of all her baking that kept together the assortment of fillings.

Anyways, after that little bit of reminiscing I ran the mini-putt game all night where a father and daughter brought some real competitiveness that I thought would be lacking. They tied for first and got to fight over who would keep the 40 of Canadian Club, that being the only prize of the assortment they cared about.

And through it all I didn't drink my face off, and was feelin great for the drive down to Toronto to see the Jays. Gorgeous day, and the traffic was infinitely better than a weekday evening, or apparently during a TTC strike. But apparently getting to the stadium a full hour before the first pitch still wasn't early enough to guarantee me a bobblehead, and then they went on to drop the first game of the series, and chalk up the first loss of a game I've been to all season. At least I learned by bobblehead lesson, and will be much better prepared for when Cito Gaston's porcelain embodiment comes to town.

Nice Weather a Week Too Late

For a self proclaimed big city guy, Joscelyn was/still is pretty clueless when it comes to even the most general of birthday shot staples. He deserves credit for blindly accepting the shots with little question and putting them back, but how has a person 25 years old not been warned of the evils of prairie fires and cement mixers.

I bailed pretty early on the evening, with only 2 pictures of the festivities. The holiday shortened week felt exceptionally long, but the weather seems to have whipped itself into shape in time for the stag and doe tonight. I'll have to do my best to make up for lost time, and still be functioning for the morning drive to the Skydome for my bobblehead. The Jays won the first two games I went to this year, and took the first game of the series against the south-siders last night. If they can pull off another win for me tomorrow that will mean another series won, and keeping in lockstep with the Yankees a couple games back of the Red Sox for the division, and the White ones for the wildcard. Even with some of the injury and sophomore season hijinx we're still looking solid almost 2 months in. Its my duty as a fan to go out and throw my support.

But, I think its also my duty as a member of the wedding party to make that title live up to itself. Life's rough when these are the tough dilemmas you face.

Patience Deficient

I probably shouldn't let people annoy me as quickly as they do sometimes and then go into rants about it. I think boring work has something to do with a shortened tolerance for those kind of things too. Hopefully today's sick day will be enough of a break to go back to finish out the week fresh and not quite so bitter.

If not I have a weekend full of stuff to do between some birthday celebrations Friday night, a Stag and Doe Saturday night and, if I'm not too hungover, a trip to Toronto for Vernon Wells bobblehead day Sunday against the world series champs. The bobbleheads go to the first 10,000 fans which means I'll have to get my ass there extra early. Likely two nights of drinking followed by a Sunday morning road trip...maybe I'll have to make a concerted effort to show some restraint. We'll see.

Reason Falls Short

If there's one thing I've learned since I enlisted myself to the study of the physical sciences, its that when debating with people of religious influence there is little to no argument by logic and reason, even while debating purely physical processes. This is infact not a reaction to any kind of commentary on the last post's quote on divinity and the unknown, but to a couple MSN conversations today with people planning to see the big screen version of The Da Vinci Code in the near future.

All the reviews I've read and accounts I've heard place the movie release as a rather dull portrayal of the book. I know that's not in any way uncommon from books going to movies with all the lost detail, and I think, the lost imaginitive presence of the reader in creating the characters and setting, but lets not all go Grade 11 English nerd here. The book read like a movie, but its easy to see that the details alluded to in the novel can't all be assumed of the movie goer with a piqued interest just in the controversialty around the whole thing.

The movie will still make its money on Tom Hanks and Ron Howard's names and the uproar from Opus Dei and the Catholic church and so on, and maybe inspire a few people to read into things.

That said, people still hold steadfast in beliefs of the powers that be in the church instead of reasoning for themselves. Historically we have examples of the persecution of Copernicus and Galileo's theories while currently debates still rage over the theories of Darwin which prove themselves every day in the fruits, vegetables, grains and meats we eat. Or one can look at suggestions, without as common a name around them, on for instance the use of condoms to prevent the spread of sexually transmissable diseases instead favouring the continued approach of trying to teach chastity which isn't recognized by a large proportion of even those who profess to be devout followers and believers.

Like my issues with the government, its often the hypocrisy that kills me when trying to debate views with some intelligence. I'm obviously not a pillar of intelligence on all these subjects myself, but the glaring contradictions and lack of logic frustrate me to no end.

So endeth the sermon.

Random Passage Day

Entirely too uncreative to come up with some of my own stuff right now, so I'll just slap up some random passages I've read in the past few days and see how many people I can offend.

First from Systeme de la Nature by Paul Henri Thiry (1770) via Cosmos:

If a faithful account was rendered of man's ideas upon the Divinity, he would be obliged to acknowledge, that for the most part the word "gods" has been used to express the concealed, remote, unknown causes of the effects he witnessed; that he applies this term when the spring of natural, the source of known causes ceases to be visible: as soon as he loses the thread of these causes, or as soon as his mind can no longer follow the chain, he solves the difficulty, terminates his research, by ascribing it to his gods; thus giving a vague definition to an unknown cause, at which either his idleness, or his limited knowledge, obliges him to stop. When, therefore, he ascribes to his gods the production of some phenomenon, the novelty or the extent of which strikes him with wonder, but of which his ignorance precludes him from unravelling the true cause, or which he believes the natural powers with which he is acquainted are inadequate to bring forth; does he, in fact, do any thing more than substitute for the darkness of his own mind, a sound to which he has been accustomed to listen with reverential awe?

236 years and few changes in some ways of thinking.

And from Matt Good who's started writing here occasionally:

According to a recent Angus Reid poll, some 62% of Americans are against current US military involvement in Iraq. Ironically, according to another recent poll, some 38% of Americans admit to the repeated use of crack cocaine.

That's almost the whole post, but there's really no way to pull more of a tidbit. Apparently he's been working on writing material for a new album.

Also saw the music video for Counting Bodies Like Sheep to the Rhythm of the War Drums by A Perfect Circle which I apparently missed the boat on at the time of the last presidential election. I guess I shouldn't be surprised as its a longish track which doesn't fit the 3:30 cookie cutter for TV and radio play and doesn't have enough booty in da club, drama (we don't want no drama drama), or black eye make-up in it. Anyways, if you haven't seen it you can watch it on the APC website. The quicktime stream wasn't working properly for me, but I also have a version in .mpg if any one wants a copy.

Twenty Four

Well boys and girls, its that time of year again up in Canada. The mosquitos are ramping up their numbers, the weather's consistently above freezing, and the forecast is for rain most of the weekend. That can only mean one thing: its time to celebrate the birthday of a Queen of another country, honouring her by filling our bladders with beer that most often is not of British origin.

I was hoping to get out and do a weekend hike this weekend, but nothing really came together. Now I'm hoping to get together a kegger for one night this weekend, but that too looks like it won't come together. The one thing that can be guaranteed is that I'll be enjoying my time away from work as June is one of those useless months with no official holidays.

I can only hope that the official start to the summer cottage season that this weekend represents also means the official start to some real field work because if I have to spend another 30 hours reading .pdfs and Word documents I might just snap. When a week like that is compounded by finding out that no talent ass clown Ben Mulroney makes 400 thousand dollars a year, anyone needs a solid three days of chilling out. For quite some time he's been identified as useless, but when you find out he sucks that badly AND makes that kinda money (more than Rick Mercer, and just shy of Peter Mansbridge) its just depressing.

Maybe we can get a special Queen's order to shoot fireworks at his face in celebration of the Victoria Day holiday? Cheers!

Ah There It Is!

I thought it would be best to more carefully depict yesterday's events. The above picture gives the approximate setting. Although that picture was taken earlier in the day, the water level and cloud cover can be considered consistent with yesterday's conditions. The following is the rough path paddled to pass harmlessly between pillars 2 and 3 (from right to left). Also note the stripper joint that Tony, Raymi, Fil, Chad, and friends ended up for Raymi's birthday after the Matt Good show I missed last month.

It obviously takes a certain kind of 'special' person to boat around with such command of all things nautical.

Where's That Confounded Bridge?

Canoeing is all fun and games til you run head on into a bridge pier. Yea that's right. A lesson to you all, make sure you canoe with someone that has a bit of experience with a canoe and will pay attention to what's going on, and you should be able to avoid these kinds of issues.

Of course I can sit and pass the blame, but it was half my fault too, zigged when I shoulda zagged, and boom, watch my brother almost faceplant into the bridge pillar, crack the canoe, take on a bunch of water, and have the current spin you around and carry you on down the river backwards. To my credit, I did keep the canoe from flipping and us goin for a swim in the still somewhat chilly water.

I still managed to run us into a huge ass bridge though, not exactly my finest hour. Now I'll have to reclaim my Canadian citizenship through the clever use of duct tape to fix the canoe. Aside from that, I'm completely exhausted, and have aches in muscles in my back that I didn't know existed: all in all a fun day.

Keeping Up Illusions

Another great day in early May, or at least, it looked like it was from where I spent the day sitting at my desk pretending to be doing work that in reality simply didn't exist. Once again, faking it seems like more work than the real deal.

I did at least manage to give myself a bit of a refresher on some simple organic chemistry that I haven't done since 1st year that will probably become important over the next year as I try to glue, nail, and duct tape together a halfway intelligent honours thesis. And most of the material was at least partially applicable to some of the work I've been doing, except most of that is mindless dummy work for which you don't really need to know the specifics of the 'why's. With my experience, its the best way to treat field work like that. The less your field workers actually know about the implications of what they're doing, the better they can play dumb when local residents come around asking questions to which you've signed privacy agreements not to answer (although I think all the information becomes public domain once official reports are filed).

Yea I realize its some of the same kind of opacity present all through legislation and government, but a man needs his paycheque, and not letting on about a little bit of one substance that will break down naturally here, or another there isn't quite on par with starting wars under false pretenses or anything like that.

Also on the government note before I run along and wait for phone calls and e-mails back about things that never seem to come...Matt Good made an interesting post today over at Thought Mechanics on the current Canadian census. The general gist is that the compilation of our population statistics are being contracted out to Lockheed Martin. My brother already did ours up and sent it in I think, which is a shame cause I would have loved to have messed with the system a bit on this one. You win some, and lately I lose a lot more...

The One That Got Away

G.W.B. at it again, from BBC:

"I would say the best moment of all was when I caught a 7.5lb (3.4kg) perch in my lake," he told Bild am Sonntag.

The worst moment was the 11 September 2001 hijacked plane attacks on New York and Washington that killed about 3,000.

Letterman's staff, Leno's staff, Stewart's staff, Colbert's staff, and comedians anywhere couldn't come up with stuff this good.

Avs are down...again...and better turn this shit around soon, its bad enough that its Sunday and back to the working world tomorrow.

Ding. Round 2.

Cup playoffs round 2 are on. My picks for the finals are both playing tonight...and the scorefest that is the Sens-Sabres game is getting out of hand here. The horn just went on goal #4 for the Sens. Not even halfway through the second and its 4-3. A sign of things to come with the goaltending in mind. Glad I picked Heatley in the pool though. Not so glad that my buddy really hasn't been on the ball on giving us updates on the points standings. I might have to step in soon and offer some assistance so there isn't just money randomly handed out at the end.

I would have to think I'm doing alright being as I picked every Avs player in the West and Sens/Devils in the East...around here the allegiances tend to fall with the Wings and with everyone BUT the Sens. Nothing like free money, if anyone knows where I can find more, don't be shy, spill the beans.

Forecast is for cool weather this weekend again, making me grateful for at least getting to spend some time outdoors as opposed to none at all while bunch of the world is trapped inside with their own versions of the Lumberghs of the world, or busting their hump in a grungy factory. Hopefully all the crap gets out of the way in the next two weeks so the 2-4 weekend is conducive to sitting on my balcony drinking its namesake one twenty-fourth at a time since no other plans seem likely. Anyone got some cost effective ideas for me?

And We're Back...

Well, maybe we're back. After the past week of fighting with this pile of metal and silicon and its random behaviour I just don't really trust it anymore.

The abridged rundown of my time since Friday is as follows:

Friday night - a couple beers, a new harddrive the exact same as my old one, a failed attempt to save my old harddrive (like I talked about in the last post).

Saturday morning - dedicate the new harddrive as my system harddrive, transfer files and format my old system harddrive. on first boot to new system, find that most of the files i transferred and checked didn't actually transfer, even though I checked them. Decide to play some guitar to quell the temptation to test the flight properties of a mid-size PC tower; distortion switch on the footswitch for my amp breaks (since randomly 'fixed', but under warranty still so should get someone to look at it before its not under warranty and i get bent over)

Saturday afternoon - after more fighting with the computer, set it up to recover any fragments it can with a handy program, and decide to get out and get my sedentary ass out on my bike and check out the trails near my new office. Proceed to think after 2 previous rides of any length all year, that I am ready for the poser X-Games, take a 3 foot high near vertical jump at about 30 klicks, go up an extra couple feet, give or take, land hard on the front wheel, bounce, land again about 6 feet down the trail and bail into the rut there, smashing both knees up and having them turn all shades of green, purple and red, as well as having wrecked my cranks and front wheel. The whole event actually has put getting a helmet on my to do list for the near future while the bike is in the shop getting all fixed up.

Saturday night - enough of this breaking shit and hurting myself, lets numb the pain and ring in a birthday...and forget to bring the camera. 3 pitchers, 2 shots, and some bad food later (it had to be the food cause historically that's not enough booze to get me, and I didn't have the spins when I was falling asleep), I wake up at 4 am and am hanging over a toilet 10 seconds later.

The mercy rule kicks in, Saturday officially ends.

Since Saturday: fighting with my computer, work - spilling random chemicals on myself, fighting with my computer, work - more random chemicals, more fighting, more work - spilling heating oil pulled out with groundwater on myself, reminding me that even the nicest old neighbourhoods have their demons, and more fighting with the computer.

Somewhere in there, the Avalanche won their series over the Stars, the Jays won a couple times, the weather was nice, and I found the time to pick up legitimate, storebought copies of Pearl Jam's self titled release, which is pretty solid, and Tool's 10,000 Days which I've praised already, but after seeing the album art officially seals the deal as one of my favourite overall albums of all time, which is fairly arbitrary company I suppose, but forget all that and give it a listen if you can....now.

My work has been mindless so far and now so am I, I'm outta here.

Fuck Your Short Memory

Goddamn I am sick of computers and their neverending stream of bullshit no matter how much you get to understand them. I haven't posted the past few days because I've been once again fighting with a harddrive that doesn't want to function as advertised. Long story short, bought a new drive in an effort to swap a board to save my oldest drive. That didn't work. Swapped te board back, new drive worked fine, decided I would make that my new 'operating system' drive. Formatted part of the old drive, installed Winblows on the new one. I boot up the system, and see that three quarters of the files that I copied over to the other partition, and opened AFTER i copied them to check they had done so, had once again disappeared. The following three days have been spent recovering old files, and having them disappear once again, and trying to get them to a separate drive before they disappear.

Needless to say, being that I did everything right on my end this time and still lost all the files I was trying to keep, I've been pretty pissed at computers. I hate typing on my laptop keyboard as well, which seems to have a tendency to miss one in every 5 keystrokes, and really makes for even more disjointed writing than usual, so I haven't bothered until now, where I had to do something to avoid taking a large hammer to my small computer.