Boxing Day Sales?

One of the more enjoyable parts of christmas for me is hunting some boxing day deals to get the most out of gift cards. This year though, I wasn't very impressed with any of the deals I saw; at least on stuff I was interested in getting. I blamed it on the economy; or just a better general memory for prices really not all that different to the 'huge sale prices'.

Whether its the economy and the shitty Canadian dollar, or artificial jacking of prices to make the 'sales' look good; the fact is prices are higher now than they were in September. At least computer parts, as I happened to have a list of prices for the parts to build a computer for Steve's dad from back in September that he asked me to update for him to find any deals this week. Overall, even at sale prices, an 8-10% increase in price since mid-September on technology that normally drops weekly as new stuff comes out.

So in the end, I ended up with no new telephoto lens for my camera, or new speakers for my stereo, or BluRay drive for my computer; just booze enough to ensure I see spots for half the day on Thursday.

Oh, and Carolyn loves her x-mas present, and will until she kills them.

Its doomed.

Sausage Party

More often than not, the weather around my birthday is shit, and this year was no exception. An e-card I got from Nick pretty much sums it up.

I have to plan my birthday a month in advance if I want people to actually be able to make it out with all the family reunions and other engagements that tend to go with the x-mas season. This year I planned a sausage party, a quasi-potluck affair where people were to bring their favourite sausages and cheeses. Apparently it wasn't immediately clear that the sausage should be precooked but, with that cleared up, there was a ton of kielbasa to go around.

Despite the close to 20cm of snow that kept a lot of people trapped at home, the turnout wasn't bad. For once it wasn't the day after hangover that kept me out of commission the day after my birthday celebrations, but the revenge of the massive quantities of spicy salami consumed.

All that said, I'm left with a ton of leftover meat, and gruyere and gouda to snack on while sitting around playing Civ IV, spotting online boxing day deals, and reading (next up is the newly gifted The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins). Besides all that, I've got nothing on the go until the traditional New Years Eve fondue again at my place; I don't think there are many that can claim to have a much more relaxing holiday season.

Nickel and Diming

I hate x-mas shopping at the best of times. When I have little money to play with it only intensifies my distaste and difficulties with picking the right gifts for people. That said, I'm down to just my mom and Carolyn left to shop for, and still have 2 weeks to go. I tend to start my shopping early every year now to take advantage of the best online store/eBay deals I can find, but after a couple weeks, I can't take all the 'shopping' anymore and want to get on with the 'buying' and be done with it. It still has to be better than waiting til the 23rd or 24th.

Having gotten tired of the 'christmas cheer' from walks around the lights in Waterloo park this week (and watching, on multiple occasions, old people ignoring signs and driving their cars right down the main pedestrian pathway), we decided to go for a walk around in the Galt portion of Cambridge along the river. 9:30 on a Tuesday night, no record shops, but no people either; it was a ghost town. The rain I'm sure had a little to do with that (and made taking pictures less than spectacular), but with a major construction project on the main bridge, and the architecture school out for exams, the most activity was a lone patron and a bartender sitting and watching a hockey game in an old, run-down bar.

It was a welcome change from the blaring carols on the outdoor speakers at the park, or the mall easy-listening versions of the same tunes while dodging ignorant and impatient people who feel the number of bags they are carrying is positively correlated to their importance in society.

Trivia?

I've been playing around with Wordpress and a new blog. I've decided that I don't want to spend much time altering templates and such this time around. If there's something out there that looks clean and polished enough, why change it? That said, I'm working with the 'Minimalia' template published through BraveNewCode which was used for a time, yes you got it, on the Matt Good website.

At this point, one of my main issues is finding a way to blogroll without a sidebar because I know for the most part people barely even click on sidebar links, so getting people to go to a whole new link page just to see a list of blogs probably won't happen. I'm sure I'll figure something out though, as soon as I finish working my way through the Showcase streams of Kenny vs. Spenny episodes I haven't seen.

In the meantime, if you have a mind for trivia, or a competitive nature; some of my friends and I have a trivia game that's in desperate need of players. Monthly totals start scoring on the 1st of the month, so get in there from the start if you can.

Week Wasted

My back was still off for most of this week, but I finally found a new desk chair for myself this week after suffering with an 'ergonomic' kneeling task chair for the past year or two. Whether the chair had much to do with it or not, the lingering dull ache in my back is gone. Next week should be a lot more productive.

Carolyn got booked for a a shift tonight, so I've settled in with a two litre bottle of Grolsch (complete with swingtop, and suitable for re-use with homebrew) and a link to some streams of live hockey games for tonight that I hope play out.

If I had the money, I'd much rather be at the NIN concert at Copps Coliseum tonight, but I'm sure I'm not out of chances to see Trent Reznor live just yet.

Amidst my time wasting this week, I set up a web server on my computer. I know I've alluded to change before, but I might actually finally make the switch to Wordpress and move the web page to my own computer. Most of the reason behind this though is to get an early jump on setting up a smoothly running, minimal management playoff hockey pool for this year. If nothing else, at least I'll finally learn PHP in the process.

Its probably not normal to be excited about learning a programming language on a Friday night; but then when the sun sets at 5:30 and there is nothing but snow and rain in the forecast, anything looks like a luau.

On the 7th Day He Memed

This one comes via Christielli. I'll have to cheat and get some of this data from LastFM as I don't, for example, have a play count feature installed in my foobar.

---

How many songs total: 6083 songs, 39.7 GB
How many hours or days of music: 2 weeks 4 days, 12 hours, 20 minutes, 26 seconds
Most recently played: Nine Inch Nails - Just Like You Imagined
Most played: Tie between Eulogy by Tool and Blue Skies Over Bad Lands by Matthew Good (41 each)
Most recently added: David Bowie - South Horizon, I have a ton of David Bowie on here from my mom's collection that I've never heard.


Sort By Song Title
First song: (-) Ions by Tool
Last Song: Zoom by The Watchmen


Sort By Time
Shortest Song: Bonus Track from Nine Inch Nails' Head Like a Hole
Longest Song: The longest that isn't a bad rip, or the last song on an album with a 'secret' song at the end is Tubular Bells Pt. 2 by Mike Oldfield

Sort By Album
First Song: Queen B by Puscifer from "V" is for Vagina
Last Song: Pomp and Circumstances by The Smashing Pumpkins from Zeitgeist

Top 10 Most Played Songs
1) Tool - Eulogy
1) Matthew Good - Blue Skies Over Bad Lands
3) Matthew Good - House of Smoke and Mirrors
3) Nine Inch Nails - The Day the World Went Away
3) Tool - Wings for Marie (Part 1)
6) Radiohead - Bodysnatchers
6) Matthew Good Band - A Boy and His Machine Gun
8) Josh Ritter - Thin Blue Flame
8) Emily Haines & The Soft Skeleton - Crowd Surf Off a Cliff
10) Tool - 10,000 Days (Wings Part 2)
10) Matthew Good Band - Hello Time Bomb
10) Matthew Good Band - I, The Throw Away
10) Matthew Good - Black Helicopter

Five Songs that come up on Shuffle
1) Metallica and San Francisco Symphony - One
2) Eagles - Witchy Woman
3) Rage Against the Machine - Snake Charmer
4) Rammstein - Bestrafe Mich
5) Cat Stevens - Can't Keep It In

Search…
“Sex”, How many songs come up? 28
“Love”, How many songs come up? 163
“You”, How many songs come up? 606
“Death”, How many songs come up? 30
“Hate”, How many songs come up? 35
“Wish”, How many songs come up? 22

Give the People What They Want

I mentioned a few posts ago that my friend had sold some of her artwork with Carolyn in it a little while back. Now Carolyn has been featured again in a diptych

© A. Ramsay

Again some great stuff, and awesome to see in full scale.

Edit: Blogger is pissing me off lately. In the preview the images are side by side, but as soon as I publish they end up stacked on top of one another, no matter what kind of floats I use. Annoying.

Lower Spine of a 90 Year Old

I took advantage of Halloween being on a Friday, and had a party here this past weekend. Everyone had great costumes, and presumably a good time, myself included.

You know the horny fundamentalist priest went over well with an 8 year old boy around.

Then I woke up Saturday unable to bend over far enough to tie my shoes, and have had the same lower back pain ever since. After some googling, it seems I must have a slipped disc from rearranging some furniture on Friday afternoon, though I didn't feel it at the time.

The same sources I found on Google say it can be 2 to 3 weeks of healing to get over a slipped disc...I'm frustrated after 2-3 days; though I have learned that alcohol is a far better painkiller than ibuprofen or oxycodone, and likely cheaper as well.

Apparently there are more important things happening in the world today than my lower back pain. I'll likely be sitting around medicating and watching polls and numbers and people singing the praises of McCain/Obama's campaigns all night. I like CNN's big touchscreen 'magic finger' technology so far, though I'd like to be able to access the breakdowns myself, without them picking and choosing. I haven't found it on the CNN site so far, but I'll keep looking.

17:41 EST - CNN Exit Poll update 72% of new voters so far voted Obama; the top state being California, which was guaranteed Dem anyways.

18:10 - 5+ hours in line to vote? We're no America, but in Canada you get in and out of the voting station in less than 20 minutes (including 5 minutes to stop at Tim Hortons)

18:17 - CNN is busting out all kinds of fancy graphics technology - pure filler.

18:33 - Exit polls are great and all that; except when you remember how the exit polls all had the Democrats ahead in the past two elections.

18:42 - White evangelical voters in favour of McCain, who knew? Numbers down from support from the same demo. of Bush. That's a plus. Wolf Blitzer "loves these numbers". Stay tuned closely going to and coming back from commercial breaks, he may be standing over at the 'voter analysis board' rubbing his beard against it sensually.

19:00 - CNN projects Obama and McCain get Vermont and Kentucky respectively. No alarms and no surprises.

19:15 - CNN busts out a hologram looking like the Emperor and Lord Vader talking in Star Wars.

19:48 - Flipping around a bit; NBC has McCain projected in South Carolina, CBS South Carolina and West Virgina, CNN is being more cautious.

19:56 - CNN all night has been showing some great breakdowns of the current votes by county, and comparing to the 2004 election. CNN now projects South Carolina as well.

20:00 - A slew of expected Democratic states have come in. Why aren't there more states like Maine and Nebraska that can split their electoral votes?

20:30 - Another northeastern state for Obama in New Hampshire. I like that CNN is actually waiting for a significant number of actual ballots, as opposed to exit polls which I have a hard time trusting.

20:44 - The latest versions of Firefox have become increasingly bloated, and prone to crashing. Software developers need to stop taking memory usage for granted. I think its time to switch to using the much more streamlined (though less customizable) Google Chrome on my laptop.

In the meantime; Obama has been projected to win Pennsylvania which is a nice pickup.

20:54 - I just came out of the bathroom and thought I heard Wolf Blitzer say Clay Aiken had won a seat in North Carolina. Turns out it was Kay Hagan, which is probably for the best. Clearly my 'medication' is starting to catch up with me.

21:01 - Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota all for Obama. NY was no surprise. Wyoming and Alabama to McCain. Race as an important factor or not a factor votes the same according to exit poll demographics, lending some credence to the suggestion that for every person voting for Obama because he is black there was someone voting against Obama because he was black.

21:34 - Ohio. As Ohio goes, so goes the White House. McCain is running out of seats quickly.

21:39 - The McCain HQ has turned off the news coverage of the election. Even Fox News apparently; I'm guessing there's no way to spin it in their favour at this point, even at Fox.

22:02 - Indecision 2008 is on CTV Live. I don't have to wait like most nights not having the Comedy network. Excellent.

22:28 - They're talking about concession speeches with more vigor now, I think I'm done posting updates for the night. Suffice it to say I'm pleased that its so clearcut at this point, with little chance for even vote fixing to save the Republicans this time around.

23:19 - I'm pretty sure that the intro music theme that was just played before McCain's concession speech was a slightly altered theme from Top Gun...Maverick to the end; hilarious. Lets hope he doesn't let Palin speak.

23:27 - John McCain remains a classy man, after cutting off hate mongering supporters at rallies in the past weeks, he has delivered a humble, and apparently honest concession. He suggests that he has no regrets about what might have been, but one still has to wonder how much closer it would have been if such a divisive candidate as Sarah Palin hadn't been chosen as the VP candidate.

Yea, I Wouldn't Do That Stem Cell Stuff Either!

I listened to a segment of the Howard Stern show the other day in which they walked around Harlem interviewing black people about who they would be voting for in next week's election. Obviously the clips played were selective, and the whole process non-scientific, but it was still surprising to hear how many people were voting for Obama when McCain's platform, policy, and even running mate were applied to the name 'Obama', making a case for the black community voting blindly for Obama on race.

But after thinking about it for a moment, and given things like the arrest of two people this week with intent to assassinate Obama based solely on the colour of his skin, I am convinced that for every person that votes for Obama because he is black, there will be at least one white person who votes for McCain because he isn't black.

The fact was broken down all too eerily again on the Daily Show, probably over a month back as I recall, when they did a bit on how stupid people will control the outcome of this election. Of course they intended it as a joke, but its not all that far from the truth when you think about it.

Every day you are confronted with something new and more unbelievable, whether its an unlicensed plumber discussing foreign policy with the McCain electorate, or people walking the streets of New York voting for Obama and his 'running mate' Sarah Palin. Obviously, hopefully, its a small minority of uneducated people being highlighted in the media, but my suspicion is that's not the case. The election next week will probably be decided by a few percentage points. A whim going into the election booth of a few 10s of thousands of people, some international event spun to play into a candidates hands between now and then, or blind fear of or faith in a black man could decide who presides over the most powerful country in the world next week, and that scares me.

Thrilled

Carolyn found this and made my weekend:


Who says prison, or the Phillipines, can't be fun?

(Apparently I'm over a year behind on this viral...too bad)

Immortalized

© A. Ramsay

A friend of mine takes photos and enlarges them into relief artwork in wood. A few months ago we found out she'd sold a piece with Carolyn carved into it, and now it seems it was my turn to be put into art.

I have no idea whether this piece is for sale yet or will be, but if for some reason you happen to be interested in a large portrait of me (obviously for the art, not the content), or similar pieces, let me know and I should be able to get you in contact.

The Results Are In: People Are Tired

According to Reuters, voter turnout was an all time low at 58%. Frequency of elections combined with the table I've created below pretty much explain all that away in my mind.


As of 08:52 15-Oct-2008.

Clearly its difficult to choose what 'Other' candidates would gain seats being as so many fringe parties are included in these numbers, perhaps the highest nationwide percentages could also be brought in to play here. All I'm saying is the representation needs to start better following the population, instead of arbitrary geographical lines. Yes, a majority government may never exist under that format, but maybe then the politicians will be forced to work together for the long term, instead of looking 18-24 months down the road at the next election opportunity.

Election Watching

I may or may not update this as the election results come in. Popular vote in the Atlantic region has the Liberals and Conservatives down, and NDP, Green and Independents up...go figure. I have a feeling this will be a popular theme, and yet, I don't think the seats will change accordingly. I suspect after this election there will be even more calls for a change to the voting system to reflect the popular vote.

Its particularly telling that Rick Mercer is part of the CBC official election coverage. I sure don't foresee the likes of Jonathan Stewart or Stephen Colbert being on call when the results come in on Obama v. McCain.

21:44 EDT
Elizabeth May paraphrase 'If voters aged 5 and up counted, I would have won in a landslide'. There are positives and negatives to take from this.

Northern Ontario swinging past Liberal to Green and NDP? Oh wait, basing these claims on 30-200 total votes...One comment though, that the region depends on diesel and so is opposed to the Liberal carbon tax plan? I'm pretty sure 3 of the 5 big positive movers on those shitty markets today were mining/metals companies, the little man working for those companies has nothing to worry about. Not to mention that many of those metals are integral to the new 'green' technologies.

22:11 EDT
Counting the Prairies now, no shocks out there. Liberals are in some tighter than expected races, particularly in Toronto, where I think I heard Conservatives haven't held a seat in 20 years. Getting a little scared that the Cons could actually make a majority.

22:44 EDT
Interesting discussion on the local cable outlet for Rogers on why this election is even taking place. It hasn't gone so far as to suggest the waste of money should it come out as the predicted Conservative minority, but they have touched on Harper's motivations in declaring parliament 'dysfunctional'.

23:25 EDT
Apparently blogger is overloaded right now. One last comment on the use of Twitter on not just CBC, but any network when it comes to election coverage: cut it out. I'll be the first to admit that just about anyone can go out and create a blog. But it at least requires some ability to piece together ideas and thoughts.

Twitter updates are about on par with the text messages scrolling across the bar on MuchMusic vote in music video segments. They work for status updates...not for informed commentary. Get rid of them.

Loudness DNE Fullness

Until I went browsing around to hear some of the tracks besides the first single from the newest Metallica album, I had never heard of the loudness war. I ended up finding a couple articles, including this one on the Wired blog, describing how the quality of sound was being sacrificed for the sake of a 'louder' sound. Boosting the levels of the tracks would make sense to me if people all over were suddenly turning all their stereos, personal players, computers or whatever to full volume and not finding it loud enough, but I really don't think that's the case.

Of course what the music industry has effectively done now is create a ton of garbage quality releases for which 'high quality' releases can later be marketed as they see fit.

At least in the case of Death Magnetic, it was also released as a Guitar Hero version, against which the album version was compared to see the remarkable effect of the loudness boosting. I've now downloaded, in the face of Metallica and their Napster kerfuffle, the GH3 version of the album and listened to it a couple times through. Does Metallica deserve my money for their efforts? Absolutely, its a great return to some of their earlier ways and energy, and miles better than St. Anger and its dropped D monotony. I don't however feel that their label and management are entitled to my money for an inferior quality release, and won't be buying the album until a re-mixed version is readily available, at a non marked up price.

If more people follow this philosophy, and record sales tank on this disc, it would seem to be obvious that the record labels would pretty much have to rethink their ways. Here's hoping.

-A petition directly for the re-mixing of 'Death Magnetic' is online here
-A presently smaller, broader ranging petition against the loudness war in general can be found here

Sniffle Hack Wheeze

I disappeared for the weekend with Carolyn to her cottage. Before leaving, I picked up a nasty cold/flu that's been making its rounds. I managed to load enough orange juice and vitamin C pills into my body to hold the worst of it off until Monday morning around 2 am, at which point I woke up and couldn't sleep again for two hours. Lack of sleep combined with elevation changes driving back home yesterday made my head feel like a dense ball of yellow-green phlegmy goo (not far from the truth).

A bit of turkey soup, and time seem to have the cold on its way out.

Objects in Motion

4 degrees at night and a yellowish tinge to many of the leaves on the trees; fastest summer ever. One of the rainiest too.

Every year around this time, one of my friends from highschool throws herself a birthday house party, which becomes my annual highschool reunion to catch up with people I don't see in the intervening time. Back in highschool it was the typical gossip, backstabbing and drama. Through university less of the drama, and more bitching about profs, courses and tuition. Now, 7 years removed from graduation, and 2 or more from university or college, and most of the catching up involved hearing about people rotating through jobs in an attempt to advance careers. Meanwhile I remain static; an object at rest, waiting for enough of a force to get me in motion. One would think plummeting towards debt would instill some kind of energy to do so. Instead, I'm blogging, and waiting for paint to dry on another household 'make-work' project.

On the bright side, at least I haven't lost thousands or millions in the markets the past few days. At least I'm not one of those declaring bankruptcy trying to pay for my $300 000 home, and $50 000 SUV status symbols on a $30k salary. Not working at all has put me in the exact same position as those people at least, nowhere. But with infinitely less energy wasted. At least I have efficiency going for me.

Lets Play Ball...Just Not on TV

The Toronto Blue Jays have won 8 games in a row, the first time they've done so since the 1999 season. Three of those wins came against one of the two teams ahead of them in the wildcard race in the Minnesota Twins. Three more of them came against the division leading Tampa Bay Rays. And the remaining two wins came against the New York Yankees, who the Jays have now surpassed in the overall standings.

Winning late in the season isn't unusual around the Jays franchise, and neither is being all but mathematically out of the playoff race at this point in the season for every one since 1993. With 20 games remaining, and despite the hot streak, the Jays remain 8 games out of the playoff race. Now, whether you want to call out the MLB for having the smallest playoffs of any major pro sport, with 8 of 30 teams getting extra play; or are willing to accept life in the perennial best division in baseball, Jays management has stepped afoul of fans somehow in not having the final game of the season scheduled for TV broadcast according to the Yahoo! schedule.

Going into the season, the Jays were being sold as a true competitor for a playoff spot. And while that clearly didn't pan out with a lacklustre offensive output until things seemingly turned around with the firing of John Gibbons and hiring of throwback Cito Gaston, the Jays still find themselves playing quasi-meaningful games at the end of the season. At present, the Boston Red Sox sit 8 games ahead of the Jays, with 7 of their remaining 20 games scheduled opposing one another.

Despite all this, the final game of the season has apparently not been picked up by any of the big three Canadian sports networks for TV. This, combined with the ridiculous blackout restrictions on MLB.TV in Canada such that no Blue Jays games are available on the online package, means that a game that may infact have playoff implications will go unseen in Canada. At the end of September, not even the beloved Maple Leafs are back in season, so the reasoning behind this scheduling blunder seems unclear. Jays fans can only hope that the issue is resolved come the end of season, hopefully whether still in contention or not.

Betrothed

On a distinctly more positive note than the last post; I forgot to mention in the post after returning home from the cottage that one of my best buddies since elementary school, and his girlfriend (and my own girlfriend's cousin) are now engaged, with a wedding in the works for next summer. You know it will be the hottest day of the summer when I'm standing there, with my full tux on, roasting. In all seriousness though, congratulations to Dave and Jo!

Military Breeding Machine

I have caught a few minutes here and there of speeches and the like coming out of the Republican National Convention in the past few days. I tend to only be able to maintain my attention for those few minutes at a time before I become dumbfounded at how people so adamantly support such hypocrisy. I thought surely last time around there was no way they could possibly re-elect Bush, but then they did. And now despite all the negative response around the selection of Governor Palin for VP, I worry that the same thing could happen.

When it comes down to selling your campaign on grabbin' yer guns and upholding some notion of Christian law, apparently votes quickly swing your way. The Republicans have only managed to shift gears slightly since last time around, slightly fewer references to the dreaded 9/11 (except those by GW himself), and endless more references to McCain's POW experience. Sure the guy is a hero in that regard, but so are countless other vets slipping further into senility, and under-assisted by aid and health care programs. I don't see how this becomes such a strong selling point in marketing the President of the USA.

As usual these days, its basically been put on satire shows like The Daily Show and Colbert Report to reveal the hypocrisy of the actual halfway relevant talking points, and they've done a hilarious job. The speeches themselves would be funny, if it wasn't so scary, what people are willing to believe.

The two most prominent platforms in the speeches so far seem to be the 'protection of human life', and the 'resolve to get the job done in the war against terrorism'. In that juxtaposition, I've finally realized some of the 'logic' in Republican thinking. The life of children must be protected, until such age that they are fit to suit up in camo and carry an M16, no matter the costs to the mother bearing them, or the perhaps young father, who has nowhere to turn but to the military to earn money to support the child. Two birds with one stone right?

Sure we have our own imminent election coming up in Canada, and it has its implications for conflicts overseas as well, but it all seems to pale in comparison to the problems faced south of the border, and in reality, the world over, should the Republicans steal another 4 years.

Back from the Bruce

The extended weekend up at Carolyn's cottage on the peninsula was awesome. Mostly quiet. Mostly nice weather. Mostly good food.

3 hours of rain in 4 and a half days is nothing to complain about, even when you burn your knuckles on the barbecue trying to keep the food from getting soaked with rain spilling off the roof.

In an effort to save money, I tried to keep the road tripping to a minimum, but we did manage to make it up to Tobermory to walk around for a bit and see the million dollar sailboats interspersed with more modest fishing boats and glass bottom boat tour boats. Carolyn told me she'd gone on one of the glass bottom tours once only to find that the 'glass bottom' was a couple feet square window, which you had to fight for space around with the rest of the passengers. Certainly not the image the mind conjures for the description.

We also made it out to the Georgian Bay side to hike a little ways along the Bruce Trail out to the cliffs near Devil's Monument. With Carolyn's vertigo at cliff tops, and with trails running within a couple feet of the edge, we decided not to push very far along the trail.


After turning around and heading back to the van, we decided to try the drive north along the shore to the lighthouse at Cabot's Head. Most of the drive was a one lane gravel road right along the rocky beach with little room to pull aside for traffic coming the other way. Hopefully the scratches along the side of the van aren't anything more than some roughing of the clear coat; I still have to wash off the dust accumulated from that part of the trip. When we got to Cabot's Head though, there was a sign that requested a mandatory donation. The last time I checked, I thought that was called a fee, not a donation. We decided to turn around and were happy with the scenic drive, mostly on principle, but also on lack of change.

The rest of the time up there was spent sitting around in the sun watching the swarms of grasshoppers and frogs hop across the clearing, drinking, and burning through the lumber pile.

I won't use the end of this post to talk about how the only meal really gone wrong was the blueberry pancakes attempted by Carolyn. That would be mean.

Library Porn

Context:

If someone wants to look at internet pornography at a public library, they should have that right, says the executive director of the Ontario Public Library Association.

"Is that appropriate? No," said Shelagh Paterson. "But people should be able to access whatever they are looking for in the library."

The association does not set rules for public libraries in the province, but encourages them not to restrict access to information -- including on the internet.

"It's certainly an issue of concern for libraries," she said yesterday from Toronto.

She was responding to the concerns of Rob Nichol, a parent and owner of a cyber safety business who saw someone looking at porn near children at the Queen's Square library branch in Cambridge this week.

So first off, who goes to a library to look at porn? But whether you're a pervert or not, you should still have that right. Parents, and other squeamish types: if you're offended by porn, mind your own business and that of your children and don't gawk at people's monitors in the library. Its certainly not safe practice, but some people are in situations where they have to do things like bank online or similar sensitive matter wherever they can get a connection. If I were one of these people, I wouldn't want people staring at my screen, and its pretty reasonable to expect that kind of privacy. The same kind of thing should go for any browsing.

If you're gonna look around and snoop into other peoples business, then you deserve whatever eye-full of cheerleader girl-on-girl action you get. The library has done what should be expected of them in filtering the content in the children's area of the library. Outside of that, teach your child about respect of privacy, or keep them in the children's area. In my experience, the public access computers tend to be somewhat separated from the main book racks, so if you're that concerned, just keep your child away from the unfiltered computers.

All that said, again, who, aside from doing legitmate research (??), goes to the library to surf porn?

NFL 2008/2009 Regular Season Schedule

The season is coming up and after not being able to find a convenient schedule already in a spreadsheet online (without succumbing to joining the Micro$oft community), I decided to spend some time and set up a sheet complete with pivot tables very similar to a schedule I was able to find a few years back.

I figure I might as well make it accessible to anyone that needs it for setting up pools, etc., so here it is: NFL 08/09 Regular Season Schedule [xlsx]

Oh, Hey There

I guess I've been lost in the tubes. I'd like to say my absence was due to shocking amounts of productivity, but that would be a lie. You have to be careful about when you choose to tell your lies after all. Between the endless rain and the lack of income of any kind, its been difficult to really plan to do anything exciting.

But, somewhat out of the blue, Carolyn's parents have given her permission to use their cottage towards the end of August, so we'll be heading up to the Bruce Peninsula for a few days. I say it comes as a surprise because, despite her being closer to 30 than 20, they still end to be very conservative and protective in their treatment of her. There is of course some level of control you have to be willing to accept living at home, but then there is above and beyond the call of duty.

In any event, we have use of the cottage for a few days, provided we take care of mowing part of the lawn/weeds, and staining or sealing some deck boards of some kind. I can only hope that the wet weather patterns in these parts don't follow us up there so we can actually make use of the few days vacation time.

Undiscovered Discovery Discretization

An article on the BBC this morning has me somewhat baffled. I'll not go into a discussion about whether the Arctic should be fair game for drilling, or the can of worms that this will re-open in terms of land claims north of 66.5° latitude.

According to the survey, the Arctic holds about 13% of the world's undiscovered oil, 30% of the undiscovered natural gas, and 20% of the undiscovered natural gas liquids.

If its undiscovered, then how does one determine a percentage, especially one as precise as "13%". Since there is apparently an actual volume of oil discovered by this survey, why not use this to calculate as a percentage of the known oil reserves. Ass backwards calculations like these will go a long way to pissing people off when getting the runaround about oil prices and economic 'forecasting'.

Nature of Things

Fried Potato Slices

Alright, I have a debate to try to settle. Its obvious that Regular, Salt and Vinegar, Ketchup, Sour Cream and Onion and Barbecue make up 5 of the 'original 6' staples. The debate is what was the 6th.

Which chip flavour do you remember being first?
	All Dressed
	Dill Pickle
pollcode.com free polls

Bell Sympatico

I don't even understand why a company would want to buy out BCE as was finally approved last week. I myself have had a number of problems with them on a service level, with unannounced changes of e-mail servers, and unexplained loss of connection for days at a time (though that hasn't happened in a while now). That's not even getting into the fact that Bell has deemed it appropriate to throttle internet connections, whether legitimate or otherwise, all while actually increasing the cost of the high speed service since the time we initially signed on.

In what other market do you see a diminished quality of service for an increase in price? I sure can't think of any.

Then late last week out of the blue, Carolyn's family Sympatico connection went down for no good reason. With no apparent changes being made to the modem-router combo (that you are forced to rent from Bell as opposed to buying your own and saving money in the long run), all three of their computers were unable to connect. After hours on the phone with their tech 'support' spread out over much of the weekend, her dad was driven to screaming at the useless tits at the other end of the phone line.

It seems to be Sympatico policy to always pass the blame to the customer. In this case they had Carolyn disable her wireless card, and in whatever else they had her do, remove the drivers for said card, causing more headaches later. Along with that, they tried to insist that Internet Explorer HAD to be used, and that there was some error, apparently present instantaneously on all of their computers at once that was causing the problem. This despite the fact that 2 of those 3 computers were reformatted and configured recently and were clean of any kind of spyware, adware or viruses. I've managed to reconfigure everything for them now and it seems to be up and running fine again, but that's not to say that Sympatico should be let off the hook for their useless 'help'.

After the first 2 hours on the phone, they should have been willing to send a technician out to the house, maybe not same day or anything, but nonetheless within a day or two. Instead, they shipped out a new modem, without the wireless capability of the previous one, and strung them all along for a ride blaming the customer's computer instead of their own shortcomings, something I've run into with my own dealings with them.

Then to top all this off, I read this morning that Bell is restructuring their cell phone billing to charge their clients for incoming text messages. While thankfully not a Bell mobile customer, you can guarantee I wouldn't be one for a second longer once they started pulling that kind of bullshit, effectively making double the profit on messages exchanged between Bell customers. Of course it makes sense to charge fees for outgoing messages, but incoming messages? The client can do nothing to control what messages they receive. On an incoming call you at least have the option not to answer the call, but a text message doesn't have the same feature. But its these kind of backhanded business practices I guess that make a company worth billions. Watch out, in the months ahead I foresee Bell adding a rental surcharge for the copper communications lines running into your home that have been there for decades.

Woof

Oh yea, we also adopted a dog.

Steve and his wife adopted one also.

They got along great for about 15 minutes when they met the other night. Lots of sniffing and marking, but not even a hint of a growl. Then, food was introduced to the mix, and that changed everything. A bloody paw on Sasha was the only visible wound from the melee that ensued; impressive given the noise the two of them made. Our dog, Tyson, has been listening to commands better since that all went down though.

Last night was a pretty mellow night of a few beers and busting open some board games with Carolyn. Overall its been an unusually low key long weekend.

Olivetti

Hippy Dippy Weatherman

If there is an afterlife, George Carlin now knows whether or not fart jokes truly are universal.

Why Don't We Turn This Whole Place Into a Roundabout?

Apparently the Region of Waterloo Council is still under the impression that the area is located smack dab in the middle of France. Another roundabout has been informally approved, this time much closer to the core of the city than any of the previous efforts.

Just down the street from me, the new installation at Union St. and Margaret Ave. apparently will serve the maybe 2 hours a day it is at all difficult to get through the intersection, and at that, the only real problem posed is a little bit of a wait to turn left from Union onto Margaret.

Again those in favour tout the slowing of traffic, and the diminished severity of accidents. But they are still neglecting the fact that this is not Europe, and drivers around here have not grown up with roundabouts, and that we here in North America still tend to follow a persuasion of driving over-sized vehicles. Combine that with a relatively poor explanation on the MTO website of how to properly navigate the intersection, and you've created an intersection that many older drivers are going to avoid, funneling more traffic down side-streets like the gonged up Ellis Cres. project of last year.

On top of this, the roundabout is immediately adjacent to one of the larger bush lot park and trail areas in the region, and that it is frequently used by pedestrians, including children. As soon as a steady flow of traffic is created through that corridor, the park will become much more inaccessible to people living nearby on the west side of the park.

The severity of accidents may decrease, but I guarantee there will be a higher incidence. Hopefully council does the right thing and does not formally pass the installation of this roundabout. Give it time at least and let people better acclimate to the slew of roundabouts already constructed at just about every boundary of the Region.

Valid Code

As nice as being able to control the finest details is with code, differences between things like '&' and '&' that have you Googling around for 2 hours before you find them can be rather frustrating. But now my pictures are displaying properly in Firefox 3, so its worth it? And really, what else do I have to do?

Last week's awesome weather has faded into cold rainy crap, putting an abrupt end to any plans to have an outdoor poker night this week on the picnic table I built this weekend. I'm not a fan of the furnace kicking on overnight in the middle of June.

I am however a huge fan of the Netherlands domination of Group C at Euro, despite handing an undeserving Italy a pass to the quarter finals in beating Romania yesterday. Beyond changing in 9 second string players, there's not much more Holland could have done to help Romania along. Here's hoping they don't go ahead and choke now against whoever of Russia or Sweden they meet on Saturday. If they keep playing the way they did in the group stage, I'm convinced they can beat any team out there. The key is not getting too cocky.

Faxe'd in the Butt

Tasty meal...but moving the chicken off the grease hotspots that my grill tends to develop and still keeping it upright was a bit of a challenge. I think I'll go back to rotisserie next time around.

Hup Nederland!

After a France-Romania draw, the Dutch are the leaders of Group C after taking it to the Italians. You can dispute the first goal all you want, the fact is, until the player beyond the end line gets treatment, he is still in play. Further to that is Holland's pretty second goal and the 3rd goal.

The plan now is to be back at Kickoff for game 2, hopefully the French supporters show up as strong then as the Italians did today.

In other news...the Catholic school board is at it again with their monopolistic business partnerships. Apparently my mom ordered Grad photos for my brother a few weeks back at an astonishing total of $162 dollars for a very limited package of photos. Well, while I was out today apparently the people at the company that the Catholic School Board chooses to do the grad photos called my mom up and promptly informed her that she wasn't entitled to the photos she ordered, despite ordering over their '$100' dollar minimum. In the world of cash grabs and monopolizing people with a once in a lifetime opportunity (e.g. graduation), Lifetouch / Life Touch has done their utmost best to fuck over the little man. Similar to the uniform monopoly run by McCarthy's for uniforms in Catholic schools in the area...this bullshit needs to stop. The Catholic schoolboard, if they want to sustain themselves within a society with so many other religions needs to stop buying into these bullshit contracts. And the people who run these companies need to be held accountable for their actions. If no-one is willing to even file a complaint (i.e. my mom) then these issues won't come to the forefront.

So if you have an issue with Life Touch / Lifetouch and their photos...be sure to at the very least file an e-mailed complaint with the board. If the board doesn't hear about it, they have no official cause for concern. In the end...no matter what watermarks you put on your proofs Lifetouch, educated people will find a way around it.

A New Distraction

Less than a week after the end of the Stanley Cup playoffs, Euro 2008 is underway. Sure the NBA playoffs are still going, but now that the Pistons or Spurs can't win it, I'll be pretty much satisfied with whoever wins. That said, I'm not a huge Kobe fan, and think Garnett deserves a ring, so go Celtics I guess.

The Euro so far has been great. Despite Groups A and B not being very deep, the games have been contested fairly evenly, even in the case of the poorly ranked Austrian team who are only there by virtue of hosting this year's tourney. I have my concerns about the Netherlands even making it out of the group phase, somehow getting lumped in with both Italy and France who at any given time are football forces. Somehow 3 of the top 10 teams in the world ended up in the same group of the European tournament, but if nothing else, it will provide for some fiery, tightly contested play. As I write this, 5th ranked Germany has scored its 2nd against 28th ranked Poland, and they still get to play Austria who is ranked below Canada (?!) in the world.

Anyways, competition and all that, I hope to go out to Kickoff in campus plaza for the Netherlands-Italy game tomorrow. What Kickoff lacks in menu, it more than makes up for in tasty, obscure imports on tap and always having a soccer game tuned in.

Hup Nederland!

Summer Love

To the couple having sex just off the trail next to Laurel Creek: Sorry we ruined your party. Maybe a bit further off the trail next time would be better for everyone, but at least you were able to laugh about it.

And really who can blame you with the nice weather finally. Plenty of activities I want to do outdoors as well. For now though I have some home brew to bottle.

Pave Over Paradise, Put Up a Parking Lot

When it comes to making a buck, greenbacks come before greenspace. The City of Waterloo has approved selling space for advertising on a number of trails around the city. As it is, its been a disappointment in the past few years to see many natural trails dug up and paved over with asphalt in the first place, the only benefit really being to a small fraction of rollerbladers that I ever see on those trails.

Particularly astounding was when the City of Kitchener decided to tear up some perfectly adequate trail in the Huron Park area to make some 'Eco Learning Center' deal, and then went and paved half the trails with asphalt, obliterating a series of nice biking trails in the process.

But back to the City of Waterloo pimping itself out, and ruining the retreat aspect of the local trails. The question is appropriately asked by Councilor d'Ailly, at what point do we draw the line on advertising once its started? Every time a new proposal comes along, a higher price can be asked, and the income for the City will again be used as justification for tarnishing the already rapidly diminishing natural areas within the entire Region.

And then what happens when companies want small 'inconspicuous' sign spaces at a price? If the price is right does the City give in again? I have no problem with putting advertising around the trail map kiosks, and encouraging advertised sponsorship on those signs, but the trails themselves need to be left untouched.

Just yesterday I went for a walk along the RIM Park trail and caught a glimpse of a doe and its fawn just off the trail in an otherwise natural marsh environment. If Disney were to come along and want to advertise the newest remake of Bambi on a sign along that stretch of trail, does the City give in so that it has money to pay its councilors the next time they vote a pay raise for themselves? I'd like to think not, and clearly there are some of those councilors who agree that this is a very bad precedent to be setting.

Right to a Fair Trial, Whenever It Suits You

I suppose when you're an aging white woman who can cry on demand, you are afforded more privileges than an Arab-Canadian who has lived out his teenage years in captivity. Of course, like the schoolyard bully in gradeschool, Canada was in more of a position to throw its weight around, and move Brenda Martin out of the country where she was actually afforded a fair trial, bring her home, and bail her out. But when the other bully on the playground is bigger and older than you, you just sit back and do what they tell you so you can keep up your rep.

The U.S. is at the point now where they have to keep their war-criminals prisoners of war 'enemy combatants' (the first two terms would seem to have actually given those people rights on an international level) locked away just to keep those who used to in fact just go about their lives taking care of their families and livelihoods from going and perpetrating acts of revenge against a nation that has locked them away for years with no recourse of any kind. I know I'd lose some of my passivity if I were locked away for 6 years with no just cause, and no way of defending myself.

I'm not saying these people need to be handed get out of jail free cards, as some of them may have indeed had ties to terrorist organizations, but the President of the United States in January, whether it be Obama, Clinton, or even McCain need to stand behind some kind of policy to deal with the prisoners like those at Guantanamo to expedite the trial process, and come into line with signed international treaties on the treatment of prisoners of war, as well as the treatment of child soldiers, for argument's sake, like Omar Khadr.

A Novel Idea for Pet Owners

If you can't keep your animal, namely your poorly trained dog, quiet when it spots strangers, then don't leave the fucking thing roped up in your front yard all day, barking for 15 minutes at a time when someone happens to be outside talking to a neighbour across the street or something.

Missing Pages

A couple months back my buddy Como mentioned an add-on for Firefox called 'Foxmarks'. Basically, it keeps a copy of your bookmarks online so you can keep them the same on multiple computers and have a backup should you do something stupid and lose them all.

Fast forward to me doing something stupid and losing them all; I installed the newest beta of Firefox over the old one, found that it wasn't compatible with some things I already use, and removed it. But when I uninstalled, it took all the preferences, including my bookmarks from the old version with it.

I've remembered about half of the bookmarks and managed to find them again, I guess the other half weren't important enough to remember anyways.

Now I'm using Foxmarks.

Also, thanks to Christielli I found out that this weekend coming is apparently the May long weekend already. The May 2-4 being a full week before May 24th is about as logical as the placement of religious holidays. No idea what I'm gonna do. Well, some idea.

Uplifting News

Blisters the Size of....Well, They're Big

Three days helping my buddy Steve and his wife move from a third story apartment with no elevator to what is essentially a three storey house. By the end of the first day I had the cliched muscles I didn't know I had aching. After three, I'm pretty sure I had worn them away to nothing anyways.

I followed that up with two days of building a poorly designed and supplied shed from Home Hardware (let this be a warning). Holding a bottle of ketchup at dinner was a challenge with fatigued arms shaking. At least its been good to be productive, and I have been paid well with food and beer.

But somehow between yesterday and today, my cellphone decided to take a shit, and now won't start up, despite being on a fully charged battery. Infact, the charger itself won't even work, and I'm left trying to find a replacement battery or a replacement phone for at least less than the amount of airtime I have left on the plan. I guess its back to being incommunicado for me.

I Learned My Moves From Street Fighter

This is hilarious. Couple gets married in tropics. Couple redoes ceremony infront of family and friends back home. Couple gets drunk, has argument in hotel. Groom karate kicks bride. Couple goes to jail.

Maybe marriage doesn't sound so bad after all...

One Day My 1994 Dodge Caravan Will Be Celebrated

It must be spring cleaning day at the apartment up the street. There are cars lined up and down both sides of an otherwise dead street during the daytime. Stepping out on my balcony this morning for some fresh air, I noticed some classic cars all lined up and decided to walk up the street for a closer look.

It must cost a fortune in additional parking on the owner's rent to keep these underground, but for the most part they were in great shape, for as much as I know about classic cars and how they are 'supposed' to look.

Something in the Water in the City of Saints

A couple days ago a video appeared showing two men being swarmed and beaten by a crowd of people in Montreal. Varying reports have come in since, some saying the two men were near death, others like that linked saying the men suffered cuts and bruises and were able to avoid hospitalization. Of course wanting to avoid hospitalization may speak to the two men's own guilt in the matter, with differing reports saying that racial taunts may have incited the violent attack. In reality, there's no place for either behaviour.

Then, after last night's Montreal Canadiens win to advance in the playoffs, the fans decided to honour the win and celebrate the pride in their home team in their own way, by looting stores and burning police cars in their home town. I have never understood the reasoning behind rioting over a sporting event. We get it, you're excited that your team won, but why trash the store of a fellow citizen who him or herself is likely a fan of the same damned team. Why endanger the lives of police officers who, were they not out watching over your dumb asses, would likely be home watching the game and celebrating as well.

Sure there are those cases where there are two clubs from the same city, New York, LA, Chicago have their sports with multiple teams, along with cities all over Europe, where they are even more accustomed to witnessing rioting like this.

I've been reminded that the same thing happened when the Oilers went deep in the playoffs a few years back. Not that the magnitude of the event in any way justifies this kind of behaviour, but this was a first round win. The Senators fans last year at least had it right, and the Flames fans tonight have a chance to show that this isn't a growing tradition that needs to be continued. If this kind of thing continues in Montreal, they won't deserve to have the first Canadian team to win the Cup since they won it in 1993.

Hardly the Bambino

I just came across this on Yahoo Sports. A construction worker on the new Yankee stadium managed to bury a Red Sox jersey beneath some concrete in the new project.

A construction worker’s bid to curse the Yankees by planting a Red Sox jersey in their new stadium was foiled Sunday when the team removed the offending shirt from its burial spot in the ballpark.

After locating the shirt in a service corridor behind what will be a restaurant in the new Yankee Stadium, construction workers jackhammered through the remaining concrete Sunday and pulled it out.

...

On Saturday, construction workers who remembered the employee—Gino Castignoli—phoned in tips about the shirt’s location.

“We had anonymous people come tell us where it was and we were able to find it,” said Frank Gramarossa, a project executive with Turner Construction, the general contractor on the site.

It took about five hours of drilling Saturday to locate the shirt under 2 feet of concrete, he said.

...

[Yankees COO, Lonn] Trost said the Yankees had discussed possible criminal charges against Castignoli with the district attorney’s office. “We will take appropriate action since fortunately we do know the name of the individual,” he said.

Seriously, if there are Yankees fans dumb enough to believe in curses, especially one so arbitrary as burying the jersey of a player who likely won't even make the Hall of Fame, then they should foot the bill for a couple hours of labour to remove the offending article that would have otherwise gone unnoticed. What the hell are you going to charge the guy with?

Sure the construction company he works/worked for has grounds for dismissal cause he obviously wasn't working as hard as he could be, but criminal charges? Yankees organization, this is why people hate you. You blow a harmless prank out of proportion for no good reason. You need to get over yourselves and stop signing egocentric old men, then maybe your team wouldn't be losing out to Boston so often.

This Just In

The Leafs didn't make the playoffs. They were essentially out of the running for 2 months before the season ended. You still droned on about their chances during that time. The season is over now. Stop fucking talking about them and give some more respect to the teams that did make it. Even if you only give attention to the Canadian teams. What happens with your Swedish meatball and your 10 million dollar D-line can wait til the other teams are on their offseason as well. And to the assclown that tried to say that the Leafs are as good as any team from 5-8 in either conference; how do you even wake up and dress yourself in the morning, let alone be allowed to spout such nonsense on a national sports program. They finished 11 points back, in 12th place, in the East.

But hey, its your kind of thinking that will be infectious to all the rest who bleed blue, and will prevent the kind of wholesale changes that the club really needs in the offseason. And anything that causes the Leafs to miss the playoffs is alright with me, but seriously take it off the TV and give some time to the teams who do matter.

Allan H. Selig

I got to my first Jays game of the year yesterday, and it didn't disappoint. Hilarious Boston fans who made the trip, combined with a Jays blowout, and finally catching a ball at a game after going to so many, along with quasi-t-shirt weather, made it a great trip. Hopefully I'll make it down again for at least one of the $2 games in the first few months of the season.

I learned that Bud Selig's real name is infact Allan Huber Selig by way of his signature on the ball. Who knew? What kind of name is Huber?

Walter Gretzky was also at the game for 'Brantford Day' and lived up to his reputation of being great with signing autographs for kids and other fans. He actually sat in the section next to us instead of rubbing shoulders with all the execs up in the boxes.

And on the hockey note, the standings are finally almost clear, and the pick sheet for the pool just needs a few more players slotted in. Within a couple hours (since tonight's game doesn't have any implications) I should have the sheet uploaded for everyone. Get em in ASAP!

I Want to Break Free

Two days in a row with a temperature above 10 degrees meant that it was time to rid my head of a couple months worth of shag yesterday. Earlier in the week I pulled my mountain bike in for the limited spring tune-up I'm capable enough to perform.

Last year after my early season crash, I took my bike in to the shop to have things re-aligned and looked over since my knee was so buggered up that I wasn't going to be riding for a few weeks anyways. At the time, I was told that my shocks were likely in need of new bushings to eliminate some of the 'sloppy' feel I was noticing at the time. Well today, after placing an order online for some parts I need at prices 50% to 75% cheaper than those at the local shops, I decided to finish the work I had started on my bike.

After truing up the wheels and putting my tires back on, I checked the compression on my shocks and noticed a kind of squelching, squirting noise coming from inside. After a bit of reading, I think it means that the oil seals inside are pooched which could make for some expensive time in the shop unless I can find a decent guide to do the work myself. After having turned to an online store to avoid the mark-up in the local lower volume shops, I can only imagine what they'll want to charge me for more limited parts and labour. They sure won't want to take any parts I can find for cheap online and do the labour for me, as nice as that would be.

The money spent on keeping the bike in good shape so I can get my own ass in shape is already enough to cover a few 24s of beer that could serve well to keep me out of shape. The forecast repairs, will likely cover a few more cases. All I wanted was to get out on my damned bike.