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.

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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.