Sunday 10 October 2010

Scores, Sandman and Starship Sofa


The word of the week is prescient. Are you?

Oct 4 – That’s a lot of Texting...

Have you seen the Cigar Guy internet Meme yet? If not, go have a look – it involves Tiger Woods, in a peripheral way, and may serve to boost his career... again. I find it fascinating that we live in an age of such instant communication that a simple picture can launch a thousand tributes... or a song can launch a career, such as with Justin Bieber. Given the choice, I’d take Cigar Guy on the TV any day of the week.

Text messages are becoming my bane; Renee prefers them as a method of communication. Sadly, my LG Shine phone from a few years ago is great in many ways, but does not have a QUERTY keyboard. I’m considering an upgrade to a new phone soon anyway as my contract expires in a month( I despise phone contracts!!! )so I’m looking at low-cost models with a full keyboard for texting . I don’t really want to splurge on a ‘super smartphone’ right now, as my instinct tells me that there will be a MUCH better offering on the market by this time next year, so I’m looking for suggestions / deals with Telus phones. No iPhones either, though a used one may be just the ticket... but it’d have a virtual keyboard. Can’t win with that.

Oct 5 – Long Day, Creeping By

A long day today; one of the girls from the Millstream store had trouble opening the safe this morning, so I trucked on down there to help... in the process witnessing a fender-bender at a stop right in front of me. A new driver failed to wait for a truck turning left in front of her and rammed it, fortunately not at any great speed – the sound of metal boxes slamming together is quite distinct but fortunately nobody was hurt. I left my name and number as a witness and scooted to work, where I then took 2 hours off due to demands on the car and spent the time at the local library – I read Neil Gaiman’s The Kindly Ones, a Sandman graphic novel. Spectacular. The rest of the day slid by solidly until I closed the store.

Most of you out there know that I am very, very careful about what personal information I put up online – FB is a good example, as I don’t use my real last name, just my pen name. It’s just too easy to put bits and pieces together from sources all over the ‘net that as a whole can be damaging in various ways. I was reminded of this today, as a co-worker asked if I had ‘creeped’ anyone online via FB or Google yet – the thought hadn’t occurred to me, but apparently that’s what everyone does nowadays...?  I can see the merits in it, as you might get lucky and find out a bit of info, but on the other hand, what if you find out something that you don’t like? Tough choices.

Oct 6 – Starship Sofa Super-ness!

Congrats to Brian for his ramping up of his uber-involvement as Art Director for StarshipSofa beginning this month! Way To Go Buddy!  Brian’s been with S.Sofa for some time now, and put me onto listening to his Hugo-Award-Winning audio magazine... my iPod Nano’s full of episodes that I listen to whenever I can; there’s always a good story in there and the host Tony C. Smith does an amazing job every show. I highly recommend a listen!

Hmmm... having Wednesdays off worked out this week – the weather was perfect! Of course, life couldn’t let me have perfection, as when I walked over to The Mountain Bean a little after lunch for a few hours relaxing outside... they were closed, with an apologetic note in the window. So I brewed up some tea and settled for my balcony instead, complete with peanut butter cookies. Earl Grey with Vanilla is spectacular, by the way – very smooth and definitely a different taste.

Oct 7 – No Niagara News, Just Local TV

Still no word about the plane tickets to Niagara, and my vacation at the end of October is fast approaching. I’m hoping that they will arrive this week, so I can let everyone know that I’m heading down – right now, it’s still up in the air. *ba-da-boom* I’ll send out an email ASAP once they arrive!

This doesn’t happen every day: my mom was on local television today, being interviewed. She’d written a letter into the station about the lack of transit( of any kind )here on Bear Mountain... and today they sent out a reporter to record an interview with her on the subject of interest! Have a look below( sorry about the audio, Blogger.com seems to have converted the video w/o it. Working on it! ):


Oct 8 – Writings and Workingz

Does anybody out there keep a journal? A diary? A mini-blog? A private stash of letters to themselves that nobody will ever read? I’m curious; as I’ve been writing this blog for almost 3 years solid, I’m wondering if anyone else out there does anything similar. I know there are some obsessive cases of people documenting their entire lives, but as I’ve said before in this blog, mine’s not interesting enough to put down that much detail day to day. Maybe some future sociologist will revel in collecting the textual detritus of blogs into a comprehensive picture of our current Cultural Age, but I doubt any of my entries will be there. Who can say how long Blogger.com will stay online? A decade? A century? Will it be archived for posterity in deep underground Google Vaults? We’ll have to see what the future brings.

Fridays at work are much better than they’ve been, with four people scheduled for the day. It makes things so much easier when the lobby fills up, and the customers are happier that they have less time spent waiting in line. It also helps that I have a fine crew, who keep improving their skills day to day and get along famously with each other – no prima donnas or woe-is-me types at all. Makes me smile!

Oct 9 – Savings and Scrubbed Dates

I know I keep throwing them out there, but I do find a lot of interesting and useful sites for your edification: SparkSavings.com is no exception. You can register to use its free financial tools, which are great for budgets, calculating spending habits and learning from other people’s experiences with finance – for free! I’m all about the free, as I’ve said before... with the ‘net at your fingertips, you can find tons of great advice. You just have to learn which bits to take, and which to ignore. Simple, right?

This evening was a bit of a wash, so I spent it in - talking on the phone, mostly, for the later part of the evening right up until midnight. Not a date night, though the weather was rather calm and balmy, for all that.

Oct 10 – Super Score... 42?

Seeing as I worked today, there was little chance of my catching a few games online with my friends on Xbox, as we usually do on Sundays. But, to my surprise, Dave was still online when I logged in after 8pm, and we jumped into a solid few hours of Battlefield: Bad Company 2. The last game of the night was a long drag-out fight with tiny 4-man teams that took the better part of 45 mins – I had the highest score I’ve ever dreamed of from it! 29,743 in total, with 26 pins that included a TON of long-term experience earnings... I was flabbergasted, really, and will be hard-put to ever equal that again. So I mention it here and now – huzzah!

What an auspicious date today: 10/10/10 – the perfect score in many an Olympic sport or contest, and just plain lucky to boot. Today is also ’42 Day’ in celebration of that legendary number from The Hitchiker’s Guide To The Galaxy – rather an awkward name for a day, really, but it gets the point across. Seeing as I recently missed Talk Like A Pirate Day, I’ll be sure to mark this one on the calendar... and check it every 42 days, give or take. Thanks for the heads-up on this one, Brian... I’ll send you a nice towel as a thank-you. Oh, and it’s today’s date as 101010 in binary that turns out to be the number 42. Cool, eh?

And... that’s all for now except for: Newt And John! Have you checked it out this week yet? Stop reading this blog and go now! It’s the Silent Treatment!