Sunday 6 February 2011

Signals, Shadows and Snowpocalypse


The word of the week is obsequious - something I will never, ever be. 

Jan 31 – No Signal

The foibles of modern technology never cease to amaze me, cell phones especially. Given the rapid rise of the modern cell phone that has seen them move from convenient accessory to lifestyle necessity, you think that cell signal coverage would have advanced as rapidly. Not so, friends, for my home seems to be distinctly lacking in signal, at least one that my iPhone can detect. After much research on my part, I’ve ordered several inexpensive solutions that when combined should make the lack of signal more bearable. As it stands, I don’t do a whole lot of calling from home anyway that’s on my personal cell, so it’s not a big deal... but still frustrating nonetheless. As are the eye-popping prices of ‘cell boosters’ you can get to help your signal along – yikes! Sometimes living on a mountaintop has it’s downfalls, if you’ll pardon the pun...

Feb 1 – Green Lawns, Grey Skies

We’re now into our second month of 2011 and while Spring isn’t quite in the air, it’s certainly not feeling like winter out this way. While the Snowpocalypse of 2011 rages our east( helped by media hype )I have to say I’m damned glad I’m living out here on the West Coast. Weeks of rain with the occasional glimpse of sun are just fine-dandy by me, as I have no desire to go back to ice underfoot, knee-high snowbanks and more white stuff accumulating on my head as I walk. Sure, a sunny day makes the snow pretty but the bone-chilling cold is no fun to wander around in if you don’t have to, especially given how damp Southern Ontario winters can be thanks to the Lake Effect. Or you could have... this:





Feb 2 – No Shadows Seen

Yep, you guessed it: It’s Groundhog Day today... when a furry rodent eyes the sky and predicts if winter will stay or depart early. I happen to love the movie Groundhog Day, which is odd since I’ve never BEEN to a Groundhog Day celebration. I’ll not wax wondrous about the movie o’ermuch here, save to say that it’s one of the few movies that speaks to me and that I can watch more than a few times a year without disappointment or finding it getting stale. There’s not many movies out there like that, frankly. At least not that I’ve seen, and boy do I have a backlog of movies I’ve been meaning to see all these years... not a few of them with Bill Murray in them, at that.

By the way: the groundhogs predicted an early spring!

Feb 3 – Change A-Comin’

I’ve been feeling better lately, overall – moreso than say a few months ago or this time last year. Not to be selfish, but this blog is about what’s going on with me... and I’ve not seen a whole lot of similar things from other folks I know out there. Which is frustrating in some ways, as FBook seems to be the best way for me to keep up to date with their goings-on. When things are updated, that is – one should not live on FBook or for it, but perhaps through it. Like an old-fashioned bulletin board you can check out in passing as you go about your daily activities. As for me, we’ll see what the Spring brings in a few month’s time and the Summer after that – change is in the air, and I’m not talking about ducking pennies tossed from on high either.

Feb 4 – Baby Vader

All right, I admit sometimes I’m a sucker for cute commercials( except Minipops – they BUG me! )so when I saw this Volkswagon Vader promo... I laughed. I mean, I like most things Star Wars and growing up Vader was always a cool villan( until George Lucas killed off his cool in the new movies ). What’s not to like about a pint-sized Vader running around a suburban home trying to use his Force powers? Since I saw the video today, it’s gone viral from 60K hits to over 13 million. Gotta Love The ‘Net!



Feb 5 – Saturday Off Means Busy Moi

My first day off in a bit, which I decided to spend productively doing a bunch of small things over the course of the day. A lot of time was spent installing things, as I’ve deicided to make the best of a bad situation with my defectively-designed Seagate laptop drive... by installing it in my server. Yep, it’s going to speed things up considerably as the boot drive, and since I’ll never be shutting the thing down, it neatly bypasses the ‘go to sleep and never wake up’ design flaw. Aren’t I smrt? So that took a good part of the day there; along with that I rifled through my vast collection of original software, tossing a lot of ancient disks and setting the rest( along with a lot of other knickknacks )aside for sale at a near-future date. I tossed in a few hours at the Bean, a nap, and some much-needed TV time and before I knew it midnight had passed... and so had my day off.

Feb 6 – Football? Fah and Meh.

It was all about support today, on Superbowl Sunday – not that I cared a lick about football, mind you. No, I covered today for a very sick co-worker, who’s been down all week with the nasty bug that’s going around – she sounded as though she needed to be in a hospital, so I gave her the day off. Which put me working at the downtown Douglas St. Branch, my old stomping ground from when I started here in Victoria. It was a solid, busy day which kept me hopping and fortunately was jackass-free; the downtown store tends to collect the more vocally anti-social members of the customer pack that roams the region. After work, I briefly attended an online NWN event at our new server, which unfortunately didn’t get off the ground due to a wonky ‘net connection on the DM’s end – still happens in this day and age. It was good to see some folk able to get together again, and I hope it bodes well for more regular events to take place in the near future.

A better week – it seemed to go by right quick, with few pauses and not a stumble amongst them. Always a good sign!