I knew I shouldn't have mentioned the lack of snow in last week's blog: you never know who is listening. Glad to hear from you too, Jen... nice to see you're still dropping by the blog!
March 2 - Monday Madness
Ergh.... man, today was BUSY at work, so much so that at the end of felt like I had jogged in place for the entire time. Which, considering I worked almost 10 hours, was really wearing on me... yadda yadda, I know, everyone has to work. When you're alone though, there's nobody to complain to, so you have to suck it up and do your best despite the crowds of people who of a sudden all decide to show up within ten minutes of each other... damned strange, that. I've also noticed that when it's sunny out, MANY people seem to let that decide them if they've been waffling on whether or not to go anywhere. "Sun's shining? Hooray, let's head out then!" And where do you think they stop first? MMart, for cash, of course... *grins* Keeps me in a job though, so that's good in MY books!
A lot of people seem to confuse Vancouver Island with the City of Vancouver, especially when told I live in Victoria( Langford now, close enough )which is on Van.Island. While Vancouver has a mild climate, I would not want to live there due to the size of the city and the increasing crime rate, including shootings. Still, some people really do seem to like the place, and I can't speak to it fully until I've had the chance to visit sometime soon.
And WOW, did we EVER get a windstorm tonight! Out of nowhere, 75km/hr winds whipped up from the north, blasting everything on the deck and nearly causing my carefully-constructed anti-cat bird saving structure to flip through the living room window. Thankfully, the plastic sheets were quite heavy to begin with and landed on the deck, only cracking the corner of one of them. T'was scary though, so have the wind rise to such a howl that it made the chimney moan like a tortured beast... and to die down again after less than half an hour. Weird weather, reminded me slightly of the time when Niagara was hit by a small twister back in the nineties... though today the sky didn't turn green and the rain didn't blast down as though from God's pressure cleaner.
March 3 - RAID Failure
The day off today was pretty good, all told. An order from Monoprice.com arrived today, so I was able to wire up my ancient laser printer finally, along with replacing the power cable for the Canon Pixma printer. While easy to find online, neither of these specialized cables are stocked by local PC retailers, so I was relieved I found them online, cheaply too. Now that I have printing capability again, I feel an odd sense of relief, especially since I can't print things at work and the local Staples charges an indecent amount for printing things like PDF docs... I mean, really, $0.49 per page for colour? Sheesh!
I also managed, after exhaustive testing, to fix my Blue Frankenstein of a computer. After running down the list of possible reasons for it NOT wanting to boot, it turns out my paranoia from years ago has paid off. Years ago after losing several former PC's to drive failure, I had installed a pair of redundant hard drives in THIS computer that mirrored each other's data - so if one went wacky, then the other would still work. Turns out that WAS the case, and unplugging one of the drives( the second choice )let the system boot happily. Which meant I spent the rest of the evening backing up all the recent data from the remaining drive to other external sources, just in case... you can't be too careful. I was really, really happy that the RAID setup worked so well, and will have to figure out a way to replace the drive ASAP - since it's a Seagate, it may STILL be under warranty. Though they recently went from 5 years to only 3, it's still best in the industry, despite recent concerns about some of their drives experiencing far higher failure rates than is acceptable for consumers.
March 4 - Talking Taxes
For those of you who are anxious about doing your taxes, take heart: aside from EasyTax at MMart, there are a ton of other solutions to juggling those numbers to take form in your favour. One I prefer over all others is QuickTax.ca, which has the added bonus of being linked to from most major banks for an additional 20% off... which means you can do your own taxes online for less than $20.00. That's assuming that your tax situation is not too complex and doesn't involve things like owning your own business or long-distance trucking mileage. And is it mileage if you live in a country that measures things in metric, like Canada? Wouldn't it be 'klickage' ? Nevermind... that's straying back into Made Up Wordz territory.
Not that I advocate making up words will-nilly, or mashing a few together to make a new one. Unfortunately, I seem to be in the minority in this regard, as evidenced by the newest media ads for the Apple iPhone... "The Funnest iPhone Ever!" - made me want to write stacks of angry letters using famous english grade-school teachers as pseudonyms. This person has also taken exception to the slow degradation of the language, much like my posting last week for Feb 23rd. Language has to evolve, but I would rather not see it delve into offshoots like Ebonics or the unusual cross-cultural effort of Esperanto, the most popular of the constructed languages to date. I also snuck a look at Sindarin, which is one of several fantasy languages derived from Tolkein's works which has several online translators and thousands of fluent speakers worldwide.
But you can't order a hamburger at your local Wendy's in it... heck, I've still got to get to the point where I can do that in french, Italian or Spanish. One of many things to do when I find the time.
March 5 - Thursday in Brief
Having grown up with syndicated reruns of the old Star Trek series, I was pleased to hear that a new 'reboot' of the show was happening. The most recent trailer looks amazing, though it obviously tries to break new ground and steer away from the campy elements of the original series.
Merchandising has always been a core part of Star Trek, though I wonder why they've recently decided to branch out into... colognes?
I miss my Babylon 5.... but things like the new Battlestar Galactica reboot have been amazing. Many fans have wondered though: what would the old series title sequence have looked like with the new cast?
March 6 - Movie Time
Today Watchmen was released in theatres, and though I really want to see it, I just can't bear to share the same space as the Massed Public Hordes for over 2 hours. Reviews of the film at RottenTomatoes.com are mixed, with the main complaints being that it's "too complex" and "slavish to the original material" - neither of which are bad things in my book.
Related to that, I've been watching Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles in bits and pieces over the last few months, and was disappointed to hear that tonight's ratings were rather low. Yet i09.com has posted the obvious answer: everyone was out watching Watchmen. Which is a cool way of putting it, actually...
Well, that's it for a Friday. Not much to do out here in Langford on one's ownsome, though I am working on seeing some of my Victoria friends more regularly come the spring. Perhaps I will be able to take up a few more outdoor hobbies come the summer as well, as I do miss my biking and the Galloping Goose Trail is close by.
March 7 - Da Weekend
Not so bad a Saturday, really... except it snowed four separate times today. Typical Victoria weather, changeable three times or more an hour. Snowing, then sunny skies, then snowing again; we're talking heavy clouds and masses of white drifting flakes that fortunately did little more than melt when they hit the ground.
After work today I did something different: I went out to a pub just down the street - it has a striking home page here. Christie's Carriage House Pub has been around for over a century, though the building was only turned into a pub in the late 80's. It was quite crowded when I arrived, as there was a hockey game of some kind on - I didn't bother to pay much attention, as is my wont. Instead, I dug into a turkey sandwich with fries and gravy, with two pints of Guinness to wash it down over the course of several hours as I read through Pierre Burton's The Joy Of Writing, which I've never managed( until now )to actually open and read through. It was quite enlightening, moreso as I had no idea of the sheer volume that people could produce with only ancient typewriters, pencils and steno pads. While not containing any revelations about the craft, it did emphasize to me the importance of perseverance, hard work and finding one's own style, as well as reading as much of the work of other good authors as possible.
Which also begs the question of motivation. Working as I have been for the last while has left me little energy, feeling the way I do, to put towards other things. I find myself in dire need of decompression / de-stress time, and my creative processes of late have been stretched in just trying to come to the blog each week with something new aside from purchasing new socks.
March 8 - Sunny Sunday at last!
I spent most of the afternoon attending to my Blue Frankenstein PC, backing up data to various drives before reworking the interior setup - added a video card so I can run 2 monitors at once, as well as ensuring my now-unmirrored main drive was hooked up a little differently to make room for the video card. I am surprised that now the main bottleneck in my storage setup is speed: having a sizable external drive is great, but with standard USB 2.0 speeds, it takes hours to copy massive amounts of data. One of my external drives does have an eSata connector, so I think that I will invest in some cabling to take advantage of that fairly soon - I hate waiting to copy data around.
Nice to see the sun, despite the cold outside. Sitting in the rear family room it's amazing just to bask in the evening sunshine and watch the sunset reflect on the clouds behind the hills to the northwest. The colours it creates on the lake are incredible, and I'll post some pictures soon.
Lastly: I am narrowing down possibilities in regards to my health issues, thankfully. My doctor has been very attentive, and together we've eliminated( pun intended )quite a few avenues and continue to do so with various tests. Nothing concrete yet, but allergies to gluten are a possibility, as are several other sources of indigestion, including IBS - more as I find out solid medical facts from tests.
March 2 - Monday Madness
Ergh.... man, today was BUSY at work, so much so that at the end of felt like I had jogged in place for the entire time. Which, considering I worked almost 10 hours, was really wearing on me... yadda yadda, I know, everyone has to work. When you're alone though, there's nobody to complain to, so you have to suck it up and do your best despite the crowds of people who of a sudden all decide to show up within ten minutes of each other... damned strange, that. I've also noticed that when it's sunny out, MANY people seem to let that decide them if they've been waffling on whether or not to go anywhere. "Sun's shining? Hooray, let's head out then!" And where do you think they stop first? MMart, for cash, of course... *grins* Keeps me in a job though, so that's good in MY books!
A lot of people seem to confuse Vancouver Island with the City of Vancouver, especially when told I live in Victoria( Langford now, close enough )which is on Van.Island. While Vancouver has a mild climate, I would not want to live there due to the size of the city and the increasing crime rate, including shootings. Still, some people really do seem to like the place, and I can't speak to it fully until I've had the chance to visit sometime soon.
And WOW, did we EVER get a windstorm tonight! Out of nowhere, 75km/hr winds whipped up from the north, blasting everything on the deck and nearly causing my carefully-constructed anti-cat bird saving structure to flip through the living room window. Thankfully, the plastic sheets were quite heavy to begin with and landed on the deck, only cracking the corner of one of them. T'was scary though, so have the wind rise to such a howl that it made the chimney moan like a tortured beast... and to die down again after less than half an hour. Weird weather, reminded me slightly of the time when Niagara was hit by a small twister back in the nineties... though today the sky didn't turn green and the rain didn't blast down as though from God's pressure cleaner.
March 3 - RAID Failure
The day off today was pretty good, all told. An order from Monoprice.com arrived today, so I was able to wire up my ancient laser printer finally, along with replacing the power cable for the Canon Pixma printer. While easy to find online, neither of these specialized cables are stocked by local PC retailers, so I was relieved I found them online, cheaply too. Now that I have printing capability again, I feel an odd sense of relief, especially since I can't print things at work and the local Staples charges an indecent amount for printing things like PDF docs... I mean, really, $0.49 per page for colour? Sheesh!
I also managed, after exhaustive testing, to fix my Blue Frankenstein of a computer. After running down the list of possible reasons for it NOT wanting to boot, it turns out my paranoia from years ago has paid off. Years ago after losing several former PC's to drive failure, I had installed a pair of redundant hard drives in THIS computer that mirrored each other's data - so if one went wacky, then the other would still work. Turns out that WAS the case, and unplugging one of the drives( the second choice )let the system boot happily. Which meant I spent the rest of the evening backing up all the recent data from the remaining drive to other external sources, just in case... you can't be too careful. I was really, really happy that the RAID setup worked so well, and will have to figure out a way to replace the drive ASAP - since it's a Seagate, it may STILL be under warranty. Though they recently went from 5 years to only 3, it's still best in the industry, despite recent concerns about some of their drives experiencing far higher failure rates than is acceptable for consumers.
March 4 - Talking Taxes
For those of you who are anxious about doing your taxes, take heart: aside from EasyTax at MMart, there are a ton of other solutions to juggling those numbers to take form in your favour. One I prefer over all others is QuickTax.ca, which has the added bonus of being linked to from most major banks for an additional 20% off... which means you can do your own taxes online for less than $20.00. That's assuming that your tax situation is not too complex and doesn't involve things like owning your own business or long-distance trucking mileage. And is it mileage if you live in a country that measures things in metric, like Canada? Wouldn't it be 'klickage' ? Nevermind... that's straying back into Made Up Wordz territory.
Not that I advocate making up words will-nilly, or mashing a few together to make a new one. Unfortunately, I seem to be in the minority in this regard, as evidenced by the newest media ads for the Apple iPhone... "The Funnest iPhone Ever!" - made me want to write stacks of angry letters using famous english grade-school teachers as pseudonyms. This person has also taken exception to the slow degradation of the language, much like my posting last week for Feb 23rd. Language has to evolve, but I would rather not see it delve into offshoots like Ebonics or the unusual cross-cultural effort of Esperanto, the most popular of the constructed languages to date. I also snuck a look at Sindarin, which is one of several fantasy languages derived from Tolkein's works which has several online translators and thousands of fluent speakers worldwide.
But you can't order a hamburger at your local Wendy's in it... heck, I've still got to get to the point where I can do that in french, Italian or Spanish. One of many things to do when I find the time.
March 5 - Thursday in Brief
Having grown up with syndicated reruns of the old Star Trek series, I was pleased to hear that a new 'reboot' of the show was happening. The most recent trailer looks amazing, though it obviously tries to break new ground and steer away from the campy elements of the original series.
Merchandising has always been a core part of Star Trek, though I wonder why they've recently decided to branch out into... colognes?
I miss my Babylon 5.... but things like the new Battlestar Galactica reboot have been amazing. Many fans have wondered though: what would the old series title sequence have looked like with the new cast?
March 6 - Movie Time
Today Watchmen was released in theatres, and though I really want to see it, I just can't bear to share the same space as the Massed Public Hordes for over 2 hours. Reviews of the film at RottenTomatoes.com are mixed, with the main complaints being that it's "too complex" and "slavish to the original material" - neither of which are bad things in my book.
Related to that, I've been watching Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles in bits and pieces over the last few months, and was disappointed to hear that tonight's ratings were rather low. Yet i09.com has posted the obvious answer: everyone was out watching Watchmen. Which is a cool way of putting it, actually...
Well, that's it for a Friday. Not much to do out here in Langford on one's ownsome, though I am working on seeing some of my Victoria friends more regularly come the spring. Perhaps I will be able to take up a few more outdoor hobbies come the summer as well, as I do miss my biking and the Galloping Goose Trail is close by.
March 7 - Da Weekend
Not so bad a Saturday, really... except it snowed four separate times today. Typical Victoria weather, changeable three times or more an hour. Snowing, then sunny skies, then snowing again; we're talking heavy clouds and masses of white drifting flakes that fortunately did little more than melt when they hit the ground.
After work today I did something different: I went out to a pub just down the street - it has a striking home page here. Christie's Carriage House Pub has been around for over a century, though the building was only turned into a pub in the late 80's. It was quite crowded when I arrived, as there was a hockey game of some kind on - I didn't bother to pay much attention, as is my wont. Instead, I dug into a turkey sandwich with fries and gravy, with two pints of Guinness to wash it down over the course of several hours as I read through Pierre Burton's The Joy Of Writing, which I've never managed( until now )to actually open and read through. It was quite enlightening, moreso as I had no idea of the sheer volume that people could produce with only ancient typewriters, pencils and steno pads. While not containing any revelations about the craft, it did emphasize to me the importance of perseverance, hard work and finding one's own style, as well as reading as much of the work of other good authors as possible.
Which also begs the question of motivation. Working as I have been for the last while has left me little energy, feeling the way I do, to put towards other things. I find myself in dire need of decompression / de-stress time, and my creative processes of late have been stretched in just trying to come to the blog each week with something new aside from purchasing new socks.
March 8 - Sunny Sunday at last!
I spent most of the afternoon attending to my Blue Frankenstein PC, backing up data to various drives before reworking the interior setup - added a video card so I can run 2 monitors at once, as well as ensuring my now-unmirrored main drive was hooked up a little differently to make room for the video card. I am surprised that now the main bottleneck in my storage setup is speed: having a sizable external drive is great, but with standard USB 2.0 speeds, it takes hours to copy massive amounts of data. One of my external drives does have an eSata connector, so I think that I will invest in some cabling to take advantage of that fairly soon - I hate waiting to copy data around.
Nice to see the sun, despite the cold outside. Sitting in the rear family room it's amazing just to bask in the evening sunshine and watch the sunset reflect on the clouds behind the hills to the northwest. The colours it creates on the lake are incredible, and I'll post some pictures soon.
Lastly: I am narrowing down possibilities in regards to my health issues, thankfully. My doctor has been very attentive, and together we've eliminated( pun intended )quite a few avenues and continue to do so with various tests. Nothing concrete yet, but allergies to gluten are a possibility, as are several other sources of indigestion, including IBS - more as I find out solid medical facts from tests.
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