A perfect weekend of weather here - close to 30C, no rain and only a little wind. Sweet!
Sept 7 - Labour Day
Some of you( though perhaps not even close to all )may be aware that Labour Day started right here in Canada, way back in 1872 in Toronto. From there it spread across the globe, culminating here in the West with the reduction of the work week from over 60 hours standard to 40 hours here in BC - nice, eh? Something else we can be proud of as Canadians... though the tendency to work MORE these days and take less breaks is still a problem.
Still, I worked today instead of taking the time off - I let my employee have a 4-day weekend instead, as she's been doing VERY well( thanks to some fine training, I might add! )and deserves the break. I didn't anticipate it being busy, and aside from a few hours of steady business when I opened, the day tailed off such that I was able to get a fair deal of paperwork done by closing time.
Some cool stuff from the past: I used to get the occasional Popular Mechanics or Popular Science mags, as they were the best way to see the newest gadgets and tech news in the pre-internet days. Now, via the internet, I've discovered that quite a few back issues of both magazines are available via Google Books - another way the info mega-giant is slowly taking over the world. Or, you could saunter on over to Lifehacker.com, which has a ton of great things you can make, similar to what's over at Instructables.com, but a lot g33kier.
Sept 8 - Sleep Cycling
Science Fiction - there's a lot of it coming this Fall, so much so that you might want a guide to check it all out. Thankfully, someone over at i09.com has made one up, and it's quite comprehensive in that it includes TV, books and other media. I especially like the show Fringe, though I've only seen a few episodes, and the upcoming FlashForward, which was mentioned on the previous io9.com Guide to Fall Television: the premise of FF is that everyone in the world blacks out for 2 mins 17 secs and gets a vision of their personal future - some good, some bad, and none at all of the same time frame( that'd be boring ).
I didn't sleep very well last night - for some reason I just couldn't shut my brain off, and it was churning on about all sorts of things such that I resorted to channel-flipping at 2am just to gloss over things mentally so I could fall asleep. These days, that's a fairly rare thing as I'm usually tired enough at midnight to put down my book and snooze until the alarm in the AM. Even a ten-minute nap usually suffices to recharge me during the day; just close my eyes and I snap awake after a short time, which is a good thing as otherwise I'd snooze away useful hours of time.
Cycling to work is great, given the good weather we're having( still )at the start of the Fall season - being a leisurely 20 minutes from work( less if I decide to arrive in a sweat by biking uphill part of the way )is great, and it's only a 35 minute walk at a good clip. Cycling is my preferred method though, as I can get a good bit of exercise in while not spending too long on the commute and leaving more time for rides around the Langford Lake trail, even to nearby Goldstream Park. I get the occasional odd look though, as I have a white bike, blue rain slicker( on cooler days )and a black backpack with my cell prominent on the strap - from afar I think some people believe I'm a policeman, as I can't come up with any other reason for the odd looks I get. And yes, I've checked my fly: it was up each time. Maybe I should ride one of these?
Sept 9 - The Road to TV Repayment
The upcoming film The Road stars Viggo Mortensen as a father trying to guide his son to safety in a post-apocalyptic world - obviously something I will be checking out. While I didn't manage to see 9 in a theater on opening night tonight( 9/9/9 )I am eagerly awaiting its arrival at my local Langford cinema.
A few more months and I'll have my LG TV( and my Xbox360 )paid off, which will be nice... one less monthly bill coming in, though it's been nice not paying any interest on the combo for almost 2 years now. A good deal that's provided me with many hours of entertainment since that first heady month I arrived in BC, and certainly a heckuva lot easier to move than the old( and much-beloved )27" CRT televisions I left behind. Though I do miss my JVC, which had picture-in-picture and more menu options than I've ever seen on any TV, anywhere - I kept the remote just to remind me. If you are lucky enough to have a large-screen TV of your own, you should ensure it is properly adjusted - it can save you money! While I've spent a good deal of time learning all the secrets of my TV, every model is different and you can find all the info you'll need with some careful web searches.
On the plus side, if you do end up upgrading, make sure you don't just toss your old TV - FreeCycle it. I'm sure there's a lot of people out there who would be perfectly happy to have a new(er)TV for free, rather than go without - even 2 years ago, when I was selling things off, people wouldn't pay for those CRT TV's, so I ended up donating them to a few good homes. Ditto for the computers I had: I installed Ubuntu, got them working slick and off they went to good homes... I hope.
Sept 10 - Smoking Networks
Looks like a setback in Croatia for non-smokers, as the government has repealed a ban on smoking in cafes after only 4 months. I'm saddened by this, as it means that the 3 million other residents of the country are at the mercy of the 1 million who choose to poison themselves... and everyone else in the immediate vicinity. Like the guy across the fence whose smoke drifts thickly across with the wind into my bedroom, forcing me to slam the window closed each time or suck in his poison - I'll bet he doesn't care, as I've loudly but politely said "That's blowing with the wind right into my room, thanks." several times. Who knows? Maybe he enjoys it more than he cares about how others suffer from it - maybe that's the reason that smokers keep puffing, playing right into the addictive side of the cancer sticks. I'll never understand - if you haven't heard my donut horror story from working at Timmy's back in the day, ask me sometime.
I fiddled with my home network today, managing at last to wring proper speeds from my laptop by separating my parent's connection to a separate router( their old one, actually ). I got it all working, and the speed increase is dramatic: I can download close to a gigabyte of data in less than 10 minutes which is about a 5-fold increase over the shared connection. No thanks to Gateway though, as their Tech Support guys couldn't solve the speed issue( nor give me any advice on it either )or the previous connection issues with it - I had to solve both problems myself. Ah well - my year's warranty is up tomorrow, so I expect the Warranty Chip( first mentioned here in 1991 )to activate and start counting down to a Major Malfunction soon enough.
So far, no joy in the writing department: after the closure of Cyberwalker.com to new work of mine, the economic downturn has seen none of my articles accepted at the sites I've shopped them around at. I've been perusing places like GetAFreelancer.com to see what's available( a LOT of $1.00-an-aricle jobs! )but so far, zilch on that front. I'm considering again trying to get into voice acting, but my range so far is rather limited - the trend now is for an actor to be able to have a very flexible voice so as to enable multiple parts to be played for one fee. Ouch.
Sept 11 - Remembering
Yes, I have to mention it: eight years ago today, we were all shocked out of our own realities by the vicious attacks on the USA by terrorists. I'm sure most of us can remember what we were doing that day, in some part, as those sorts of world-shaking events tend to etch things in our brains. Myself, I was off for the day, and when I heard the news my first thought was "What the hell is happening?" followed by "Geez, I hope they're not going to attack Niagara Falls for the power plant." Which is odd, as slamming a plane into a hydroelectric dam made of millions of tons of concrete won't do much, nor will splashing it into the raging Falls itself, other than providing thousands of tourists an opportunity to document terrorist stupidity and the horror of helpless hundreds along for the ride. Some felt that the tragedy was an inside job, but I don't hold to that idea.
After thousands died with the collapse of the World Trade Center buildings, what's happened since then to try to learn from the tragedy and save lives in the future? Precious little: talk of skyscraper escape methods has been bandied about blindly, but nothing concrete has been agreed upon or even installed, apart from a few prototype systems. Though one company was making brisk sales right after 9/11 - selling parachutes. In 2006, the City of New York even rejected the idea of 'escape pods' for buildings, without actually coming up with anything better instead.
On a lighter note, someone has discovered a way to fool photo speeding tickets in the US: wear a mask. Apparently close to a hundred speeding tickets have been issued to a monkey-masked speeder in Phoenix AZ, but due to the laws there more than half have been thrown out. I remember when Photo Radar was in use on the QEW, and I loved it - why, you ask? Because it ACTUALLY WORKED - people SLOWED DOWN every time they even thought they saw a GMC van parked on the shoulder of the highway. The difference between that and the AZ laws? The ON photo tickets were charged to the owner of the car, which put the onus on them to ensure their vehicle wasn't being misused. Which makes you wonder how smart the lawmakers in AZ are, to let some guy in a mask make a monkey out of them...
Sept 12 - Single Daleks
Sometimes, one wonders, as a single person, just how other Single Guys are handling it... and what 'it' is, exactly? Unlike Steve Martin's The Lonely Guy, where a lonely writer leads a bleak existence in New York surrounded by millions of women, Single Life these days can be a pretty mixed bag. In my own case, I've been single for well... what decade is it now? Nothing serious has sprouted, despite various dates and the usual - even my move to BC, land of the Leggy Runner and Svelte She-cyclist hasn't proven very fruitful. Some guys would feel pressured at my age to 'be in a relationship' but I feel differently; the recent news that perennial bachelor George Clooney has hooked up with a lovely lady this month, this coming years after he regularly made the Top 10 Bachelors in Hollywood - I'm not sure that's a good thing, really.
Which dovetails nicely into dangerous celebrities of the internet: yes, there are some folks that will drag you into dangerous places if you search for them on the 'net. How so? Well... those scummy Evil People out there who want to( promote their website / hack your PC / amuse themselves / pick a reason )have figured out which celebs have the highest number of search requests, then employ methods to hijack your searches through misspelled names and other means. So it pays to have a good UP-TO-DATE virus checker( I use AVG Free )and malware program installed and running while you surf these days. I also employ a plugin for FireFox( which I'm using less and less in favour of Opera or Chrome )called Web Of Trust, which uses a user-based reporting system that puts a green( good ), yellow( questionable )or red( yes, it's BAD )circle next to EACH search result from a search engine like Google - you can instantly see which sites are harmful and so avoid them. My parents love it.
What about last week, you ask? How could I forget it was International Bacon Day on Sept 5th? Well... I didn't know, actually. But it's on the calendar now - check next year! Oh, and I finally got my talking Dalek working... turns out that the reason I couldn't find the 'talk' button is that it was cleverly disguised as one of the 56 small bump-domes on the lower half of the thing. "You will obey the Daleks or you will be exterminated!" - Dalek and Borg, anyone?
Sept 13 - All About Money?
Everyone has that fantasy( well, one among many anyway )about what they would do if they Won Big Money. Yet for a surprising number if people who HAVE won it big, happiness has not followed - at least not the lasting kind. It's interesting to read about how people's lives have changed thanks to a big lottery win - and everyone's life WILL change if they win, there's no question of that. Me? I'll just start with the massive pancakes I made for breakfast today and go from there, making sure I check out the advice at CanadianBusiness.com from time to time - s'free!
Raising money for good causes is another thing: today is the 29th Annual Terry Fox Run around the globe. Hard to believe that close to 30 years ago, Terry almost made it across the country while cancer ate him away from the inside. Amazing that his legacy lives on in so many people, raising millions for cancer cure research every year. Rick Hanson made it across the country in a wheelchair, following Terry's footsteps( as it were )to raise funds to a cure for spinal cord research.
I spent a good part of today playing COD4 with my pals - though I only really had one good game of the whole day, I had a ton of fun trading quips and tripping claymores... ouch. I took a few breaks of a few hours, sitting out on the deck and enjoying the QUIET: no noisy idiots in the park next door, which astounded me. Usually the good weather( it was 30°C outside in the early afternoon )brings them out in droves, but not today - bliss! In the evening, I was mesmerized by CBC's Passionate Eye presentation '102 Minutes Which Changed the World' which follows the WTC disaster on 9/11 in a minute-by-minute compilation, using rare footage - it felt like I was watching it happen again on TV as events unfolded, which I found very creepy and intensely involving. Especially as it showed quite a bit of amateur videos with the incredibly emotional reactions of ordinary people to extraordinary events - the horror and the agony of those 1.5 hours was palpable, especially the scenes showing people falling from the buildings, waving helplessly from the upper floors, or the thousands of people running in the streets to escape the collapse of the twin towers.
In the eight years since then, has our world changed for the better?
If anyone remembers a colour editorial depicting a firefighter with a 'Superman S' on his back, please send me the image - it's stuck in my head. 'night.
Sept 7 - Labour Day
Some of you( though perhaps not even close to all )may be aware that Labour Day started right here in Canada, way back in 1872 in Toronto. From there it spread across the globe, culminating here in the West with the reduction of the work week from over 60 hours standard to 40 hours here in BC - nice, eh? Something else we can be proud of as Canadians... though the tendency to work MORE these days and take less breaks is still a problem.
Still, I worked today instead of taking the time off - I let my employee have a 4-day weekend instead, as she's been doing VERY well( thanks to some fine training, I might add! )and deserves the break. I didn't anticipate it being busy, and aside from a few hours of steady business when I opened, the day tailed off such that I was able to get a fair deal of paperwork done by closing time.
Some cool stuff from the past: I used to get the occasional Popular Mechanics or Popular Science mags, as they were the best way to see the newest gadgets and tech news in the pre-internet days. Now, via the internet, I've discovered that quite a few back issues of both magazines are available via Google Books - another way the info mega-giant is slowly taking over the world. Or, you could saunter on over to Lifehacker.com, which has a ton of great things you can make, similar to what's over at Instructables.com, but a lot g33kier.
Sept 8 - Sleep Cycling
Science Fiction - there's a lot of it coming this Fall, so much so that you might want a guide to check it all out. Thankfully, someone over at i09.com has made one up, and it's quite comprehensive in that it includes TV, books and other media. I especially like the show Fringe, though I've only seen a few episodes, and the upcoming FlashForward, which was mentioned on the previous io9.com Guide to Fall Television: the premise of FF is that everyone in the world blacks out for 2 mins 17 secs and gets a vision of their personal future - some good, some bad, and none at all of the same time frame( that'd be boring ).
I didn't sleep very well last night - for some reason I just couldn't shut my brain off, and it was churning on about all sorts of things such that I resorted to channel-flipping at 2am just to gloss over things mentally so I could fall asleep. These days, that's a fairly rare thing as I'm usually tired enough at midnight to put down my book and snooze until the alarm in the AM. Even a ten-minute nap usually suffices to recharge me during the day; just close my eyes and I snap awake after a short time, which is a good thing as otherwise I'd snooze away useful hours of time.
Cycling to work is great, given the good weather we're having( still )at the start of the Fall season - being a leisurely 20 minutes from work( less if I decide to arrive in a sweat by biking uphill part of the way )is great, and it's only a 35 minute walk at a good clip. Cycling is my preferred method though, as I can get a good bit of exercise in while not spending too long on the commute and leaving more time for rides around the Langford Lake trail, even to nearby Goldstream Park. I get the occasional odd look though, as I have a white bike, blue rain slicker( on cooler days )and a black backpack with my cell prominent on the strap - from afar I think some people believe I'm a policeman, as I can't come up with any other reason for the odd looks I get. And yes, I've checked my fly: it was up each time. Maybe I should ride one of these?
Sept 9 - The Road to TV Repayment
The upcoming film The Road stars Viggo Mortensen as a father trying to guide his son to safety in a post-apocalyptic world - obviously something I will be checking out. While I didn't manage to see 9 in a theater on opening night tonight( 9/9/9 )I am eagerly awaiting its arrival at my local Langford cinema.
A few more months and I'll have my LG TV( and my Xbox360 )paid off, which will be nice... one less monthly bill coming in, though it's been nice not paying any interest on the combo for almost 2 years now. A good deal that's provided me with many hours of entertainment since that first heady month I arrived in BC, and certainly a heckuva lot easier to move than the old( and much-beloved )27" CRT televisions I left behind. Though I do miss my JVC, which had picture-in-picture and more menu options than I've ever seen on any TV, anywhere - I kept the remote just to remind me. If you are lucky enough to have a large-screen TV of your own, you should ensure it is properly adjusted - it can save you money! While I've spent a good deal of time learning all the secrets of my TV, every model is different and you can find all the info you'll need with some careful web searches.
On the plus side, if you do end up upgrading, make sure you don't just toss your old TV - FreeCycle it. I'm sure there's a lot of people out there who would be perfectly happy to have a new(er)TV for free, rather than go without - even 2 years ago, when I was selling things off, people wouldn't pay for those CRT TV's, so I ended up donating them to a few good homes. Ditto for the computers I had: I installed Ubuntu, got them working slick and off they went to good homes... I hope.
Sept 10 - Smoking Networks
Looks like a setback in Croatia for non-smokers, as the government has repealed a ban on smoking in cafes after only 4 months. I'm saddened by this, as it means that the 3 million other residents of the country are at the mercy of the 1 million who choose to poison themselves... and everyone else in the immediate vicinity. Like the guy across the fence whose smoke drifts thickly across with the wind into my bedroom, forcing me to slam the window closed each time or suck in his poison - I'll bet he doesn't care, as I've loudly but politely said "That's blowing with the wind right into my room, thanks." several times. Who knows? Maybe he enjoys it more than he cares about how others suffer from it - maybe that's the reason that smokers keep puffing, playing right into the addictive side of the cancer sticks. I'll never understand - if you haven't heard my donut horror story from working at Timmy's back in the day, ask me sometime.
I fiddled with my home network today, managing at last to wring proper speeds from my laptop by separating my parent's connection to a separate router( their old one, actually ). I got it all working, and the speed increase is dramatic: I can download close to a gigabyte of data in less than 10 minutes which is about a 5-fold increase over the shared connection. No thanks to Gateway though, as their Tech Support guys couldn't solve the speed issue( nor give me any advice on it either )or the previous connection issues with it - I had to solve both problems myself. Ah well - my year's warranty is up tomorrow, so I expect the Warranty Chip( first mentioned here in 1991 )to activate and start counting down to a Major Malfunction soon enough.
So far, no joy in the writing department: after the closure of Cyberwalker.com to new work of mine, the economic downturn has seen none of my articles accepted at the sites I've shopped them around at. I've been perusing places like GetAFreelancer.com to see what's available( a LOT of $1.00-an-aricle jobs! )but so far, zilch on that front. I'm considering again trying to get into voice acting, but my range so far is rather limited - the trend now is for an actor to be able to have a very flexible voice so as to enable multiple parts to be played for one fee. Ouch.
Sept 11 - Remembering
Yes, I have to mention it: eight years ago today, we were all shocked out of our own realities by the vicious attacks on the USA by terrorists. I'm sure most of us can remember what we were doing that day, in some part, as those sorts of world-shaking events tend to etch things in our brains. Myself, I was off for the day, and when I heard the news my first thought was "What the hell is happening?" followed by "Geez, I hope they're not going to attack Niagara Falls for the power plant." Which is odd, as slamming a plane into a hydroelectric dam made of millions of tons of concrete won't do much, nor will splashing it into the raging Falls itself, other than providing thousands of tourists an opportunity to document terrorist stupidity and the horror of helpless hundreds along for the ride. Some felt that the tragedy was an inside job, but I don't hold to that idea.
After thousands died with the collapse of the World Trade Center buildings, what's happened since then to try to learn from the tragedy and save lives in the future? Precious little: talk of skyscraper escape methods has been bandied about blindly, but nothing concrete has been agreed upon or even installed, apart from a few prototype systems. Though one company was making brisk sales right after 9/11 - selling parachutes. In 2006, the City of New York even rejected the idea of 'escape pods' for buildings, without actually coming up with anything better instead.
On a lighter note, someone has discovered a way to fool photo speeding tickets in the US: wear a mask. Apparently close to a hundred speeding tickets have been issued to a monkey-masked speeder in Phoenix AZ, but due to the laws there more than half have been thrown out. I remember when Photo Radar was in use on the QEW, and I loved it - why, you ask? Because it ACTUALLY WORKED - people SLOWED DOWN every time they even thought they saw a GMC van parked on the shoulder of the highway. The difference between that and the AZ laws? The ON photo tickets were charged to the owner of the car, which put the onus on them to ensure their vehicle wasn't being misused. Which makes you wonder how smart the lawmakers in AZ are, to let some guy in a mask make a monkey out of them...
Sept 12 - Single Daleks
Sometimes, one wonders, as a single person, just how other Single Guys are handling it... and what 'it' is, exactly? Unlike Steve Martin's The Lonely Guy, where a lonely writer leads a bleak existence in New York surrounded by millions of women, Single Life these days can be a pretty mixed bag. In my own case, I've been single for well... what decade is it now? Nothing serious has sprouted, despite various dates and the usual - even my move to BC, land of the Leggy Runner and Svelte She-cyclist hasn't proven very fruitful. Some guys would feel pressured at my age to 'be in a relationship' but I feel differently; the recent news that perennial bachelor George Clooney has hooked up with a lovely lady this month, this coming years after he regularly made the Top 10 Bachelors in Hollywood - I'm not sure that's a good thing, really.
Which dovetails nicely into dangerous celebrities of the internet: yes, there are some folks that will drag you into dangerous places if you search for them on the 'net. How so? Well... those scummy Evil People out there who want to( promote their website / hack your PC / amuse themselves / pick a reason )have figured out which celebs have the highest number of search requests, then employ methods to hijack your searches through misspelled names and other means. So it pays to have a good UP-TO-DATE virus checker( I use AVG Free )and malware program installed and running while you surf these days. I also employ a plugin for FireFox( which I'm using less and less in favour of Opera or Chrome )called Web Of Trust, which uses a user-based reporting system that puts a green( good ), yellow( questionable )or red( yes, it's BAD )circle next to EACH search result from a search engine like Google - you can instantly see which sites are harmful and so avoid them. My parents love it.
What about last week, you ask? How could I forget it was International Bacon Day on Sept 5th? Well... I didn't know, actually. But it's on the calendar now - check next year! Oh, and I finally got my talking Dalek working... turns out that the reason I couldn't find the 'talk' button is that it was cleverly disguised as one of the 56 small bump-domes on the lower half of the thing. "You will obey the Daleks or you will be exterminated!" - Dalek and Borg, anyone?
Sept 13 - All About Money?
Everyone has that fantasy( well, one among many anyway )about what they would do if they Won Big Money. Yet for a surprising number if people who HAVE won it big, happiness has not followed - at least not the lasting kind. It's interesting to read about how people's lives have changed thanks to a big lottery win - and everyone's life WILL change if they win, there's no question of that. Me? I'll just start with the massive pancakes I made for breakfast today and go from there, making sure I check out the advice at CanadianBusiness.com from time to time - s'free!
Raising money for good causes is another thing: today is the 29th Annual Terry Fox Run around the globe. Hard to believe that close to 30 years ago, Terry almost made it across the country while cancer ate him away from the inside. Amazing that his legacy lives on in so many people, raising millions for cancer cure research every year. Rick Hanson made it across the country in a wheelchair, following Terry's footsteps( as it were )to raise funds to a cure for spinal cord research.
I spent a good part of today playing COD4 with my pals - though I only really had one good game of the whole day, I had a ton of fun trading quips and tripping claymores... ouch. I took a few breaks of a few hours, sitting out on the deck and enjoying the QUIET: no noisy idiots in the park next door, which astounded me. Usually the good weather( it was 30°C outside in the early afternoon )brings them out in droves, but not today - bliss! In the evening, I was mesmerized by CBC's Passionate Eye presentation '102 Minutes Which Changed the World' which follows the WTC disaster on 9/11 in a minute-by-minute compilation, using rare footage - it felt like I was watching it happen again on TV as events unfolded, which I found very creepy and intensely involving. Especially as it showed quite a bit of amateur videos with the incredibly emotional reactions of ordinary people to extraordinary events - the horror and the agony of those 1.5 hours was palpable, especially the scenes showing people falling from the buildings, waving helplessly from the upper floors, or the thousands of people running in the streets to escape the collapse of the twin towers.
In the eight years since then, has our world changed for the better?
If anyone remembers a colour editorial depicting a firefighter with a 'Superman S' on his back, please send me the image - it's stuck in my head. 'night.
