Dec 21 – It’s in the blood
Today is the winter solstice, the longest day of the year. Little light, lots of dark and a whole lot of looking at your watch while grumbling about where the sun has gone. Ironic how the longest day of the year is also a Monday, no?
Just ten days to go until the new year – does anyone out there have any special plans? Myself, I’ve decided to make it a quiet one at home; so far all my friends here have not finalized any plans, and I dislike last-minute car trips on busy nights with the heightened possibility of drunk drivers – I’ve already had two close calls over the years avoiding drunks trying to kill me, so that’s enough incentive there to stay in.
I’m still astounded at my doctor’s news last week that I don’t appear to have Thalassemia Minor – I’ll be making another appointment to confirm the results, which will mean a change in my diet. I’ll be able to add iron back in, along with some other things( more bacon! )and that means I may actually feel more energetic day to day. I’d like that.
Dec 22 – Scam Artists
Looks like I’d better get out and take more pictures of the trees around here while I can. A report today from the Sierra Club states that BC’s old growth forests are disappearing at an alarming rate – must be all that moss buildup that gets people confusing the old with the new trees.
This is really amazing: a sketch that a co-worker made of me a few months ago. I’ve only now been able to get a picture of it and post it. I just love when people do sketches of me, for some reason – I don’t mind pictures, but there’s something about an artist taking time to render an image that speaks to me. Plus, somehow I always manage to look cool – go figure!
Here’s a show about sketchy people you might want to catch, either on a local channel or on YouTube: The Real Hustle. This is a British import, where three hosts expose some of the most popular scams and hustles that the public is likely to encounter on a day-to-day basis. I was shocked by one scam, where a woman poses as a homeowner who has lost her keys. She gets a locksmith to open a non-alarmed house so she can loot it at her leisure – yikes!
Dec 23 – Blue Screen of Sexy?
It’s been 2 months since Windows 7 was released into the wild, and I’ve been using it for about as long. So far, it’s been a mixed bag: faster than Vista, hogging less resources and with a lot of features added or refined since the release of Vista. On the bad side, it has numerous small glitches, like programs refusing to start and an annoying penchant for refusing to come back from Sleep Mode. I hope these small things will be ironed out in the inevitable future patches from Microsoft...
If it’s the holidays( and not Windows )having you feeling blue( from the cold, or a lack of holiday spirit )then check out this survey over at io9.com: Who is the Sexiest Blue Woman In the Universe? Heck, even Smurfette made the list!
I suppose it all depends on what level of seriousness you have – today, for example, we lost our 134th Canadian soldier in Afghanistan. His name was Andrew Richard Nuttall, a Lieutenant in on patrol who was killed along with An Afghani soldier while on foot patrol. He was born here in Victoria, and kept a blog with updates from the front, including mention of IED’s. Brings things into a bit of perspective.
Dec 24 – T’was the Night Before...
Ah, Christmas Eve... stockings hung by the fireplace with care, cookies and milk left out for Santa, and all that. But what about... Santa Traps?
Looking at the many different possibilities of Christmas gifts, I’ve wondered what the most popular items of the decade have been – the lists go year by year, but nothing stands out overall. I think if you went simply by the Cool Factor, then you’d end up with... the iPhone. Which I’ve decided against getting for the time being, for myself – it just costs too much, and I don’t want to get locked into another contract just for a phone. I mean, the things are $799.00 CAN by themselves –for a freakin’ phone! It’s not a laptop.
Speaking of Christmas gifts, I’ve always loved toy submarines – I wanted to get one when I lived in Port and had a pool, but they were just too expensive and I’d have got little use out of it overall. This guy has turned it into quite a hobby – he’s made models of famous spaceships and turned them into remote-control submarines: what a great idea!
Dec 25 – Happy Xmas
This Christmas was a very, very quiet one for myself and my family. We had a turkey dinner... for lunch, as my dad was working in the afternoon. It was quite a sunny day, with no snow and a lovely lack of traffic everywhere. I enjoying spending a good part of the day online with my friends playing MW2 – everyone was in a good mood and the gaming was good.
On the gift side, we’ve been pretty minimal for a few years now, given that we got rid of a lot of stuff before moving out west. This year, I purchased a simple digital picture frame for my parents, loading it with a few thousand photos – the resolution is a decent 800x600 pixels, so by downsizing individual folders of photos to that scale, I managed to fit every digital photo they have onto a single 2gb mem card – with room to spare for more. Sweet!
Another thing I love about Christmas: cookies! You can check out the best cookie recipes of the last 50 years to see if any tickle your fancy; my faves were always the ones with holiday shapes – of any flavour.
Dec 26 – Boxing Day! No Gloves!
Up at 5am today, to stand outside BestBuy for when they opened at 6am. The lineup was about 100 people long when I got there, and tripled by the time the doors opened. It was quite cold, but people were in a good mood as there was no snow – unlike last year. Once in, I easily found the 2 things I had lined up for and headed to the cashiers – Batman: Arkham Asylum and a Turtle Beach X1 headset for the Xbox.
In case you wonder where Boxing Day had its origins, look no further than here – you may be surprised at what you don’t know. I always am.
On a totally different note, I’m pleased to say that there’s almost a total lack of spiders here in the winter. When I lived on Westgate near the ravine there, the spiders were present year-round in the corners and crannies of the house. Here, despite the mild climate, the house has had almost no noticeable spiders make appearances. For which I’m grateful; the huge mothers who came to visit at my May St. place were more than enough to make me keep my windows closed at night, thanks.
Dec 27 – Not Boxing Day
Yep, you guessed it: I spent most of today playing MW2. Badly. My stats are slowly sliding downwards, millions of other people are playing the game better than I am... but there is hope: the new X1 headset! Yes, now that I am no longer distracted by the cramping pain of two headsets on my head, I can finally concentrate on the game and not crackling cartilage!
A good thing that the new X1 headphones cover my ears completely – the renovation racket from downstairs today was louder than usual. They’re making massive changes, and the sounds of power tools at work reverberate throughout the entire house, leaving nothing to do but leave or try to block it all out. Thankfully MW2 does a fine job of distracting me. J
I’m pleased to see some folks making use of the Comments for the blog, latching onto some of my words and bandying them about. Well, beating me about the head with some, but that’s why I put the phrases online, for people to ... enjoy? Make use of? Barbeque? Keep it up! Plus, did you know you can use the Search Tool on the top left of the blog to scan back through for keywords? I bet you didn’t...
That’s all. This week’s blog was a tiring one, but flowed fairly well once I left it to it’s own devices. So there!
