HUDs, Humps and Home Depot

The word of the week is apropos.

June 7 - Apple Skins

Two million iPads sold in the last sixty-something days must be making Apple execs turn a few handsprings; not easy to do in suits, I imagine. Despite the hype, I’m not getting one, and won’t be changing my mind – the idea of an iPhone also still holds little appeal to me, especially as the things are only available via contracts with telcos in Canada, and I don’t really want an older version. Even if I did get a used one, cell phone rate plans are hellishly expensive in Canada compared to elsewhere in the world, which is sad – why is this? Also, the iPhone is still lacking quite a few features, some of which I consider essential.

I’ll start my vacation in two week’s time, and I have to say I’m really, really looking forward to it. It will be a staycation, of course – I’m planning on doing little save relax and to work the knots out of my being. I’ll be following some( but not all )of some advice for taking a staycation, mainly the ‘not spending money’ part of things. Also, I’ll be avoiding the massive crowds that are going to be packing Bear Mountain for the Telus Skins Game running June 21^st and 22^nd – if you want a good eyeball of what the place where I live now looks like, catch the game on TV on those dates. In the meantime, I’ll pop on over to Lays.ca, where they’re running a ‘local points’ program all summer to give you reason to staycation.

June 8 - Argh Healthy

I like words, as most of you know; some people of a like mind call themselves wordsmiths, others title themselves authors, and so on. Part of the fun of words is diving into their meaning and history, which include the various iterations of spelling as the language develops. One word that’s always been fun to spell is the inimitable ‘argh’ which has so many, many variations – so many, in fact, that one blogger took it upon himself to make a thorough study of the word. Check it out; he even has a chart!

A week ago, another blogger concluded a month-long experiment: How to Eat Healthy on $1 a day. Yes, that’s right – a month’s worth of food at a dollar a day. He concluded his experiment still alive, healthy and with these pithy thoughts about how to save a ton of money while feeding yourself properly. It reminds me a little of another place I visit a few times a month: LookContests.com, where you can browse all sorts of good contests safely; the site filters out scams and fraudulent sites to ensure that only legitimate contests are presented for your enjoyment and possible winning.

June 9 - Heads Up, Hump Day

Work this week has been a grind; today was supposed to be my day off, but I had to head to the other store to catch up on paperwork and put out a few smouldering fires before they became hotspots; the usual. In office parlance, today is known as Hump Day, so once it was over I only had to get through two more days until the weekend arrives – which I have scheduled myself off for, the first in many months. Considering that the area is now almost fully staffed with trained employees, it’s going to be the norm to actually take a few days in a row off, which will really help reduce my stress levels. Huzzah.

Hmmm... from HUD’s are common in fighter jets, but what about cars?  The WeGo GPS uses a HUD to allow the driver to keep their eyes on the road and operate things hands-free. Pretty cool, and it promises more possibilities for displaying info on a HUD for drivers to see.

June 10 - Future Futurama Fun

Two more weeks until Futurama returns to the airwaves on Comedy Central – I can hardly wait! Check out the 90 second trailer below:

You can also take a look at some cool Futurama alternative art, like this: The Futurama Crew as X-men!

The old Compaq laptop is humming along smoothly now, fully updated and tweaked according to my own designs. I’ve decided to use it to try out a few new operating systems in the next few months, once I get things set up to allow it to multi-boot... I’ll run Vista, XP, Ubuntu, Fedora  and a few others, as there’s gigabytes of space still even on the old hard drive. I’ve set it up to allow a secure network connection via Hamachi VPN to my newer laptop, so I’ll have full access to all my files without needing to duplicate them by storing them on the old Compaq too. It’ll be nice to be able to go anywhere and still have my documents, bookmarks and other things available securely... with a full keyboard, unlike an iPhone or iPad.

June 11 - Gas and Fireworks and Carriers

Since I don’t drive much at all any more, I don’t pay attention to many things automotive... but my eyes are still inevitably drawn to a gas station price board at least once every trip that I take in a car. In the summer, I was used to seeing gas prices rise in Ontario as inevitably as the tides, to suck as much profit from the increase in road traffic as possible. One place I liked to frequent( and still do )is GasBuddy.com  where the price of gas is tracked in almost real-time, thanks to eagle-eyed roving contributors. I’m spoiled now though, as I can just surf on over to VictoriaGasPrices.com for a local update. Sweet.

After a longer than expected workday, In the evening, I went down to Esquimalt Lagoon to watch the fireworks in celebration of the 2010 International Fleet Review. Thousands of people lined the beach, sitting comfortably on the innumerable washed-up logs common to beaches all over BC. Sitting there we could easily see the dozens of warships from various nations anchored in the bay, including the USS Ronald Regan, the newest nuclear aircraft carrier in the US navy worth a cool $5 billion and change. It and all the other ships were decked out in strings of lights, sitting peacefully in the bay as the fireworks lit the sky.

June 12 - Handyman Moi

Once breakfast was settled, I got right to work on building a screen door for the balcony door today, to take advantage of the breezes that often blow up atop the mountain here. I’d purchased the materials the day before, mainly some straight pieces of fir wood that I had cut to size at Home Depot – the critical 45-degree angles included. I measured, cut, trimmed, sanded and measured again for two hours, finally putting in the last screws just after lunchtime and then laying the screen out to be tacked down. It was a perfect fit( of course )and made me quite proud, especially as it looks clean and well-made – no rough angles, ugly screws jutting out or the like. A custom screen door in a few hours by my hand; woot!

The Snowbirds flew over the mountain here, putting on their demonstration for the crowds down in Victoria harbour – instead of fighting traffic, instead I spent a few hours over at the Mountain Bean cafe, simply relaxing and taking in the ambiance – lunch was a grilled turkey Panini sandwich with a chaser of Stewarts Root Beer, two of my favourite things enjoyed in a quiet setting reminiscent of a mountain ski lodge with the bonus of free WiFi. The afternoon was outside again, lolling in and out of the sunshine and enjoying the very quiet surroundings.

June 13 - Just Browsing The West

Over the last year, I’ve been running the five major web browers on my laptop: Firefox, Opera, Chrome, IE and lately Safari. So far, Firefox has been the winner in terms of daily use, but Apple’s Safari has been growing on me for its speed and stability. I’ve also installed Kylo, which is a great browser for use when you’ve attached your PC to a big-screen TV – it’s optimized for that sort of display, and looks great.

I whiled away the day in portions today, with a good chunk of it from morn to mid-afternoon spent in Red Dead Redemption. Lots of fun with five friends there, though by the end I’d managed to give myself a headache from the combo of rainy-weather imagery and bright sunshine outside trying to get through the window – an odd combination, that. So I spent the rest of the afternoon alternating between snoozing and reading inside, as it was far too windy to enjoy myself outside, despite the sun. During the day today I also downloaded Fallout3: GOTY Edition from Steam, which had it for half price for the PC – quite the deal, considering Best Buy is still charging an arm and a leg for the thing. I’ll play it thoroughly on my staycation in a few weeks time, hopefully on my laptop outside in the nice fresh BC mountain air.

Whenever I write up a blog, I’m always taken aback by the time it takes; if I haven’t added much during the week, a good two or three hours can pass by while I compile, write and edit each week’s entry. Surprising, even after doing it for over two and a half years now.