The word of the week is dishevelled ...
March 15th - Parting Ways Perhaps?
I shipped off my dead Xbox360 at UPS today, and hope to have it back from MicroSoft fully repaired under warranty by next week – if it wasn’t under warranty, I’d take a look here for various fix suggestions for the Red Ring Of Death. I’m less upset than I thought I would be, as I’m far too busy these last few weeks to really put much time into some serious relaxing online or off with the Xbox. I’ve still got to make some serious headway in games such as Borderlands or Batman: Arkham Asylum before I can even consider newer content like Toy Soldiers... I always feel like I am falling behind in my game time.
I was also shocked, along with the rest of the world to learn about Jesse James and Sandra Bullock this week, especially so hard on the heels of her Oscar win. I’ve always had a soft spot for Sandra, as I find her a rather refreshingly honest AND likable personality among Hollywood’s many false-faced players. Being not as naive as you would think, I do realize this could just be stellar PR on her part, but overall I’ve followed her career with some interest and found her to be a most lovely a person on and off the screen.
March 16 - Movie Parody Swiftly
One of my favourite SF series to read when I was young was Tom Swift, whose books captured a sense of adventure without imminent danger of horrible death – bad for young readers, I suppose. I recently found out that Tom Swift falls into the genre category of a ‘Youth Dystopia’ which surprised me, given the upbeat nature of the books. What I find even more interesting is that I clearly recall an updated series of Tom Swift books from the early 80’s with slick black covers and updated artwork, but I’ve not been able to track down their origin or publisher. One more thing to add to my ‘Find it!’ list.
One always has to keep atop of trends, as well as analyzing how things work. Below is a very clever parody of Hollywood movie trailers, which looks at how movies tug at our emotions and push our buttons. Listen closely to the dialogue; great work!
March 17 - Luck of the Irish
Yes, it’s St Patrick’s Day, where everyone is Irish for the day. I confess that I like the day the most for the colour: green! It’s my favourite colour, and another reason why I love BC: it’s green for most every day of the year here, in some part or another. As for St. Patty’s Day, I limited myself to googling Irish blessings and planning perhaps to visit Niagara next year about this time, to see how things are at the Kilt when this Day of Days arrives again. We’ll see if those plans actually happen, won’t we?
After work today I went up to Bear Mountain to have a look at the condo we’re looking at renting ASAP, as it’s been immensely difficult to find a place near where I work that not only has room for three people but will ALSO allow a pet. Fortunately, this place fits the bill and the budget, as well as being in a stupendously lovely setting and is situated next to a world-class golf course. Which I don’t play; there’s irony for you. A downside to the location is its isolation: there’s only one road in from Millstream that winds almost 4km up the mountain, a route that means I’ll not be able to walk to work any more, or if I ride my bike it will be a one-way fast trip down and a long hike back up of more than an hour.
March 18 - Good Medical News for Moi
A busy morning: off to the doctor’s for an early appointment, when I was told that I do NOT have pre-diabetes, according to my blood test... I just had slightly elevated blood sugar levels, but all other indicators were normal. Also, I found out that diabetes would affect BOTH eyes, not just my right one, so that’s good news indeed! Now I have to really watch my diet for the next three weeks, so I can ensure that my sugar levels remain fairly constant and so make my next eye exam a solid baseline one. Then I can get my new glasses completed and not have to worry that the damaged ones will fall apart again at any moment.
Ah, good ol’ io9.com – I love to check the site every few days, as there’s always something cool or new posted. One such that was up today was this incredible Transformers art – as the article said, Michael Bay should have got the artist on board for his films and not just depended on the CGI department.
March 19 - Good News for Moving To The Mountain
During my morning shift today, I received word that the Bear Mountain condo is ours if we want it( we do )and that the papers will be signed on Monday for the rental lease. Which means that we’re going to be moving in mid-April, and packing up / selling things for the next month until then. Busy, busy, busy. On top of that, I’ve had someone from Head Office visiting this week, an opportunity I’ve made use of as he’s very interested in finding out what’s working and what’s not at the retail level... I’d estimate I’ve given him about 50 pages of notes to bring back and ponder, most of which are positive criticism about how to make things better for both the customer and the employees at the front end. Plus in all this I’ve been training someone new... so it’s been rather exhausting, and a good thing that my Xbox chose this week to go on the fritz – I’ve had NO time to do more than relax a tad before sleep every night.
In terms of archiving, my Toshiba DVD recorder’s been getting a workout of late as I transfer various programs from the DVR in the other room onto DVD( obviously )as it won’t be as easy in the new condo due to the increased distance between my electronics stack and the DVR in the main room. Phew... say THAT last sentence five times fast and see how much of it makes it past your lips. I’ve managed to save quite a few episodes of Pinky And The Brain for later viewing – my eventual hope is to have a massive media server setup with my old PC, where I can call up any show I wish and watch it on the big screen, without having to resort to swapping DVD’s; instant on-demand TV without the limitations of a retail DVR. I can dream...
March 20 - Spring Arrives!
Today is the first day of Spring for 2010, and it’s a gorgeous one here in Victoria – people are wandering around outside in t-shirts and tank-tops, albeit with jackets still over their arms. Flowers are blooming all over the place, as the picture shows – the ones below are the ones at the top of our driveway that had bloomed early last week:
At work today: I had a surreal experience at the downtown store, and it was related to Star Wars, of all things. A customer came in who challenged my perceptions of reality, as well as my self-control. A simple transaction: he wanted to cash several cheques... but when I saw his name on the items, it was all I could do not to laugh and rub my eyes! He had changed his name to match that of a famous Star Wars character, whom he bore more than a passing resemblance to( and no, it wasn’t Chewbacca! ). I was totally non-plussed, as by sheer coincidence almost ten years ago I had created a file in our MMart computer system with the SAME name for training purposes... AND HIS SIGNATURE MATCHED MY OLD ‘CREATED’ ONE NEARLY PERFECTLY! It was really, really weird, as I kept expecting the walls around me to ripple Matrix-style, or a camera crew to pop out of the ceiling; the world under my feet shifted ever so subtly. I did manage to keep my professional calm and had him on his way fairly quickly, but I could tell by the smile in his eyes that he half-expected me to say something the whole time about his name – which I imagine is WHY he changed it in the first place. A very, very weird experience, especially given the serendipitous match of my own signature-creation and his. Sometimes, the world is so strange!
March 21 – Newt News on my One Day Off
Hooray! News yesterday that Newt and John will be updated by Mike Hogue this Spring! Fantastic... I’ve been waiting a while for this duo to have new adventures, and I can hardly stop jumping on the couch from sheer joy. I think I may need a t-shirt...
It was also my sixth day in a row working yesterday, which will be a common theme for me up until the first week of May – we’re chronically understaffed and though we have enough people coming online in April, we won’t have 100% confidence in-place until the end of the month. More overtime, and even less sleep for me, as I’ve commenced packing for the move. What pains me is that I’ll likely have to keep a fair number of my books in storage, as there will simply be no room for them. On the bright side, this also means I’ll be less tempted to read and more inclined to write or work on my podcasts... so that’s good in the long run.
Being as busy as I am already, I will still have Sundays off, so the blog will still appear each week albeit in a somewhat more condensed form. Until next week then!
