Black Panther, B5's 25th and Burning Legs

The word of the week is replete.

Feb 26 – Happy Belated 25th, B5!

Twenty-five years ago, the best scifi ever to make it to the small screen premiered( on Feb. 22 1993, to be exact... )and there's lots of love to be had for it from many, even today:



As anyone who reads this blog regularly knows, B5 is near and dear to my hear, more than just about any scifi or fantasy series( or any story, really )so I'll not wax overly poetic about it again. It's informed my thoughts, my take on scifi / fantasy, and especially my writing, pointing to what's possible that I'd not realized could be achieved... and that's remarkable to me. I could go on, but...

I'll simply say this: I don't look at life the same way now, after watching Babylon 5.


Feb 27 - Black Panther

In a word: awesome!

After seeing the film on Saturday, and now that I've had a few days to think about it, here's my thoughts - SPOILERS BELOW!

I slapped together this combo image myself - not bad for found art!

I really liked this movie: it was fun, respectful, well-written, had solid characters with a nuanced villain who wasn't just another Big Bad with a chip on his shoulder. The excellent cast included a majority of women in prominent roles, as mentioned in this article - the Dora Milaje( the royal Special Forces )were some of the best-realized female warriors seen on the screen in decades, even accounting for the Amazons in the recent Wonder Woman. Incredible!

The CGI was excellent, and didn't get in the way of the story for the most part. I loved the depiction of Wakanda, the hidden African nation, rendered as a spectacular blend of future tech and tribal heritage. The common usage of the incredible technology posessed by the Wakandans was liberating to see, in that they treated their tech as useful tools to make their lives easier, and didn't glorify it as some films might have tried to do: they led regular lives, helped by their tech.

If I had anything to nitpick, it's that there was almost too much hand-to-hand combat: the movie at time seemed like calm islands among a sea of smackdowns, even if they were amazingly choreographed. The scene between T'Challa and Killmonger in their respective Black Panther suits was also a bit of a letdown, in that it was a CGI-centric fest with little 'facetime' in between punches.

I'll stop there: there's FAR too much to list that I enjoyed about this movie, so if you haven't seen it yet, go.... now!


Feb 28 – Hello, Android?

Is your phone listening to you?

Ever since smartphones became ubiquitous in our lives, I've been concerned about the privacy issues around the information they gather - both officially and unofficially. With Android phones, you're always given a list of 'permissions' when you're installing apps, so that you know if they have access to things like your location, the camera or the microphone.

The last one is the most important, as it seems that there's quite a few people out there like me who suspect that their devices are listening to them - have a look at this:



Now, I realize that right now there is only anecdotal evidence from people, but it's creepy nonetheless; I've had ads for things pop up on my phone's FBook app that I DID NOT search for whatsoever using Google or other methods, but ONLY spoke aloud.

Really creepy.

What hasn't time this spring, I'm going to set up an experiment where I only TALK about a specific-yet-obscure subject around my phone and explicitly refrain from searching for the same subject using ANY of my devices.

The results should be... interesting, I believe.


Mar 1 – March Arrives, No Lion?

It's a new month, and a hint of spring?

While it's been cold here for the last few weeks( hovering around the freezing mark )there's been only 48 hours with any real snow in 2018, ten days ago:



It started to snow in the early afternoon, and by the evening, the roads were covered, enough so that the bus I took home to avoid slogging along icy unshoveled sidewalks was a small one, as the big buses were sidelined due to the rapid white buildup. Yet by the same time three days later, ALL of it had melted:



I can't say I'll miss the snow; apart from lending an ethereal calmness to the scenery, I consider it a pain( sometimes literally )and while it scares me that climate change might mean winter snows become a rarity, I did move to Victoria in part because it gets the least snowfall in Canada...

To date, that's twice, for a total of four days of snow. Not bad at all!


Mar 2 – No Swimming This Week

I've a bit of an ouchie, that I can't quite figure out.

On Monday, I carefully lifted a somewhat heavy box and still managed to slightly injure my left leg, aggravating what I believe is an old injury to my thigh that stubbornly refuses to heal fully despite several years of careful observation. As such, I didn't go to the pool this week, as it was painful to walk on Tues / Wed.

Oddly, on the same leg, there's been a recurring pain on the inside( medial )section that runs from above to below my knee, almost like it's catching on something... and ouch, does it hurt! But only for a few seconds at a time, sharp pain to dull ache and then gone again... and only when I've been resting, like it's spasming. That's been going on for a few weeks now - maybe they're related?

After doing some research on my own( the earliest appointment I can get with my GP is a month from now... )it looks quite similar to a Medial Plica Irritation, which is a minor injury:


Now, to be clear: I don't go looking for this sort of crap, as I know aches and pains are part of getting older... but I DO pay attention when it's like getting stabbed with burning needles in my leg for 5-10 seconds semi-regularly when I'm not doing anything to cause such.  Grrrrrr!!!!


I'll be going swimming this coming Tuesday, and I'm going to ease into things when it comes to my legs: gentle movements to test the waters, so to speak, until I can see my doctor. I'll forego going to a Walk-in Clinic, as they've not been so great at diagnosing things other than 'You have a cold' so far, so unless things take an odd turn, I'm just going to go with baby steps. I should also note that I always keeping a close eye on my diet / nutrition, and nothing's changed, so I'm baffled as to why these odd 'medial knee pains' have shown up...


Mar 3 – Passed By... Again

Nuts.

I received an email Monday thanking me for applying for a higher-up position within my office.. but that they've decided to go with 'a more qualified candidate' or something. I can't quite silence the suspicion that they had someone already in mind, and that the posting was just a formality... or that's been my luck to date.

This month marks a year since I've been applying steadily for better positions as my GVT Job Search Agent emails them to me, and I've applied for over a dozen now that I had solid qualifications for... with no luck.

It's disheartening, but I've resolved to just keep doing the best I can for each application and hoping that I'll get a "Yes, we want YOU!" email soon enough... though it's been a year now since I've put my nose to the Apply-For-Positions grindstone with no results, and last time I looked for work, it took 13.5 months.

So far, nada, but I'll keep learning from each experience and applying said lessons to the next one... though it's disheartening to see myself in exactly the same spot I was when I started 3.8 years ago, while almost everyone I started with has moved up and in some cases, significantly so.

Looking at most of the last 4 years though, I've had a range of health and financial problems, so perhaps starting a new position with heavy challenges was in the cards. All the same, I'm coming out of things now in 2018 with a more solid outlook, so I've got to keep my chin up despite the nagging voices telling me that I'm stuck, or that people see me as washed-up, or I'm not qualified for any jobs with real responsibility, or I need to go back to school for retraining for a few years, or fill-in-the-blank-you're-not-good-enough...

Yeah. Those voices will drag you down if you let them; I'm not... but it's hard.


Mar 4 – For a Laugh...

I make an effort each day to chuckle a few times.

For example, this picture makes me laugh every single time I see it:

The FACE! He reminds me of Tetley, who had attitude to spare...

Animals are wonderful clowns, in their own way, as the wild success of sites like LOLcats and IcanHaszCheezeburger have both shown. Some examples( please forgive me for posting a cat video this once, and for the awful music in most of it ):



I was reminded of that today while I was having an afternoon beer( my first in two months )with my lovely girlfriend, when we got to talking about cats in the course of the conversation. My family has had dozens of wonderful felines as pets over the years, and with them came many hilarious stories. I related more than a few and in doing so, managed to laugh myself silly to the point of tears, which I think surprised my girlfriend and myself both. I treasure the memories of my long-departed pets, especially the funny ones, for which I'm thankful there are many, and I help those memories stay strong by revisiting them regularly... with a smile.


That's all I've got for this week, and it took me an extra 45 minutes to do the blog, as it keeps having strange-coloured text issues thanks to errors in the HTML - so I recopied it all by hand AGAIN this week. Heading into a new week, I'm determined not to let whatever this newest leg-pain annoyance is get in the way of DOING things... I've quite a backlog for 2018 already!