Comments, Cable and Cars

As you may guess, it's not easy coming up with New Stuff every week... kind of like when your favourite TV show comes up with a 'Clip Episode' that reuses a ton of stuff from the past season to make up for the fact that they've either run out of money or ideas, or both. So far in this blog, neither seems likely... heck, I'd LOVE to be paid for writing this. Some Ideas have already been forwarded... any more?


Feb 2nd - The Day After Groundhogs

I like Groundhog Day, both the event and the film starring Bill Murray. There's just something about the film that speaks to me, about an imperfect guy who gets the chance( once he recognizes it )to become the person he's always wanted to be, through simple trial and error. Though there are no consequences to his actions, as he repeats his day over and over, he doesn't turn to violence but instead turns outward to help others, as well as inward to better himself. A lovely thought, and too rare... this site gets into some great detail about the messages of the film. Though I wonder if Bill Murray's other film with groundhog cousins in it may illustrate that most folk don't know there's a difference between the little furballs.

Each year around this time, I try to re-watch the film, but this year it will have to wait until later in the week - just too busy and too tired with the move. There's always something to unpack, move around or put on a list to purchase when its discovered that we're out or simply don't have it, like phone cords or the like.

This has to do with the whole darkness / winter thing that people go through every year: Seasonal Affective Disorder, or SAD for short. Unless you're a Gremlin, bright lights usually help keep folk from feeling down. I'm lucky in that my workplace faces towards the west, so I get light all day long and even a peek at sunset through the masses of windows that enclose my corner-built branch. Sunshine! Not the film either, which I just bought this week - who wouldn't want to get within hugging distance of a star?

Feb 3rd - Russian Empire

The Death Star - who wouldn't want to have the keys to this Ultimate Weapon, floating in orbit just waiting to blast a planet or two into dust? Uninhabited planets, of course! I've always wondered just how much it would cost to construct. Now, someone has come up with a dollar figure, based on the materials contained in the moon-sized battlestation - can you guess how many times the current U.S. National Debt the figure is?

On a related note: Darth Vader helmets... as re-imagined by top artists, on display at the Warhol Museum.

The Russians know a thing or two about breakfast, as well as how to build really big things - maybe someone should have suggested a Death Star to them in the 70's ? The gigantic construction in the photos is known as the Woodpecker, an early-warning radar system developed during the Cold War that could see missiles over the horizon. It got its name from the tapping sound it made on radio sets all over the world at certain frequencies. Thankfully, it was shut down and abandoned decades ago... leaving the giant metal skeletons to rust slowly in obscurity.

Feb 4th - Car Confidence

My parents had been looking at perhaps getting a new vehicle this week, a Mazda 5, as my mother has been having trouble getting out of our Mazda 3 lately, due to several medical reasons. They had been dealing with Pacific Mazda in Victoria, the same ones that they had purchased their current car from. Sadly, even given the current economic climate, the salesfolk at Pacific did not proceed with my parent's best interests in mind... which I deduced from what they had told me up to this point. So, I went in today in the morning to sit in on their appointment, and was rather annoyed with the indifference and vagueness of the sales pitch - it was as though the staff expected to spout off a few numbers and then watch as my parents signed on the dotted line, dazzled by the opportunity they were being given to throw their money at the dealer in large wads.

Needless to say, the sale didn't happen, and after work today I went into detail with my parents about how a lot of the car sales industry works, relating it to the techniques and information presented by Pacific to them this past week. My favourite was the 'Flow Chart', a vague collection of scribbled half-numbers in circles joined by lines criss-crossing the page - supposedly outlining the value of their trade-in, package options and 'discounts' being offered. My parents won't be going back to Pacific except for service, as they are the only Mazda dealer for fifty km in any direction, which likely explains their 'Only Game In Town' attitude they took with their sales pitch. I know it's a game, and that the rules are subtle... but neither side should ever assume the other are ignorant of ANY common sense.

Feb 5th - The Cable Returns.. or re-runs?

Moving on towards the end of the week... I will be SO glad to get a day off work, at home...

The cable guy was at out new place this week, and gave us good news: the signal into the house is plenty strong enough to support all the TV's in the place, plus a few more if needed. This can be an issue depending on the quality of the signal in your neighbourhood, as happened to us in Fonthill, where an extra line( at no charge )had to be run in to ensure a stable signal for all the outlets in use. This bodes well for fast internet speeds, assuming things stay working, which they haven't so far.

Now that I have cable again, I find myself reluctant to watch TV - odd, but I consider it mostly a waste of my time now. Considering I am out of the house for at least ten hours a day now, my time is becoming even more valuable, especially as work is getting busier with tax season and the ton of daily details that being a manager entails.

Still, there are a few shows I want to catch up on: BSG, which is in its final season & final episodes right now, plus The Sarah Connor Chronicles, which continues to surprise me with the quality of its writing as well as production values. The Terminator franchise, which is releasing Terminator: Salvation this summer, has often made me wonder about the intricacies of time travel. Someone has helpfully looked into how Skynet could make better use of its resources in killing John Connor than sending back machines shotgun-style to be mangled in various desperately-contrived ways. So, assuming that Skynet is listening, we're all doomed....

Feb 6th - Smiling... ack! Zombies!

The evening piled on, with a nice ending: my last customer of the night, a regular, gushed at how she loved coming to my branch because I was so efficient, friendly and professional. When I joked she should tell others, she surprised me by grabbing a comment card and stating firmly that she would send it in Monday with glowing comments. Needless to say, after having had several other customers( bad apples all )send in not-so-great cards, this response left me with a happy grin until I left for the night.

Apparently other people wanted to leave people with a smile a few weeks ago in Texas: hackers altered a few road signs to produce amusing messages. Go have a look. Makes me long for the days when things were hacked for the fun and the challenge, and not in order to make money, cause disruptions for millions of people or to plain old cause damage.

Feb 7th - Books I've never read

An interesting place to visit is Privacyworld.com. They have a ton of useful info about keeping YOUR info safe, as well as educating yourself. Though I am very well-versed on keeping my info private( it took someone ten years recently to find me again! )there were things I didn't know there. Worth a look!

Tonight, I looked through my collection for that rare bird: a book I've never read yet owned forever. The result? The Hero and The Crown by Robin McKinley, which won the Newberry Award in 1985. Apparently I've had the book since around that time but never got around to reading it, which amazes me - looking over my collection, I can recount at a glance when I've last read almost every one of them. Still, there are still a few that I haven't read, or finished reading.

Makes me wonder where the nearest library is around here...

Feb 8th - Day off? Work 8 hrs at home!

I managed to sleep in today, and it felt great. Though this house is not perched in a sunny spot, it has two huge skylights in the roof, one of which is in the main bathroom. Sunshine splashing, soon enough....

After spending all day in my living room, I had all both the couches and the chair cleared off, and all the electronics working properly. The TV is hooked up, the DVD players work, and the surround system sounds great. After long experience organizing masses of wires, I have it down to a fine, if slow, art - now that it's all in place, I can use any piece of media and have it displayed on the TV, with the option of the sound going to the surround or just headphones. Once I have the rest of the room to rights, I'll be able to enjoy the room for any form of entertainment... even relaxing, by gosh!

The only thing that gave me trouble today was configuring the wireless internet connections. This is always a tricky business, and for the entire week I have had trouble with things interfering with each other. There are a total of four routers now sitting on top of my shelves, and after today they're finally programmed to play nice with each other - one for the downstairs tenant, one for my parents, a faster 'N' version for me, and a non-wireless one for my VOIP Vonage phone. Not for the faint of heart, that.

Good news about my own cable modem too: it's not dead, just not programmed for the new place. Whew!

Looking around as I write this blog late Sunday night, I have to say I am pleased with my setup, moreso than at my May St address. Here, I have room for my entire 3-pc couch set, surrounded by shelves at a good distance without crowding, plus a nice see-through wood burning fireplace. The room is sunken, and paneled on the ceiling with wood, with large windows at the front. It is a calm, relaxing room and I am looking forward to spending a lot of quality 'me time' in it... I don't get enough of that.


Comments, we had comments last week - yay! Well, one was more of a personals ad / sticky note, but the others were good - Trevor, I will email you, and Anonymous: The story proceeds... slowly. Thanks for asking!

Plasma, Plumbing and Physics

Much as I tried, I just couldn't finish off the blog until Monday afternoon... my eyes kept drifting shut last night and I had to postpone the final cut until well into the afternoon the next day. I do a fair bit of work to bring this to my faithful few readers each week, and I won't let the quality suffer. Much. :)


Dec 29 - Back to the (g)rind.

It seems that I can't keep from mentioning something new to do with All Things Bacon every so often. This week: Bacon In A Can from SupersizedMeals.com. At only $9.95 for a can that contains up to 50 slices of pre-cooked bacony goodness, it's quite the deal and is available by the case. Which won't go bad for a long time; the shelf life is tagged at ten years. A decade of bacon bliss in every can!

The power failed around 10pm PST, plunging most of Victoria into darkness for several hours, which was odd as the high winds of earlier in the day had died down many hours ago. Though not as bad as the massive outage that hit on Thanksgiving this past Oct. 13th, it was still a surprise. I was still able to shut down my various electronics thanks to the UPS systems I run, and enjoyed reading a book by light of two blindingly powerful LED flashlights. The gas fireplace was still blazing merrily to keep the room warm, and the carbon monoxide detector was ready in case the circulating fans were disabled from the outage. I am growing to appreciate my laptop in such situations as well, as its built-in battery means the power can be out for hours and I can still be entertained... though offline from the internet. *sigh*

With the power off, I was unable to play with my plasma globe... yes, that's right, one of those really cool things that you don't know what else to do with a few years down the road. Thankfully, when I had 'net access again, I came across a site that tells you all the cool things you didn't know you could do with a plasma globe. Where else, but on the internet? Now I can breathe new life into my glowing conversation piece, which is something I searched years for and finally found... and there are some enthusiasts out there who know more on the subject than any hundred other people - the details! One fact I found fascinating was that 99% of the visible universe is made up out of plasma... to be taken with a grain of salt, of course, as most of what we can see are sources of radiation, such as stars.

Segueing a bit, apparently there is a lot of research going in into cold plasmas, if you can get your mind around that. Normally, plasmas are hot - VERY hot, in most cases, and since they are their own state of matter, this can lead to some very interesting things. One such application may be the creation of shielding for spacecraft, similar in operation to the kind often pictured in sci-fi TV battles, though cold plasma would operate in a radically different manner than Trek-like shields. Something similar was recently discovered by accident at a 3M plant in the USA too. So that plasma flatscreen TV you have been eyeing at the local FutureShop may be the foreshadowing of things plasma has yet to show us... and the shows you watch on it may indeed foretell the future. Just watch out for burn-in!!!

Dec 30 - Mystery Illness

This is for those of you who are wondering if I am ill or not. Short answer: yes.

Long answer: Details are sketchy, but a plan of action is in place to see if things are correctable...

I'll spell things out as plainly as I can. I have not found any specific details as to what is going on, so I don't want to worry folks, which seems unlikely as only one person has actually asked me if I was sick to date. This tells me that either I haven't been clear enough in my blog or that nobody really noticed... edit: except Lucas, who raises some good questions in his comment at the end of this week's blog. While I am not dehydrated, the diet I have been on has not changed substantially in the last 4 years, nor does it include much, if any, junk food any longer. Turkey is my staple meat protein, and the herbal supplements / vitamins I've been on are the same again as they have been for many years. I will make a point of raising GI issues with my MD next appointment, thanks for the reminder.

See if you can fill in the blanks to form a known illness: symptoms include nausea an hour after meals, lack of appetite, irregular difficulty with waste expulsion, occasional dizziness and a general lack of energy. These began several months ago, and are possibly related to my problems earlier in the year which I believed were solved when I switched to a lactose-free diet. Guess it wasn't as simple as that. I do not have plumbing pains or related abdominal issues, nor am I suffering from gall bladder attacks of any degree. Though I am on a waiting list to have my gall bladder removed( up to 12 months away )I may be 'bumped' or sent to another area on the Island to get it done if my symptoms persist or worsen... assuming that it is the cause, in some manner. Unknown right now.

A visit to the doctor this morning was not incredibly informative, but a plan of action was hatched. In addition to the enzymes I am taking, I am going to switch to a new type of antacid, one which will hopefully correct the digestive issues and get me back on track. My new doctor wants to try this first, before suggesting other courses of action - I hope that the nausea goes away and that I get back my sense of hunger again. Feeling woozy and weak at day's end is no fun, especially when you stare at food of any description and feel not the slightest hunger twinge in your belly despite not having eaten all day... not being a light eater, I like solid meals on a regular basis, and this really unbalances me.

I hope that the new antacid brings things back INTO balance, but there's no guarantee, as there are too many possible illnesses that fit my symptoms. Thankfully, I am not showing signs of other more serious illnesses, so I am hoping that my new doctor's recommendations will prove effective. Fingers crossed.

Dec 31 - New Year's Eve

I spent a few hours visiting my parents for dinner, then back to my place for a quiet evening in front of the fireplace. Surprisingly, I was unable to find any 'event' taking place for New Year's Eve around here; lots of advertising for parties taking place in local bars and restaurants, but nothing like the Niagara Falls New Years Eve Party at all. There is a nice online listing of local events here though, which is great. So, I rang in the new year online, watching the ball drop live in Times Square at 9pm locally, then surfed a bit without finding any west coast feeds, like Seattle or Los Angeles... ah well. It's 2009.

The tradition of New Year's Eve got its start way back in 46 BC with the Romans, who as we all know really knew how to party. Which has lessons for us in the modern day, as we are easily distracted from major issues facing the world today by modern media - Hollywood and major league sports follow quite distinctly in the ancient Roman's footsteps by pulling our attention towards trivial entertainment, when we should instead doing our part to get the world on track, like some people have been for a while now.

As for me, I watched the fireplace flames flicker out as the year changed, and wondered what was in store for myself... and for us all. At least the LHC didn't suck us all into a black hole a few months ago!

Jan 1st 2009 - Where did 2008 go?

One thing I'd like to do this coming year is read more of the classics, and I've found a great site that lets me do that from home: ReadPrint.com. You can find thousands of books to read online, from dozens of different authors including Chaucer and Shakespeare.

Upcoming movies I'm wanting to see: The Watchmen, The Road, Terminator: Salvation, Land of the Lost( with Wil Ferrell ), Thundercats, and perhaps even Gatchaman - the last is a movie that some may remember as Battle of the Planets / G-Force from 80's cartoon TV. Go Firey Phoenix... or something.

In the blizzard of 'Top Whatzits' of 2008 lists, I pay more attention to the techie side of things, of course. Over at WorthPlaying.com they have been counting down the Top 10 Games of 2008, for consoles and PC. I find it grin-inducing that both Fallout3 and Left4Dead made it on that list, for as you all know I enjoy most things post-apocalyptic and apparently many gamers share the very same interests. Which bodes well in case the world DOES end; there will be a lot of unhappy zombies out there once the surviving gamers figure out where the local gun shop keys are. FPS training at work.. but I guess it helps to live in a country stuffed with firearms too.

Along the lines of stupidity from the above thought, we have: The Stupidest Products of 2008! While the majority of the list items seem mostly sex or scatologically inclined, there are some exceptions, such as the Fender Stratocaster coffee table and the fork chair. Who thinks of these things? Better yet, who in their right mind thinks they will sell, especially since oddball and boutique stores have been packing it in faster than adherents to the Atkinson Diet in the past 6 months.

I'm also still investigating the idiocy that is Imperial Majesty Cruise LINE - there are quite a few places online where people have voiced their concerns, but this one in particular had a gem about telemarketers and the Canadian National Do Not Call List, from the entry by 'Annoyed Canadian Girl' on Dec 11, 2008. I quote it here in its entirety, as it amply illustrates the frustration consumers feel when loopholes in our systems are exploited by ethically bankrupt companies:


As for those who are posting about Canada's National Do Not Call List —that list does not apply to this company. If you read the Term of the NDNC List, you will see that:

If it is a NON Canadian company working INSIDE Canada, and calling in Canada, they have to abide, if it’s a NON Canadian company working OUTSIDE of Canada and calling TO Canada, they DO NOT HAVE TO FOLLOW THE DNC LIST.

Although, I’m pretty sure that if you request to be placed on their DNC list, legally they HAVE to place you on that list.


This all reminds me of a quote from one of more favourite sci-fi animated series, Futurama, where the main character Fry( the lowly intergalactic delivery boy )discovers that ads are beamed directly into people's dreams in the future. He responds: "Not in our dreams! Only on TV and radio. And in magazines. And movies. And at ballgames. And on buses. And milk cartons. And t-shirts. And bananas. And written on the sky. But not in dreams! No sirree!" Seems he forgot about the internet, mailouts, pamphlets, billboards, newspapers, books, clothing, and of course telemarketers. Yeesh - too much!

Jan 2 - Two of 2009

Work is going well enough; I'm doing a lot more paperwork as a manager, with a ton of reading as well - not unexpected at all, and my smaller branch is the perfect place for me to do that on slower days.

I had my apartment shown not once, but twice, today. I've been leaving it in showroom condition every day that I am working, as my landlord seems to be getting quite a bit of interest in it, which is good. Though most everyone loves "such a cute little apartment" they inevitably comment that it's "small" ... well, yeah, it looks smaller with all these bookcases, the couches and a big coffee table. Ah well, not my prob. It does annoy me that I have to take down my window insulation sheet during the day, but since the days are all well above zero degrees now, sometimes with decent sunshine, it's not a major heating issue. The house I am moving to doesn't have central heating, which seems to be the norm here in BC and that still rings oddly to me. No furnaces? No insulation? No ducts? Single-pane windows? No central A/C? What gives? I'm sure home inspectors in this province make a killing, being so busy!

I was also pleased to see today that Wikipedia.org has reached their goal of raising $6 million to continue their fine work of bringing the sum total of human knowledge to everyone on earth. Though the modern internet has meant that the venerable encyclopedia salesman has been out of a job since the mid 90's, when the encyclopedia made the jump to CD-ROM and from there to its many current online formats.

I spent a portion of the evening playing Mass Effect on the Xbox360, which I mention only because I recently started playing the game again, as in this week, after a year-long hiatus. Why is that? Simple: I hadn't got used to the controls, and the story hadn't 'grabbed' me yet, so I shelved it soon after I bought it. Now that I have spent a little time with it, the depth that BioWare invests its games with is starting to come through; the game plays like a SciFi movie in many ways, which really pulls the player into the universe being presented. Making a difference on a galactic scale is fun!

Jan 3 - Green for RPG

Rain has come and washed away the snow; the grass is still green underneath out here, which still amazes me when I see it. Not that people are cutting their lawns much here in the winter, but not seeing huge swathes of dead brown lawns is an incredible pick-me-up during the winter. I commented last year about how flowers bloom here year-round; coming up in a month is the Victoria Flower Count, when people call in the number and locations of blooms they spot for a whole month. In my view, it is like giving the birdie to the rest of Canada during the height of the winter snows, saying "Hey, we live in a place where there are flowers blooming in February... so how's that snow accumulation, Toronto?" This is why I love Vancouver Island... one of many reasons that so many people love to live here.

I had an interesting game session online tonight, which surprised me as I haven't played all that much NWN in the last few months. I ended up having to make a few moral choices, as well as personal ones, for the character I've created - which though upsetting for the character, had me scratching my head at points to try to follow the logic of the person running the game session. I gave up near the end and simply retreated to my tavern's office, as I was too tired to make sense of the fractured plot any longer.

Though I do enjoy the way such roleplaying games let me stretch my characterization skills for my writing, they do tend to take up an inordinate amount of my time, as one has to wait for others to respond to one's typing... and since I type VERY quickly, this can lead to some toe-tapping waits. Given that the alternative is voice chat, I am not sure about that... as I shudder to imagine that every dwarf one runs across will have a terrible Scottish accent, and vampires will all sound Transylvanian - bleh!

Jan 4 - Weekend Warriors

Working the weekend... seems so long ago that I looked forward to weekends, in my high school days. Though I worked them then as well. Hmmm... I think the only time I ever had weekends free was back in grade school, when I was too young to have a job; I've been working since I started high school, and haven't stopped since. University was fun to juggle jobs, school and life in general, and I managed to fumble a few things before it all got sorted out in an educationally painful manner. Live and learn.

I finished re-reading another favourite series by David Weber and Steve White, set in the Starfire universe which was based on a tabletop strategy game of the same name. Similar to Starship Troopers, but far more logical in terms of technology and especially strategy( infantry rifles versus hordes of giant monsters? Puh-leaze! )as well as making sense of combat in three dimensions, albeit with a few sci-fi twists tossed in to spice things up. While some people deride the books for being 'simplistic' I enjoy them for what they are: fun space opera set in an uncertain universe, with man-eating bugs. Joy!

It reminded me of the first time I saw a space combat simulator, running on an ancient floppy-based PC with monochrome graphics. Called Starfleet Orion, it was the first game to try to bring to the computer the complexity of combat in space... and it succeeded, despite the incredibly basic graphics that the Commodore PET( ancestor of the Amiga! )was barely capable of. I never did manage to play it, but I watched over the shoulders of a few older kids playing it and was entranced, especially given that the Atari2600 had nothing like it. Nowadays we have lovely bits of game code like the freeware Space Combat Simulator, which looks to simulate actual combat with real-world physics. No warp drive here. A really mysterious site is SpaceshipSimulator.com, debuting in 2010... and that's it. Check back in a year!

Something that I wished had made it to actual hardware was an idea presented at the Baltimore WorldCon back in 1998. Similar in execution to Space Camp, the idea was to take two 'crews' of a dozen people and have them face off against each other in combat, commanding the 'bridge' and 'engine room' of their respective ships. They would spend a weekend 'sealed' in the simulator, with quarters, a mess and whatnot to simulate being aboard a starship. It seemed like a great idea, but sadly even the name has vanished into obscurity... and what with the popularity of MMORPG's nowadays, spending a weekend with your friends now means chatting with them via headset from your couch.


No Comments on last week's blog... have we seen the last of the Spider and his pals? TTFN.

Singing, Shock and Sweat

I am still working on those pictures. There's literally thousands of them that I am going through, so what I am doing is going through this Blog week by week and picking out images that go with each entry. I wanted to do that in the first place, but it was hellish trying to get images properly attached / hosted when I started this blog. Again, I hope to have it done before my trip to Niagara!

Aug 4 – B.C. Day

After work, I headed home for a quick supper and then cycled down to the Inner Harbour area to catch the festivities. The weather was simply perfect: clear skies and balmy temperatures that did not start to feel the least bit chilly until well after 10pm. Part of BC 150 Years, this article gives a great summary of the event.

When I arrived, the crowds were dense but not heavy, with quite a few people content to sit much further back from the massive stage set up in front of the Parliament Buildings. Hundreds were spread over the vast lawn of the Fairmont Empress Hotel. Famous local son Burton Cummings was playing when I made my way to the corner of Government and Belleville St, which was close enough. The crowds were much heavier just the opposite side of the street, covering the lawn completely. Where I was, I could see the stage as well as the two huge screens on opposite sides. I even had a tall guy to my right, who neatly blocked the blinding rays of the setting sun – perfect, in fact.

Burton Cummings was a blast of energy, singing his heart out along with his band. I was sorry I had not got there sooner, as they left the stage not even a half hour after I arrived.

Sarah McLaughlin was next. I was interested to see her, as I'd been first introduced to her music back in my days working at The Brock Press. My editor at the time, Nick, was a HUGE fan of hers. So much so, that he was on a first-name basis with the staff at her record label – he would call them up weekly to see if there was anything new happening with her, which I found amusing. I should also mention that the last Sarah McLaughlin concert I attended was back at the Molson Amphitheatre, when she first returned from hiatus after having a child( I believe ). That was a great show, but I ended up not enjoying myself after the halfway point. I had gone up to the 'cheap seats' rail that separated the grassy seating fringe from the 'paying customer' seating to take some pictures, with my lowly 3-megapixel Olympus C3000 digital camera( but DAMN could it take good low light pictures! ). Amazingly, there are still reviews online of the camera. I barely got two pictures before security dove on me, lectured me about not 'filming' ( ?? )and took away my camera for the rest of the concert. Needless to say, I was NOT impressed.

But back to the concert. Sarah put on a lovely performance, her songs as always making the crowd smile. I noticed 'Aida' seemed to be the most popular, with a lot of the crowd singing along. It was a mixed lot too, with a lot of families and older folk present; officials put it at around 45,000 people all told. Suffice to say it was a relaxed, happy and well-behaved group of people out to enjoy a perfect summer evening with a free show.

Fiest was on after Sarah, with an intermission by a local singer named Shawn Hlookoff. He was energetic, but you could tell by the absent-minded chatter of the crowd that they were really waiting for Feist. There was a small group at the front who would occasionally chant her name during the setup after Shawn, and the roar that went up when the lights came on( low of course )was almost as big as for Sarah's low-key entrance.

And an interesting entrance it was. Fiest had set up a 'silhouette screen' and started off the show singing with her backlit silhouette on that very screen, a theme that continued throughout the show. I did not know any of the songs, but BOY could you hear her – they must have amped the bass ten times over the other performers, as very asphalt was vibrating enough to rattle the gravel. Loud, I guess, is another way to put it – glad I wasn't any closer. Too bad I had to leave before she got to the one song I did know, the Apple iPod commercial-famous "One, Two, Three, Four…" I really wanted to stay for that, but I was just too tired at that point, so off I went home in the gathering chill – I'd not brought a jacket( again )and forgotten how quickly things cooled down here at night. MUCH different than Niagara, where the hot summer nights can make sleeping a chore.

Aug 5 - Weather to Sleep

I almost got to sleep in today… until the garbage truck came at 7am. Very similar to how the landscaping guys used to show up around 7:30 am at The Prince every Tuesday to start mowing the lawn – great timing when you're tired from the night before. Not that I managed to get much done before work, mind you, but that's not the point.

The weather has done a total reversal during the weekend – it's back to sunny skies and balmy temperatures. Only a few clouds forecast for later in the week, so it's back to chilly mornings, sweaty lunchtimes and cool evenings again. Again, hard to get used to needing to bring a jacket, or wear 'layers' of clothes as the locals put it. Makes sense, but I'm so used to sandals, shorts and a t-shirt for summer weather, day and night. At least the need to shower more than twice a day is alleviated somewhat here due to the lack of humidity. Heck, the glaciers on Mt. Olympus to the south see to natural A/C for the city! No sightings of Zeus or other gods though; they must be laying low in the heat.

Aug 6 – Surprise Work Problems

Well, a shocker today: my co-worker was let go from the company. While I cannot go into why it happened, the reasons were a surprise to everyone. It is especially hard when working at a small branch like ours, when there ARE only the two of us there. It's stunning when someone you work with every day, who you have great respect for their abilities and like as a person, is suddenly gone for reasons that come as a hammerblow to the now-revealed-as-fragile-glass gestalt image you had created of them. In the business I am in, one learns to read people very well… but that still cannot ferret out well-kept secrets, and will never restore the blow that you take to your sense of trust. Damn, it sucks. So now our trainee is back, who ironically has the SAME name as my newly-departed coworker( yes, it was very confusing when they were both there at the same time ). Fortunately, we get along great, and we'll both move along from this incident as best we can… a little wiser, and a lot more conscious of how fragile a thing our jobs can really be.

Aug 7 – Looking for Group

I stumbled across a GREAT webcomic, called Looking for Group. It's based off WoW, but not overtly so. The art style is colourful, the writing is decent… and it has a GREAT character or two in there as well( see if you can tell which one I like ). Reminds me of another great comic I've not had the time to read in many years: Thieves and Kings, whose creator was a friend of a friend from quite long ago. Though why the site is in Australia beats me - last I heard, the creator was in Toronto. Hmmm.

On a related stress note, I've been cutting back on a lot of foods lately. Not buying cookies, chips and other snacks has made a difference in my food cravings, though the balance has not yet swung the other way to the point where fresh fruit and veggies fill the fridge. Yet. The one indulgence I still permit is something I discovered at the local Thrifty's I pass twice a workday: the Kilo Bag of Chocolate Chip Cookies.

Measuring daily stress levels by the numbers of cookies consumed has proven both amusing and tasty, so it's something I will continue for a while. Inexpensive yet delicious, the fresh-baked K.B.C-3 is something to look forward too, trivial though a cookie may be in the grand scheme of things. In terms of stress measurement though, the average day at work is about a two-cookie day in the end, with perhaps a half-cookie thrown in for good behaviour or a witty retort. A full cookie if they actually get said retort.

Aug 8 - Where the heck AM I?

I may have posted this already some time ago, but I like it and feel like sharing it again, as people keep adding to it – what's not to like about something continually updated? The 117 Things to Do in Victoria List is chock-full of Goodness for the South-Vancouver Island dweller to dig into. Speaking of which, a little geography for you folks, to clear up something that often confuses people who aren't familiar with exactly where Victoria is. The city is located on South Vancouver Island, which can be confusing as it's over 100 km SOUTH of the city of Vancouver… which is on the mainland well to the north-northeast. Most of Vancouver Island is reserved as forest parkland, with communities mainly situated on the south-east shores, radiating from Victoria north to Sidney. This website in particular has some great info, including interactive travel guides.

Aug 9 - Rain at last

Saturday mornings without cable – has it comes to this? The foundations of my world have become shaky and cracked… no Spiderman, no Robotech – what am I to to?

Oh, right. Work. That's it. How could I forget? I mean, when you take away the PC games, Xbox360, PS2, TurboGrafx, the DVD collection( movies, TV shows, recorded TV episodes ), the several thousand books, the TV available on the internet and those old Choose-Your-Own-Adventure stories… there's practically nothing to do here. *grin*

So aside from writing up a few more articles for Cyberwalker.com, finishing up a few story outlines and digging into a few old stories, there's still a lot to do around here. It actually rained for most of the morning and early afternoon here, which was fine by me as I had a lot of laundry to do. Seemed like the perfect time for it too, as everyone else in the building was apparently out doing their Weekend Thing. As I mentioned earlier in this blog, Victoria is FULL of things to do and it seems that especially during the Summer months, there just aren't enough hours even with the longer days.

Aug 10 - Damn, I'm hot!

My apartment gets rather warm with the PC or the Xbox running for any period of time, but as I have mentioned before, the %##@! smokers out the front of the building manage to pollute the air every couple of hours – it seems even more than that, of late. Kudos for not smoking IN their units, but it pisses me off NO END that I have to run to the window to slam it shut when I sniff the foul stench of their killing clouds drifting my way. Even reversing the flow of air does not help; the prevailing wind blows from the southwest, and going against that means I get no cool air – so I either swelter with little airflow, or I have to do a yo-yo act to constantly close the window, wait, then open it again and see if the air is clear so I can get some cool air again. Damn all smokers and their addictions( present friends and family members excluded ).

I played COD4 for a few hours until 5pm, and as usual it was a varied performance. Since my final game of the day was 0 kills / 18 deaths, I took that as a sign to quit before it got worse… as if that were possible? At least I am managing to keep up with my friends, most games - nothing is worse than being the team anklebiter or headshot dummy.

Amazingly, last week's blog was the first one since March that had no comments posted for it. Seems to support my theory that this is the busiest time of summer, when people are packing all they can into the fading daylight hours of warmth.