Heroes, Homes and Halitosis

I'll refrain from further mention about whatever's wrong with me, as it resulted in some lengthy comments last week - not my intent. So instead I will continue to focus on events and things of interest here, along with the positive changes about life in BC. Happy thoughts.


Jan 5 - Real World Superheroes

The TV show Heroes was a smash hit when it started out, and despite a rocky road of uneven writing, it still remains a vibrant idea that seems to have struck a chord with the general public. Ordinary people whose everyday lives are changed forever by the discovery of untapped powers within themselves; heady stuff.

Apparently that sort of thinking has rubbed off a little, in unexpected ways. Amateur crimefighters have sprung up here and there around the world, taking upon themselves the burden of fighting crime and injustice in the streets. One of the most colourful is Citizen Prime, who keeps a blog of his activities that makes for some fascinating reading, as does the site for The League of Citizen Heroes( though the flag background is overdoing things a bit, from my Canadian perspective ).

One has to wonder what motivates some of these folk, though I suspect it is simple empathy for their fellow (wo)man, that they care what happens to others enough to do something about it. Their decision to do something, aside from joining civil services such as their local police or action groups, speaks to me of a desire to make something better out of society's mess. If we as individuals cannot empathize with one another, then we start to slide down that slippery slope towards the anathema of disinterest, where people become objects with names attached and so we lose a big part of what we call being human. Being a superhero can bring new perspective to one's sense of community involvement, to become a participant of solutions and not a spectator to the problems one sees daily. Kudos, heroes... too all of you who can get close to others.

Makes me want to go all civil-minded, but then I remembered I work in customer service. *sigh* Still, one wonders what would happen if a superhero had to hold down a day job... while in costume. My fave is the anger management counsellor; see if you can guess which hero it is.

Jan 6 - Death and Gaming

A sad day for gaming enthusiasts today: Electronic Gaming Monthly has bit the dust, just shy of its twenty-year anniversary. Companion magazine Computer Gaming World died early last year, after nearly 27 years tuning gamers into their needed hobby. I really liked CGW, even moreso than EGM; I still have some amazing issues, the crowning glory of which was their Dec.1996 issue, which gave you 425 pages of gaming goodness for a mere $4.99 CAN... how can you beat that in a monthly magazine?

And who wants to die, really? I mean, there's very little to recommend it, and as far as anyone knows, its both permanent and very boring. Apart from Terry Pratchett's amusing take on the character, Death has always been, well, unexciting and sinister. I did enjoy A Disagreement with Death, which is going for the bargain price of $0.01 on Amazon.ca - grab a copy while you can as it's out of print.

Two architects have come up with a novel life-prolonging idea: design a house that forces you to be active to live within its walls. While their idea has merit, I really do not think that living in their concept house would be all that safe on a daily basis; sleepwalkers would injure themselves in moments. It reminds me of a zoo habitat for monkeys, or a playground challenge area for really agile and active kids.

I suppose it all comes down to living; if you're a sloth, you move slowly though life and likely will end it early. If you run at high speed, you might crash and burn. I'm more of the moderate type; keep moving but watch where you're going, so as to avoid some of the bumps. Plus, it's better to travel with company than alone; who's going to take the scenic pictures and check the maps while driving life's highway? Oh wait, that's why I bought a GPS... though they don't have one with a camera too. Yet.

For those of you who wait every year for it, wait no longer: the 2008 Darwin Awards are out! Yep, now you can read about those intrepid souls who have managed to improve the gene pool of the human race... by removing themselves from it in acts of utter stupidity, though some get a lucky break.

Jan 7 - More Jerking

Just another day at work, though I did manage to have another oddball story to add to the list of Odd Things I've Witnessed at MMart. A perfectly normal-looking fellow came in to load some money to his Mastercard, using debit. As it is wont to do sometimes, my computer told me that the transaction failed to process, so I backed out and restarted the transaction from scratch. At the end of the second attempt, things worked fine, and I handed the receipt to the customer to have them sign it. At which point things took a 90-degree bend towards Weirdsville. On the receipt, the total showed the amount had been loaded twice( despite my PC telling me it had failed )and I opened my mouth to tell the customer that I would fix the error... but he beat me to it by demanding that I not charge him for the error. As well as demanding that I put it in writing; he was instantly rude and derisive towards me, not giving me any opportunity to interject my willingness to HELP and correct the problem, at all. Weird. In addition, when I was in the back calling the CSC, I could hear him berating customer service reps in general to another customer, being a total jerk about something over which I obviously had no control and was immediately going to fix for him( at no charge, no less ). Which I did, and when he had the gall to point out a single spelling mistake in the letter I wrote at breakneck speed, I instantly replied "Well sir, I did not want to make you wait further by running a spellcheck." Picky, mean-spirited bastard, I tell you... I refer you to my earlier link to The Serial Jerk, and would also add that when I read stories like this one, I am glad that I work at a place with armoured glass.

My opinion? Some people are nice most of the time, but can be jerks on occasion... then there are people who are jerks most of the time, but can be nice when needed. Telling the difference is always fun, as the jerks usually try to be nice when dealing with you for the first time... then when your guard is lowered somewhat, they let their true nature out with a bang - ouch. It's really too bad there's not some sort of licencing system in place; if people could just take a test to see if they are a jerk, then we may see more people taking a closer look at bumper stickers like this one. Which would result in some interesting stories. Maybe Steve Martin will star in a film about such jerks: oh wait, he already did.

Though one wonders... how can you tell if you are a jerk? I wish I could leave pamphlets on the subject strewn on the counter at work..

Jan 8 - Space Pressure

Battlestar Galactica has its final episodes coming up, and theories abound as to what will unfold. I've really enjoyed the show, even the 'break' season where they ended up on New Caprica for a too-long while, which was intended to reflect the USA's occupation of Iraq - nice, but it doesn't make for the same TV experience as a space-based show, despite the gritty character situations and writing.

I guess what it comes down to is trust: do we trust the producers of BSG not to screw their audience, who like that of Lost have followed the show along, enjoying the roller coaster of intelligent writing? Not that I expect BSG to jump the shark, but one worries, with some justification, that the writers have painted themselves into a corner at some point and have been desperately trying to figure a way out. No pressure: just millions of fans ready to jump all over you when that shark gets footprints on it...

I am also under pressure this week, though of a different sort: barometric pressure. The barometer has skyrocketed here in the last few days, rising to hover around the 104.00 kPa mark. Why is this significant you ask? Two words: weather sensitive. When the barometer rises, my head starts to pound; it's a trigger that many people seem to share in common, sadly. While theories are many as to the exact causes of barometric headaches, my personal research is leaning towards the reaction of blood vessel diameters towards exterior pressure. Given that the human skull is a series of closed chambers under various pressures and lined with many blood vessels going in and out, it stands to reason that some individuals will have a higher sensitivity to external pressure changes than others. The vast numbers of forums and blogs out there on the subject shows that for many, being able to predict the weather comes at too high a price.

Oh, on the note of Cylons: this is just the coolest. Well, when it's not on, that is. Mmm... chromy.

Jan 9 - Voices and the Doctor

A while back I wrote about cell phone watches, and the current lack thereof on the market. Well, the recent 2009 CES had a lot of great new tech, including a wristwatch cell phone from LG Electronics. Much like the Dick Tracy Wristwatch Radiophone of yesteryear, this new cell may( of course )herald the direction of things to come. We'll see how bulky it ends up being, as well as how actually useful it is, though with the advent of Bluetooth headsets, some of the drawbacks of having to talk AND listen with something strapped to your wrist are negated. The part I loved about it all? You can see it in this video... the phone used to call the wristwatch cell is my very own LG Shine! Sweet synchronicity! Though if I am honest with myself, my current phone will meet all my cell needs for some time to come.

Some news about Doctor Who; the new Doctor Who has been chosen! While this is a Big Thing for some people, I always wonder how far away from the Tom Baker standard the show can get before fan backlash snaps things back into line. Here is a bit about the various people considered for the role of the current Doctor, as well as some suggestions therein. One request: we need more scenes with the sonic screwdriver! And less with Daleks, especially if they are singing...

While singing is usually part and parcel of most Disney productions, thankfully their cartoon series have for the most part lacked musical numbers. One series I enjoyed immensely was the too-brief Dave The Barbarian, which was a parodied take on fantasy adventures. The show featured the voice of Jeff Bennett as the Narrator, and had some great writing with spot-on comedic timing. Bennett appears in many of my favourite old-school shows, such as Johnny Bravo, Freakazoid! and Earthworm Jim, and even appeared in several of the Baldur's Gate series of video games. He has quite the voice acting career which I find inspiring, especially as he is able to do so many different voices. Truly talented, Bennett... though I wonder if bad breath might make or break such a career? I know that Billy West, one of the most famous voice actors in the world today, had a lot to overcome to land at the top: he speaks about it here, a great read.

Jan 10 - Shared Plumbing

One of those things about sharing, be it bills, lunch or even bathrooms, is that you have to adjust to the habits of others. Nowhere is this more instantly apparent than while showering... and someone else runs water. The blast of scalding water or shattering cold jolts you out of your comfortable reverie; how many great ideas have been lost while in the shower to the inconsideration of others? One thing I will not miss about shared plumbing is all the other people using it at the same time. If I ever decide to build a home of my own, or renovate one, it will definitely have one of these to eliminate that pesky shower issue. And some of these. And one of these... and heck, while I am at it, one of these for good measure. Though we'll likely never see anything like it, the House of the Future still resonates today, as future homes are looking good, albeit still too darn large... and lacking fireplaces?

Going further along the concept of shared living, this site shows how modern ideas of living spaces have begun to change in the last decade. Given the huge housing problems that have struck the US from the sub-prime mortgage debacle, these ideas of smaller, shared spaces make a lot of sense. The days of vast sprawling suburbs, of huge isolated and individual expensive homes, may go by the wayside. While I am not a proponent of living in the huddled mass of giant apartment complexes, I am certainly open to new ideas for old concepts to make better use of space in already developed urban zones.

Jan 11 - Almost put my foot in it...

Today was day 5 of 9 in a row, not a bad stretch of working and not the longest I have ever worked in a row... but it still wears on you a little depending on other factors. One bit of news, good or bad as you take it: due to the general slowdown, we are closing on Sundays for the next while. Which will be a nice change, as I have worked almost every Sunday since the summer; I even have a three-day weekend coming up. Though I will be spending most of it packing. The place now looks like I am moving: packed boxes sit on shelves instead of books, and everything has that shambled, forlorn look as if to say "this is no longer home, so just get on with it."

After work, I was out shopping with my dad for a bit before heading home... and near disaster. While unloading my groceries from the back seat of the car, my dad put the car into park and took his foot off the brake... causing the car to roll forward downhill a significant distance. I moved instantly with it, whipping my foot out from in front of the rear wheel and so narrowly avoiding getting my foot trapped under the wheel. After some spirited reassurances that such would not happen again, I headed upstairs, relieved that my upcoming move would not be further complicated by any foot injuries - last thing I need. Kinda makes me wish I'd invested in a pair of steel-toed sneakers a few years back.


About all I've got for this week. It's just work and packing, rinse and repeat until month end... though next week, a surprise visitor!

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.

Animation, Alias and Assh... er, Jerks

I hope everyone had a good Christmas, be it family-oriented or materially satisfying! I never did develop a taste for eggnog, so I'll settle for some hot chocolate while I write up this week's blog:


Dec 22 - Star Wars is Toast

For those of you out there who always have that one impossible-to-buy-for person on your lists, I present the perfect gift: the Star Wars Toaster. Yes, your loved one or friend can greet the day with the image of Darth Vader seared into their bread of choice, feeling the power of the Dark Side flowing through them to give them the energy they need to face any challenge. You can complement this amazing piece of kitchen technology with the only logical choice of knives to slice your bread: the Jedi Ginsu Knife! Indeed, the Jedi Ginsu slices through almost anything, bread included, and stores easily in the smallest of kitchen drawers.

Considering that my menu of food choices keeps shrinking due to my recent plumbing problems, toast is still a good standby choice. Not to mention a cheap one too... and some people have raised it to an art form. Apart from the occasional grape jelly, I tend to go plain.

I hope most of you have forgotten about it, but in case you haven't.... the Star Wars Holiday Special is still out there, lurking... 1978's contribution to some of the worst TV schlock ever. So bad it's good, akin to some of those great B-movies
like Plan 9 From Outer Space or After the Fall of New York. Only this one has wookies... which are infinitely better than the ewoks, imho.

Dec 23 - Alias Flash

Though it's been a while, I've started re-watching the Alias TV series with Jennifer Garner. The layer plots, slick production values and eminent watch-ability of its cast have drawn me back, with a few sites such as Alias Season.com to fill in the blank spots when I don't quite catch all the plot points flying around.

I purchased another one of only a few XboxLive! games today, as I find most of their content rather lacking... but I have a soft spot for Bomberman. It is one of the original 'party games' the first of which caused a craze in Japan back in the early 90's, and I first played it on my venerable TurboGrafx-16, which was designed as a 5-player party machine itself - the two fit perfectly, and more than a few parties were enlivened by exploding bombs and trash-talking amongst friends.

On the topic of good games, go check out The Ten Most Addictive Flash Games Ever... see if you agree. There are so many sites out there nowadays with free flash games, that you could feasibly dispense with console games or PC games altogether... though you have to beware of some really awful games.

Dec 24 - Holiday Movies

I spent part of my day relaxing, as it is only one of two days off for the holidays.

In the early afternoon, I headed over to my parents place to spend the holiday with them. My sister was not able to make it, though that was itself a good thing given the horrible weather that had stranded thousands of people and canceled flights in B.C. Why not skip the travel insanity during the holidays, and use things like Skype instead, you might ask? Somehow I think that being with family during Christmas will always win over even just seeing family, though you'd cut out things like your uncle's halitosis and the vicious pinching fingers of well-meaning aunts seeking your cheeks like hawk talons... *ahem* Love my family, but I am glad in some ways that I am an adult now, at Christmas. Only some.

We watched Elf in the evening, which seems to be the new holiday movie of choice, though I am still partial to Scrooged along with A Christmas Story and Its A Wonderful Life. Wil Farrell playing Buddy the elf works perfectly with his talents as a lovable innocent adult in an unfamiliar world, and I was also impressed with the low-key performance of Zooey Deschanel, who also happens to have an incredible voice.

One thing I miss about Christmas eves of yesteryear is a roaring fire. I grew up in a house that had a large, wood-burning fireplace and I remember many a Christmas was spent in front of that fire, with the warmth from the crackling logs spreading throughout the room and the Christmas tree standing tall nearby... but not too close, as we usually had a real tree in those days, as fake ones were too darn expensive still. Today, most fireplaces I have seen are of the gas or even electric variety, relegating the old open hearth and wooden logs to homes that have easy access to wood supplies and folk who don't mind clearing away ash.

I think it's worth it; I especially enjoyed the time I spent living in Fonthill, in a home that had TWO wall-to-wall wood burning fireplaces, one on each floor.

Now that was cozy at Christmas!

Dec 25 - Earthquake, or digesting dinner?

Apparently there was a small earthquake at 12:11am far offshore, a 5.9 that was too small to be felt. Still, it is a reminder that I am living in an area that is exposed to such things, unlike Niagara which only has to worry about smog, thunderstorm-spawned tornadoes and bad winter weather. Who remembers the 1996 tornado that struck the drive-in theater in Thorold, which was scheduled to show Twister ? It made it to Letterman and Bob Saget, so apparently a few people took note. Not a bad film either.

I watched both Shrek the Halls and the not-so-seasonal Arthur and the Invisibles, which was the made-in-france super-expensive 3D animated film that didn't do so well over on this side of the pond, perhaps due to its rather lackluster and nonsensical story. Mind you, the animation itself was incredible, showing just how far the graphical movie arts have come since the days of Who Framed Roger Rabbit. I was disappointed, as the direction was Luc Besson, who made one of my favourite films, The Fifth Element... which starred Mila Jovovitch, who seems to have a penchant for making bad movies too. Guess that's why she and Besson married each other and soon called it quits.

It was a good day, spent relaxing in the company of my family and far from the worries of current events. My plumbing behaved itself, thanks perhaps in part to the enzyme supplements I am taking... I was worried that the turkey dinner would prove to be a problem, but apparently my holiday gift was to be able to enjoy it AND not see it again in any improper manner. Joy!

Finally, what would Christmas be without... zombies? The Twelve Days of Zombie Christmas will give you the answers you need - brains. Arrgh.

Dec 26 - Nien, it is 9 !

I heard about the latest Time Burton animated film over at i09.com which is a great place to peruse the many facets of SciFi goodness. They ran an eye-popping( ow! )article about the film, which is currently under development for a near-future release. The feature film is based off a short film by creator Shane Acker, which is a tale about a post-apocalyptic world devoid of humans, but not all life... you can see the feature film's trailer at his official website. His is an interesting story about the leap from short film to feature, definately worth the read in this recent interview.

On the track of creating fiction, sometimes you get stuck. For those times when the blank page is a black hole staring you in the face, there is 911: Writer's Block, where you can turn to for inspiration when all else fails. The site is part of WeBook.com, where writers can gather to create stories together. Sounds like a virtual group hug to me, but it looks intriguing enough to try.

Oh, and since it was Boxing Day, I headed out to make only one stop to pick up some inexpensive DVD's at London Drugs - more seasons of The Simpsons, Stargate: SG-1 and all three seasons of Arrested Development, a series that Rene put me onto some time ago and I have been looking for since... on the cheap, of course! I was in and gone in less than 10 minutes at 9am, the most civilized Boxing Day sale I have ever been to, especially compared to last year's zoo at Future Shop that I lined up at 5:30am for... never again. Considering the current economic downturn, I would not be surprised to see sales continue well into the new year as retailers struggle to stay afloat. Some higher-end ones have already gone under and more are sure to fall as consumers close their wallets and strive to save.

Which means gift cards are a bad idea, given that if a company goes under, any cards outstanding will not be honoured as they are considered part of debt. Good luck going to court for your $25.00 card!

Dec 27 - Weary Weekend

While waiting for many a film to arrive in the coming year, some folk get a little impatient... like this fellow, whose obvious ardour for all things Thundercat shows in his spectacular fan-made movie trailer, which skillyfully blends clips of actors from dozens of movies, adding special effects and overlays. It is quite convincing, along the lines of the fake Phantom Menace trailer from the late 1990's, of which I still have a copy floating around somewhere... surprisingly, it is nowhere to be found on YouTube!

Work today was steady but unremarkable, which is the way I like it - the fewer emotionally-twisted children masquerading as adults that I have to deal with, the better. Sometimes I wish I had the ability to move one of my eyes independandly of the other... I can only imagine how well that would work to defuse and confuse tense situations, when one eye keeps drifting off-center. Surely it would work better than an eye-twitch, that keeps getting worse as the person keeps being a jerk... hint, hint? Too bad that the rule holds that the worse a jerk the person is, the more oblivious they are to other people. just do not confuse the oblivious ones with the real serial jerks out there....

Dec 28 - Sunday Games

Unsurprisingly, I am going to mention... the sun. Since it was out and shining today, the snow piles melted considerably, leaving the streets far more navigable than they have been for the past week. It was nice to return home on relatively dry pavement, instead of picking one's way down hills mostly covered in ice. Victoria has quite a few hills to it, if you travel around the city a bit, which only adds to its charm, I think - the Niagara Escarpment is lovely, but can't hold a patch to the mountains here.

Feeling sheepish? Fatigue getting the better of your reflexes? Then test your reaction time with a little virtual sheep-herding... with a tranquilizer gun. Go on, you know it sounds like fun... or are you still feeling a little baaa-humbug from the holiday craze? *grin*

As most of you know, I am not a sports fan... nor is proficiency with a golf club high on my list. However, when I find a game called Medieval Golf online, my interest is perked... especially since you play it with arrows. Ah, to have time time to indulge that particular one of my hobbies... soon, I hope.


All for now... more news as I trip over it - see last week's blog for some major news of mine, the entry is highlighted in red.

DVD's, Dinner and Decisions

I'd ask Thought Police to actually read the blog entire, before commenting, as it only shows them to be foolish by leaving comments that ignore the blog's content.. but why bother? I'll bet they just skim, and don't actually read - keywording at work, folks. Hey, my first intro-comment link! Whoop.


Dec 15 - Scams

Low energy...

Turns out the phone calls I have been getting are from an 'Imperial Cruise Lines' ... important to note the name, as they are NOT the same company as 'Imperial Cruise LINE' - the distinction will be important later. Seems that this less-than-reputable bunch( nee scammers )use autodialers to call numbers and so determine the times of day when people there pick up. They then pass that info on to call center staff to peruse, based on data from their 'automated survey' call, which basically tells them if the mark is likely to have money to spend( nee be bilked of )on a vacation cruise. Apparently lots of people have been getting these types of calls, which often result in large sums vanishing from one's credit cards, if you are foolish enough to give such info away. Given that these scammers are taking full advantage of internet-based IP phones, which are difficult to trace and have no CallerID, it makes the National Do Not Call Lists rather impotent. Law enforcement is slow to follow up on complaints, which then means that the numbers that DO show up are already out of service a few weeks later. Reading some of the information that former employees talk about is eye-opening as well, and makes me wonder HOW this kind of company can stay in business legally? The world is not what it once was.

I watched Transformers in the evening, which was in the now-defunct HD-DVD format. Say what you will, I stick by my guns that it IS the better format - Blu-Ray has far fewer features, but had the backing of all the major studios, likely because it was cheaper to produce. Ah well. Transformers looked amazing on the HDTV, as the detail of the robots was mind-boggling. Too bad the video game stank... they should take a page from Good Old Games, which is a company dedicated to bringing the best of the older video games into today's age, making them run under Vista and the like. Oddworld!!

Dec 16 - Concepts and Movies

With the expression "Work is good for what ails ya" in mind, I set out today, my second day off, to make myself feel a little better... by organizing my place. I went through all my books, papers and sundry stuff to comb out all that which was no longer relevant to my life, which was surprisingly little. The papers took the longest, as old bills and other whatnot had to be examined to see if they were still worth keeping - the papers, not the bills. I progressed steadily through the day, cleaning, dusting, moving, tossing and the rest, until by dinnertime I was satisfied - my place finally looked like I wanted it to. All the extra was tossed or tucked away, I'd found a few things I thought lost, and in general I liked the neatness... the old saw of 'settled surroundings, settled mind' was definitely at work here.

I Stumbled across a website that is a mecca for people posting concept art; one fellow actually had his art go from concept to full-sized spaceship, built for a theme park in Germany, in only three months! Sing the praises!

Speaking of concepts, while waiting for Watchmen to come out, I came across a trailer for X-Men: Origins - Wolverine, with Hugh Jackman reprising his successful clawful role as the badass mutant. Nice that Wolvey keeps gaining popularity as the years go by.

I finished off the evening watching Iron Man, which was a great comic book movie. All the elements were there: cool superhero suit, lots of action, and even a redheaded Gwyneth Paltrow as Pepper Potts, assistant to Robert Downey Jr's Tony Stark. I've always liked Iron Man, though regrettably I've not kept any of the few issues I had from years ago. Apparently the newer issues have incredible writing in them, so I'll have to try and scout eBay for a few issues in the new year. Cool suit, did I mention that?

Dec 17 - What is that white stuff?

It snowed all day today, which in itself is nothing I am not used to from decades in Niagara. However, there is not even a tenth as snow removal or salting equipment here in Victoria, due to the much milder temperatures. Which means that when it keeps on snowing with low temperatures, things literally pile up faster than can be dealt with.

Tonight was a case in point. After I finished work in a flurry( hah! )of activity, I raced to the nearby bus stop, thinking I was a few minutes early for the scheduled bus. So I waited confidently, snugly tucked into my winter gear. And waited. And waited. After a half-hour, I was rather put out, moreso as I had spotted a bus in the far distance pulled over with its hazard lights on. After trying to call the bus schedule number futilely, it being busy constantly, I trekked over to the bus in the distance. The driver told me that due to the slippery roads, ALL transit buses had been told to wait until the roads were re-evaluated and the salters/sanders had had a chance to get around the main routes. So he took my ticket, gave me a transfer slip and I waited with a few others another ten minutes until we were finally given the go-ahead to proceed. I then waited with a large crowd downtown in the main foyer to Chapters, keeping warm for another hour almost until the bus I needed straggled in. Annoyingly, the driver told everyone that by that point, the ride was free due to the delay... but I had already paid on the other bus. Ah well, at least it got me most of the way home... albeit two hours late. Which was about the average wait for a cab that night, due to the virtual shutdown of transit. Thanks, snowfall.

Dec 18 - Bacon and Wall-E

A little late now to order in time for Christmas, but as a companion to my earlier blog entry I present: bacon ornaments! That's right... now you can hang your fave food on your tree for the holidays! And, in case you didn't already know about it, ILoveBacon.com is up and running for all your bacon needs!

Speaking of greasy, I made it home from work in the usual half hour, as the buses were running on time today, for a wonder. Seems it just takes them a day to get used to snowfall, which according to the locals has not been this heavy since the Blizzard of 1996, the year when Victoria held the record for all of Canada for the most snow accumulation in 24 hours... ouch. Not as much snow as the White Death, when Niagara and Western New York State got buried in snow in 1977. The sledding was good that year. Shades of The Day After Tomorrow, really, but without the bad acting. Or the wolves.

I headed over to my neighbour's place, in the next apartment on the same floor, for dinner and a movie. This was the first movie night we'd had since springtime earlier in the year, so I was excited... my social calendar here in Victoria has had few outings of this type at all, to my regret. We watched Wall-E, the Pixar CG-animated movie... it was fantastic! The graphics, as expected, were top-notch, and I was impressed that the producers did not try to go for a 'true-human' look as Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within did( mostly successfully )back in 2001. What impressed me the most though was the personality that the animators managed to imbue into the robotic characters, mainly done without dialogue. Watching their antics on the screen, I was reminded of the silent pictures of the early film era, where gesture, expression and body language had to convey the totality of expression in the absence of words. Charlie Chaplin, we miss you.

Dec 19 - Fuzzy Friday

Listening to the radio at work always helps the day go faster, or at least not suck as much. The station I have tuned in here, 100.3 'The Q' seems tailor-made to my tastes: lots of oldies, classic rock and the odd indie song tossed in, without any rap, dance, techno, metal or other related... stuff. I am almost always pleased with their selections, even the esoteric ones I've never heard of - rare is the time when I flick off the radio in the back when I can't stand the choice of song. So that's a good thing here.

After a long day, I was feeling rather woozy - dizzy even, at points. I've been taking digestive enzymes on my doctor's recommendation, to see if they might assist with bringing my plumbing back to normal... but no results as yet. So, I packed my bags and spent the night visiting my parents, who put me up in their spare room. I slept very well, and our cat Tristan was delighted to see me for such a long stretch, so much so that he barely left my side all evening. I didn't eat much, as usual, apart from a slice of pizza and a buttered bun - I have been using liquid meal replacements at work for the last few weeks, as they avoid the nausea that has inevitably followed eating solid food. That cannot continue forever though, as I need to find the reason for this problem and not just continue to treat the symptoms.

Dec 20 - Decision

I woke up to the toot of a train horn somewhat after seven AM, just one of the lovely things that living in Esquimalt forces you to get used to. At least the stench of diesel over the entire Inner Harbour is much less on the weekend, as there are fewer commuter flights leaving. Also, this is the off-season for tour buses, who show up three or four at a time during the summer to loudly proclaim over the views.

But, enough about that. I was still feeling burned out, as I have been for the last many weeks, due to whatever is causing my illness. Part of the symptoms is that I do not feel hunger, even after not eating for 12 hours or longer - I just don't. So I have to remind myself to eat, and watch that I don't eat too much at once... I've taken to having four or five smaller meals a day, as that seems to work around the nausea I get an hour after a regular-sized meal. Taking digestive enzymes helps, and I am still able to function fairly normally, despite a few dizzy or nauseous episodes a day, which only happen after a meal... for the most part. So that's only three times a day, really, when you think about it. Every day.

Which is why today I had to make a choice: to continue on my own, or make plans for my near future.

Plans, you say? Yes. I have to consider that I will not quickly figure out what is going on internally with my plumbing, nor that my doctor will find a simple solution - he hasn't yet, and I am going to be getting a few more specialist's opinions in the new year. So with that in mind, I have decided to hedge my bets in case I am unable to continue working or functioning on my own in the coming year.

Discussing things with my parents for the last few months, we have co-ordinated our searches for an alternate residence, and today we went to see a house in Langford that hit all the checkboxes. It is about a fifteen minute drive from Victoria, on a good day, is located on a lake with a view, close to many amenities and has plenty of room for everyone and our 'stuff' too.

We loved it, and immediately sent off an email to the owner that we would take it.

Which meant that I also contacted my own landlord and gave notice today, which broke my heart... because I love my current apartment. I've rhapsodized about it many times in my blog, so let me just say this: as I look around while composing today's entry, I am again struck by how comfortable and perfectly suited this place is to me, in so many ways: the size, the location, the neighbours, the way the sun lights the whole place all day long... that I can write in peace here, with my independence and all that I need at hand. It is everything I wanted in a place of my own.

Now I have to leave it, by my own choice albeit forced by circumstance. Which means that I will be moved out of this location by Feb 1st, 2009. Bitter is that taste, to have found a place that is all that you wanted and be forced to leave it by your body's betrayal. Bitter, bitter a taste indeed.

Dec 21 - Sunday Slush

The splash effect of slush on semi-cleared roads should not be understated, especially where temperatures have not solidly frozen roadside accumulations. I watched several people eat flying slush as cars zoomed past on the somewhat cleared main roads today, waiting for the bus on Fairfield Rd. I passed quite a few folks out on their Sunday morning to clear their walks; there must have been easily a dozen people flailing away with shovels, not to mention those who had already cleared their walks and the sidewalks in front of their homes too. I am sure that many an enterprising youngster will make a good few dollars today with no more than a sturdy shovel and a penchant for ringing doorbells all day.

Which made for a slow day at work. I've brought in a humidifier, as the air here hovers around 35%( or less )humidity, which is uncomfortable to work in. Cracked skin on one's hands and the occasional nosebleed are things I try to avoid adding to my list of winter enjoyments, so the added moisture, although not substantial, helps to keep these minor scourges at bay during my work day. Not to mention that the lobby is at least 15-20 degrees cooler than the heavy-glass-insulated teller area, so whenever the heating system comes on, cold air is displaced from the lobby and blasts into the teller zone... can you say, "My hands are frozen?" I knew that you could. Now thaw 'em out and count change.

I watched the DVD extras for Iron Man after getting home from work - amazingly easy on a Sunday night, as the bus goes directly from my branch to the stop outside my front door. Maybe a hundred steps total from work to home... and I won't be doing that ever again, in little more than a month. Though I will likely still be working every Sunday... I'm tempted to get religion, just for the day off.

Ahem. DVD extras... there are a LOT of them with Iron Man, all top-notch and informative. Must be the hundreds of geeks involved in the creative process... they know what sorts of things they would like to see on these things. Great gobs of CGI graphics, diagrams and interviews - when I was finished watching I felt like I had been on the crew for most of the production. I'll have to pick this one up.


And on to the Comments... if any. Will there be spiders?

Stories, Swedes and Snow

Well, l'm not sure what to make of Brian hijacking my blog... my thoughts are akin to watching a chihuahua try to chew my leg off: good luck, little nipper. Though it'd be cute to watch him try, with those beady little eyes and that yappy noise he makes. Oh, the chihuahua, not Brian. Really.

Dec 8 - Butchart and Goldstream

Off today, but busy nonetheless; left in the late AM to travel north to Goldstream park. The stench of dead salmon was still strong despite the cool air; you could smell it from the road just as the trees began to close in from the park proper. But I was not there to see the dead dish, no - I was there to see eagles. Not just ANY eagles either: bald eagles. Yes, you heard correctly... this is the time of year when the bald eagles flock to cleanup duty, when the streams disgorge their cargo of dead fish into the estuaries and the eagles feast.

We ended up at the far end of Goldstream park, which was mercifully free of crowds, being a weekday and after the Salmon Run died off weeks ago... literally. The weather was great, illuminating the trees and their mossy coverings. We stood outside the Nature Lodge and watched at least a dozen bald eagles, both the parents and the young, in trees across the expanse of the 'Quiet Zone' which is an area where humans are forbidden to trespass or make noise - this has brought larger numbers of eagles back every year for years since its institution at this end of the park. Once I knew what to look for, the bald eagles were easy to spot( hi Brian! )as their heads looked like white golf balls against the green trees. Really - they looked just like that. Only, well, eagle-ish. Having a pair of good binoculars helped bring things close, and they were amazing to watch - there are live cameras accessible through this site here, which has cams for other wildlife parks in the area too.

On to lunch at the Waddling Dog, a bar with a great name, good food and mediocre service. Apparently, the bar is named after a mascot dachshund, whose bigger-than-life-sized image stands ready by the far entrance. They're up to John the 6th apparently, who spends most of his time sleeping under the counter by the main entrance - we didn't see him, as we arrived around 2pm and didn't want to bother the sodden crowd gathered around the sports scores at the main bar. The food was good, in decent portions, but the whole time we were given the feeling that the waitress would rather be anywhere else... she was easily the most inattentive and least personable waitress we've had in years. Not rude... just indifferent in large doses. Ah well... that's what tips are for, or in this case, lacking thereof.

Finally, we got to Butchart Gardens, arriving in time for me to actually get some pictures in daylight this time. Now that the winter is here, the flowers are in short supply, but there is still a lot of green everywhere; the lawns are full and lush despite the low temperatures, which surprised me. We took a walk through once while the daylight was waning, then set out again more slowly to capture the Christmas lights in all their glory - they go all-out here, with tens of thousands of lights strung all throughout the Gardens. They had the Twelve Days of Christmas done to the nines at various points in the park, like the Five Golden Rings here and here, seen after dark. You can see some other folk's pictures here, along with the IEOA Lighted Truck Parade that took place last week, which I missed due to work - again. Ah well... they have it every year, so I'll see it eventually.

Dec 9 - Frankly G33k Decorating

I spent a good part of the day moving my Blue Frankenstein from one side of my apartment to the other, which involved a lot of wire untangling and general cursing. It really made the place look bigger and less cluttered though, now that it is ensconced next to my couch and no longer a hulking, glowing focal point for the room. Quieter too, with fan noise being muffled by proximity to the fabric and not stuck out in the open to reflect off surfaces, like hardwood floors. A technical challenge though, to get the HDMI signal across the room to the TV, which a long cable solved... sort of. Once I had everything hooked up and turned it on, the video flickered, went red, and then went to static. A problem...

Which is the kind of thing I enjoy solving. After some head-scratching and cursing, I surmised that the signal being output by my video card simply wasn't strong enough to wend its way through twenty-five feet of cable and arrive all fresh and happy at the TV... hence the odd colour-then-static failure. So I grabbed a few extra cables and ran the signal through a handy HDMI splitter I'd purchased for other reasons... lo and behold: a perfectly strong boosted signal. Stick THAT in your tech support, ATI! I am bitter about ATI's total inability to solve my antiquated All-In-Wonder 9800 Pro video card issues, despite several years of emails... but since Microsoft can't solve my Xbox360 HDMI issues either, I have to make do with what I come up with.

Dec 10 - Swedish Shelves

After moving things around yesterday, I got down to the business of bookshelf-building today, as the final shelf has sat in a box in my bedroom for almost 11 months now awaiting space to be cleared. It took but an hour to put things together and set it up under my TV next to the fireplace, and I must say the room has a completed look to it now that the pile of PC cables and gear never gave it. Perhaps this is what things are moving towards: hiding the home computer out of sight so that only the interface, like wireless keyboards and a TV display, are visible. Aside from the PC modder community, I think this is how things will be for most folk, as nobody likes to see this taking up space in their living room or den. What with having a laptop now, the old PC has taken a back seat, mainly existing to heat my place in the winter while processing the latest BOINC files, as well as gather my email and serve media to the TV... not a bad life, as retired computers go; things could be much worse. Especially since in the ten years since this article on computer recycling was published, not much has changed - the only province in Canada to charge an environmental levy on electronic purchases is B.C. - how ironic! I love the fact that you can go to this RCBC website and look up available recycling methods for almost any product... lack of knowledge often results in things being landfilled that could otherwise be recycled.

On a completely unrelated note, the Swedish Chef has been on my mind of late. Nothing got me laughing faster while watching TV than an episode of The Muppets with the Chef on it. The way things always progressed from simple cooking to bizarre disaster was always creative and uproariously funny as well as being a new twist every time, guest stars aside. As befits a scion of St. Catharines, one of my favourite clips is the Chef showing us how to make a donut.

There is even a Swedish Chef Translator, which apparently has been around in one form or another for over a decade... who knew? Go ahead, use the Borkifier and see what happens!

Then there is the related Theory of Swedish Meatballs...

Dec 11 - Short Stories

Does anyone remember "The Storyteller" ? It was a great series designed to present fairy tales to modern audiences, created by who else but Jim Henson. It starred John Hurt, and was a great show to curl up in front of the fire with, so to speak. Other shows along the same lines were Amazing Stories, The Twilight Zone and the live-action show Dinosaurs, again by Brian Henson.

My DVD copy of the Robotech Protoculture Collection arrived from Amazon.ca today, a used copy that was mailed to me all the way from England. Considering that a new copy is currently running around $150.00 CAN plus shipping, I got quite a sweet deal. Now I can erase all 80 or so episodes I recorded on my DVR last spring, which will clear a LOT of space, I tell you. Though since I don't use it to record much TV of late, the extra space isn't really necessary... again with the irony.

Dec 12 - Silly people, locks are for hicks!

I thought today would start out horribly, as I had no sooner arrived at work and locked the door behind me than Crazy Lady showed up wanting in. A too-long mime session later, she got the point that no, we were NOT open, that she could come back at 11am, and that the hours posted on the door DID actually apply to her as well as everyone else. Amazingly, she went away and only came back once to rattle the door at 10:50 am, ever so briefly, before coming back at 11:10 to act totally normal when dealing with me... not even a peep of derision for not opening the store immediately when she arrived. Perhaps she was discovering that Canada did not run to her schedule of needs, and that she might actually need to consult a bus schedule or read posted business hours once in a while?

Nah. She's crazy. That's all I have to say about today, as the rest was pretty normal.

Dec 13 - Snow. Yes, it is exciting. For some.

Late in the evening, well after I arrived home, it began to snow. Now, this is no big thing back in Niagara, but this is the first snow of the year for Victoria. For the last week, talk on the radio, among customers in the lobby, passers-by and total strangers can all be summed up with the question: "When do you think it will start snowing?" - again, it felt odd to me, but people here get excited. Not to mention silly, for a few simple cm of gently falling powder makes people cower inside their homes.

Which are not all that warm, with single-glazed windows and an almost total lack of insulation. Again I am astounded at the difference my insulation efforts have made to my apartment, as I have yet to turn on the heat despite the mercury dropping to a few notches below zero. Comfy inside? You betcha!

Here's a poem I wrote to keep up the spirits of one of my co-workers, as the heat failed in their branch today and they were wrapped up like an Eskimo in a meat locker:

Cold days should be warm, filled with happy thought,
Of hearth-warmth and the smiles it has brought.

Kettle's whistle brings cocoa in hand-warming mugs,
Curled up by the fire, stocking feet tucked in snug.

Snow flutters outside, silent piles of white,
As friends share stories on cold winter's night.

For the critical among my readers, I invite you to see this link on the world's greatest poet. The choice may surprise you. Or not. I know this poor guy would love to have been considered for the title above.

Dec 14 - Rocks Fall... no, not asteroids!

Well, the roads are covered in snow finally, but the stoic acceptance that is so Canadian meant most people simply piled on a few more layers and sauntered out into the weather. I was amused to see how some of my neighbours cleared snow from their yard: she with a shovel, he with... a garden hoe. Hoe, Hoe, Hoe, as the holiday Santas say.

Work was very quiet, and nobody bothered to come by in the last hours after the sun went down and things really started to chill. Though again some folks had different opinions on what 'cold' meant: the girl from Alberta, wearing only a blazer jacket, was used to -40C temps, and the guy from Saudi Arabia went on about how nice it was out compared to the sunstroke-inducing temps of his native country.

I was reading through an extremely funny online comic take on the Lord of The Rings saga, which looks at things as though the whole story was being played as an adventure by a group of gamers. Feel free to skip it if you've never played an RPG before, as you won't get most of the jokes. It's funny, trust me.

Erm, back to the point: one phrase mentioned in one of the comics is 'Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies.' Now, this is a phrase that any old-school RPG gamer has heard at one time or another... but nobody seems to be able to put an origin to. Along of the lines of such phrases as 'Cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey', the Rocks phrase seems to have sprung into being at the beginning of RPG lore. Funny as well too, as it is basically a cop-out, where the person running the game is tired of his player's whining and simply kills them off by saying the phrase. The look of shock on the players faces is usually worth it, but the whining almost never stops after that point. Speaking of which, did I have a point here somewhere...? Ah yes: obscure origins of phrases are endlessly fascinating. Well, to some, they are... and thanks to the 'net, there is now the Slang Dictionary - go read it before I break your crayons. Or something.

I was dead tired after work today, so much so that I kept falling asleep while typing up the blog after a late dinner. Perhaps the week just caught up to me, or I was just feeling warm and cozy curled up with the laptop tossing out heat like a hot brick - seriously, this thing can melt ice cubes in less than a minute. Which is not all that useful, but if you have nothing better to do you could look at this site, which compiles the Top 10 Time-Wasting Sites on the internet today. I wonder how much time it took to compile that list...?

Thanks to all those who sent their well-wishes during my last few weeks of illness... oh wait, nobody did. Well, thanks to those who might have thought about it, then forgot; after all, especially at this time of year, its the thought that counts. And chicken soup doesn't keep hot long during shipping... too bad.

Space, Sweepstakes and Sickness

Another late Monday update... my apologies, but I have been VERY preoccupied this week with my health and being damned busy besides. Still, this blog is important to me, so here we are...


Dec 1 - Overtime by the Dozen

Oi, what a day... and to think it was my day OFF too!

My first mistake was to volunteer to "help out for a few hours" at another branch in the morning. You know me, always willing to trade in my time for some O/T and help out my co-workers in the process - I hate having a day off knowing others are suffering for my lack of willingness to work.

So... that started the ball rolling. Things were going well, I worked from 10am to 2pm and decided to stay until 4pm to ensure the morning opener finished her shift on time.

Big mistake.

The computers went down at 3:55pm... hard. So hard that they were off for three hours... and this as the day suddenly got busier, which was totally unexpected.

So it was me and three other tellers, including the hapless opener, who had to deal with things. We had to do all of our transactions manually, while trying to ensure that the folks waiting to be served did not break into frenzies of impatience. Fortunately, only one customer of the whole lot had the smarm to remark "If your computers are down, why didn't you put a sign on the door?" ... at 4:30pm. I won't dignify his idiocy by recording my response here, as what I said summed up everyone's feelings remarkably well without being rude. Though it did cause the customer to roll his eyes.

After the horror show was said and done, I had worked 12 hours solid... on my day off. Most of it spent cursing our Internet provider, whose swiss-cheese service had taken even our helpdesk by surprise... and making it impossible to fix from their end of things. Yet after all that, the branch closed up and had no unusual errors in the transactions after all was said and done. Even the staff's attitude was positive, if exhausted - we'd all managed to keep each other smiling despite the stress.

Which is why I am still with this company - the people it hires are just incredible, most days, though all of us are human. Days like today show that we can all rise to the occasion by relying on each other. Though I relied on my bed to draw me quickly into a semi-coma as soon as I got home. Argh... as a sop to all those out there who hate tech support, I offer this questionnaire.

Dec 2 - Managing Things

I was rather bleary-eyed today for my 9-hour shift, no wonder given yesterday's excesses of energy-draining excitement( if you can call it that ). Still, some good news cometh:

Today I accepted the position of manager for my branch, which comes with a raise both in pay and responsibility. Given that the the corporate climate( ick, I feel dirty now )here in Victoria is MUCH more to my liking in several key ways compared to Niagara, I decided a few weeks ago to take the plunge. Our branch has been without a manager since late summer, so stepping into that role has been on my mind to take some of the stress off other managerial staff in the area. Considering that I have almost nine years experience with the company, it was an easier decision for me in some ways, though as always there is training to be done with any new position. I hope I can be as good a leader as I have been in other roles, but you can only find out these things by doing - like a weekly blog, fr'instance.

Once I fell onto the couch at home, I discovered a bit of good news: looks like the video game adaptation of Ghostbusters is finally a go! I have wanted to play a game-version of the movie ever since it game out, and have never been satisfied with all the low-budget pretenders that have shown up over the years. Considering that the entire original cast has signed on for the voice work, I have high hopes for this one to hit most of the marks... really. I do!

Dec 3 - Pick your Disease

After my usual 9-hour day, which went remarkably quickly, I headed out to another branch to help their newly-hired closer to, well, close the place up. Another few hours of O/T, which is always nice - seems to be a trend this week and for December in general. Once more thing I LOVE about B.C. is that after 8 hours of work, O/T is automatic - back in Niagara, O/T was only paid after jumping through flaming hoops while slathered in gasoline gel and while carrying road flares between your teeth. As in, not likely. Here, if the Need Is Dire, then people can actually HELP OUT and not leave their co-workers stranded knee-deep, especially during the double-whammy of busy December and Cold Season. Huzzah!

Towards the end of the evening, a middle-aged couple came in and began dealing with my co-worker. After a few minutes, she asked me to take over for her, as things got... complicated.

Turns out that the lady was in with her husband to set up an account for him again... as he was on disability for a mental condition I'd never heard of: frontio-temporal dementia, also referred to as 'Picks Disease' used to describe the common pathology.

Things like this scare the willies out of me, as they constitute some of the many blindside-horrors that life can toss at you, like cancer, car crashes or randomly falling meteorites. There is no way to prepare oneself against the random, so listening to this woman's tale sent some shivers down my back, especially the part about how her husband's friends had all abandoned him over the last few years, unable to cope with his changing personality. They could no longer see the man they knew when dealing with him, even when informed about the way the disease was affecting his brain.

I hope I never have to experience that sort of situation. What would it be like, seeing someone you've known all your life turn into someone else, and have no way of knowing if the original person was still in there somewhere? Horror, folks... it takes many forms, and that is one of them for me.

For those of you with a little time on your hands, this site is chock-full of quizzes. Perhaps you may find some in there that challenge your sense of reality, morals, or just your spelling skills. Go see.

Dec 4 - Space Sickness

I've been watching the original Star Blazers animated series this last week, one episode in the morning during breakfast before work. I have to say I am enjoying it almost as much as I did when I was a kid, back when I was six years old and would run home from school so I could catch the last ten minutes of Star Blazers... it was grossly unfair that it showed every day at 3:30pm, I thought; why couldn't they bump The Smurfs and make it so I could see ALL of this amazing program? This was in the days before VCR's, so I actually had my dad rig a cassette recorder to catch the show while leaving the TV on, just so I could hear what had happened.

I think this helped develop my imagination / mind's eye, as I would sit there and listen with my eyes closed, creating the images in my head of the episode as the tape played. I still have one or two tapes as keepsakes... that's how much I loved Star Blazers, and it has stayed with me ever since. Now that I have the series( just the first of three, and none of the movies )on DVD, I am experiencing the show in a whole new way: visually. It's been thrilling, and I catch the odd flashback from those after-school days as scenes from thirty years ago flash past my eyes...

Today started out all right physically, but by mid-afternoon I was feeling the effects of the week catching up to me: lethargy and slight dizziness crept up on me so that by shift-end I was ready to go home. You know that feeling you get after one too many beers, when you turn and it takes a half-second for the rest of the room to catch up to you? That was me by the end of today's normal 9-hour shift... ick. Not that it helped that I was feeling nauseous too... my malfunctioning gall bladder does interesting things to my digestion sometimes, enough so that things don't always go smoothly - 'nuff said on that, save that when things go awry, it makes me wish all over again that I didn't have to eat at all. Yeah.

While at home tonight, after a small dinner that thankfully decided to co-operated with the plumbing and move along quietly, I StumbledUpon a few online sweepstakes sites. While I am not one to promote what amounts to blatant advertising grabs, I am not above perusing a few search results to find the most "bang for the buck" contests out there. Seems there are plenty of places doling out prizes online, though most require you to play various time-wasting Flash-based games and the like. I'll be trying out the other variety, where you enter your info but once a day towards larger prizes of several thousand dollars( or more ). I figure in those cases, I can spend a few minutes a day typing towards a prize... and not have to spend money every week on lottery tickets at all. Not that I do anyway... and we shall see how long it takes for the first junk mail to reach my mailbox.

Dec 5 - ReBarf

I made myself a nice breakfast today: eggs, pancakes, bacon, toast. Not too much of each, but definitely a feel good meal before what promised to be another long day at work. Big mistake... as an hour after eating, things got confused in the plumbing and wanted out again, the wrong way. It was as bad as my reactions earlier in the year, but I managed to hang tough until the feeling passed, if you'll pardon the pun - considering how I felt, I wasn't laughing. I meandered through work, trying to fight the urge to go cross-eyed at various times as things... bubbled. The after-lunch nausea wasn't so bad, but I ate my meal slowly over the course of an hour, so it slipped past unnoticed perhaps. Not an easy thing, dealing with customers while trying not to turn green and run away. Which, I suppose, is not an uncommon reaction in customer service...

At home, I checked in at ReBoot.com to see how things are progressing; the latest WebComic was up, and it's tight - since the creators of ReBoot are taking a strong hand in bringing the show back, the site's production values are stellar. I am excited to see what current CGI technology can do for a new series set in the Reboot universe, given that huge value for production dollars can now be had by combining today's CGI systems with the ReBoot visual style.

Dec 6 - Immortal Puns

Up early, did my laundry before work, which was great... ate a small breakfast too, just some cereal. Which caused only a small amount of nausea, but enough things aren't working per my manual's specs that I am looking forward to a doctor's appointment on Monday. I have a feeling that it is related to my gallstone condition, I hope - I don't need news that my intestines have decided to throw me for another loop.

Home and hungry, but considering my nausea I settled for a PBJ and crackers. I watched the clock, paying attention to my internal mutterings, and was relieved that after a few discontented gurgles, my offering of food was grudgingly accepted.

I relaxed before zzzz-time by re-reading part of an old favourite series by Piers Anthony, a favourite author of mine from.... well, as far back as I can recall. He wrote the many wonderful Xanth novels, which are famous for the puns included in each book that are sent in by fans; Anthony keeps careful track of each usage and credits them in the back of the book they appear in. How cool is that? So, back to what I was reading: Wielding A Red Sword, part of the Incarnations of Immortality series that Anthony wrote, which included the more famous On A Pale Horse, which of course dealt with Death - who had really only ever been looked at originally at the time by Terry Pratchett... but I digress.

The reason I bring up Wielding A Red Sword is that in the back of the book, Piers Anthony uses quite a few pages to catch up his fans on what has happened to him, the author, since his last book... and since this is in the days before even BBS systems, long before websites, I found it fascinating. Because really, what is it other than a blog? That thought really spun my brain, because twenty years ago there was nothing really available about authors save autobiographies... but here was an author who willingly took the time to catch his readers up on events in his and his family's life in every book! Amazing!

Dec 7 - Still Sickening Sunday

Damn.... I was hoping today would track close to the forecast, but the dratted clouds skittered away to leave a bright, sunny day. Not warm by any stretch of the imagination, but still lovely as long as one did not tarry in the shade. I saw several folk who were waiting for the bus just outside the branch window think better of doing it in the building's shadow and quickly walk back into the light. Sun-day!

Dinner was a larger one, as an experiment to tell the doctor about tomorrow: turkey with gravy, squash, peas and Brussels sprouts. Not too much of each, but the largest meal I have had this week. Sure enough, about 1.6 hours after I had eaten, I got the awful feeling that things were not progressing smoothly downstairs... and that things wanted to come back up for a second opinion. After another hour of will-vs-body, the feeling of nausea went away... but I'm still quite worried. It doesn't feeling like what I am used to concerning my usual digestive ticks, especially since I pay close attention to what my body tells me after the gallstone incident four years ago.

We will see what the doctor has to say in the morning; hopefully his diagnosis is that it is not a major problem... and that he actually knows WHAT the problem IS. And that it does not require any sort of medical treatment requiring a look inside; I hate the thought of sharp skin-slicing thingies.

Just to leave things on a not-so-dreary note, we have: the Elvish Name Generator... go on, give it a try. Apparently my name is 'Golradir Fëfalas' which means nothing to me, as I do not speak Tolkien's Sindarin. Which according to the site's FAQ, this isn't really based on. Which makes me like it all the more... in addition to the fact you can generate your Hobbit Name on the site too. Cute, t'is. Indeed.


I was saddened this week to learn that Jen has put her real estate career on hold; I hope it's a temporary thing. What with all the doom and gloom nowadays, I know I am tightening my own belt while looking towards the future... not that my RRSP's will be in any decent shape anytime soon FOR that future, but one has to hope. Comments?