Budgets, Birthdays and Bladders

The Word of the Week is... obdurate

July 12 – Hit Me!

Another minor milestone today: this blog passed the 5,000 hit mark, which is pretty good for what I’ve been doing with it. Figuring out ways to update it more often, monetize it, share it more flexibly or redo it to better organize the advice / links / videos / etc I’ve put in over the years does occupy some large corner of my brain, but to date I’ve not come up with a definitive plan for changing it permanently. What I would like to do is move on several projects of mine, one of which is taking shape with a friend Brian introduced me to: it’s a podcast series in the style of old-school radio dramas. So far, it’s been fun to write, but I only have a few outlines past the first rough draft. Later this month we might get the first reading done, so I’m exciting to bring that to this blog once it’s recorded, edited and made available. More on that soon!

Remember that old saying “Believe nothing of what you hear, and only half of what you see?” Reminds me of the video above, that’s making the rounds again after first appearing on the scene a few years ago. Looks amazing, when you see it for the first time, right? Spiderman would have been jealous!

July 13 – Excel-ing at Handshake

While I’ve no expert, I’ve come to realize that using MS Excel for basic things like monthly budgets makes a helluva lot of sense. For my budgetary use I’ve cobbled together a simple spreadsheet to track money coming in and expenses going out, to get an idea of how each month is going to turn out for the rest of the year. It allows me to see how adjusting expenditures can have a profound effect on the year as a whole, and lets me see when I   may have room for major expenses for things like car repairs or, if I’m lucky, new electronics. Check out the budget spreadsheet at FreeFinancialAdvice.net, as well as the advice the site has to offer, it’s quite good.

Something else that’s part of our daily lives, but something we almost never think about getting right before we do it: the handshake. It’s something that immediately conveys a lot about your character and personality, without even a word being spoken so it’s important to get it right. Thankfully, science has come to our aid with a study on the Science Of a Perfect Handshake. Believe it or not, there’s a right way and lots of wrong ways, so go have a look – and wipe off that sweat before you do.

July 14 – Zerg My Pager!

Remember pagers? Those buzzing little things people carried before cell phones came along? I can’t recall the last time I saw one, as I think they’ve totally disappeared from the world at large; there must be vast unmarked pits somewhere filled to the brim with discarded pagers, I think. Unsurprising, since the latest count pegs worldwide cell phone use at five billion users as of July 9^th 2010. Incredible, that there is one cell phone for almost every person on earth, compared to a few thousand twenty years ago.

Speaking of buzz: Starcraft II comes out in 2 weeks, with all the hype you might expect for a game that’s been $100 million USD and 12 years in the making. You have to hand it to Blizzard, they really, really take their time in designing games in order to get things right. Starcraft is arguably the most popular multiplayer game in the world today, despite the fact that it came out in an era when such games were only first making their appearance – it certainly isn’t World Of Warcraft with thousands of people sharing the same world, but it is a game played by millions of people worldwide; over ten million copies of Starcraft have been sold as of a few years ago. Pretty good for a game that fits well into the corner of a basic CD-ROM and whose graphics never came anywhere near something called ‘3D’ ...!

July 15 – Mom’s Operation Success

Today was my mother’s operation, where she went in to have her bladder repositioned to correct for years of wear, damage and the like – been that way for some time, as I recall. I am happy to report that this serious surgery was a success, though she will need several months of recovery time before we know for sure that things are going to stay where they are supposed to. My family was very worried about this surgery, understandably, but the surgeon himself called us as soon as the procedure was complete to reassure us that all had gone well – I was really impressed by that touch when my dad called me at work to tell me. The rest of the day went by quickly afterwards, for all that it was incredibly busy and that I went home almost 1.5 hours past the store’s closing time. Puts things in perspective.

A place I’ve shopped at on and off over the years is TigerDirect.com, which has some great deals... as long as you know your prices AND your products. Like anywhere else, they are a retailer looking to move their stock ASAP without giving it away, and as the video below shows, they can wax enthused about things you may not really be getting value for. Just because it looks cool and a g33ky guy is waxing wow over it, doesn’t mean you need it, or even that it’s very good compared to other things the same price. Read the comments on the video and you’ll see what I mean:



July 16 – The un-Birthday

Due to a staff family emergency, I ended up working today in the morning, despite having booked myself for the day off – literally no-one else was available, which is what happens when you’re even slightly understaffed. Given the circumstances, I was only slightly put out, as I was still able to leave shortly after noon to go have lunch and then visit my mom in the hospital. Lunch was special: my dad and I went to The Prairie Inn, which I’ve mentioned before... it’s been in business since 1859! I had their “Miner’s Monte Cristo” which is one of my favourite kinds of sandwiches, hard to find a good example of since the best are pan-fried not deep-fried. Delicious! After lunch I spent a good few hours visiting my mom who was recovering VERY nicely at the local hospital out in Saanich. I made it home a little after dinnertime, where I spent the remainder of my evening talking to some online friends as well as putting around with videogames. A quiet end to a mediocre day, but my mom’s successful surgery put it all into perspective.

Awright, you want to know what I really wanted for my birthday? Something totally useless to me now, but that would have been extremely kickass about 25 years ago: Nerf N-Force. Yep... running around bashing each other with these things would have been fantastic! About 15 years ago I came into possession of a dozen foam-covered practice weapons from the SCA, and those were quite fun while they lasted in sessions bashing with my friends( right, Scott? )but they inevitably broke from our enthusiasm, never to be replaced. Plus, we never managed to make a battle-axe safe to use – thanks Nerf, for conquering that incredible hurdle for us!

July 17 – Comics and Happiness

Does anyone out there have a favourite webcomic? Apart from the stellar NewtAndJohn, of course! I like to drop in a few faves every week, which include the more recent Evil Inc. as well as Looking For Group and . There’s also the Top 100 Webcomics List, but none of the above are on it, so take that with a few salty grains – I prefer Webcomicz.com’s Top Ten Lists.

Tonight I didn’t win the latest Lotto 649, a paltry $4 million. We all have that Lottery Fantasy: what would you do if you won millions? I’ve always thought the corollary to that fantasy is “Would that much money make me happy?” The short answer is “maybe” which might not be the answer you expected me – once you take care of the basics, the rest is accounting, really. A recent study focused on How Much Money Do You Need To Be Satisfied? and the surprising answer is “not as much as you think” – if you’re earning more that $75,000 a year, you won’t be all that much happier.

July 18 – Friends and Fools

Being unable to game online today due to having to work, I spent a little time pondering the mysteries of online friends. These are not to be confused with your offline friends whom you game online with( and also meet at the pub! )or friends whom you occasionally see online or in an instant messenger. No, these are people whom you ONLY know via places like Xbox Live or Steam. Lotaku.com just posted( I almost said printed! )a great article about this very topic called ‘Are Your Online Gaming Friends Really Your Friends?’ and the comments section has some great discussion too. Myself, I have a fairly small number of online friends, but for the most part they go back years, in the main from NWN. I see a few of them too seldom, but we all chat via MSN or email fairly regularly. I’ve yet to have come up with the scratch to meet any of them( a convention maybe? )but I believe they will be just as much a friend in person as they are online, personal hygiene aside.

People have to be considerate... or so you’d think. What I find infuriating is procrastination that affects others, such as my last customer of the day. At ten minutes to closing, a woman walked into work and said she want to send MANY thousands of dollars to her husband overseas as part of his work. It was such a large amount that it took me 45 minutes to get it authorized and completed, which put me so far behind that I finally left the branch an hour and a half after closing time. It floors me that on a Sunday, with the whole day to use and NO banks open, for that matter )that this woman left things until the last second – she knew it too, as she said “Don’t you hate it when people come in at the last minute?” Yes, I do, lady... which is why I was professional but didn’t talk to you much at all while you waited alone in my lobby for 45 minutes as I worked furiously to get you out of my branch. Very observant of you, really – too bad you never learned to budget your time, like I was forced to do when you walked through my door - late. Idiot.

Yes, that was TWO videos embedded this week – I’m going all hyper-media, it seems. Sure beats a lot of slow, non-moving text, right?

Laptops, Lifestyle and Longevity

The Word of the Week is... allegory.

July 5 – Writing Art

Now here’s something to start things off with a smile: handwriting. My own handwriting is awful; it’s inconsistent, loopy and messy, with no style and oftentimes I go back to make letters more legible. I’m certain that any handwriting analyst would have a field day examining it, and I may send in a sample myself out of sheer curiosity one of these days just to find out if my many quirks are made manifest in the ragged loops of my penmanship. But, I’m in good company, as William Shakespeare is known to have had an awful signature. Despite which, it’s worth several million dollars, so there’s hope for me yet!

From art to tech as art: what do you get when you combine dozens of GPS units, a van, and a video camera? This, of course: a mobile work of art that has to easily be the most annoying thing I’ve heard in a long time. Eerily so though; so many voices chanting together might just summon some ancient Roman Road God if let loose long enough, so watch the papers for that...

July 6 – Crows or Ducts?

Living on Vancouver Island has its perks: lots of green space at your doorstep, fresh air... and wildlife. Rare as it might be elsewhere, there’s a lot of natural life running around here on the island, especially on Bear Mountain where you have to be on the lookout for wild deer 24/7 when driving, as they are totally unafraid of cars and will nibble on the roadside grass without a twitch as cars pass by mere feet away. Somewhat more rare: a white raven was recently spotted on VanIsle, which would probably confuse the heck out of Edgar Allen Poe should he have ever seen one. Perhaps it is adaptive camouflage, so that it can soar unnoticed in the clouds? Ravens are known to be clever as well as sneaky creatures...

Speaking of crafty, a few months ago I had a customer come into the branch to pay for something with cash he pulled from his wallet... made out of duct tape. When I asked where he had got such an oddity, I expected him to say he had made it, but apparently it was a gift from his wife who bought it while in the USA. A quick search found this great Guide to Crafting A Duct Tape Wallet, which easily falls under the 1,001 Things You Can Do with Duct Tape site. That customer said he had had it for several years and it was still holding up strong, moreso than several leather wallets he had had previous. My question: how do you stop it from going all sticky in the heat?

July 7 – Hot Lap Movies

Yeah, it’s hot here... not nearly as hot as it was / is out east, but still sweaty-uncomfortable in a room with little airflow. Like my room:

Nice setup, I have to say... except for the lack of A/C, but that only matters for less than a week of days every year, so I’ll take it over all the other places I’ve lived in so far here in BC, and that’s saying a lot. I still want to make one of these homebrew heat exchangers that I first found out about three or so years ago – simple, cheap and ingenious, that’s me in a nutshell. Plus, I tend to worry a lot about my technology, especially the more expensive bits whose warranties have run out – hence my recommendation for all laptop owners to check out 9 Tips For Using Your Laptop In Warm Or Hot Weather. It’s important to know the limits of your hardware, before you discover them the hard way... with the smell of burning.

Last week I mentioned that I rarely ever rent a movie, and it seems I am not alone: news this week that Blockbuster’s stock is being delisted on the NYSE. That’s just crazy to think that such a huge market could switch in such a relatively short time, to the point where people are going direct through pay-per-view rentals on cable or satellite. Whither the DVD, I wonder? Is everything going to be on iTunes sooner, rather than later? And where are we all going to find the time to watch all these things?

July 8 – Social Drive

I’ve mentioned before about social circles, about how many people you meet in your lifetime and how many you remember. How about 6,000 people who are memorable, that you would want to meet sometime before you met your maker? Sound interesting? That’s what The Six Thousand purports to be a list of: "6000 intriguing people you want to meet online before you die.” Seems like a bright, brainy bunch to me – certainly people who’d have a lot of interesting things to say over coffee or a drink. I wonder how many of us can say the same?

Amongst all the other things vying for my time and interest are my more-than passing, less-than-obsessive researches into upgrading my old laptop. I just love the idea of keeping a solid machine out of the landfill / recycling shop; I’m typing up most of my blog entries of late on it, whilst over at The Mountain Bean. It’s quite thrilling to be able to access shared folders on my other laptop securely across the wireless VPN connection, even if it isn’t all that fast or all that good for video – not yet anyway, that’s coming in the new year. For now, I’m debating getting one of these old-style large-capacity drives( it’s so damn cheap!!! )or a nice SSD for speed and low power consumption... mainly the speed. We’ll see shortly what I decide - probably whatever is cheaper.

July 9 – On Friends

Happy Birthday Rene! Today segues neatly into the topic of birthdays: past, present( pun intended )and future. Up until your teens birthdays were events, things to look forward to for weeks: inviting friends, having family over... at least at my house, birthdays were crowded, happy events where the place was full of life and laughter. Having a birthday in the summer meant memories of sunshine, party hats, a picnic table crowded with cake and paper plates, party favours and a small table of presents. Smiles were on everyone’s faces, kids were running around playing while the adults chatted and kept an eye on the cake to ensure nobody snuck a finger into the icing. Once the teen years hit, the parties tended to become more laid back affairs, graduating to out-of-home celebrations at the local pubs as soon as we could all afford to do so legally( and sometimes even not ). Once I hit my thirties, these affairs became smaller and more intimate, with a circle of close friends gathering to hoist a few cold ones and catch up with each other, for we saw far less of one another now than those days when we were all in school together. Moderation crept in, so that now a few beers in good company will more than suffice in comparison to ten or so years ago, when everyone bought the birthday person a drink... sometimes to excess, sometimes just a little less so. Now that I am here in BC, away from my circle of close friends and unable to raise a toast in person to their health on their birthdays, I find myself missing such a simple act. Let it be said that the small things in life are the most treasured, for you truly don’t notice their importance until you have already noticed their lack.

July 10 – Typing Cool

Okay, okay... this week’s blog should be called “All about laptops” but hey, it’s something I use every day, so there you are: talk about what you know! One thing everyone can relate to is trying to get a decent wireless signal, which can be difficult if you live in a place where there are a ton of other networks filling the limited airwaves. Since I started using wireless networks five or so years ago, I’ve become fairly good at customizing my networks to ensure they don’t overlap on the other ones in my area, maximizing my signal and also ensuring it’s as secure as possible. HowToGeek.com has a great Guide To Optimizing Your Wireless, which is really informative – you’ll learn a lot about your neighbours too, probably not what they intended either.

There’s some darn cool tech out there, mixed in with a whole lot more that’s really only cool for a while until you realize you don’t use most of what it’s capable of – most modern cell phones are cases in point. For a while, I really loved keyboards; the more multi-function buttons on them, the better! On and off, I’ve enjoyed watching out for the coolest keyboards out there, and for the last few years the winner has been the Optimus Popularis out of Russia, of all places. It’s finally hitting the market later this year, and it promises to be a revelation for those who need it. Not me though; I’ve found that regular laptop keyboards suit me just fine, as I don’t use any proprietary programs like Photoshop that can make full use of multitudes of esoteric keyboard shortcuts.

July 11 – Energy Sweat

Of late I’ve been feeling really blah, despite the lovely sunny weather; it reminds me of the years when I was working nights, when the sight of a sunny day would send me into a sleepy doze. Fortunately, I managed to kick that reaction soon after going back onto daytime shifts, but the twitch still remains, especially at the low-ebb mid-afternoon nap-times of the day. More time spent walking each day might help pick me up, but my motivation on my days off has been severely lacking. Not a lot of fun in that; I've read that adding fish oil to your diet boosts your metabolism, so I'll work that into my more-energy-for-fun plans in the coming months.

This was my weekend off, of which I spent a good part going through things in the storage unit( again )to prep for sale. A fair lot of it too, when all was said and done. I put a half-dozen highly collectible things on eBay yesterday, and had already sold one by today – no more Ecto-1 on my shelf taking up space. For relaxation, I spent goodly parts of both days playing Battlefield: Bad Company 2 on the Xbox, which I found refreshingly enjoyable despite the heat build-up in my room – sweat and controllers don’t mix well. As always, it was great to be able to game with my friends in real-time over great distances. I do miss the halcyon days of tabletop board games and Halo LAN parties, but things change and we have to make do with what means we can find to stay in touch while getting on with our own paths. Just being able to game a few times a month is special, in its own way – there are some of my friends I rarely talk to, even given the easy of instant email communications. Not much to say, or not much new? Who knows.  

Next week should be a crazy one – my mom’s going in for a serious operation requiring 8 weeks of recuperative time, so my dad and I will be spending all of our free time at home to ensure her recovery is as comprehensive as possible. We all hope her quality of life will improve when all is said and done, making her retirement years ahead a thing to enjoy.

Webisodes, Wants and Waverings

A rare Word of the Week is... troglodytic.

June 28 – Cops and Webbers

Talk about starting the week off with a bang( almost ): there was a police take-down on the main road down from Bear Mountain on my way to work this afternoon! A late-model blue SUV was stopped about three cars in front of ours by an unmarked police car; undercover and plainclothes cops poured out of a half-dozen other vehicles, all of them armed with guns in hand. The lone occupant of the SUV, a tall male in his mid-twenties, surrendered immediately and peacefully, much to bystander’s relief. What made me boggle was that some idiot in the car in front of us got OUT of her car to walk closer - not twenty feet away from the blue SUV - for a better look. Could she not SEE all the drawn guns? Talk about Darwinism at work!!

Webisodes: not TV, not YouTube videos, but media released directly to the internet via one’s own mega-bandwidth webisode( which can cost you quite a bundle ). One series I’ve mentioned before that still has to show up as webisodes is Riese The Series, but you can check out the Top Ten Webisodes for May 2010 – June is just about to be released, I believe. IMHO, I think this is the future of media: surf for your interests and things that match your viewing tastes, and don’t bother with those 500 ‘empty and static’ cable
channels.

June 29 – Get Out, Cheaply

It’s turning out to be a fairly dull summer; living outside of Victoria on top of a mountain, combined with working long hours has rather dulled the edge of my social life. I still talk with people regularly online, deal with people at work every day and the life, but I’ve not been getting out much at all. So I’ve taken it upon myself to see that this summer I get out at least once a week to DO something, be it a movie, trip downtown, or the like. While I begrudge the time that it might take, I’ve come to realize that I have to make that time separate from pursing my other interests, which in the main revolve around my home. Come to think of it, I haven’t shown anyone a picture of my new digs so far, so look for that next week. Things look much better now that I’ve really settled in and everything is in its proper place, to so speak.

Ah, Gizmodo – I like the pictures, but I keep going back for the articles, as they say. This time it’s a great piece on The Cheapest Ways to Upgrade Your PC, which dovetails nicely into my recent resurrection of my old 2005 Compaq laptop. Sure, it works with Windows Vista on it and 2gb of RAM, but it’s... slow. One of the newest trends is buying new hardware from up-and-coming tech companies in China, who often have great deals on eBay with hardware that is the equal of many items sitting on retail shelves locally... but for less. Here’s one example from a company called KingSpec, who have ample hits for research purposes to find out how their products fare. Nice to see that some companies are still supporting older tech, allowing it to be re-purposed instead of being tossed while still working fine.

June 30 – Movie Recreations

What are Digital Dioramas, you ask? Well, in effect they are digital worlds created by talented artists for other people to enjoy touring around in – for example, someone re-created the Indiana Jones Theme Ride digitally, using the Left4Dead game engine. These sorts of things are becoming more common, especially given the popularity of places like SecondLife, where people can create virtually( hah! )any setting they so choose. Assuming that they spend all of their free time for a year on each project... like this fellow looks to have when he re-created the now-closed Adventurer’s Club from Disney World.

I don’t watch a lot of movies, or rather the ones I do watch I own, or are on TV – I remember the clerk’s look of shock the last time I was at Blockbuster, as I hadn’t been in for over 7 years... and that was probably about 7 years ago. Tonight, I caught Analyze This on TV, starring Robert DeNiro and Bill Crystal. It’s a send-up of mob movies like The Godfather, and I thoroughly enjoyed the light-hearted take it put on the subject, quite a difference from something like The Sopranos or similar movies. Good laughs, that.

July 1st – Canada Day already?

Where the heck is the summer weather? It’s been cold and overcast here all week, even worse than last week on my vacation, which was frustrating; very little outside time due to the cold winds. From what I can see of the weather across the country, the East is getting the baking-level heat while the west is quite cool and rainy. Weird. It made for a quiet Canada Day today; I didn’t feel like sitting in packed lines of traffic to make it south to the downtown core – I relaxed today and mainly tried to get rid of a headache. Not that exciting, but I’m glad that I make the schedules and could give myself today off. Seeing as I’m managing two MMart branches locally, I get headaches fairly often of late... bleh. Still FAR less often than I did in ON though, which I totally relate to the air pressure from the weather systems that move around in the east.

Today as well, I found a great article about the new USD currency being released in the USA this year – something I am keenly interested in, as I deal with spotting counterfeit currency as part of my daily job. It’s always a race between counterfeiters and government mints to see who is ahead of the curve in any given year. Earlier in the year, Canada announced plans to change our currency over to a polymer base, much akin to Australia’s bills – a great idea, as these bills are extremely difficult to counterfeit and VERY easy to train people in detecting security features on. I’ll be MUCH happier when our cotton-based bills are out of circulation altogether, and I don’t have to worry about every bill that comes over the counter.

July 2 – Ponderings

I’ve been giving a lot of thought as to what to get rid of from storage, thinking in terms of rarity, sentimental value and simple usefulness. Most of the things down there don’t really rate high on any of those three scales, apart from things that I’ll need when I’m in my own place again – sooner than you might think. While a die-cast model of the Aliens dropship really does look quite cool, it loses its charm when on display 24/7 next to one’s lava lamp, slowly accumulating dust. I think there may be good business in renting out cool collectibles to people, so that when they tire of them they can pass them on to the next deserving uber-fan of whatever genre they collect. No unicorns or trolls though, please.

Here’s something I wish I’d had about a dozen moves ago: Roomie. It’s a free web-based app that lets you create AND furnish a virtual model of the place you’re thinking of moving into – quickly and easily. Better yet, it’s completely in 3D, so you can not only see if your bed will fit in that one-bedroom apt, but see how it LOOKS as well. Amazing to see how far online software has developed, as I recall selling exactly this sort of thing ten years ago for nearly $100 CAN, and it didn’t have a tenth of the capabilities that Roomie does. Very similar to Google’s Sketchup, but very polished and focused on its target users.

July 3 – Saving up and Staying Up

Last week I mentioned retirement, as I have been thinking about it lately; the old ‘Freedom 55’ commercials from Banko Montreal came to mind a while ago. Presuming I wanted to retire at age 60, I have 23 years of investment potential to add to what I’ve already begun in the last ten years, which frankly isn’t a whole lot of time – the magic of compound interest doesn’t really start to kick in until quite a few years have passed. Some good basic advice for thinking about your own retirement can be found here, as well as what to expect based on what you’ve been planning to save / invest. You can also see where you stand compared to The Millionaire’s Retirement Plan, or just check up on how your daily finances are faring with 7 Common Mistakes We Make Every Day regarding our finances. Heck, what I liked the best was the made-in-USA How To Drive Free Cars – makes sense when you think about it!

I was quite tired today, as for some reason I couldn’t fall asleep last night – I lay awake until close to 3am, with my brain refusing to shut down. Being a manager, things are always racing through my head, mainly to-do lists that I can constantly revising and updating. Have you ever had it where your brain simply won’t stop running over things that need doing, regardless of how tired you are? I tried watching TV, playing music, reading, warm milk and all the like to no avail... good thing I was able to sleep in today. Sad thing is, I don’t want to get my sleep cycle out of whack, as going to bed around midnight has been the norm of late and I’ve been doing better in my daily energy levels. No relapses, please.

July 4 – Shooting Aliens

Hard to believe, but it’s been 14 years since Independance Day hit the big screen. The scifi tale of aliens bent on taking over the world with only Will Smith and Bill Pullman to defend us had some really, really big F/X ... plus a plucky scientist in the form of Jeff Goldblum and his Mac computer. I remember being really excited about the film, but all these years later it seems... tired, somehow. I think maybe it’s because I wanted the aliens to be smarter, if not cooler – they crossed billions of light-years and conquered untold numbers of civilizations... only to be tripped up by a mid-1990’s MAC computer virus? Yeah. Happy July 4^th.

I think I spoke a little hastily in terms of weather earlier in this blog; looks like the heat is moving west this week, as our highs are looking to be in the mid-twenties the entire time. Too bad I work all five days; I hope that the trend holds until the weekend, when I can relax on the balcony and not feel like I’m in a chilly wind tunnel. Which made staying inside for a large part of the day playing COD4 with Dave, Bill, Lucas and( briefly )Simon all the more enjoyable. We played some of the Resurgence Pack maps, which I thought were very well made and very playable – the added detail and layout in each map really showed how much more polished the development team has become in making their maps really shine in COD4.

Nothing much to say as an afterword this week, save that I really want to get out in my hammock this summer – I’d love to see how relaxing( and challenging )it will be to use a laptop in such slung repose!

Peers, Petroleum and Peter

Ah, vacation at last... a whole week of doing as little as possible. We’ll see how long that lasts. Oh, and the word of the week is paraphernalia.

June 21 – Digging Downstairs

 A good portion of time today was spent on two things: digging through the basement storage to clear some room, and working on a radio drama script( the initial rough )to be fleshed out as the week goes on. The basement thing went fairly well; I was down there for well past four hours finding things, re-packing other things into smaller boxes and generally figuring out what stays and what will go. The go-pile is unfortunately composed of things mostly with little intrinsic( or sentimental )value, so disposing of them at the local swap meet down the hill is probably my best bet – even eBay won’t net much for most of it.

One of the things I won’t be cutting down too much on is my book collection, though I have been very good in the last year in NOT collecting much of anything, despite my nagging hindbrain seeking more wordage. I managed NOT to browse BookCloseouts.com much at all, ignoring the incredible prices on hardcovers by simply telling myself that I only collect paperbacks to save on space... and ignoring the fact that the things will fall apart all too soon with their acid-based paper. You can’t win, really – I’ll have to re-read my collection and commit it all to memory within the next twenty years before it all degrades.

June 22 - A Dying Art?

After dropping my dad off at work for noon today, I killed some time before my doctor’s appointment by browsing around Value Village. I managed to score another A&W glass mug( I’m up to three now )for my collection, as well as a Honeywell air cleaner in perfect shape! For those of you who have allergies or who really dislike dust, I recommend running one of these in your home; they really cut down on dust / pet hair, and as a bonus they provide white noise to drown out loud upstairs neighbours or nearby traffic. When I was in Niagara, we used to get the PrincessAuto catalogue at work every few months, and I’d enjoy browsing through it for all sorts of one-off deals – I managed to score 6 UPS batteries dirt-cheap, and they’ve been running well for years now. You never know what you’ll find there; reminds me of a place called Capital Iron here in Victoria, which also stocks all sorts of cool eclectic paraphernalia.

Brian sent me a link today about how the days of the novelist are numbered – bad news for my future career in writing. Thanks, Brian... that made me spend more than a few hours over at the Mountain Bean today, finishing off the first draft of a radio drama / podcast script that I’ve been working on all week. If I don’t have a future in print media, then I can ensure I keep my fingers in more than a few puddles in case one or two of them dry up – plus I might wrangle some voice-acting time in there too.

June 23 - Food and MIT

I’m not much of a cook per se, just one who can prepare basic meals in a minimum of time and who’s had to learn to make do with less since I can’t deal well with higher-fat foods for the last few years. Which in a way is good, as it’s healthier by far. So I’m always looking for ways to cut down on my prep time while still maintaining some tasty tricks in the pantry – one of the places I’ve surfed to of late is TheStoneSoup.com, where there’s a lot of great basic and intermediate advice for feeding yourself. One of the best things about the site just came out: a huge FREE e-cookbook, with meals based on no more than 5 ingredients and less than 10 minutes cook time each. How’s that for both simple and fast meals!

Since I was a kid, I’ve always wondered what it would have been like to go to MIT; I thought all you needed was to be really, really smart and you’d end up there. Shows what I knew back then; now I find out that you can study MIT coursework online for FREE, though it doesn’t grant you a degree of any kind. Still, it’s fascinating to be able to browse through some of the most cutting-edge coursework on the planet. Maybe I’ll see if they want to take me up on my study of smacking your knee to the nose: ever done that? It hurts, and can it happen again randomly? I’m sure a few dozen test subjects and a research grant would prove illuminating on the subject, as well as painful.

June 24 - Social Life

It’s strange how Life Stages work as we age – from forming our first social circles in childhood, to more complex relationships as we turn into adults and from there things just seem to go all over the place. Some people follow the traditional pattern of work, kids, retirement to the letter, others take stage Left and head away from the traditional model as fast as they can. Most of the rest of us are in between somewhere, be it for better or worse. You might enjoy a thorough look at this theory of life stages, which I admit will be too complex for some, but it provides food for thought and analyzing your own stage in life. For myself, where I am right now works for me, though I think I’d be far happier if I could just get rid of the need for this pesky day job and so focus on things that I want to do with my time. Five years from now, that may actually be attainable – we’ll see how my personal plans go from here on.

As I’ve been doing all week, today was another relaxing mix of long-dormant shows on DVD, some TV shows I’ve recorded but not found the time to watch, plus reading on the balcony in the sun( sorta; it’s been so-so this week )and a daily trip over to The Mountain Bean in the afternoon. I’ve mixed in some games as I see fit( Fallout 3 mostly )and of course there’s always time for a snooze outside – I think that’s been the best part, as it feels all the more satisfying when the howling down a few balconies away takes its own nap for the day. Dogs and condos don’t mix, and I think this one’s days are numbered, as it howls loudly at the open( !! )door of its absent owner’s condo for long hours every... single... day. Poor thing.

June 25 - Finding An Audience

You heard it here first, folks: the future of media may be... micro-media instead of the much-hyped idiom of mass-media  that’s been the way of things for the last few decades. Instead of media being blasted out to millions to chew on en masse, things in the future seem to be trending towards assembling an audience, akin to old stage performances: a limited audience, in a way. You’ll be able to simply pick what you want to watch and read, with programs helping you find similar things of interest and organizing them for you, akin to GoogleTV. Most authors will build up their audiences slowly via blogs, word of mouth and the occasional press release helped along by major websites or the like. Having an audience of thousands instead of millions may just make the Fame Game fade away, as Hollywood realizes finally that the world is changing. Again.

Here’s what I’m talking about: remember the old Dungeons and Dragons TV cartoon series? Well, I just found it has a connection to one of my favourite writers: Mark Evanier, who worked on such things as the comic Groo The Wanderer and the Thundaar The Barbarian TV cartoon. Being able to write humour for decades is a skill few can keep sharp, but Evanier’s wit remains razor( yet gentle )after all this time. I especially like the way he managed to work puns into many of the Groo comic plotlines; good ones too!

June 26 - Thoughts

Instant gratification is the name of the game these days: Betty White recently said that the old Password show failed in a recent reboot because of the modern audience’s short attention span. Mind you, a young blogger felt the need to respond to Betty White’s comments here, and he has some good points too.  Will the New Now quickly begin to change to become ‘Can you keep up with me?’ instead of ‘are you a solid thinker?’ I hope not, because multitasking is a great skill, it can’t substitute for the learned skill of decision making and the sharpening of the minds behind those actions.

Today on my FBook status I posted this:

1.5 days of vacation remaining... 1,298.5 days of things other than work I'd still like to be doing. 182 days until Christmas. And an unknown number of days until retirement, when all of the above will be mainly meaningless... who's counting again?

It just came to me, as I was sitting there in the afternoon browsing the web out on the balcony... that we spend most of our lives doing things we’d rather not be doing, in order to do the things we WOULD rather be doing. Money of course, is a major factor, but then so is fear: of failure, among other things. Myself, I’ve seen how money can’t buy happiness, and some of the happier people I’ve seen are the poorest materially – they know what they want to do in life, and gave up the frivolities that other people see as necessities. When we’re wrapped up only in what we know, we can’t see what we really want...

June 27 – Peerage

As I sat in the window of The Mountain Bean today, I saw many vehicles pass by, almost all of them status symbols of one kind or another. Giant GMC trucks with grilles the size of bathtubs, slab-sided giant Hummers, tiny svelte sports cars with their tops down and fancy SUV’s with more space inside than your average minivan. All of these driven by lone drivers, perfectly clean and immaculate – all of them screaming ‘I have money and the time to have my expensive car washed every day, nyah-nyah!’ to every passerby. What’s the point? Makes me glad I don’t have a peer group out here to keep up with!

The last word on oil spills comes from... Kevin Costner? Strange as it may seem, it looks like the actor’s experience on Waterworld may have paid off after all: He’s come up with a revolutionary way to help radically speed up the BP Petroleum oil disaster cleanup efforts. Who would have thought he could go from Hollywood disaster to disaster cleanup so easily? Kudos to him for taking a serious stance on helping to stem the flow of what is shaping up to be the worst environmental disaster in recent earth history.

I’m updating this on a Monday, as I felt my vacation really only just ended this morning – despite the fact that I worked yesterday, I was by myself and it wasn’t that busy, so I don’t count it. Off tomorrow though!

Beans, Backup and Batteries

The word of the week is unctuous... you betcha!

June 14 – What the Dell? Already?

A few times a year, Dell.ca has their ‘11 Days of Dell’ sale online, and I always manage to pop into it halfway along, darn it. Last time, I managed to score a Snowball mic from Blue Microphones for half off, and I’m sure there’s a few things in the current sale that may appeal to some of you( but not all ). Not that I advocate buying things just because they ARE on sale, but if you’ve been waiting on a purchase( like I was with the Blue mic )then seeing it for sale by Dell( with free shipping, for the most part! )might just decide you to make the purchase before the price goes back to normal again. That’s the reason I check out Steam online, as they have sales EVERY week on games, like Fallout3 GOTY Edition )that are really worth it if you’ve missed a title previously and want to grab it before it’s gone.

It may seem strange, but I’ve realized that since MMORPG’s like World of Warcraft became popular less than a decade ago, I’ve never jumped at any particular one – I happily blame Neverwinter Nights for that. Also the fact that I don’t feel I should pay someone a monthly subscription to play in their world if it’s not up to my standards of fun and storytelling... and let me tell you, trying to create a roleplaying game for the general public  means that it almost always lacks the depth and substance of plot and play that I require. So the news that Fallout Online is, well, going online is MOST welcome – I’ve been playing my PC copy of Fallout3 this past weekend, and loving it... a little slow, but the craft and story are amazing!

June 15 – Bean there, Backed That Up

Ah, a precious day off... too rare, sadly. I slept in( sort of )until 8am, then fiddled with all three of the  laptops here on and off all day to improve their overall performance and network them together. For the most part, I succeeded – especially in the case of my parent’s laptop, where a cheap RAM upgrade from eBay went hand in hand with a thorough spyware / malware upgrade and a virus scan. It made quite the difference when I was done, I have to say – no more grinding hard drive or strange things going on, not to mention the extremely slow performance. If you haven’t scanned your own PC for malware / spyware / viruses lately, or backed up your precious photos / docs / emails, I now URGE you to do so ASAP... before they’re gone at the caprice of a rogue bit of code. You have been told!

A few hours of my day off were spent today over at the Mountain Bean, where within that time I saw it pour with rain, then turn sunny again. Then rain for five minutes and back to sun – WARM sun too, for that matter. I’ve taken to perching in the window at one of the bar-height tables, with a view of the road and the people passing by – admittedly not a lot of people, but hey, it’s a quiet ‘resort’ and I like it that way. Though not as comfortable as a comfy chair by the fire, it has the advantage of not needing to perch a laptop on my lap... which can get very warm, very fast, and is bad for sperm. Ouch.

June 16 -  Stargate and Immortality

After work tonight I managed to catch an episode of Stargate Universe, which I hadn’t known was now on the program for the local A-channel TV station – I don’t get Space, so I’ve missed a few first-run sci-fi shows these past few years. No biggie, as I prefer to test them out and then purchase them on DVD should they prove worthwhile; that way I can watch them at my leisure and don’t even need a PVR – yet. As first episodes go, I liked it enough to want more, so I’ll catch some more as the summer goes on.

I’d be lying if I said I’ve never thought about my eventual demise... perhaps it is one reason why I love science fiction, if only to see how fiction becomes fact as time passes and technology improves. Recent events have led scientists to consider that suspended animation may be achievable after all... echoes of Woody Allen’s Sleeper, anyone? So far, the only known immortal creature on the planet is... a jellyfish. So unless you can figure out a way to transfer your consciousness into that, you’re out of luck in time.

June 17 – The Roar of Annoyed

Noise. I’m someone who enjoys peace and quiet, the mutter of my thoughts the only thing troubling me. Thus, when a motorcycle five blocks away blasts a nasty string of notes with a throttle-happy hand, I take offense – I know of no other legal way to annoy more people more easily. So it made me smile to hear that the city of Edmonton is enacting a motorcycle noise bylaw next month, to ticket gross noise offenders to the tune of $250.00 should they be louder than acceptable... and a preview by police last week showed that a lot of the bikes on the road there will fail the noise test. Having just moved from a house where three of four driveways had motorcycles parked in them, I have to applaud Edmonton’s new law.

Something I’ve been reading over the last year or so is a classic from antiquity, freely available online at MIT’s Classics Archive. It’s the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, which I first heard about on, of all things, my fave show Babylon 5 – one of the major characters mentioned he read it, on several occasions. I find it fascinating that an author dead some thousands of years can still speak today to thousands of people, with words that are still relevant to the modern human condition. Gives me hope for my own works too.

June 18 – VOIP MIA and Batteries

After looking at things yet again, I’ve decided to cancel my VOIP service with Vonage by the end of the  summer. Though I only pay $20.00 a month for the service, it’s not worth it for the few calls I get and make each month. I talk to more people via IM, on Skype or using my cell, so having one less bill per month makes more sense – besides, I can always pick up a Magic Jack( albeit with a USA phone number )if I want to use a regular phone. I also still have a Skype-enabled phone here, though the thing has been less than useful a purchase due to the crummy battery life; a lesson in live and learn with your purchases there.

After resurrecting the old Compaq laptop this past month, I’ve found that the battery needs to be replaced. In my research into new batteries, I’ve learned that most laptop owners don’t take proper card of their new laptop batteries to ensure they last as long as possible. Lifehacker.com has a great Guide to Maximizing your Laptop Battery Life, which includes several handy utilities to run and monitor your battery as your laptop is in use... I discovered that my 2-year old laptop’s battery is not optimally charged, so I’ll be correcting that this summer to bring it back to full capacity. Fairly easily too.

June 19 – Drama and Vacation

I’ll be working on some of my stories this coming week while I’m on vacation, including a project that may become a podcast drama... which is very, very exciting. Kudos to Brian for putting me in touch with the folks on that project, as well as point out to me the Submissions Guidelines for Clarkesworld Magazine Online... which unfortunately contain a clause that looks down on stories with puns. Might be a harder job to submit there than I thought...

Today was my final shift this week before my vacation... it was steady but not crazy-busy, which was nice. Silly me though: I should have thought to schedule myself to OPEN, not to close, the branch... and so be able to leave before dinner to start my vacation. Ah well... I’ve been focused on so many things, including balanced schedules for the staff at two branches, that details like that slipped through the growing cracks in my brain. I’ll remember for next time though; I’ve already scheduled my second( ! )summer vacation for the end of August, if all goes well – I have a BIG backlog of vacation hours to use before the end of the year. No plans to visit Niagara though... that looks to be better for Spring 2011.

June 20 -  Dad and Futurama’s Return

T’was Father’s Day today, which was rather low-key around here... we went over to Jack’s Place here in Bear Mountain, named after the famed golfer. It was busy but not crowded, which will change tomorrow when the Telus Skins Golf game gets underway; there has been a flurry of activity all over the mountain this past week. Gardeners perfecting the landscaping, barriers going up to funnel the crowds, and TV camera platforms springing up on the greens within sight.

Tomorrow is Midsummer’s Eve, the longest day of the year... fitting indeed for the debut of the new season of Futurama this week on June 24th, which has not had a new episode on the air since it was cancelled in 2003. I have to say I’m eagerly looking forward to the new episodes, having watched the available current four seasons on DVD and in reruns on TV to the point where I know almost all of them by heart. Having interesting and diverse characters, zany plots and bucketloads of humour is a uniquely difficult thing to do right, so points to creator Matt Groening of Simpsons fame for pushing to get his creation made for as long as he did.

I’m finishing up the blog early tonight to a-bed; I was woken at 3am this morning by a low-battery smoke alarm and so have been a bit groggy today. Why can’t those kind of things ever pick 3 PM to go off? Why?

HUDs, Humps and Home Depot

The word of the week is apropos.

June 7 - Apple Skins

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

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

June 8 - Argh Healthy

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

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

June 9 - Heads Up, Hump Day

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

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

June 10 - Future Futurama Fun

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

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

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

June 11 - Gas and Fireworks and Carriers

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

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

June 12 - Handyman Moi

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

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

June 13 - Just Browsing The West

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

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

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

Gadgets, Games and Ghyslain

The word of the week is febrile.

May 31 - Same Junk, New Format

It’s the end of May, and it’s cool here in BC – quite cool compared to last year, where the temperatures were around 15-20 degrees hotter than they are now. It’s been rainy here since the weekend began, and being on a mountain there’s a lot of misty clouds rolling around in the morning and evenings. Much prettier than hazy clouds of smog or the shimmer of a heatwave from the concrete expanse of a city, I think.

Do you remember The Sharper Image stores from the 80’s, or even The Den For Men shops? I loved browsing around those places in the days when paper catalogs were still infrequently updated and the internet hadn’t been invented yet as a place to shop. A modern equivalent is GadgetUniverse.com where you can browse all sorts of cool things you didn’t know you needed... and that you will likely regret getting very soon afterwards. I mean, who needs a dashboard video recorder for your car, anyway? And they don’t carry plasma balls either , which are the true sign of a cool gadget store....

June 1st - Free Your Brain

I like online games... especially free ones. In the last few years, you can find pretty much every kind of game you love to play for free online in some form of flash-based browser format or another. Most are arcade-style, but others allow multiple players to interact – check out the World’s Largest List of Free Games!! One of the more amusingly different MMO’s  that sees hundreds of players a day log in, is Kingdom of Loathing, where you can adventure as a stick figure with a club. Filled with dark humour, make sure you try it on a sunny day.

Is the internet bad for people’s brains? Nicholas Carr, a UCLA professor, thinks it is – and the answer lies in the simple book. Have a look at the solid article over on Wired and you’ll see why... long-term memory seems to fragment if media-rich information is used, wheras the simple book is the perfect medium to transfer knowledge to the long-term spots of our meaty brains. Whoulda thunk it?

***On an extra-special note: late this evening I drove to pick up my sister, who had managed to arrange a ride way, way out here all the way from Alberta. We've been planning this secret visit for weeks to surprise my mom, who has her birthday tomorrow. When I showed up with my sister in tow at the condo, there was much excitement - my mother was thrilled speechless that we'd managed to get my sister out here in secret in time for her birthday!! They spent all of the next day together( I had to work and so did my dad )so that was a really special present for my mother, as we hadn't seen my sister for over a year. Love my family. :-)

June 2 - Anyone seen my Sword of Omens?

Aintitcool News had a gem posted today: the Thundercats are coming back as a TV series in 2011! Following the trend of rebooting 80’s culture, Lion-O and Cheetara will strut on the screen again in all their catlike glory – hopefully without Snarf. Sweet!

I spent the first half of today in a training seminar with a dozen of my co-workers from the area, which was fun for the most part – everyone I work with is creative, intelligent and generally fun to be around, which can’t be said for other places and people I’ve encountered in my various day jobs. I'm pleased to see that this company is placing more direct focus on continual training upgrades these last couple of years, as it shows a progressive aim towards solid employee skills. Which means more work for all of us, but I'd rather be learning than doing by rote - that's boring.

June 3 - Relax, it's Thursday

Today was my one day off this week; nothing to do with work, and work had nothing to do with me – not a single phone call disturbed me all day long. After relaxing with some PC games in the morning, I spent some hours playing RDR of course, but I cut out early when the sun decided to finally shine in the late afternoon. I spent a pleasant few hours on the balcony, basking in the warm western glow of the sun which bathes that side of the condo every evening – not a place to tan, but just to relax. Lovely.

Here’s a gem from io9.com: What it was like to be a writer on Firefly. It’s a solid article with a lot of great info, and though I’m not a Browncoat I still love reading about the show – all the details that were never gone into, background etc. It’s the mark of a great show gone too early that it leaves you with more questions than answers, and you want to know those answers – instead of just scratching your head and changing the channel after trying to watch Twin Peaks. Or more recently, Lost – which I still have to catch up on, again

June 4 - Puttin' it off

Over the years I’ve been getting better at getting things done, but procrastination still rears its ugly head from time to time. If you’re not sure if you procrastinate, go and take the Procrastination Test over at Psychology.com to see – don’t wait, don’t put it off... go do it!

I always like those “Whatever happened to...?” articles, though Gary Coleman’s passing of late( as well as Corey Feldman )shows that happy endings are rare enough to be treasured. Such seems to be the case with Ghyslain Raza, also known as The Star Wars Kid – 2002 was not kind to him, but today he’s doing a lot better for himself. Who knows? Someone may pop up a video of you one day and you’ll have to deal with millions of adoring fans – look at how Kristen Stewart recently handled the question of fame.

June 5 - Touring Brains

Virtual Tourism may be the thing of the future: why pack yourself onto a slow-moving cruise ship that spends too much of its time on the boring ocean when you can play tourist from your own couch? Check out EarthCam.com – you can find ideas of places to visit from your LonelyPlanet.com travel account. Having lived next to Niagara Falls all my life, I find being labelled a tourist somewhat derogatory, so I’d prefer to be called a world traveller or even a vacationist... though the last one sounds really lame.

What do you do with your free time? How has that use changed over the last century in general? These and other interesting questions are asked by Clay Shirky and Daniel Pink in their related books that are out this summer – Wired Magazine has a great summary article that delves into the hows and whys of what free time means to people in today’s fast-paced media-soaked culture. Great reading.

June 6 - Sacrifice on Sunday

Today marks the 66^th anniversary of D-Day, when thousands of Canadians joined other Allied troops in storming the beaches of Normandy and so helped to ultimately liberate Europe, ending Nazi tyranny. I remember seeing The Longest Day on TV as a child, totally captivated by the spectacle of courage under fire so portrayed – I spent the entire movie glued to the set, which was rare for me as a kid. Amazing that I can still see that film every few years and not skip parts of it, despite the epic length of the thing.

Some local news: part of a plaza( Colwood Corners )one block down the road from where I work burned to the ground today. I’ve shopped there and driven by many a time, so seeing it in ashes is rather shocking; good thing nobody was injured as it started in the early AM. I imagine they’ll sweep things up and soon enough have something new there, like another Starbuck’s or a McDonald’s... ‘tis the way of things.

Don’t forget to visit NewtAndJohn.com for the latest craziness: jets vs. paper airplanes! I’m posting early tonight so I can a’bed, as it’s shaping up to be an 11+ hour day tomorrow again...

Gunslingers, Guides and Google

The word of the week is basically.

May 24 – Vic Daze

Being a holiday, I managed to take the day off work and tried to spend a good part of it relaxing. It worked, for the most part, though I didn’t manage to reach a Zen state or anything close. For the most part, I tried to fix my parents old laptop, and finally got it booting in the late afternoon under Windows XP. From there it was hours of work to install Windows Vista, which I also owned – hard and slow work with only 512mb of RAM, but I got it done. I left it chugging away at updates overnight at the end. Maybe when I’m done and the little monster is fully functional, I’ll treat it to a skin from Gelaskins.com, which has some very cool custom artwork that you can smooth over the top of your laptop, cheaply too.

I’m an observant listener, a skill most necessary for being a writer – you have to pay attention to what people say, how they say it and all the things they aren’t saying that layer around the words themselves. Which means that when I hear things that repeat, I tend to pick up on them, especially local trends in language. Much like the ubiquitous ‘yes/no’ that has pervaded some people’s speech for the last few years( and thankfully seems on the decline )another word I have heard a lot of lately is ‘basically’. Words tend to stand out sometimes, like suddenly being able to see the same model of car in the traffic around you one day, whereas before it was all a sea of the same moving metal. It’s an odd skill, but one I find fascinating when it rears itself.

May 25 – Gunning for invention

Before work today I picked up a copy of Red Dead Redemption from Best Buy, which came with a bonus download for a War Horse – I’ll add it to the game later once I have some time to play with it. I had to wait until today to get it, as all the local retailers have been out of stock since last week’s release date. I flipped through the manual briefly on my break at work and liked what I saw – I also checked the CD for scratches, as I always do when I purchase a DVD... sometimes those little plastic tabs that hold the disc in place break during shipping, and I’ve had to return several DVD sets over the years as they’ve been badly damaged as the bits scratched away at the surface while they were handled in transit. Wasteful.

Hmmm... this is a cool place to surf: Inventorspot.com, which showcases the wildly wonderful things that human imagination can come up with, for the world to see. Very cool indeed, and with a fair lack of As Seen On TV-style plastic crapola made in China, at least from what I’ve seen to date.

May 26 – Cloudy Skies Out West

Today I spent a good deal of the day playing Red Dead Redemption, simply exploring the game world in general. So far, it’s been a solid experience; instead of being railroaded into storylines, the game seems to wait patiently for you to make a choice and then guides you down that path. Great stuff.

It’s been a blah, blah week here weather-wise, with nothing but solid layers of clouds and only occasional rain day to day. Sometimes the sun cuts through in the early morning or late evening as it ducks below the cloud layer, but I’ve been surprised by the cool temperatures and continual grey that have manifested this week – very unlike the usual changeable BC weather here on Vancouver Island. Still, no smog and no heatwave is fine by me, considering how stinking hot it was here last year at this time.

May 27 – Not my sick day?

Darn it all, the world of bacon has been pretty quiet lately, with not a lot to report... save that a recent vote has come up with the best bacon flavour name in the world. I think it has potential, and I’ll try to figure out a way to test it out myself one of these days. Not having a BBQ or deep-fryer here does make things a tad difficult, but I’m sure I’ll figure out a way somehow.

Not much to write about today work-wise; one of the girls called in sick with the 24-hour bug that’s been going around, so I hung in from 8am to 7pm to ensure we had proper coverage for the day. One thing that MMart doesn’t do is hire part-time staff; for the massive amount that CSR’s have to remember to do every day in their jobs, being here less than 25 hours a week doesn’t work to keep on top of the workload and training. Part of being fully-staffed in the near future means being able to call people in to cover days like today, so that’s another goal of mine to reach sooner rather than later.

May 28 - Yep

It’s interesting to see how people develop their social networks over the course of their lives; I remember reading an article years ago( and think I still have clipped, somewhere )about how many people an individual encounters with ‘friend potential’ over the course of their lives. I believe the number was around 2500 or so, with urban dwellers having a higher pool to work with compared to small-town folks, obviously. I’ll have to dig up the article, as I believe it also went into the differences between friends, acquaintances and co-workers – important to know if you just lump everyone into one big list.

Yeah, a very stressful day at work; things of late have been very, very punishing to me mentally, and I’m finding my short-term memory is not 100%. Forgetting some little details is becoming easier, and I hate that – HATE it, as it shows a mental weakness that I thought I’d never suffer from. Still, I do my best, and can only hope that as the summer progresses that running two stores will prove easier than I thought. Considering the levels of stress I’m dealing with at work, I should really be making far more an hour than I am... and that adds to my stress levels all the more. Ironic, eh?

May 29 – Sun and Sleep

Some sunshine peeked through the clouds today, on and off, culminating in some decent rays by evening – it was good to feel the sun on my face as I left work. Especially as each day now seems to fly by in an orgy of over-responsibility and paperwork, which really comes as no surprised but is unwelcome all the same. Having fun on the job seems reduced to making jokes in between cranky customers, fixing problems caused by staff and generally trying to plug as many leaks in a day as possible before new ones start the process all over again the next day. If they made Valium cappuccinos, I might just buy a box soon. Maybe if I had a yacht like this one, I could pop down to Victoria harbour and sail off for the rest of the weekend. Nothing like having a supercar in a garage on your own private yacht, right?

At least I’m sleeping a little better this week; the new curtains and some earplugs are working well together. As well, I’m cutting back on my caffeine for the day, limiting myself to a tea or two in the afternoon and none in the morning, in the thinking that the less I have the more effective they will be. Also, too many in a day really messes up your body clock; I’ve been reading this guide to rebooting your sleep cycle from Lifehacker.com and it makes a lot of sense. More on how effective it’s been as I go.

May 30 – Bang Bang TV

Holy lost hours Batman... after breakfast I hopped onto Xbox Live with Red Dead Redemption, to find five of my friends also playing it. Six hours or so later I had to call a stop, as my game was steadily getting worse. From winning a solid streak of games in a row( go me! )I went to holding up the bottom end of the scoreboard – annoying and frustrating, but I think it was just the week’s stress catching up to me on top of being tired. Not a good combo.

So, in the evening I did my best to de-stress by watching streaming episodes of Farscape on the big TV, looking damn good for all of it being free – and 24/7 too! I still think this is the future of the media; the recently announced Google TV will do away with the ‘tyranny’ of unwanted channels on your cable box cluttering up your choices with programs you have no interest in( sports, in my case ). It will be fascinating to see how the next ten years sees a shakeout in the media,

All for now – my head’s killing me and I have a 12-hour day to look forward to, on a Monday no less. Ick.