Crepes, Critiques and Childhood Cinema Magic

The word of the week is ecstatic.

Dec 14 – Tummy Yummy!

Crepes!

I say that with enthusiasm and delight, because of a discovery I made today.

Across the street from where I work, a tiny little new restaurant opened last month called Heavenly Crepes. There’s room enough inside for the cooking area, three tables and a window bar-seat: that’s it. It’s cute and cozy and quite conveniently located, so I checked it out for lunch.

Now, I love crepes, having discovered them at the long-gone Magic Pan chain of restaurants in ON as a kid: yummy! More flavourful and delicate than an omlette, crepes have been somewhat of a rarity for me since my teen years, as few places in ON or BC serve them on their menus.

So, it was a real treat today to wander in and order a crepe, with spinach and feta cheese. I waited only a few minutes while wonderful smells wafted from the crepes as they cooked… then the owner neatly folded a large piping-hot crepe into a cone-holder for me to take with me – for just $7.00 all-in!

As I walked the short distance back to work, I waited a minute for the crepe’s exposed top to cool, then took a bit… and had to stop from the delightful savoury taste that filled my mouth! It was sweet, enough so that I worried it was heavy on sugar( turns out they aren’t! )and soft like a chewy cheese-filled sponge – perfect! I finished off the crepe in stages over my lunchtime as it cooled, enjoying every bit.

It’s going to be hard not to go more than once a week, I tell you..

Dec 15 – Crucial Critique

Another great critique group meeting tonight.

I can’t overstate how useful these monthly sessions are to my writing, both in terms of quality and just plain inspiration. Sitting down regularly with three other writers in a constructive, supportive and non-judgmental gathering is a fantastically rare thing, a fact we all appreciate.

And they liked my chapter this week as well, in numerous ways.

One of the biggest boosts to my muse was being told that ALL the characters are well-realized and interesting, enough so that the others in my critique group always wonder when more info will appear in new chapters about them. They( my friends )say that I’ve done an excellent job of juggling all the story threads so that we find out just enough about what’s happening with each group before moving on to the next thread, leaving the reader wanting more without feeling disappointed.

That’s a hard, hard thing to get right, and I’m incredibly happy that I’m managing to do it.

Giving feedback is just as important, and again I felt I managed to get that part right, too. One of the chapters I critiqued tonight included an event that stopped my reading dead, I was so taken aback: I couldn’t believe the characters involved would do such a thing, and I said so when it was my turn to speak. I stressed that as a writer, I understood why the author would choose that path, but as a reader, I was appalled… and I suggested the reasons why. In addition, I talked over the possibilities of working around the ‘block’ as I perceived it, in terms that allowed the other writer to build on and alter their story in such a way that seemed correct to both them and we others.

In the end, we made each other’s stories better, without harming any egos and without straying too far from each other’s visions of what our work should embody.

Addendum: one of the writers messaged me later in the week with something that made me grin ear to ear. She said she’d been telling one of her co-workers( she works at a local self-publishing firm )about something she’d read in a book lately that she’d found inspiring, but couldn’t quite place where she’d read it. After some thought, she realized that it was a few lines from MY most recent chapter that we’d reviewed this week, that had stuck in her head! She immediately messaged me… and that, friends, is how authors stay inspired in their writing!

Dec 16 – Less Ouch

My head’s been better lately.

Which comes as a surprise to me, given the big weather shifts we’ve been having here in Victoria this winter. There have been several big storms come through, by which I mean quantities of rain have soaked Vancouver Island when each low-pressure system has moved in from the open sea.

Normally, that’s bad for my head, or at least it was up until this year.

I have barometers at home and at work, to help keep an eye on the weather as it develops so as to give warning when my head’s most likely to feel like it’s an expanding – or collapsing – balloon. I do miss having a barometer on my phone, but that capability was lost when my S3 was damaged.

Treating the headaches is the other half of the equation and that’s where things have changed.

I used to take Tylenol tablets, sometimes Advil, at the first signs of a major pressure change to help stave off migraines. I’ve taken such medication less and less since coming to Vancouver Island, mainly because the weather here has been so moderate, most seasons: it’s a rarity for the air pressure to drop quickly, or rise rapidly.

Still, I do get headaches, from combinations of things like noise, bright lights and the usual culprit, weather changes. But I haven’t needed to take more than 1 set of medication in a day this last year, for some reason, and I think it may be due to the lack of medication I’ve been needing since moving to BC.

Good news for my head, since the less I take, the more effective it is!

Dec 17 – Busy Holi-Days

The holiday season can get pretty busy, sometimes.

Take today, for example: we had our potluck lunch at work, then I went out for the evening.

The potluck was magnificent, with five long tables running the length of one walkway hall holding an enormous amount of food. Which is a good thing, as we have nearly a hundred people now on staff and the last potluck we had ran out of food before the final ten people were called up to eat.

No chance of that today – heck, we still had turkey left over when everyone was finished!

The best part of the potluck, aside from the food, was being able to sit down and talk with people while a few other folks covered phones for a bit. While any workplace has its share of socializing, ours has rather minimal levels due to the levels of work we have to complete on a daily basis, and today was a welcome reprieve from that for a little while.

After work, I held a social for my writer’s group.

Which didn’t turn out as well as I’d hoped. For a month now, various group members have been asking for a social night to celebrate the holidays together, and tonight was to be the night. I’d sent out invites the week before, picked a place( Garrick’s Head pub )and got a nice big table all set for people to show.

Only two of them did. The rest? Who knows.

Mind you, it was still a good eve, as the two writers who showed up were both personable and enthusiastic about writing. Not to mention happy to listen to my answers to their questions about writing in general, as they were both fairly new to the group and writing in general. I spent a few hours in their enjoyable company, then headed home, feeling pleased that despite the lack of numbers, a social seasonal evening had still gone well indeed.

Dec 18 – STAR WARS!!!

Today was awesome in every way… even the timing! NO SPOILERS BELOW!

As my regularly scheduled day off, t worked out perfectly: I could wake up a little later and have breakfast with my lady before spending a leisurely day Doing Needed Things and then heading to Langford to see The Force Awakens for an evening showing.

While at breakfast, I checked out some other showtimes on the Cineplex app out of curiosity… and was stunned to see that there were two perfect seats still left for sale for the 12:45pm showtime – even better than the seats I had purchased back in October before they all ran out!

With slightly trembling fingers, I logged into the app and bought the seats, wondering if I’d be in time to get them all the while… and success! I was seeing the latest Star Wars film early today!

Turns out I’d made the right choice.

The seats were almost dead-center in the theatre, slightly to the left-hand side and perfectly placed to enjoy the movie on the giant UltraAVX screen. I couldn’t believe our luck in getting these fantastic seats on the day after the movie opened… and the audience was incredible. Nobody made a peep apart from the times that the movie elicited a reaction: no cheers, catcalls, loud questions from younger moviegoers, nothing: just a rapt, attentive and appreciate audience full of fans. My friend that I sold the evening show’s tickets to later said that he had the exact opposite experience –whew!

And what did I think of the movie? In a word: fantastic.

It was a return to form for the franchise, a film that embodied the feel-good fun fantasy of the first three movies. While I don’t think it was by any means perfect, I’d give it an 8.5 /10 overall: it lost points for not explaining, even a little, some of what I considered crucial story points needed by the audience. It is, after all, many years after the first film( Han and Leia are old, after all… )and we can use some pointers as to what’s happened in all that time – more than the film gives us, at least.

The action was heart-pounding, and while many of the F/X were CGI, a huge number were old-school practical effects and sets. This really grounded the film in all the good ways an epic should be: everything had a substance, a believability to it that came through on the screen.

As did the chemistry of the cast. One and all, I liked the casting choices, even that of Kylo Ren.

One bummer was that one plot point had been spoiled for me before seeing the film, thanks to a spoiler grenade: TFA movie spoilers scattered by assholes all over the comments sections of random posts everywhere on the ‘net:

I won’t go into it here, but suffice to say, I hope that there’s a special place in g33ky hell that's reserved for the scum who delight in spoiling things for other people just because they can.

In any case, I loved the film and I’ll probably see it again soon, though not before the theatre crush dies down a bit. Strangely, I don’t feel the need to see it as pressing as I did Guardians Of the Galaxy, perhaps because Star Wars is such a known quantity to me that I feel I can wait a bit for it.

Dec 19 – Binomes and Battleship!

Today I opened up my copy of Battleship Galaxies and played my first game.

The game itself is high-quality in every regard, coming with 20 plastic miniatures including stands, two high-quality hex gaming boards and sundry parts. There is also a glossy full-colour graphic novel, rule book and dice. The object of the game is to wipe out the enemy ships, playing one of five included scenarios. Shamefully, Hasbro pulled the plug on the game line before any of the planned expansions could be created, leaving players in a bit of a lurch – I’ll have to search out a few online forums were BG players lurk to see if there are any fan-made rules out there still.

Setup took about 20 min. to set up, as we weren't familiar with everything yet. Once we got into the swing of things, it started to make sense, though I personally thought the ISN( the good guys )had a rather underpowered main ship compared to the enemy.

My battleship, at bottom, before it all went wrong...

About an hour later, the ISN had been wiped out, despite my efforts. My girlfriend said she enjoyed the game and noted that I had kept missing her ships with my attacks, while hers kept hitting – my usual luck with the dice, this time with enemy ship hit locations. I think next time we play( a different scenario too )we’ll keep track of the shots to see who hits more often and with what.

After our space battle, we watched a few more episodes of ReBoot.

I’ve been enjoying introducing my girlfriend the show, one of my favourite shows of all time. To date, we’ve caught up to the middle of the third season, which is where things get really interesting. I won’t spoil the show for those of you who haven’t seen it, and I suggest that you find a copy of all 4 seasons( Amazon.ca or eBay usually have more than a few copies )so as not to miss this gem of a show. It’s rare that an animate TV series gets better with every season, but in this case ReBoot manages to excel in every aspect of the storyteller’s craft to bring incredible depth to what many have dismissed as a kid’s show.

It’s not, as of the third season. Go watch it.

Dec 20 – Booking It

I spent the morning with my girlfriend, and we decided to get out for a bit after breakfast…. Just because. I think we were both feeling a bit of the holiday spirit in some way, and wanted to see how the rest of the city was handling things along those lines.

We took a detour downtown, as the sun was out for a bit and we ended up in Russell Books – always a dangerous place for me and my wallet!

What a trove of treasures I discovered there!

First off was a copy of Built to Last, which is a 2010 compendium of three stellar illustrated books by David Macaulay that I loved as a child. Castle, Cathedral and Mosque were all books created over 40 years ago as illustrated introductions to the wonders of medieval architecture in Europe and the Middle East. Better yet, all of the original drawings were carefully updated by Macaulay to correct minor errors from the originals and made into colour illustrations to boot – amazing!

Castle in particular is near and dear to my heart, as it was the first book on medieval castles that I ever read. It’s not a long or complicated read, but it perfectly captures what it must have been like to build a castle and live there so long ago. It’s stayed in my head ever since and now I have it on my shelf, along with the two other wonderful books that are new discoveries for me. Hooray!

As well, I found copies of other books I’ve been searching for, for some time – more treasures! Copies of the other two of the three Lando Calrissian Adventures, of which I’ve only been able to find one in all these years of searching. A copy of Crimson Skies, based on a video game I lived and it’s a book I didn’t know existed! Additionally, I found a perfect copy of the Wonderbook, which is a beautifully illustrated guide to creating fiction that I’d seen this past summer in a small bookshop while visiting the States. Lastly, I picked up a minty copy of The Virtues Of War, the first edition of my friend Ben Coles’ first science fiction novel which is now published by a press in London UK.

Great finds all, and wandering around the bookstore with my girlfriend was a treat unto itself, as she loves books as much as I do, with some similar tastes. We’ll have to do this again soon, though not before my wallet has a chance to recover somewhat…

I tried to hook up my Dragon Naturally Speaking on my laptop to a Bluetooth microphone, but the results were… mixed – literally. Every fifth word was garbled and the software seemed to be lagging a lot more than when it ran on my desktop, so I abandoned the effort for this week’s entry and will try again to get DNS installed on the ol’ blue monster this week. I sure miss the convenience! As well, I’m going to bed tonight a bit perturbed, as my nose and part of one cheek are slightly swollen red and I’ve no idea why…

Sweaters, Solstice and Space Games

The word of the week is fraught.

Dec 7 – Smart

It’s getting busier around here.

This week at work, I’m off phones completely, having been re-tasked to incoming email. With almost 500 emails a day, that’s no small job, especially as each email can have a multitude of attachments that have to be printed and checked, not to mention questions to respond to.

Busy, busy. But it’s a job and everyone on my team’s highly capable, so I’m not feeling overwhelmed in unfamiliar territory. It’s great to be surrounded by such stellar folks, day to day.

One other thing I’ve been doing lately is watching NetFlix, on and off, on my TV. Not the way you’d think however: I’m doing it the Smart way.

My TV is a 4-year-old Samsung SmartTV, with built-in apps( more can be downloaded and most are not worth it, )which on the whole I’ve found little use for, as I have a PC hooked up to it which does everything faster and better. SmartTV’s, while a neat idea, are on the whole clunky and slow.

However, there is a Neflix app, which actually works rather well. I can get into Netflix in about 30 seconds and once there, it’s a stable and glitch-free experience – unlike on a PC, which can be subject to stutters, stops and other influences unless you shut down all other programs( and then some ). With the SmartTV app, it’s a blissful experience free of distractions, which I’ve come to appreciate this month.

My show of choice has been Batman: The Brave and the Bold, a recent animated series that goes back to the basics: action and adventure! No brooding Dark Knight here, though: Batman’s lifted from the pages of the 60’s comics, with well-defined Heroes and Villans both doing what they do best. I’m finding it a welcome reprieve from the more recent decades of conflicted anti-heroes and murky-grey villains, which has grated some days on my writerly muse.

Fun to watch, and relaxing in many ways. I’m going to enjoy this.

Dec 8 – Virtual Journey

Last week, something wondrous appeared on the internet.

Rather than the typical cute-cat video or gross-out prank, this was something… magical: A virtual tour of Machu Picchu – by Google Streetview, no less! Instead of travelling thousands of miles, trekking through rough terrain and up mountains, you can now explore this cultural treasure from the comfort of your own home… big-screen TV recommended!

Incredibly, one of my friends from ON has been a few years ago and I’d love to be able to ask her what she thought, though our social circles seem to have drifted apart since. I, for one, have always dreamed of visiting this particular place, so far removed from the modern world and spectacularly preserved. I despaired of ever seeing it in the next 20 years though, by which time I may not be in good enough shape to make the journey – now I don’t have to worry.

I’d still like to go though – anyone with me?

Dec 9 – Space Battleship!

I found a new boardgame today – an old one, too, at that.

Battleship Galaxies, released by Hasbro in 2011, is a 2-player game based loosely on the old Battleship game that we all knew and loved. This new gaming is a different beast, one that is played on a hex grid and utilizes miniatures, though the little colored pegs are still there.

Amazingly, I managed to find a brand-new copy for sale on Ebay at about half the cost of what it is currently going for on Amazon.ca, which I wasn’t willing to pay for an unknown game, despite glowing reviews. Pretty good timing on my part, I have to say!

Unfortunately, it appears that Hasbro, in their usual wisdom, decided to cancel all of the planned expansions for BG, leaving the game a bit of an orphan. It looks like there were quite a few interesting things planned for the series, but for whatever reason, nothing else was produced.

I’m excited to get my hands on BG when it arrives next week for a test-drive!

Dec 10 – Sweater!

I was a tree today.

More specifically, a Christmas tree. It was Ugly Seasonal Sweater day today at work, and I spent a few hours last night putting together my own hard-on-the-eyes version of an USS( aka an Ugly Christmas Sweater )thanks to some bargain shopping at the local dollar store. I think it turned out great:

I did have the thought to add music to the ensemble, but not until I was already at work today and couldn’t spare the time to hunt down a very-seasonal-tune or two to play on my cell phone. What you also don’t see in the picture above is a bunch of ornaments dangling above my head from a wooden bar. They made it awkward to move and somewhat eye-pokey for unwary co-workers, but the overall effect was stunning – though I personally feel that the star taped to my hat really sets things off.

Bonus: Here’s a picture of last year’s USS, replete with white tree branch attached to my back( sorry about the blurry quality! ):

As well this evening, I have a presentation on Poetry to my writing group, of which I’m quite proud: not being even an amateur poet, I nailed it completely and again had attendees saying how much they enjoyed the session. It’s always uplifting to know that I’ve sparked some creative parts for other writers with the material I research and present on, every few months. Most gratifying!

Dec 11 – A New Home

The New York Times had something nice to say about Canada today. Specifically about our reaction to the Syrian Refugee Crisis in an article that lauds our action over the USA’s internal state-by-state bickering over what to do.

It heartens me to see articles like this, because they show how the world sees Canada... and how I hope most Canadians also see our shared country. It also saddens me that too many people, not just Canadians, would prefer to close the doors to all, for the fear that a tiny few may 'cause trouble' - which is wrong.

That way lies the road to fear, to becoming an insular and untrusting nation.

We, not just the world, have to realize that the vast majority of us want to live in peace, to pursue our dreams along with the ones we love. To live in fear of the few among us who do not share those dreams sullies the future for all.

Canadians, and all others around the world, must do what we can to see the change we want to take place actually happen. To live our lives as examples, to step forward and embrace those who ask for, and need, our help.

To those who would do nothing, I ask you this: how long can you live in a house with all the doors and windows shut tight, before you realize the freedom you want to preserve has become an illusion?

Dec 12 – Restoration

Most of my day was spent on the internet on my updated Win10 PC, tweaking and fixing and installing things. I’m rather liking the new OS overall, as it’s fast and seems quite stable. The ‘slow’ feel of the computer is gone, though it’s still nowhere near optimized – I’ll need another month or two to get it exactly the way I want it, with everything I want and need installed.

In the evening I attended a retreat of sorts, a small gathering at a friend’s house to welcome in the Winter Solstice – a bit early, but that’s scheduling for you. We relaxed, chatted about things we wanted to let go for the coming year, and enjoyed one another’s company… followed by some lovely snacks and even a bit of wine.

The highlight of the evening was the fire, for me at least.

I haven’t lived in a place with a real fireplace for going on almost 20 years, not since my days living outside of town in Ontario with my family. At that large ‘country’ house, we had TWO wood-burning fireplaces, one on each floor of the living room / family room and they were part of a wall-to-wall brick installation – spectacular! I spent quite a few cold winter nights tucked under a comforter on the old couch downstairs, a fire merrily burning while I watched shows on the then-new Space Channel… it was a happy time for me, so similar to my childhood home that also had a fireplace in the downstairs family room.

This evening, I took charge of the fire and brought it from a faint flicker up to a roaring blaze, that soon settled down into a merry crackler that warmed more than half the house with ease. Everyone there told me I had ‘the fire touch’ and that pleased me no end. Even the fire seemed happy to have me tending it: when I first got the blaze going, I saw a dozen tendrils of flame rill along the front log, as though the fire was happily caressing the wood with bright fingers of fire. I’ve never seen a fire do that before, and the image will stay with me a good long while…

Keeping me warm. A great night!

Dec 13 – More Work Ahead

Most of what I did today was tedious, but necessary.

After installing Windows 10 on my desktop PC earlier in the week, it fell to this weekend to install all the programs I’m used to using, one by one. I was chagrined to find that while my WHS( Windows HomeServer )is magnificent for saving files, it’s not an all-encompassing backup solution – all the files are saved individually, not as a Disk Image, so I can’t just re-load all the programs in the exact state of installation they happily existed in before I popped in the new drive.

Nope. Manual installs, all the way, which means time.

By the evening, I had most of the regular things installed without issue. Web browsers, utilities, email clients( Thunderbird! )along with drivers and even MS Office: everything I need to use the PC on a daily basis. Drop

All the rest will have to come in time. As I mentioned yesterday, I hope to copy over my previous software installs intact, one by one, using one of a few programs I am looking at online. That way I preserve their licenses, many of which I’ve received from GiveawayOfTheDay.com or BitsDeJour.com – if I try to reinstall them, those keys won’t be valid any more, which would suck. Unfortunately, all of the transfer programs I’ve found so far extremely expensive, so unless I find one for around $30 CAN or so, I’ll try to figure out how to use Windows Easy Transfer to get my applications moved over.

And that’s not even counting the game installations, which will have to wait – I just don’t have time right now, though I admit using Steam to install most of the games will greatly simplify things. Good thing I have an unlimited internet cap now with Juce, as I foresee some massive gigabytes being downloaded in the next while…

It’s hard typing up the blog this week without Dragon Naturally Speaking; while there’s speech recognition that comes with Windows10, it’s slow and limited to about 20 words at a time. As I don’t have the latest version of DNS, I can’t download it from their site, so I’m reduced to hunting down a copy from the internet that’s safe to install – no small task, that. Hopefully by next week I’ll have it up and running again, with some effort – typing with my hands is painful after a week spent off the phones at my day job!

Motion, Modern Marvels and an M41A

The word of the week is obfuscation.

Nov 30 – Motion

What to do…

I ask myself that sometimes, and let my mind wander around to find an answer. It’s a generalized question, one that comes up with some surprising things, depending on what’s going on in my life at the time.

Right now, the answers coming back are: more writing, and a work changeup.

The second answer indeed, was a surprise, considering how much I love where I work right now. The people I work with are wonderful( friendly, efficient, enthusiastic, intelligent… and more! )and I couldn’t ask for a better workspace setup, tucked into my own corner space, beholden to none: I see the spaces other clerks are required to occupy and I want to hug my desk…

But, I could be doing more, making more, with my experience and drive.

I’m not imagining that I need to move on: my co-workers and my office superiors continue to lavish praise on me, to the point where I’m becoming embarrassed every time they do so. Yet it’s genuine, their appreciation of my abilities, and so is their subtle nudging to apply for better positions within the government.

I’m not sure I’m ready for that step yet, but I need to be.

Government is all about movement: taking new positions, challenging yourself, learning and bettering your skills so as to move on to the next opportunity – always up, never sideways, so I hear. While the position I’m in right now seems cozy, it could all too easily become stagnant for me in a year or two, which I don’t want: I love the stability, but with such often comes boredom.

It’s a fine line, and I have to think about my writing, which is the main reason to keep my job as it is: do I want to be bored in some ways, so that my creativity shines at night, with the bonus of not being exhausted from an energy-draining higher-responsibility position?

There’s also my incipient GlowForge business to consider in 2016 too… *sigh* So much to think about!

Dec 1 – Modern Life

Have you ever met a time traveler?

If you did, how would you know? Would they tell you, or just smile and keep their secret?

What if you could see one… right now?

Meet Otis Johnson.

He recently returned to modern society, after spending 44 years of his life away from it all, behind bars. He’s 69 now, an old man compared to the youth of 25 who made a mistake… and we can see that while he’s come to grips with where his life choices took him, the modern world is another thing altogether:

Dec 2 – Homeless Help?

My city has a problem.

Well, more than a few( big and small )but apart from the lack of a sewage treatment plant of any kind, there’s a more human issue at stake… though the treatment of both problems is frighteningly similar: the homeless.

Shunned, ignored, maginialized but always in plain sight, Victoria has a homeless population that numbers in the hundreds. Despite shelters and social programs, many continue to live on the streets, camping in many of the city’s parks overnight, where they are rousted at 7am by police and told to move on.

Except for those in the park right behind the provincial courthouse.



A month and a bit ago, a few of the homeless discovered that the land, owned by the province, was not bound by city bylaws and they wouldn’t be asked to move on. Within a week, a dozen tents sprung up as word got around and to date, dozens of tents dot the grassy stretch of downtown land. I walk by the area every day on my way to and from work and for the most part, it’s quiet and well-organized. The neighbours in the area are wary and though there have been some complaints, police have yet to become involved to any degree. The province is aware, of course, of the camp, but again won’t intervene unless laws are being broken, which since the camp is apparently being self-managed by a ‘mayor’ and some others, seems less likely than you’d think.

The point is, they’re not hiding any more: the issue is plain to see, for anyone passing by. People everywhere in the city can see exactly how many homeless there are, without shelter, and ask themselves: what’s being done about it?

More on this in a later blog entry.

Dec 3 – M41A Win!

YES! Success!

I’ve been patiently searching for parts for the replica Aliens Nerf rifle I’m having built( by a Nerf expert in Toronto, no less )to allow it to look and sound as close to the real thing as possible. I’m aware that such things don’t come cheaply, but also aware that due to the popularity of the Aliens movies, there’s a small supply of ready-made materials out there, for those who know where to look. From forums to obscure websites and videos of finished fan M41A projects, it’s enough to know what’s possible and how much it will cost, depending on what you want.

Today, my patience paid off: I found a pair of ammo counters!

In the movies, the M41A has a glowing red LED ammo counter on the side, which counts down from 95 as shots are fired. Most prop-replica creators opt for a static LED counter, as it’s too much work to make it fully-functional( and reliable! )on top of all the other work needing to be done.

Unless you find someone who makes those counters( WARNING - the music is awful! ):

Which I did, a year ago… and I’ve patiently waited for his items to come on sale again, which happens every 3-4 months or so. He only makes a few, as a hobby, and sells them for extremely reasonable prices… they don’t do anything else, but they are designed JUST for M41A props!

I scored two of the LED’s, pre-programmed and ready to be wired up, for $30 CAN each –a steal! One is a spare, to be used in a future prop when funds allow… and I am so excited! It’s rare to find one of these counters for sale, anywhere, but my dedication was rewarded tonight in spades!

In a few month’s time, it will be all worth it – you’ll see it here first, in a video! Huzzah!

Dec 4 – Thoughts

The New York Times hasn’t run an editorial on it’s front page since 1920 – until today.

Have a read, and ponder:

I'm building a prop rifle from a scifi film, and it sickens me to think that people in the USA can so easily get the real thing for less than I'm paying overall for a non-working toy replica.

But hey, I don't live there, as I've been told a few times: they want to solve their own problems... yet so far, I've seen nothing but "thoughts and prayers" offered as solutions.

Dec 5 – Windows Weekend

Not a bad day, all in all: very productive!

A good part of the day was spent setting up my desktop for what amounts to a brain transplant: removing the old SSD main drive( where Windows 7 lives )and replacing it with a newer SSD of the same size I recently picked up for a flash-sale price( far less than the one it’s replacing! ). It’s a long process, relatively speaking, but less fraught with peril than trying the same thing ten years ago – even with backups, things Can Go Wrong.

The problem that has forced the upgrade is simple: part of Windows 7 is broken, so that I can’t run most software programs( like games )nor will it allow the PC to be upgraded to Windows 10.

Also: the ‘free’ upgrade to Windows 10 will expire on July 29, 2016, so that’s a buzzkill.

Since 2016 is looking to be a busy, busy year for me, I took it upon myself to fix things Sooner rather than Later – like, today sooner. I’ve been planning to do this for a while, but one thing has always been top priority: I would have to keep the old SSD drive intact for a while, until I was certain All Was Well with the new install and that there was no crippling oversight on my part.

So today, I formatted the new drive and installed Windows 7 on it, which didn’t take all that long. Then I hit the ‘Update’ button… which essentially took the rest of the day, with various resets as new Updates downloaded themselves. Since I didn’t manage to save a newer copy of Win7 anywhere on my system from years ago, I had to go the old-fashioned time-sucking Update route.

At least I had a laptop to use while the desktop was chuckling to itself all day today.

The Lighted Truck Parade tonight was a bit of a letdown, despite our having primo window seats: a perfect view of the road from inside La Taquisa, out of the cold and wet. The trucks started sailing past around 7:15pm… and I do mean sailing: they were going at a fair clip, probably 40kph, which was hardly a speed one could admire them at! There were many great displays, but it only took about 15 minutes, a far cry from the leisurely crawl I recall from years past when I saw them near Bear Mountain.

Of course, I was freezing cold and wet then and had to walk back up the mountain afterwards… so tonight’s bevvy of fast trucks was just fine, thanks!

Dec 6 – Mastery

Windows 10 on my desktop at last!

Well, mostly. My desktop updated itself last night while I slept, and I woke to a Windows 10 logon screen this morning. With some trepidation, I logged in and looked around… and all seems well!

Except that none of my programs are installed.

My choice to upgrade from a ‘clean’ install of Win7 means that I have to install all of my programs again, one by one… a mind-numbingly tedious task, exacerbated by the design of the Windows OS: thanks to the incredibly complicated Registry, where all program settings are stored, it’s impossible to install a new OS and transfer over all your programs easily these days. I’ve looked at various solutions, spoke to more than a few software companies and been told ‘Nope!’ every time. There’s at least a week or two of software installations looming ahead of me right now…

Needless to say, once things are set THIS time and working perfectly, I’m going to back up THAT image all over the place, so that I don’t have to go through all this again.

On the bright side: I managed to win a laserdisc player today, for a modest sum to boot!

The CLD-97 goes for a LOT more than I paid for my CLD-79!

And not just ANY player: it’s a Pioneer Elite, Model CLD-79, considered to be an excellent / Above Average player by those in the know in various laserdisc forums the world over. Normally, Elite models of any kind go for anywhere from $300-$1000 USD if they’re in solid working order, which this one is… yet only one person bid against me! I think I won perhaps because of two things: that the auction ended at 4pm PST( before dinner on a weekend )and that the other bidder was brand-new to eBay and wasn’t wise to my being able to bid at the last second – tadah!

I’m extremely pleased, as the Elite’s going to give me the best possible picture under the circumstances. While its price isn’t exactly on a level with a thrift-store buy, it’s head and shoulders above any such player in terms of quality: I daresay that the odds of finding such a player for the same price again are very unlikely, to say the least.

Happy, happy day!

Yep, I'm tired... it's been a busy weekend indeed, even with my day off on Friday, of which a too-large chunk was wasted on the phone talking to Telus. Turns out there's no provision for trading in my old tablet for a credit towards a new one, so scratch that plan - too bad I can't get my time back from talking to disinterested / un-knowledgeable reps. So frustrating to know what I want, to make it crystal clear... and still watch people run around looking for answers.

Life, Lemons and Laserdiscs

The word of the week is somnolent.

Nov 23 – Life

Things are going well these last 6 months.

My job’s stable and not too stressful( though busy ). My girlfriend’s all kinds of superlatives( wonderful / amazing / incredible / brilliant )and we’re very happy to spend our free time together. While my writing has been on hold since the summer, the ideas are still percolating in my brain and I'm pleased to know that the characters are being patient with me while I wait to get the story threads in order. I'm even finally getting my finances in order, to the point where I might even start to be able to put money away again beyond what I'm saving for retirement.

Wouldn’t that be something?

I really do need to exercise more, however. I've noticed that since I've stopped biking altogether the last six months, my energy levels have dwindled significantly of a day. By early evening, I'm feeling tired and my bedtime has crept forward to well before 11 PM most nights – or earlier.

While that also means I get up correspondingly early, it does tend to throw me off, in that while it up well before 7 AM every day, I don't seem to have enough time to do much productive work before I have to leave in the morning to get to my job.

Some changes may be in order. I'm thinking I may block out a half-hour( or more ) in the morning to do some writing every day, in order to catch myself when I've first woken up and thus in closest to my creative dreamtime. I may even be able to put myself to bed the night before with certain thoughts on subjects and see how those ferment overnight into the morning writing sessions.

Nov 24 – Laser mania?

This week, I’ve become a bit obsessed… over image.

Image quality, that is.

I possess the complete series of Babylon 5 on DVD, along with the DVD movies, and I've always been dissatisfied with how poorly the video effects were transferred. There's all sorts of  distracting video artifacts, juddering, moire patterns and other ugly things that stem from poor editing decisions by those who put the DVDs together from the original source material. Admittedly, there wasn't a lot to work with, as all of the original masters are lost somewhere in the Warner Bros. media archives - nobody seems to know where they are and as the archives of the size of a small city, it's not likely that they will ever surface before they completely degrade in another decade or so.

Enter the laserdisc.

Back in the early 2000's, some of the B5 seasons were released on laserdisc, which was still the highest quality video storage medium at the time. I didn't realize that enough of the disks were released that some are obtainable on eBay now and then, so I've been looking for the last few weeks to see what I can scare up as well as what has been on sale in the last few months. I'm hopeful that I can find a fair number of the laserdiscs for not-too-much outlay each, which from what I've seen would be around $20 or less individually and far less than that if I managed to find a lot-sale.

The laserdisc players are a different story. While there's quite a few of them for sale, the video quality of most is nothing to write home about and unlike DVD players, laserdisc players are far more prone to breakdowns due to the combination of high rotational speed and the inertia of such a large disk spinning at said speed. Meaning that the supply of players, while substantial, has shrunk every year as parts wear out and people don't bother to repair them due to their obsolescence. The average laserdisc player runs about $100 with shipping, which is reasonable, but the better quality players( of which there aren't all that many left )cost easily 3 to 4 times that amount – ouch!

We'll see what the next few months of searching brings. Here’s hoping!

Nov 25 – Creative Nibbles

My muse has been stirring of late.

Having recently taken care of the many bothersome details of things financial, coupled with the improvements I've been cultivating in my personal life, has meant a reduction of stress – in general – overall.

Less stress means less worry and therefore more time for creative thoughts.

Time is a tricky thing when it comes to writing: let too much pass and things you thought you knew tend to get muddled, while pushing your creativity often jumbles those same thoughts all up. There's a certain wisdom to knowing how your creative process works and how the timing goes.

Right now I'm in an in-between place, waiting to kick-start the slumbering fires of my Muse back into full burn sometime early in the New Year. More thoughts have been surfacing of late concerning my trilogy, tiny little pieces clicking together here and there, over and over, feeling in the smaller gaps around the main question marks still remaining in my head.

That's a good feeling, a sign that my Muse is beginning to stir again in earnest.

Once I get back into my writing, I intend to finish off my second book in one continuous shot, probably in a timeframe of no more than a month or two maximum. I have to inhabit the world completely while I'm doing that, with very little else on my mental plate so that I can simply step into it as needed while things are fresh and bubbling in the creativity pot of my brain.

It will be full steam ahead in the New Year, very soon indeed.

Nov 26 – Tablet Travails

My tablet experiment has been a mixed bag.

On the one hand, I’ve managed to upgrade my ASUS TF300T to the latest Android Lollipop 5.1 version, which has made it snappy and responsive again – almost like a new tablet.

Unfortunately, it also resets randomly. Often.

So often that it got stuck in a loop this week so unrecoverable that I had to let the battery die in order for me to be able to even diagnose the problem. Such are the foibles of custom ROM installs.

While I may be able to burn a different ROM onto it, I don't want to have to keep doing that, as it's a long and involved process that I'm finding me still have nasty bugs hidden inside due to the fact that these are ROM software packages designed by enthusiasts and not major companies.

On the other hand, I could try to get a newer tablet…

Except that I don't want to pay many hundreds of dollars for something that I'll use perhaps once a day: reading ebooks, a few games, checking email… small tasks and ones well-suited to an older tablet like I have, albeit one that doesn't suddenly reset at the drop of a hat.

I did find out today that Telus has just started offering a ‘Tablet Plan’ where you can purchase a newer tablet for less than $20 /month… over 2 years, which is reasonable. I have my eye on a Samsung Tab A which has decent specs, better than my TF300T and there's no goofy reset bug to boot as the software is the original that comes installed with the tablet. I could upgrade to a Samsung S2 tablet, but that would mean a substantial outlay in addition to the monthly cost and I think I'd be better off just looking for last year’s Galaxy Tab S on eBay.

Any of the Samsung tablets I’ve mentioned would be plenty fast enough for me to use without frustration and avoid the issues of limited space, as they have expandable SD card slots. I just have to decide how much money I’m willing / able to spend for what I want to do with them daily.

Nov 27 – Seven Years

My musical tastes are… eclectic, to be kind.

It may surprise you from interventionists, as I don't usually talk about music. I like things that are mainly top 40s, with some indy bands, classical music… and Enya.

Enya’s my go-to artist when I need to relax and shift my mind into creative gear – bar none. Her music has been a mainstay of my mind’s happy places for twenty years, and happily so.

Today she released a new album, her first in seven years.

It’s interesting to be an Enya fan /enthusiast, as I am at once looked at askance by other people while knowing inside that the music really connects with me on many levels. Kinda like a metalhead zen practitioner who paints rolling fields of peaceful grass and flowers.

I was surprised, nay delighted this week to discover this article that delves wonderfully well into the private artistic world of Enya. It gives a rare insight into how she's managed to have her music means so much to millions yet avoided all the pitfalls and trappings such fame usually brings while retaining her creative freedom. Her contract allows at least three years between albums, and she's always worked with the same creative team since her very first album release in the 1990s.

I'll most likely be picking up her Dark Sky Island album in the next few days to give it a listen and added to my extensive playlist on my phone. By now so many of the songs are part of my thought processes that I think some of my neurons are tuned to each note pattern.

Which is a good thing, as my creativity is tangled up in there too.

Nov 28 – Black Friday Blahs

What happened out there yesterday?

While Canada seems to have adopted the US commercial-crazy Black Friday moniker in the last few years, it doesn't seem like the discounts seen south of the border have made it up here as well.

Looking over the flyers this week, I didn't see a single thing I wanted to spend money on.

Sure, there were some cool things, but not at prices I was reluctantly willing to part with cash or credit for. For whatever the reason, most of the tech products I saw could be found at very similar prices during other times of the year on sale - there is no compelling reason to get out of bed today, sale-wise, that I could see.

It makes me wonder what Boxing Day’s going to bring.

Not that I'm really into shopping for technology these days; I simply like to keep my toe in the water so I have an idea of what's out there and what the general price ranges for items are - just in case. I have pretty much everything I need and everything else is basically a luxury or unnecessary save for the g33k factor; who the hell really needs a curved 4K TV right now, anyway?

Well. There's always next year, though we'll see if the retailers learn anything from US sales practices: you can't bring in customers if they’re savvy enough to shop online and educate themselves enough to see that your prices aren't actual incentives but merely window-dressing.

Nov 29 – Bright Sun Day

What a gorgeous weekend!

I spent most of it with my lady, enjoying the cloudless blue sky( not so much the cold ) and reveling in the fact that I didn't have a headache from the high pressure, for once. We got out and about, seeing the city while the Sun was up and keeping our toes from freezing after had gone down at a far-too-early time in the afternoon. Babylon 5 has figured prominently on our watch list of late.

I also was at the optometrist’s today to get my eyes checked out, as it’s been a year since my last visit and I really need to get a prescription for reading glasses. AS my eyes have aged, in the last couple of years my minimum focus distance has been moving further and further away, so reading's tricky and I have to take off my regular glasses just to focus up close.

The optometrist did give me a jolt today while examining my eyes: he said my optic nerves looked ‘a little odd’ which made my heartrate jump. Fortunately, he immediately followed up with “But it’s nothing to be really worried about and probably related to the early stages of glaucoma’ which he then said is easily controlled nowadays.

Argh.

Here I thought my being light-sensitive and experiencing the effects of post-age-40 nearsightedness was enough to keep on top of… but heck, why not add glaucoma to the list? I told myself on off today that I needn't worry and by the evening, I've managed to convince myself of it.

Later, my family went out for dinner to celebrate my dad’s 68^th birthday in style, dining at Il Covo in James Bay, which is a lovely Italian restaurant tucked away in one of the quieter sections of Victoria:

I’d never been there and I was impressed with both the decor and the food, which combined with the excellent service made it a memorable evening. Happy Birthday, dad!

That's about all I've got; it's nearly 10:30pm and my eyes are getting pretty heavy. I've a lot to do this week, including ordering some new glasses, writing a presentation on poetry and maybe even rebuilding my desktop PC, in addition to work and regular writing. For which I need my sleep...