Retinas, Retro and Robbery

The word of the week is from BC:  Skookum ... that’s good!

March 29 – Shiny ‘Verse news

It’s been years since I last let anything from McDonald’s into my system, and this photo shows you just how biodegradable food from the Golden Arches is. Makes me regret my time spent lunching on the cheap there in university at times; quarter-pounder meals were well within my student budget then.

Some good Firefly news: more stories are on the way! I picked up a few canon comics last year, but this is great for those fans who want to hear more about the ‘Verse. There was news a while ago about a comic being released this November by Joss Whedon’s brother about the mysterious Shepherd’s Book. I’m hoping the same may happen with the FarScape series, which also had a fair number of comics released to continue the tales from that universe.

March 30 – Eye See

Today I heard on the local news channel that one of the worst places to live in Canada for debt was... the Niagara Region - what??? Data from a recent study found that 74.6% of homeowners in the area are paying between 50-60% of their incomes towards the cost of their homes. The maximum should be around 33-36% total. Yowch! Statistics like that scare me, as I’ve been considering a home( albeit not an extravagant one by any means )given that mortgage prices are set to rise in a few months time.

Here’s some hope for those who are without sight: the bionic eye has made major strides towards becoming a viable option for those who have lost their sight. Makes you wonder what the near future may hold – shades of FASA’s Shadowrun cybernetics, anyone?

March 31 – Spring has arrived

March was a long month; lots of hours put in at work and hours put in at home working on packing. It was good to see the sun shine more often and the flowers arrive; I’ll have to make a trip to Butchart Gardens soon to see it in the springtime. I’m glad that I’m not allergic to anything spring-related!

I’ll be replacing my parent’s laptop in the new year, I think – it’s running slow even for their needs, with Vista home on it. Upgrading it would cost almost as much as a new one anyway, even without a new CPU, so what’s the point? I’ll be sure to pop on a fair number of the excellent programs from C|Net’s Windows Starter Kit on the new one when it arrives, then I’ll figure out what to do with the old one. Maybe I’ll make it into a portable word processor and set up access to my home network remotely, so I can take it around and work on my writing while still having easy access to all of my work... hmmm.

April 1 – Eye Fool You

No jokes today; I’m too busy to think of one, but I’m sure that didn’t stop other people from taking the time to do so. Here’s a list of harmless April Fool’s Jokes you can check out for next year. But of course you’ve already checked out the April Fool’s Edition of Newt And John, right? Do it now if you haven’t!

My final eye appointment was in the morning today, and it was a solid one: the doctor said she’d rarely had such a solid set of test results in her 15 years of practice. Which meant she was able to finalize my prescription which I immediately took over to WalMart to get my new glasses order finished – should be a few weeks and then I won’t have to worry any more about my current shakily-repaired glasses failing on me. Makes me wonder about the bionic eye article in terms of replacements...?  Sounds pricey.

April 2 – Robbed on the Bus Home

Well, there’s truth in the words “No good deed goes unpunished.” I received a call at 8am from my DM asking if I could work today downtown, as the only girl left there called in almost-dead ie. sick as sick can be. I agreed, and spent the day run off my feet due to the holiday – everyone who couldn’t make it to a bank today came in to see us instead. I was very tired by late in the day as I took the bus home... which is why I didn’t notice at first that my backpack had moved from its place on the floor. I quickly spotted it tucked away under a couple of seats and dragged it out again – a quick visual revealed the top unzipped and my PDA missing. I politely questioned the guy and girl sitting in those seats, as well as managing to convince the guy to open up his bag... nothing. They left the bus at the next stop, and from all the indicators were the ones who took my PDA – but I didn’t see either of them do it, so could have done little save follow them off, which would have been foolish. I also didn’t want to make a scene that could very  possibly end in violence; he was fairly rough-looking and had another friend joining him at the bus stop. My fault for being tired and taking my eyes off my bag for a minute... but they’ll get little use out of the PDA as it was PIN-locked and had no crucial data on it apart from old documents. Perhaps they’ll call me in a few days for the reward noted on the cover of the PDA – that’s why I put it on there, but I never thought I would be putting it there for a thief to collect from me! And it could have been worse; they could have gotten away with my entire backpack...

Topping that, we had a major windstorm here all day today – it began early last night and blew through until the afternoon. The roads were littered with debris, but thankfully there were no injuries – except some bruised lawn gnomes I saw under piles of branches.

April 3 – Xbox vs. iPad

Are you as sick of reading about today’s release of the Apple iPad as I am? I don’t see the tablet as anything I would need, save as a colour book or comic reader. It is missing quite a few features that I consider ‘standard’ with modern computer technology, like being able to plug in USB devices without an adaptor  – it’s a cheesy grab for cash by Apple. While some reviews of the iPad rave about it, others are not so kind – it looks like about a fifty-fifty split right now. As for me: I’m abstaining.

My own tech arrived a few days ago: Xbox was delivered on April 1^st, and the joke is that I couldn’t play it until late tonight due to working so much – I had planned on doing it yesterday, but that didn’t work out so well as you saw above. Since Microsoft sent me a refurbished unit( and not my old one )that meant I had to re-download and re-install all of the games and files again to ‘link’ them to the new hardware; there went my evening. Everything seems to be working on the new unit though – nice! Makes you wonder what happens when one of Microsoft’s secret data centers has a glitch happen...

April 4 - Thundercats

Not much to say about today; it’s my only day off before we start moving things to the new condo on the
10^th, so I’m busy packing all day today. I did take a short break in the morning to briefly play COD4 with Lucas and Dave, but that didn’t last long at all. All too soon it was time to return to sorting through things to either pack or discard... again. This is the third time I’ve done this since moving to BC in the first place, when I had a massive yard sale to begin with to reduce things... but I can only go so far before it gets down to my books, my collectables or other things that are dear to me and nigh-impossible to replace. My thought has always been to hang onto that which I cannot replace, for when I have a place of my own with a place for everything – which may never happen, I realize. But, I can dream of such.

At 3pm today the Thundercats 24-hour marathon began on TeleToon Retro. I’m too busy packing to do more than have it playing in the background, but I am recording the whole thing on DVD for later. From what I have seen tonight, there was a fairly decent backstory that was little-used in the series concerning the history of Third Earth and the ‘Cats. To end on a Thundercat note, here’s an amusing tie-in to that with Barack Obama as well – whoda thunk?

Another week, another mighty blog hand-crafted and delivered to the waiting world full of... er, words.

Force Fields, Fakes and Fringe

The word of the week is reticulated ...

March 22 - TeeVee

I’ve really been enjoying Castle lately: the levels of humour laced throughout the show take the edge off the fact that each show revolves around a murder, really. It’s also quite cool that a writer is the central character( and the titular name of the show! )that Nathan Fillion obviously has a lot of fun with. I’m no fan of cop dramas or shows like CSI, which despite the fact that they cater to a more thinking audience I just can’t bring myself to get into. I like to be entertained as much as anyone else, but I don’t go for deep drama along the lines of connect-the-dots. Humour me on this.

Another show I haven’t had much time to look at is Fringe, which recently posted a ‘Catch up with Fringe Guide’ on the Fox website. It looks to have a deep storyline, but I may just end up having to get it on DVD. Or blu-ray, by the time I end up getting around to it.

March 23 - Toy Memories

Packing up all my things, I’m still amazed that I’ve held onto so many things over the years – understandably a lot of those are books, but things like board games( Axis and Allies, anyone? )as well as my Lego and Star Wars collection... I’m loathe to part with them. I’m not sure if it’s because I keep hoping they’ll somehow rise astronomically in value so I can make a killing on eBay and retire at age 50, or something similar. Maybe it’s just a nostalgia thing, in which case it’s good I didn’t really have too many memories of my wading pool as a child...

Here’s another little bit of my childhood gone: there’s been a warning issued for all older Fisher-Price ‘Little People’ toys as a choking hazard. I remember playing with the Fisher Price castle a lot as a kid, but I never had the urge to chew on the toy and so endanger my life. Nice to know I was in danger back then and didn’t know it...

March 24 - Distance

Today I was thinking about friends and distance, of how one’s social circles can be circumscribed by proximity or by choice. In my case, my choice led to a lack of proximity to my friends, almost all of which are thousands of miles away, or in some cases merely avatars I interact with via the internet.

All right... I missed putting bacon in last week’s blog, but it seems nobody noticed. So this week, I bring you a liquid apology: Bacon Beer! And no, it’s not a smoked porter... I have no idea what that is.

March 25 - Pi Fields

One step closer from fiction to reality: word today that the British Army is experimenting successfully with creating force fields for use in tanks. How cool is that? In the same article they also state that armour covered in holes is more effective than regular armour... that doesn’t make me more confident.

On the topic of fakes: sometimes you wonder about videos on YouTube... are they faked sometimes? Have a look at this one, and you be the judge... myself, I’m pretty impressed! Quite cool that you can make a video of yourself, release it to the world and see what may result... which is usually nothing, as there are so MANY videos out there that the chances of getting noticed in the sea of silicon is almost zilch. Unless you’re the Star Wars Kid.

March 26 - Moving News

We signed the new lease agreement today for the Bear Mountain condo, for a 2-year lease – I made sure I checked things out with the help of this Lease Question List. We’re excited by the move, as it’s to a place that resembles a nice ski resort... without the snow or college-age crowds. There’s only one road in though, so I’m not so happy about that or the fact that it’s much further from work. Still, it’s better than the place we’re in now in many ways, so we’re packing up.

Today I received an email notice that my Xbox has been repaired and is being sent back to me... via the slow boat using Purolator. Still, it was nice that there was( and still is! )a three-year warranty on the thing – rest assured I will be testing it as soon as it arrives, hopefully this week.

March 27 - Movie and Work

Today before work, I managed to find some time to watch Inglorious Basterds which was surprisingly enjoyable. Knowing it was a Tarantino film going in, the violence was no surprise and didn’t detract too much from the film experience – I found it less over the top than I had expected. Any film where Hitler gets riddled with bullets is worth watching, as they are few and far between. I was disappointed in that there was less of a ‘Dirty Dozen’ feeling to the Basterds, who all get little individual screen time overall.

My sixth day of work today was only a half-shift at the MMart in Colwood, helping out so that the staffer there didn’t have to pull a 10-hour day... plus it was O/T, bonus. It was a nice shift, nothing crazy save the same silly woman who always comes in when I am there and for some reason takes every word I say as a personal insult – I’ve no idea why. I suppose I’ll have to work on my facial mobility skills, as she’s not easily picking up on my smile cues or friendly body language. Either that or: she’s an alien...? Maybe!

March 28 - Making Boxes

Spent today packing, packing and more packing. I’ve put away a lot of my books as well as my DVD’s; they’ll be put away until I figure out my available space at the new place which is short a den for my use. I’m hoping to compensate for that with a quieter location, a balcony with a view sans public park next door, as well as having accessible storage in the basement area.

By day’s end I was rather knackered, so I knocked back after dinner( perogies! )to watch a bit of television... and as usual there was little on. So I popped in the Crusade DVD and found solace in the excellent writing of JMS and the tremendous cast he assembled for the show. A bit of time to make up the blog and I was ready to hit the hay for another 6-day week. Huzzah.

Endnotes will reappear next week. Kawmint...?

Moving, Microsoft and Medicine

The word of the week is dishevelled ...

March 15th - Parting Ways Perhaps?

I shipped off my dead Xbox360 at UPS today, and hope to have it back from MicroSoft fully repaired under warranty by next week – if it wasn’t under warranty, I’d take a look here for various fix suggestions for the Red Ring Of Death. I’m less upset than I thought I would be, as I’m far too busy these last few weeks to really put much time into some serious relaxing online or off with the Xbox. I’ve still got to make some serious headway in games such as Borderlands or Batman: Arkham Asylum before I can even consider newer content like Toy Soldiers... I always feel like I am falling behind in my game time.

I was also shocked, along with the rest of the world to learn about Jesse James and Sandra Bullock this week, especially so hard on the heels of her Oscar win. I’ve always had a soft spot for Sandra, as I find her a rather refreshingly honest AND likable personality among Hollywood’s many false-faced players. Being not as naive as you would think, I do realize this could just be stellar PR on her part, but overall I’ve followed her career with some interest and found her to be a most lovely a person on and off the screen.

March 16 - Movie Parody Swiftly

One of my favourite SF series to read when I was young was Tom Swift, whose books captured a sense of adventure without imminent danger of horrible death – bad for young readers, I suppose. I recently found out that Tom Swift falls into the genre category of a ‘Youth Dystopia’ which surprised me, given the upbeat nature of the books. What I find even more interesting is that I clearly recall an updated series of Tom Swift books from the early 80’s with slick black covers and updated artwork, but I’ve not been able to track down their origin or publisher. One more thing to add to my ‘Find it!’ list.

One always has to keep atop of trends, as well as analyzing how things work. Below is a very clever parody of Hollywood movie trailers, which looks at how movies tug at our emotions and push our buttons.  Listen closely to the dialogue; great work!

March 17 - Luck of the Irish

Yes, it’s St Patrick’s Day, where everyone is Irish for the day. I confess that I like the day the most for the colour: green! It’s my favourite colour, and another reason why I love BC: it’s green for most every day of the year here, in some part or another. As for St. Patty’s Day, I limited myself to googling Irish blessings and planning perhaps to visit Niagara next year about this time, to see how things are at the Kilt when this Day of Days arrives again. We’ll see if those plans actually happen, won’t we?

After work today I went up to Bear Mountain to have a look at the condo we’re looking at renting ASAP, as it’s been immensely difficult to find a place near where I work that not only has room for three people but will ALSO allow a pet. Fortunately, this place fits the bill and the budget, as well as being in a stupendously lovely setting and is situated next to a world-class golf course. Which I don’t play; there’s irony for you. A downside to the location is its isolation: there’s only one road in from Millstream that winds almost 4km up the mountain, a route that means I’ll not be able to walk to work any more, or if I ride my bike it will be a one-way fast trip down and a long hike back up of more than an hour.

March 18 - Good Medical News for Moi

A busy morning: off to the doctor’s for an early appointment, when I was told that I do NOT have pre-diabetes, according to my blood test... I just had slightly elevated blood sugar levels, but all other indicators were normal. Also, I found out that diabetes would affect BOTH eyes, not just my right one, so that’s good news indeed! Now I have to really watch my diet for the next three weeks, so I can ensure that my sugar levels remain fairly constant and so make my next eye exam a solid baseline one. Then I can get my new glasses completed and not have to worry that the damaged ones will fall apart again at any moment.

Ah, good ol’ io9.com – I love to check the site every few days, as there’s always something cool or new posted. One such that was up today was this incredible Transformers art – as the article said, Michael Bay should have got the artist on board for his films and not just depended on the CGI department.

March 19 - Good News for Moving To The Mountain

During my morning shift today, I received word that the Bear Mountain condo is ours if we want it( we do )and that the papers will be signed on Monday for the rental lease. Which means that we’re going to be moving in mid-April, and packing up / selling things for the next month until then. Busy, busy, busy. On top of that, I’ve had someone from Head Office visiting this week, an opportunity I’ve made use of as he’s very interested in finding out what’s working and what’s not at the retail level... I’d estimate I’ve given him about 50 pages of notes to bring back and ponder, most of which are positive criticism about how to make things better for both the customer and the employees at the front end. Plus in all this I’ve been training someone new... so it’s been rather exhausting, and a good thing that my Xbox chose this week to go on the fritz – I’ve had NO time to do more than relax a tad before sleep every night.

In terms of archiving, my Toshiba DVD recorder’s been getting a workout of late as I transfer various programs from the DVR in the other room onto DVD( obviously )as it won’t be as easy in the new condo due to the increased distance between my electronics stack and the DVR in the main room. Phew... say THAT last sentence five times fast and see how much of it makes it past your lips. I’ve managed to save quite a few episodes of Pinky And The Brain for later viewing – my eventual hope is to have a massive media server setup with my old PC, where I can call up any show I wish and watch it on the big screen, without having to resort to swapping DVD’s; instant on-demand TV without the limitations of a retail DVR. I can dream...

March 20 - Spring Arrives!

Today is the first day of Spring for 2010, and it’s a gorgeous one here in Victoria – people are wandering around outside in t-shirts and tank-tops, albeit with jackets still over their arms. Flowers are blooming all over the place, as the picture shows – the ones below are the ones at the top of our driveway that had  bloomed early last week:

At work today: I had a surreal experience at the downtown store, and it was related to Star Wars, of all things. A customer came in who challenged my perceptions of reality, as well as my self-control. A simple transaction: he wanted to cash several cheques... but when I saw his name on the items, it was all I could do not to laugh and rub my eyes! He had changed his name to match that of a famous Star Wars character, whom he bore more than a passing resemblance to( and no, it wasn’t Chewbacca! ). I was totally non-plussed, as by sheer coincidence almost ten years ago I had created a file in our MMart computer system with the SAME name for training purposes... AND HIS SIGNATURE MATCHED MY OLD ‘CREATED’ ONE NEARLY PERFECTLY! It was really, really weird, as I kept expecting the walls around me to ripple Matrix-style, or a camera crew to pop out of the ceiling; the world under my feet shifted ever so subtly. I did manage to keep my professional calm and had him on his way fairly quickly, but I could tell by the smile in his eyes that he half-expected me to say something the whole time about his name – which I imagine is WHY he changed it in the first place. A very, very weird experience, especially given the serendipitous match of my own signature-creation and his. Sometimes, the world is so strange!

March 21 –  Newt News on my One Day Off

Hooray! News yesterday that Newt and John will be updated by Mike Hogue this Spring! Fantastic... I’ve been waiting a while for this duo to have new adventures, and I can hardly stop jumping on the couch from sheer joy. I think I may need a t-shirt...

It was also my sixth day in a row working yesterday, which will be a common theme for me up until the first week of May – we’re chronically understaffed and though we have enough people coming online in April, we won’t have 100% confidence in-place until the end of the month. More overtime, and even less sleep for me, as I’ve commenced packing for the move. What pains me is that I’ll likely have to keep a fair number of my books in storage, as there will simply be no room for them. On the bright side, this also means I’ll be less tempted to read and more inclined to write or work on my podcasts... so that’s good in the long run.

Being as busy as I am already, I will still have Sundays off, so the blog will still appear each week albeit in a somewhat more condensed form. Until next week then!

Diabetes, Dummies and Dead Xboxes

The word of the week is enervated... bleh. Sounds better than it is, really.

March 8th – When you’re feeling blue...

Looks like the good weather’s finally disappeared here: the rain’s back, and no sign of sun. Which is good, as there’s news that this past winter was the warmest on record for Canada and many other parts of the world.

When I got home today, there was a package waiting for me: my Blue Microphone had arrived! It was a heavy box too; I had it unpacked and set it up within a few minutes. It looked great with it’s shiny aluminum finish, and I quickly got to testing it in the spare bedroom where no outside noise dared interfere. I chose an opening snippet from one of my Nich stories( The Nighthunter )and had it nicely captured within a few takes. It sounded excellent; no mic hum or background noise to speak of. I’m very pleased with the Blue microphone and I’m hoping to use it far more frequently in the near future for podcasts and other audio tasks,

Kudos to Brian for putting me back onto the podcast track... though maybe I should think about creating a unique video with my spare time. Hmmm...

March 9 – Evil Bender!

Wahooo! I didn’t find out about it until now, but last week official news came down the pipe that Futurama is returning to the airwaves! With the entire original cast, no less! More Bender, more Fry, and more Leela to go around for everyone!

Something else that’s caught my eye is the How to Succeed in Evil blogsite, which is basically one writer’s efforts to create content as he goes along in between working at his day job and sleeping. It’s great stuff, and I’ll be putting it on my iPod Nano as soon as the blasted thing arrives at work...

Here’s something else that I’ve wondered about lately: what happens to all your electronic files and websites when you die? Unlike a will, which instructs executors on how to distribute your worldly goods, a ‘digital will’ contains instructions about passwords, payments for websites, blog instructions, etc in case you pass from this mortal coil. Most people don’t think about such things, but for more and more of us, our online lives include people that we’ve never met face to face. To ensure that our friends are informed of our passing( sad as it may be )and that websites don’t shut down, there are new services popping up to enact digital wills – something I’ll be looking into shortly myself, for my own peace of mind.

March 10 – Boom?

I’ve been training a new employee this week at work, and so far it’s been a joy. She’s bright, enthusiastic and quick to pick up on everything I teach her... to the point where she’s chomping at the bit to do more. I have to be careful as a trainer to ensure that she’s absorbing it all, and that her eagerness isn’t squelched but properly channeled into new learning as we progress – there’s a set process that we use here at MMart, and it’s time-tested. I have high hopes for her as time goes on – we’ll see how she does.

From my more-fave-than-freaky site io9.com: two new electricity tech breakthroughs that may change our world. Since one of them involves carbon nanotubes, it has cool written all over it already!

Here’s something that’s bothered me since I was a kid: supernovas. Yes, I’ve harboured a secret dread of exploding stars all my life, ever since I learned that they CAN explode, sometimes without warning – the Crab Nebula is actually a supernova that was first observed by the Chinese in medieval times! Which is why news of a possible nearby supernova sent a shiver down my spine... though it’s not likely to happen for another few million years. If it does, that’s it for this part of the Milky Way. Boom.

March 11 – Potentially Bad News

I had some frustrating medical news today: my test results were back from the lab, and my doctor tells me I am pre-diabetic. Which means MORE changes and restrictions to my diet, if I want to ensure I don’t go full-blown into Diabetes. So yes, one more big thing to worry about – just what I needed right now.

Tonight I also had an appointment with my Optometrist, which did help set my mind more at ease. She wants me to come back in three weeks time after getting my diet settled using a pre-diabetic diet, so she can check again to see what affect that may have had on my vision. And apparently this guy needs new glasses in a bad way too. I mean, what was he THINKING?

Maybe in the future they’ll have over-the-counter tests for most diseases, kind of like the home pregnancy test kits that get less inaccurate every year. One neat idea I’ve seen lately is the 1-cent blood test kit, meant for use in developing countries for quick diagnosis of common diseases. Good thinking.

March 12 – Nein to 9

The last few months at work have shown me that it’s vital to maintain a good working environment – something I’ve worked hard to attain at my branch. It’s always on my mind to ensure that I’m being professional, while also ensuring my staff and I have fun day to day – not easy to do when we’re all stressed. I’m happy to say that I believe I’ve succeeded, as my current staffer who was rather down in the dumps around Christmastime has seen quite a sea-change in mood from dour to delighted on a daily basis. It makes me feel top-notch to know I had a large part to play in making their days better ones.

I managed to watch a film on DVD tonight I’ve been waiting a while for: 9 as presented by Tim Burton. It’s a CGI animated film about the end of the world( love those ones )and the creatures that inhabit the new playing field – little characters made out of sackcloth and thread. It’s dark and has its moments, but I have to admit I was underwhelmed by it overall – a case of great hope not living up to story plot that went all mushy and teary-eyed at the end for no reason. Reminded me of the Final Fantasy movie: all spirit, no heart or head.

Bacon rockets. Yes, it’s become that silly – deal with it, and taste the yummy. Though the guy wearing the Popeye shirt looks like he’s lost a lot of sleep over designing the things...

March 13 – 5, 7, 5 went the rhyme..

And early start to the day: I was on the road before 8am to drive up to Duncan to work at that branch with another manager, as they’re very short-staffed there. The last staff member there gave their notice by text message... so you can imagine how much fun it’s been. It was a steadily busy day, which I spent most of at the counter while the other manager caught the store up on paperwork. Overall, it went very quickly and we managed to put some semblance of order into the place. Tiring, as it was my sixth day straight... and I’ll be doing the same for the next 6 weeks until all the new area staff come online.

I treated myself to several episodes of Crusade tonight, that lamented B5-spinoff series that had such potential but was canceled before any of it could be realized. It had inspired casting, with a solid chemistry and real friendship between all the cast members you could see on screen. I really regret that there was never a hope of resurrecting the series ala Firefly via a movie; I’ve had to settle for gleaning all the behind-the-scenes info I can about what happened, and what might have been.

On a random note: Godzilla is a Japanese creation, as are haiku. What about... combining the two?

March 14 –  Seeing Red

Joy of joys. Today I experienced the Xbox 360 Red Ring Of Death: three red lights meaning it’s a general hardware failure. Since it’s still under the 3-year warranty period, I called Microsoft( per this link’s information )and set up a repair return, to send the thing in and see what they can do with it. I’m not sure why it suddenly went crapola; I had it on early in the morning to play a game of Twisted Metal and it was fine. I shut it down and came back to start up again after breakfast, to find that my controller wasn’t locking into a channel; I restarted the Xbox and it went to the Xbox logo screen, then hung. A third reboot brought up the deadly Red Rings... and so now you know why I wrote the following haiku:

I played my xbox
Today, three Red Rings appeared
Tears fell silently.

We also went out twice today to look at three different houses for rent in the area. There was a potential winner with three bedrooms that hit most of the right marks, and as a bonus is even closer to my workplace in Millstream – nice! There’s still the question about the lease though, so I’m making sure to read some tips about leases before I sign anything.

In the evening, I went out to our long-delayed work Christmas party. Where a good time was had by most – I had my ups and downs though, as there always seems to be something that crops up that spoils my mood. In tonight’s case, it was news that something I did in Duncan really cheesed off that store’s manager, never mind that it was unintentional and that I’ve had had no idea at the time I did it. So I spent the rest of my evening at the party trying to enjoy myself, and mostly succeeding due to the excellent company. Yay, fun.

Did you remember to set your clocks forward this weekend, and lose your hour of sleep?

Stories, Snowballs and Sandra Bullock

The word of the week is apocryhal - don't doubt it.

March 1^st – Put off

It’s... National Procrastination Week! Yes, that’s right... now you can put off doing all those things you had on your list for this week. Officially. In my case, I DO have a few things that can’t wait, but shhh... don’t tell anyone.  Oh, and don’t forget to mark this week on your calendar for next year. Do it later on.

I wish, I wish, I could have procrastinated at work today – it was a zoo, being the first of the month, and I am by myself as usual for 10 hours on a Monday. After all was said and done, I’d ended up serving  1 person every 8 mins for 9 hours solid... plus handling phone calls and trying to get my daily tasks done. YIKES! I was beat enough by the end of the day to get a ride home, as I had no energy left. On the upside, it’s days like today when I prove to myself I can still multitask like a monkey on a banana high, and count it as 9 hours of frenetic mid-level exercise to boot. Keeps the waistline trim, it does!

As I stumbled towards sleep, I came across an interesting site called ShopSavvy. Back in the day, shopping meant that you did your research beforehand, knowing how much an item you were shopping for cost at various other places around. Then came the internet, and you could not only do your research online, but even order those same items without leaving home. Now, with ShopSavvy, you can saunter into any retailer, snap a picture of an item’s UPC, and see how much it’s listed for at local / national competitors – you can even get a map to the nearest place with a lower price! Right now it’s only for the iPhone, but expect this service to expand in the near future. Now that’s useful tech!

March 2 – Tech Tuesday

This is so, so cool: Skinput projects functional keys onto your arm! Much like the awesome Seiko “wrist halo” from the Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within movie, this may be the future of mobile tech. Or we may see things implanted under our skin, much like some ideas from the old Neuromancer and Shadowrun worlds of the cyberpunky 1980’s.

Along with catching up on a lot of things on my day off today, I also tried to save a dead laptop – without success. Emotional people and tech do NOT mix, especially when spinning hard drives and hard floors meet at high speed. Too bad that the laptop was not a later model, most of which now have accelerometers as standard-issue parts with their hard drives. Even now, SSD’s are slowly dropping in price to where they may be affordable for the average-priced laptop in five years or so. Though by then Google predicts that desktops will all but have vanished... does that mean laptops will soon after?

Another part of my day off today was spent cleaning up my files( boring but necessary )on the various drives I have scattered around my den. DiskSpaceFan came in handy with it’s lovely visuals of what’s eating up space on one’s hard drive. Getting rid of duplicate files freed up a ton of drive space for me, and it’s a good thing: now I can start backing things up again!

March 3 – Science and Arby’s

Have you ever wondered how big the Universe is? How would you measure it? A physics student in the US wants to create a new unit of measure to answer just such questions: the Hella. From slang term to universe-spanning unit in only a few years – how’s that for odd?

While I was in town today, I ate at Arby’s - there’s only 1 on Vancouver Island, which is not so strange to me as there were only two in all of Niagara. One of which I lived within walking distance of, but almost never went to because at the time my developing gallstones would remind me painfully every time I tried anything that had been near a deep-fryer. Curly fries being my favourite Arby’s offering, I had to forgo them until I had moved away to BC... and the nearest Arby’s was now a long bus ride into town.

A last... Popular Science online is finally searchable! I used to collect various issues for news on the latest tech; now I get it all instantly via the internet. One thing that doesn’t age well is tech; five years might as well be fifty at the modern pace of advancement. What I like about the old magazines is to see how well past predictions have come true, or more often how they completely missed the boat and were left behind.

March 4 – Flower Power

I have a fairly sizable collection of DVD’s here, with more and more of them sporting the dreaded trailers – oh, how I wish I could skip them! Thanks to C|net, now you can – follow the instructions there and you’ll never have to sit through fifteen minutes of ads for things you don’t want to buy or watch, ever again.

The annual Flower Count ended locally today, with a record number of spring blossoms being counted all over Vancouver island. You can find the results over at Flowercount.com – what it means is: Sweet Spring is here early! Trees here are blooming, the smell of blossoms and green grass is in the air... all this and March has barely begun! Take that, rest of Canada... and winter sports fans: don’t visit Victoria.

Dang -  last week’s blog was missing something bacon-y. So this week I’ll make up for it with Super Bacon! Yes, it’s the next generation of bacon: good for your heart, and still tastes good. Yum and yay!

March 5 – Money Truckin’

Hooray! After years of hoping and wishing, Canada is finally switching it’s currency from paper to plastic – and no, it’s not a form of debit card. We’re going to be getting polymer notes, along the lines of Australia and many other countries in the world, as early as next year. It’s waterproof, long-wearing and best of all: really, really hard to counterfeit. So maybe gas stations will start taking fifties again?

Two sites I pop back to from time to time are DateWrecks.com and CustomersSuck.com – both of which have stories to make you laugh, cry and just wonder about the human race in general. Some days it might be better for that asteroid to hit... and there’s news that there are a LOT more of those coming close to Earth than have been previously thought. Scary!

I walk a fair bit around here, when I’m not cycling, and so I see a lot of traffic pass me by on the road. So I can speak with some authority when I say: I hate pickup trucks... well, really their drivers. I’ve seen more idiots in pickup trucks doing stupid things than in any other vehicle. Running stoplights, speeding, pulling bonehead moves... not to mention the sheer numbers that belch vast clouds of dark diesel exhaust. For a province that espouses such proactive environmental policies, BC really falls down when it comes down vehicular emissions. As well as in issuing licenses to idiots in trucks. Breathing diesel stinks, I have to say – and I didn’t know that there are only TWO places in Canada that require vehicle emissions testing: Southern Ontario and the Lower Mainland of BC. Everywhere else, your vehicle can stink as much as you like...

March 6 – Happy Work Anniversary To Me

I was in town today for a blood test, to check for signs of diabetes – just a precaution given the weird eye exam results I had a few weeks back. Hopefully nothing comes of the tests, as I really don’t need something else to worry about right now. As it is, I’m wondering what exactly is going on with my eyes; my new glasses are sitting on the table next to me, useless as the right lens is totally blurred. Maddening!

It was ten years ago today that I started with MMart – who knew I’d be with them for so long? I certainly didn’t... but then I tend to stick with a job for longer than others, from what I’ve seen. What it means for me is that my vacation time increases, I get an inflated sense of well-being, and lastly a free iPod Nano – not a gold watch, but given than my last long-term employment gift was a jacket, I’ll take tech any day. First thing I’m going to load up on the Nano when it arrives? Why, StarshipSofa podcasts, of course!

Speaking of old places where I used to work: Tim Hortons announced it’s going upscale... a far cry from when I worked there when two people did the work of six. That’s where I learned to juggle tasks like a pro, as the owners( nice as they were )were always woefully understaffed. Though I did enjoy working at the first non-smoking Timmy’s in the entire region – that was a perk, along with free donuts. It almost made up for the horrible uniforms and the idiots on drive-thru(  see my note for March 5^th). I just hope Timmy’s doesn’t make the mistake of confusing upscale decor with raising prices, or they may find themselves in Starbuck’s shoes: closing hundreds of locations only a few years after opening so many.

March 7 – Finished A Story, Oscar!

I woke up at 6am today for some reason( story angst? )and fitfully tried to get some more sleep. I managed to doze on and off, with some strange effects: I dreamed of Fairuza Balk and about being trapped on a southern plantation with crooked cops, obese tourists and ATM’s with card-scanners. Very strange... might be a movie idea in there somewhere! One interesting six-degrees of Kevin Bacon note: Neil Gaiman has asked Fairuza to play the role of Death in his Sandman movie... whenever that manages to finally come together. I think she’d be perfect, though she’s perhaps been pigeonholed as playing ‘crazy’ parts. I also think Fairuza would have been a better fit than Angelina Jolie in 1999’s Girl, Interrupted, but that’s my own opinion.

I had novels on the brain today, and so I googled what the first know novel was. To my surprise, it was nothing Greek but even more ancient: Gilgamesh! Written on stone tablets, you can find a majority of the story at this excellent site. Among the fascinating details: Gilgamesh appears to have been written based on tales about a real person circa 2700 BC, and more amazing still we have the NAME of the author: Shin-eqi-unninni. Who is currently the oldest known human author – I should be so lucky to have my name remembered over four millennia after I am gone. Wow!

Just before 5pm PST, I finished off my final draft of the story The Last Playlist and sent it off to Brian. We had a long chat about the story and other things – I was pleased that he said it “Wasn’t as dry” as some of my other SF work. I’ll see about recording it this week and send the results his way; it may mean I’ll need a better mic, for which I already have one picked out( thanks for the tip, Pierre! ): The Snowball! Not to be confused with another fine podcaster, Steve Saylor, who also happens to be named Snowball... but that’s because he’s an albino. See how easily the world can confuse you...

I finished off the week by watching the Oscars. Steve Martin was the host, Avatar cleaned up, and Sandra Bullock won for Best Actress: all in all, a fairly fun and smile-inducing night. Heck, even Oprah Winfrey was on the show!

Olympics, Optometrists and Omissions

The word of the week is: ecstatic - are you, eh?

Feb 22 – Time for Books

2009 is barely dead and gone, yet it’s already time to look back and remember. Time’s Top Ten of Everything in 2009 has 50 different lists that cover everything from books to the bizarre. One thing that is on their list is The Windup Girl, a story about a near future where bioengineered flesh power has replaced all other technology as the way to run the world, which is a cool concept; it’d be cooler if I could find the book locally, but they’re sold out. Still, we live in an online world, and I’ll probably order it though Amazon.ca or Chapters.ca ... a used copy would be cheaper, naturally.

Yet there are many alternatives to the giant sellers online: AbeBooks.com helps smaller booksellers make their stock available to the world, especially the rare and out-of-print books. The Book Depository may actually be better than Amazon, as a quick comparison of book prices gives the edge to TBD and not Amazon by as much as ten dollars a title. Even though The Book Depository has FREE shipping, you have to watch for those Customs and duties charged - that’s where things can really add to the cost.

Years in the making, The Wizarding World of Harry Potter is still coming along strong... though the magic may be fading for the fan base as the years pass. I’m sure the experience may be neat for kids and die-hard fans; as for me, the deal-breaker is that Hogwart’s is a model on a hilltop. How cheap is that? No talking portraits, moving stairs or giant trolls roaming the halls... just expensive shops down below selling plastic wands and witch’s hats. No magic there, just commerce.

Feb 23 – Blurry News

Mmm... pancakes. I can’t believe I forgot that today was Pancake Day 2010, which in times past is also called Shrove Tuesday, the last day before Lent that people can eat forbidden foods. That was never part of my upbringing, as I always thought it was damned silly that people could be denied access to one’s chosen afterlife if you ate an egg too close to a date on a calendar. But then people think a lot of silly things when it comes to religion, so what’s one more thing on the list? I’ll just smile around a nice mouthful of fresh, fluffy apple pancakes, which  I’m sure will cook up really nicely on a griddle in Hades.

After work today, I went in and picked up my new glasses. They fit my head perfectly! Unfortunately, the lens in the right eye is out of focus; it’s useless for vision, and it’s not a case of my eye needing to adjust – the distance is blurred, which shouldn’t occur as the new prescription is slightly more powerful than the old. Obviously I’m upset, but WalMart has a 60-day prescription guarantee, allowing me time to get to my optometrist to see what’s gone wrong.

When I was finally home, I finished watching Stargate: Atlantis during dinner – the final episode of the final fifth season. The previous episode, Vegas, was an odd trans-dimensional story variant that I found interesting in that it actually made it to the screen, but it certainly didn’t end well. I could almost say the same for the final episode: it tried hard to have some closure, but you could tell that they were stretching to wrap up loose ends and end things if not on a high note, then a “They will all be OK” sort of note. It still felt a little cheap and cheesy, though not as surprising as learning how MUCH of what we see on TV and the web is actually done by green screens, as shown by Stargate Studios demo reel.

Feb 24 – What’s this lawn doing here?

Passing by green lawns, trees and some hardier flowers on the way to work has become a treat lately – the last week of good weather has really ‘Springed’ things up here. The local school has recently had a lot of work done to it, including roadwork... and today they laid down fresh green sod( that’s a pic! )as part of the final landscaping. Fresh grass in February, growing fine in wintertime; unbelievable anywhere else in Canada!

All right, all right... I don’t want to rant about this, or even sound like an old guy with a walker screaming at kids to Get Off My Lawn. But who actually buys those stupid Minipops albums on television? Every time I flip channels, I see the latest cutesy-kids-singing crap being hocked for a low, low price, and I wonder who the hell would even admit to owning the past twenty-whatever number of albums? Lonely grandparents whose grandkids never come to see them? People with no musical taste? Masochists?

I mentioned cheesy when talking about Atlantis yesterday, but the same doesn’t apply to a cool web series called appropriately enough Riese: The Series. I wish I could point you to something other than a trailer, but apparently Riese is now in development for release though a UK media company and that means that all current episodes have been suspended from web availability –for now. Check back soon.

Feb 25 –“ Math Is Hard” - Barbie

Math and I have never got along well, much like spaghetti and milk: we just don’t mix properly. This has pushed me more along towards the liberal arts, but I’ve always felt a lack whenever I see an old scientific calculator sitting unused in a drawer. Now there’s help for folk like me: Steven Strogatz, a Cornell professor, is writing a blog in The New York Times to help people take a second shot at ‘getting’ math. It’s simple , straightforward and written from an adult POV, and I think I’ll be checking it out over the next while.

Back to the eye doctor tonight, to get my eyes re-checked... again. After all was said and done, it turns out my prescription has changed since my visit last week, which the doctor said was very, very rare – there are checks and methods in place to ensure that a prescription IS what it’s supposed to be when prescribed. So I have to go to my family doctor, get checked out for a bunch of things including diabetes, all as a precaution to eliminate other possibilities that may affect my eyes. Then it’s back to the optometrist for another test in a few week’s time, when I hope my eyes will co-operate. Frustrating!

Because it’s all about proper functionality, right? Reminds me of why I’ve gravitated away from using FireFox, which has become slower and more bloated as time goes on. I usually have several dozen tabs open at a time: regular places I go, articles I find interesting( perhaps for the blog )and other things I find along the way. This eats up a LOT of memory over time, meaning my twice-daily laptop reboots( thanks to  Windows #$%@! 7 ... )take even longer when I restart FireFox. But not any more: I’ve finally found a truly useful plugin called BarTab, which keeps track of the websites you’ve got open in tabs, but doesn’t actually open those sites in the tab until you click there specifically. This saves a ton of memory and load times, allowing me to actually use FireFox regularly again. Huzzah for smart software design!

Feb 26 – Tax Games

Holy guacamole – it was a Crazy Friday at work today. In a word: taxes! All those T4’s are hitting the mail this week, and some who step through the door are still clutching them in unopened envelopes.  As for taxes themselves, people in general just don’t get how they work; I constantly hear “Well I PAID this much in taxes, so I get ALL that BACK, right?” – ummm, no. If taxes were that simple, Farmer Bob could let his field hands do them on the side, in between baling hay and milking the cows in the morning. While I do enjoy giving people a leg up on how taxes work, I have been referring quite a few this year to TaxTips.ca, as well as some excellent advice on RRSP’s from MoneySense.ca – really good stuff there!

After just discovering it yesterday, I’m seriously considering a monthly subscription to GameTap.com – hundreds of PC games for ten bucks a month? Quite the deal... and they have a decent enough library, though more than half are games I don’t think I’ll ever bother trying( some are just crap ). What I want to know though, is where can I buy more free time to play those games... and the ones still on my shelf. This may be the way of the future though – no more retail packages or discs, just DLC and a credit card.

Not having a physical game to collect might make it hard to find older titles in a few years, unless places like GameTap keep them around in the virtual bargain bins. Before the days of DLC or even CD-ROMs though, games were issued on tiny circuits locked inside fat plastic cartridges for systems like the Atari 2600 and the NES. Of the millions of cartridges sold, only a few have ever attained ‘collectable’ status – here are the Top Ten Holy Grails of Console Collectors. Who knows? If you’re browsing a local garage sale, you may just see one of these peeking out from under a pile of Minipops albums...

Feb 27 –  Two Tsunamis???

Living on the West Coast has a lot of benefits: great weather, lovely scenery and healthy air. But it does have it’s drawbacks: things like forest fires, high winds... and earthquakes. Today there were two tremors along faults in the Pacific, resulting in two Tsunami warnings for entire coast of BC as well as most of the Pacific Rim, causing massive evacuations in Hawaii. That lovely view across the hills to the ocean isn’t so great when there’s a five-story high wall of water racing across the horizon at you – you never hear about New York having these sorts of things happen, except in the movies. Fortunately here in BC, not so much as a ripple reached the shore.

Here’s one out of left field: Alan Rickman. Today I was struck by how many films this versatile British actor has been in, ranging from Die Hard to Galaxy Quest to Harry Potter, yet he still flies well below the Hollywood radar. There’s a very funny clip from the British TV show QI where they talk about Alan; afterwards, check out the Family Guy clip on the right listing called Alan Rickman’s Answering Machine...

I’m still considering getting my parents a Wii, to keep them active during the cooler months here, especially as my mom’s mobility keeps getting less and less every year. There’s recent evidence that Wii use helps stroke patients recover too, another reason to ensure people exercise at every age. Another reason to get a Wii: a Proton Pack!! Plus I’m STILL using a ten-year-old Logitech Marble Trackball; it’s easier than a touchpad,
and has no moving parts to break.

Feb 28 – Closing Ceremonies

Earlier in the week, Neil Gaiman posted a letter to Michael Moorcock, in which he stated that it was Michael’s fault that Neil had turned out the way he did. It’s a short but moving fan homage from one writer to another, which I find interesting because I’m only a few years younger than Neil and still developing my writer’s chops. Authors need role models, and if Neil Gaiman is one of mine, I now know that Moorcock was one of his and definitely worth checking out. I’ve only read a tiny bit of Moorcock’s work, mainly a very shortened version of Stormbringer in comic form, so yet again I’ve added him to my must-read-when-time-permits list. I think I need a few years off just to catch up with my interests!

While I was in town on Thursday , I picked up a few new books( I managed to limit myself to 5 )which included the latest instalments in the Wild Cards and The Change series, which I have been falling behind in of late. I still haven’t picked up the final instalments of the Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time  series, mainly as they’re only in hardcover and I just don’t have the room( or budget )to collect in that medium. The first of the final trilogy, The Gathering Storm, is out already and I hope it makes it to paperback soon.

Today was the last day of the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics, and I would be remiss as a Canadian if I did not mention them here. I am not an athlete, I do not follow sports and in general focus my personal energies elsewhere. But events like the Olympics transcend people’s lives across the world, and here in Canada they have brought the country together in celebration of the Games as little else has in recent memory.  The final Olympic Medal Count for the games shows Canada in 1^st place for Gold with 14 medals and third overall in total medal ranking – enough to bring a smile to the face of most Canadians for some time to come. Quiet pride, but that’s what we’re good at here in this country... along with hockey too, by the way. A gold medal in overtime – how’s that for finishing on a high note? Finally, I watched the Closing Ceremonies with pride and good humour, as I thought they were spot-on in showing how Canada looks at, and is seen by, the world.

Sunday was lovely outside; I spent a few hours in the early afternoon outside on the back deck. The sun was blazing, bringing the temperature into the mid-teens to where I could relax without a jacket and read as well as use the laptop. It was lovely and a definite plus – to sit so close to the still waters of the lake and listen to the wildlife peep and call to each other in the spring-like air was fantastic this time of year.

Sofas, SubSpace and SF

This space for rent – reasonable rates, plus cookies.

Feb 15 – Brian on StarShip

Right off the top, I have to mention that Brian’s cover painting for the February 24^th 2010 issue of StarShipSofa looks downright amazing. You can check it out on his website, though if you want to leave a comment, you’ll have to email him – for now. Go Brian; here’s to many more paintings to come!

If you missed it last week, here it is again: I’ve managed to fix my Vonage phone, so I can once again receive calls to my home phone instead of just being forwarded to my cell. I may even pick up a $10.00 answering machine this coming week to connect, for the times I’m at work and miss your call. Sweet.

Now here’s a crazy time-waster that I tried way back in 2001, and shockingly is still around: SubSpace. One of the first online multiplayer real-time shooters, this insane game has you jump into an arena with one of several kinds of space fighters and fight as part of a team. It’s fun for a while, but all too soon the skill levels of the other players makes you realize that they’ve all spent waaaay too much time playing it.

Feb 16 – The Glasses Games

For my day off today, I spent a good portion of the morning and afternoon driving around in Victoria, going to various eyeglasses places to get quotes. Overall I was unimpressed, as the prices ranged from the mid-300’s to over $600 – the priciest was Sears with a “2-for-1” special that wasn’t special in my eyes( pardon the pun )in any way. Though the frames there DID fit perfectly and the sunlgasses in particular( RayBans )fit me the best of any I had ever worn, I can’t justify that sort of massive outlay. So I’m still looking and calling around, as well as searching online at places like Goggles4u.com and ClearlyContacts.ca – the idea of glasses for $38.00 CAN intrigued me, but I am a firm believer in you get what you pay for... at least, that if you pay very little you usually get the same. Anyone can pay a LOT and still get crap; it’s the low end of the spectrum that offers the most challenge to navigate safely.

As for my laptop running WinXp virtually: I’ve given up on it for games use, as it’s just too slow to be worthwhile. Even an old game like Neverwinter Nights chugs along, so it looks like all I’ll be using it for is very old, very slow games that don’t rely on a good framerate to be fun. Darn it.

Are you an Olympic fan? What about a bacon fan? Care to combine the two at... BaconNinja.com?

Feb 17 – DaVinci Did It

Looking for a job? Have to update your resume? Well, we all do eventually... even Leonardo DaVinci had to put his out there to look for work, at the age of 30 in 1482... that’s over 500 years ago, folks. You can take a look at the beautiful original here, along with the translation. I have to say Leo really sells himself!

After work today I decided to head down to WalMart, as I remembered they have an optical department. While fairly small, within a minute of walking in I had spotted a great pair of frames... for half off a price that was already half that of other optical stores. A few minutes later I had placed an order for the glasses with those frames, for around $200.00 all told – 1/3 the cost of the ‘special’ at Sears Optical. I left with a smile on my face, and as a bonus the optician was going to try to patch up my broken frameless glasses at no charge as a backup for me.

Now I will sleep better at night, and not only for the lack of headaches in my near future. If you;re having trouble sleeping, for whatever reason, then you’ll want to check out the Top 10 Foods To Help You Sleep list – yes, warm milk is on there... as are bananas!

Feb 18 – Faugh on Win7

So far, my laptop and Windows7 are still unable to come to a compromise, forcing me to reboot the thing two or three times a day. I’ve taken to running a LOT of programs at once, so what when I return to use the laptop I can exit one... then another... and so on, until Win7 gets it into it’s brain that I want to DO something and lets me launch a new program of my choice, like a game or email client. Considering that I didn’t know about my 90-day technical support with Microsoft until AFTER it had passed, I still get steamed thinking about it.

In terms of software, I don’t usually plug this or that – save for the free stuff. One program I like to use once a month or so is WinDirStat, which gives you a visual image of all the crap that’s taking up space on your hard drive. So with one easy glance, you can see which hidden massive files that you’ve forgotten about are hogging precious room on your system... and delete them. Simple, and better yet: free!

A short blurb: my glasses were repaired by the Walmart optician... this is a Big Thing, as I’ve been unable to spend much time this week in front of the computer and type with contacts in; headache-inducing after a long day. While I wouldn’t want to test if the repairs are permanent, I’m treating them with kid gloves for now and thanking my lucky comets that I’ll have them as backup to the new pair on order!

Feb 19 – 4K In readers!

Today my blog passed the 4000-hit mark, which works out to roughly 6 visitors a day for the last two years or so. Not a ton of traffic by any stretch these days, but still, it’s traffic. ChurchOfTheBanana.com by comparison received over 36,000 unique visits in 2009, compared to less than 6000 in 2008 when it was created . That’s a 600% increase year- over- year, so I’m hoping that we can revive it in 2010 in some way. Those sort of traffic numbers mean that people are still hitting the site, regardless of the lack of updates it’s had.

Writing tips: One thing you can do with your original character you’ve so lovingly created is run it through the Mary-Sue Litmus test, which will give you a good idea if you’ve actually  created something original, or a horrifyingly derivative mishmash of parts. Kind of like a Frankenstein detector, if you think about it – apparently U2’s Bono scores a whopping 72 out of 100, but he’s real.

How’s this for combining creativity, an original idea and LEGO? It’s CrawlerTown... and it’s just amazing; when I think about the sheer amount of labour that has to have gone into the thing, my brow sweats.

Feb 20 – Taxing Weather

I follow quite a few online comics, as the best ones are those that I find rewarding to their readers with their continuous stories and character development. Plus humour. One of those is Looking For Group, which follows the trials and tumults of a really oddball group of adventurers; the humour glue of the bunch is Richard, an undead warlock. If you’ve never read it, pop on over, click on the first comic and give it a few minutes... your funny bone will thank you.

It was a gorgeous day outside: not a cloud in the sky, and not a flake of snow on the ground – hasn’t been for most of the winter here, in fact. While I was out earlier in the week, I saw flowers blooming all along the boulevards, though I still wonder how they survive the single-digit temperatures that are still the norm at night here. People in t-shirts were out all over today, with no wind to chill their pale arms. Which is why when I think of the snow that’s packed down on most of the rest of the country, I hearken back to the early 70’s, when you could buy a Flame Gun cheap, and remove pesky snow with ease!

After work I sat down after work and plugged in a few more numbers into my tax return online, having received the final few papers in the mail this week. To my immense relief the numbers are not nearly as horrible as I thought. I still get a twinge in my gut when I think about my reassessment that arrived this last summer for 2007 and 2008, but there’s nothing I can do about that – taxes are taxes, and you do the best you can to minimize their impact. Maybe in my old age, when I own a private island or two, I’ll drop in on my accounting department and see how things have changed in the last decade of not worrying.

Feb 21 – Authoring The Sky

Oh great... just when you think advertising can’t get more pervasive, some of the brains at MIT come up with something new. Having something like that hovering in the sky at night would be a hazard to air  traffic, and I can’t see it being approved over major cities.

I had a good conversation with Brian today about things relating to StarShipSofa.com, as a vehicle for both my writing and podcast work. I was reminded of a recent posting on io9.com, which takes a mathematical look at what age popular authors were first published at.

DejaVu: the lovely weather means my head is paining me something awful today, so I’ve spent most of the day NOT watching TV, but reading, napping and popping headache tablets. At least it was bearable by the time I had to head into Victoria for a work meeting around dinnertime, which was very positive: we’re looking to hire people. With the work outlook looking brighter, my stress levels will dim – I like.

Writing the blog this week was somewhat easier, as my eyes weren’t tired from the contacts being in for over 12 hours. This time next week I’ll have my new glasses with a new prescription, so that may mean the headaches will return – at least until I get used to them.

Sneezing, Sodas and Stress

This week sort of blurred by... kind of like my vision did too. So that's the word of the week - if you can see it.

Feb 8 – Stuffed

Starting the week mostly by killing Kleenexes is not a good thing, as I worked through whatever has decided to invade my system. I didn’t get much done outside of napping, as I’m finding it difficult to focus. No sign of it being man flu though, which is good, and I’ve had my H1N1 and flu shots both. Hopefully it’s only a short-lived bug.

Yeesh... how bad is sugar for you? A recent study found that people who drank more than two sugary sodas a week have increased rates of certain cancers; not good. I myself drink only root beer, at the rate of about a bottle every week and a half. Not a lot, but looking at the study data, I should cut back. Sugar as a whole seems to be more and more maligned as part of one’s diet, though substituting other things like Oelstra might not be a good idea either...

Do any of you lovely readers out there in the wild use Twitter? I’ve not dabbled in this new medium of communication yet, mainly for the fact that I haven’t found a use for it – as someone else famously once said about the internet, for that matter. As for Twitter: does it matter to some of you? Or not at all?

Feb 9 - Surprise on a Sick Day

Riviting: we had a surprised audit at work today, and frustratingly I didn’t do as well as I’d hoped. Weighted audits are like that; miss an initial or a question and the whole house of cards collapses. I understand that audits are in place to ensure you’re doing your job, yet how does it help managers who work their asses off every minute of every day and STILL have things like this come down on them? Does it improve morale? No. Improve productivity? No. It does instill an imminent sense of failure, in that no matter how hard one works, there will always be something they miss that will bring the entire house down. Which if it were an actual house, I would understand; Mike Holmes is always going on about how one little hidden error can cost thousands. Yet with my job, customer service comes first... employee development second, and paperwork third. Guess what got dinged on the audit? Yeah. My work isn’t my life, and if I make it my life in order to be the 'perfect' manager, where does that leave me? Without time or energy to do anything else - that's called a conundrum, and not a compromise I am willing to make.

At least the construction downstairs has not been of the over-loud variety in the last few weeks. They have reached the fit-and-finish stage of things, where items such as carpets and paint are being put in; all the heavy cutting, hammering and sawing looks to have been completed. As it stands right now, we are not considering moving downstairs when our lease is up, as our brief inquiries as to the new monthly rent for the lower suite has shown the price to be substantially higher than the previous tenant’s was. So we’re now actively looking for accommodations in the area that will suit our budget, and hope to have such in place well before the end of the year and our lease, as such.

Feb 10 - Old is New Again

Small is the new big, at least when it comes to new homes. At the recent International Builder’s Show in Las Vegas, smaller homes were all that people were talking about. Using the space you have wisely, maximizing its potential, is what the market seems to be shifting towards. You can also use this handy Affordability Tool to see what your future space might shape up as. Mine looks to be a cross between a moon rocket and a single-room treehouse, both of which may not be mutually-exclusive concepts...

This week I’ve popped in my copy of Undergrads to watch the first( and only, sadly )season again. The short run that the show had on television has not hurt its popularity, as it continues to gather a following through word of mouth( like this blog, fr’instance! ). I have found it to be very rewatchable, with great character designs and excellent writing that captures the college / university experience, as penned by the show’s creator Pete Williams – how could you go wrong with a first name like that?

On my own creative side of things, I’ve worked on a few ideas that I’ve had for articles this week, though neither are fiction stories. One concerns the direction people are taking when it comes to media, and the other looks at how people are forming their own social networks – both topics I have an opinion on I feel worth sharing. As for the fiction: more on that as I wrestle the creativity from its hiding spot.

Feb 11 - Better Data

I’m feeling a little better about the audit from earlier in the week, as word has come down the pipeline that Dire Things are not going to happen from the generally spotty results of the area’s audits. Apparently they were done more to gain an idea of what needs improving than to set up forms of punishment for people. Which is nice, but still stressful – but that’s life.

Ones and zeros: the basic building blocks of data. I’ve mentioned before that I plan on getting an SSD( solid state drive )for my laptop eventually... but I’ve never explained why. Now the basics of the SSD can be read about here courtesy of Gizmondo.com, and you can see why they’re the future of data storage. So your YouTube videos, vacation pictures and chain letters to friends will be more accessible than ever.

Today I renewed my XboxLive Gold membership for another year; despite my using it only a few times a week, I still like the access it gives me to friends and games, in that order. I also like the occasional deal that crops up, like this week’s ½-off sale on Turtles in Time, an update of the classic TMNT side-scrolling fighting game from the 80’s that I remember playing for the first time in an arcade on Yonge St. So... cowabunga dudes!

Feb 12 - Fragility

With my shifting around of some staff from my store, I ended up having the day off today – mostly. I went in with one staffer to open the store, and then was off to do things in Victoria until well into the afternoon – including a stop at Arby’s for a Chicken Bacon sandwich that was decently tasty, but the curly fries left something to be desired. I spent part of the afternoon sorting paperwork, filing things that have piled up over the last few months – necessary, but not very noteworthy I’m afraid. I still wish for the day when I can just feed the lot into a scanner and store them all electronically, but that is still neither practical for speed initially nor safe for the long-term storage of such documents. So far, I’ve only found one brand of CD-ROM by Maxell that guarantees a hundred-year data lifespan; not good.

Today ended on a low note: while I was watching television in the evening, my glasses decided to quietly divide themselves in two and fall off my face. They are a frameless design, and I wouldn’t recommend such a design to anyone as of now, due to their inherent fragility and the virtual impossibility of easy repairs. So for now, I’ll be using my contacts at work, and the taped-together pair of glasses while at home, at least until I find a cost-effective location to purchase a new pair.

As to that television I watched:  I tuned into the opening ceremonies to the Winter Olympics despite myself. The spectacle was hard to resist, with huge numbers of cast, colourful costumes and my favourite: special effects. The projected images, lighting effects and overall production standards were incredibly impressive, and I found myself smiling throughout the show as I watched it on my big screen.

Feb 13 - Hurty Head

Due to having yesterday off, I worked today instead. Overall, it wasn’t half-bad, being fairly steady but without any crazed-rush periods that seem to mark Fridays of late. People are getting their T4’s this week and next, so we should start seeing lineups for taxes any day now; a good thing, but not if people all decide to file their taxes at the same time of day. One problem we run into as well is that some folk rush to file their taxes as soon as they get a T4 slip... instead of waiting until their other T4’s arrive. Which then causes problems when they sheepishly come back in a few weeks later to try to file again...

By day’s end, I had a migraine that I largely attributed to eyestrain, from my being unused to wearing contacts for a prolonged period – it’s been more than three years since the last time I regularly used contacts. Luckily I had kept the backup contacts I had left on hand, as they were ones that I received along with my glasses that have now failed. The lot expires later in the year, but that means I can still see until then. For now I’ll be sure to JUST wear the contacts during work shifts and take them out as soon as I get home, as I’m not really thrilled with the headaches they’ve induced. They are the proper prescription, but the focal distances are disparate – the eyes focus at a different distance with glasses.

Thankfully, I seem to be mainly over whatever it was I was coming down with this time last week. My slaying of Kleenexes has lessened to the point of a few an hour, and I’ve managed to begin regular breathing through my nose again – the world of smells has returned. Which given the stale indoor air of the winter season, is not saying much. I’ve yet to see most homes convert over to fresh-air heat-recovery systems, which would see home air quality improve a great deal, given the well-sealed state of most homes in Canada. Except for those in BC, where just having insulation in the walls gets you high marks.

Feb 14 - I Heart Blog

Given today’s date, of course I have to write about love. Over the years, I’ve been a member of all the various online dating sites( mostly the free ones, of course )and found very little of substance there. Like it or not, the only way to meet new people is to actually go out, but in that context I’ve always found bars my least favourite place to do so. For the nonce, I’m busy enough that adding another half to that equation doesn’t make sense, but as always the best laid plans usually fail fastest. So no plans, either for today or the near future... and as for the far future, who knows? Maybe a Futurama-esque Lucy Liu?  Should you settle? No. Should you despair that you haven’t found someone yet? No. My theory on this is the longer you are alone, the greater the reward of finding that special someone. My theory, anyway.

Today marks three years since Ryan Larkin passed away. He was a visionary animator from the early 70’s, whose work revolutionized animation and inspired a generation of creative animators. Larkin was the subject of the 2005 Oscar-winning 3D animated short simply entitled Ryan, where his life was examined via CGI for his influence on the genre and his state of mind was brought to light. Lovely work.

I think it’s appropriate to end this week’s blog with a site that offers links to all things bacon. For those who love bacon, what could be better than a list of dozens of places to sate your heart’s desire? Maybe I should also link to a few sites that have cardio-exercise programs too, for that matter... mmm, bacon.

Nertz – my head is again killing me tonight, so I’m going to do some quiet listening to some Starship Sofa podcasts, I think, with silent thoughts about the future.