Nemesis, Nostalgia and Numbers

The Word of the Week is....nostalgist.

Aug 16 – Spring Vacation?

Winter’s a-comin’ soon, and with that thoughts of leaving cold Canada for warmer climes. I’m better off than most here in Victoria, where snow is somewhat of a stranger most years( except 2008! )so I can’t complain. I’ve been to Mexico twice, but I’ve never been to a ‘tourist’ resort where the plan is to party hearty for the whole time one is there – no sitting on the beach watching the stick in the sand tell the time. I’ll be keeping an eye on sites like Expedia.ca and FlightCentre.ca to see what packages I can find on the cheap.

What’s your favourite season? Mine’s Spring: full of possibilities, where the dull of Winter is put aside in favour of new growth and fresh beginnings. Summer’s the time to play, Fall’s time to buckle down for the passage towards the cold months of Winter that have to be put up with in order to reach Spring again. Strangely, some folks over at the Battlefield 2: Bad Company Forums say that Winter is their fave season... better camouflage?

Aug 17 – Talking Dimensions and Space At Home

Though I didn’t grow up to be a scientist, I still harbour a fascination with many areas of the scientific world. Rene put me onto the following great video on YouTube, which is all about the Ten Dimensions – there’s not just three anymore:

Those of you who’ve read my blog for a while know that I enjoy talking about efficient use of space in homes, given the places that I’ve lived while in BC have all been rather limited in size. One architect who has perfected the art of maximizing space in innovative ways is Gary Chang, who grew up in Hong Kong where space is always at a premium with 7 million people packed into the city. His space-saving Hong Kong apartment uses foldaway storage and reconfigurable elements to turn one 330sq-ft room into many, all again without compromising the function of any element. Watch the video on his website and you’ll see what I mean – who needs a big house, anyway?

Aug 18 – Wince-worthy War

Sometimes I’ve winced at the way some people use words in a sentence; I’m not an editor, but it still makes a part of my brain hurt to hear the language mangled severely. One of the things that people often misuse in a sentence when writing is “i.e.” – which is short for “that is” not “here are some examples” of things. TheOatmeal.com has a great example of how i.e. should be used, very similar to Bob The Angry Flower’s visual rant on the humble apostrophe – flower up, dudes.

Ouch – I had my butt handed to me in Battlefield: Bad Company 2 tonight. The game isn’t designed for going solo, as it’s squad-based so that you have your buddies there to back you up / cover you / revive you / resupply you during combat. But, since I’m too cheap to splurge on purchasing a bunch of the upgrade packs’ to get myself more weapons in a flash, I’ve been working my way through each of the kits to try and get gear to help me in the game. Guess what? A LOT of the other guys already have MOST of that gear and it really helps: I was on the receiving end of a LOT of fire tonight as I slogged my way through each session. By the end I was really grumpy; in some games I had multiple ‘Nemesis’ players on the other team, whose skill combined with gear meant I was meat on the table for many a match. Grrr.

Aug 19 – Star Wars and Nostalgia

Last week, the LA Times ran an excellent piece interviewing Gary Kurtz, who was the producer on two of the original Star Wars films and Jim Henson’s The Dark Crystal. In the interview, Kurtz talks in detail about how he parted from George Lucas over the direction that the third Star Wars film was to take. I found it interesting to read, as Kurtz makes some great points about commercialism and filmmaking in general. Definitely worth the read IMHO.

On occasion, a song will stick in your head and you can’t get it out. More commonly, you start the day off with a song in your head – see if you can’t remember the last one that got stuck there! This week I’ve have the theme song from “Tales of the Green Forest” in my head from my childhood, as it aired on TV Ontario back in the eighties. A little searching found a few videos and little else, as this Green Forest nostalgist writes – apparently The Green Forest is lost between the original broadcast and DVD, never to see the light of day. Weird.

Aug 20 – Can’t Budget Friendship

Yes, it’s hard sometimes working for a living... but I’ve seen a lot of alternative lifestyle representatives walk through the branch doors over the years, and so far I like earning a wage by comparison. Work to live, don’t live to work though – keeping a work / life balance as you go along means you have things to do outside of the office / workplace that keep you sane. I see a lot of people’s paystubs and I have to say it’s not what you earn but how you spend it – it’s shocking how many people keep throwing money at a problem instead of just thinking about alternative ways to solve things, like budgeting. Maybe budgeting should be taught as early as high school?

Tonight I talked to two of my favourite people, both of them out-of-the-blue calls, which are usually the best kind. First was Lucas, who told me all about his Kilt experience in the company of a ravishing redhead, who are my version of Kryptonite you could say. Makes me want to be able to hop a flight back to Niagara once a month or so just to see what goes on at the Kilt these days. Later on, Rene called and we caught up on things; it’s been some months since we last managed to connect. I was thrilled to hear that he’s gone through a ‘sea change’ for the better recently, which is less than he truly deserves given the rotten luck he’s had this year. All in all it was a great night to catch up with friends, which I wish would happen more often... maybe when I’m working less and have more interesting things to report about my own life?

Aug 21 – Kickass Waiters

I’ve talked about doing podcasts recently, and the idea is still buzzing around in my head. I have looked at some of the ways that people are expressing themselves on the web nowadays: blogs, podcasts, journals and more... one of the more interesting ways is on a YouTube channel of your very own, like WheezyWaiter. Who has a beard and reminds me of Kevin Spacey, sort of, and is fairly funny – who said original material is just for budding comics? Still, I’m not sure I’d be that interesting on camera, though I’m told I’m not likely to crack the lens when I crack a smile... just when I crack a joke, people may scream a little bit. Or poop themselves. Or something. Have a look at Justin.Tv where people have channels galore!

After a rather busy day where everything I wanted to complete at work kept getting interrupted, I was ready to kick some ass. Which is perfect, as I watched Kick-Ass via a Zune rental on Xbox Live. It was my first Zune rental, and took over an hour to download on my lite-version internet -8.6 gigs of HD goodness doesn’t move quickly. I liked the movie, as it had original moments and really moved the plot along without any slow spots. I agree that HitGirl stole the show, though I wondered at the morality of a ‘tween killer whose body-count numbered in the dozens yet that aspect of the ‘hero’ never gets a word of airtime in the movie. The Wolverine reference was also fun with the x-rays – but where’s the claws?

Aug 22 – Training for Rentals

Bleh – work again was true to form, with the day averaging one person every ten minutes all day long. Meaning I got nothing done towards catching up on my manager duties, which are again delayed towards another day... backed up again, with more ‘vital’ tasks piling up. I’ve been training two new employees all this week, which has actually been quite pleasant as they’re both extremely quick learners. I enjoy training( my parent’s teaching background coming to the fore, perhaps? )and it’s my aim to have them both ready for the front lines in less than three weeks time. I’ve been told I’m the premier trainer on the Island and so far all the people I’ve trained have remained both with the company and solid employees all, so maybe there’s something to that.

Disappointingly, I was unable to watch Kick-Ass again to pick out any hidden references or stop-motion a few scenes, as the Zune rental expires 24 hours after watching( or 14 days after download without watching ). Seems like a rip to me, though it’s the same as returning a DVD to the rental shop. If it weren’t for the download time, I might use the service again, but for now I’ll consider other services like Zip.ca for DVD rentals or a streaming service like  NetFlix, which is coming to Canada Fall 2010.

Next week: something more interesting. Or at least different. Mayhaps.

Files, Fallingwater and Fridays

The Word of the Week is...ignoble.

Aug 9 – Stress Roomies

Today’s Monday, which means... a new Newt And John comic has been released out into the wild! What do I like the most about this webcomic, apart from the fact it’s written by the very talented Mike Hogue? Well, it’s about two roomies... who despite their differences, seem to get along quite well in all their crazy adventures together. It’s about friendship enduring hardships, trust, and boatloads of humour. Never having had a roommate, I find the concept both fascinating and scary – which is why I keep coming back to laugh every week. Thanks Mike!

Laughter is good, because work has me really, really stressed in the last few weeks. I’ve got to get out and exercise more, as well as serious look at some massage therapy – the fall season doesn’t look to be any less stressful, despite new staff coming into the picture. I think what gets me the most is Death By A Thousand Cuts, where it’s all the little details that end up killing you slowly – much like when Londo from B5 quoted Eric Sevareid saying “it’s like being nibbled to death by ducks.” While slow, in the end you still end up perishing, just not as quickly as it would be with, say, a wild cougar.

Aug 10 - Stark Prices

Here’s something I forgot to post a few weeks ago: Iron Man was in town here in Victoria. Specifically, he was here to open the new Best Buy in the city– I was reminded of the openings of a few ToysR’Us stores back in the 80’s with the likes of Mister T and Knight Rider, neither of whom I got to see, due to the massive crowds that gathered. Doesn’t look like the case here:

Keeping up on current prices is always a good idea when you’re in the market for something, be it large or small. I always keep current on costs for computers and entertainment tech in general, as that’s where my interests are. When it comes to cars, I’m not all that current, which is why I’m glad I discovered Consumer Guide Automotive – they have tons of great info that let me have a solid idea of what I should be paying for a given model and year of vehicle. Armed with that info, you can make a far better informed choice when shopping at dealers – remember not to get the extended paint warranty!

Aug 11 - On blogging...

Today I had a thought about my blog, comparing it to a journal – they’re not the same, and don’t serve the same purpose. A journal is more like a diary, where you put down thoughts that will likely never be read by anyone save yourself or by others perhaps in the distant future after you’ve passed on. A blog in the meaning of this one I keep is meant to catch people up on what you’re doing, as well as providing a small means of documenting how your life is going in general every week. It collects your interests at the time, puts  the things that you’re working on into better focus and generally lets you get things out that may have been stuck in your brain for a while. I have a lot of those.

Along with my blog, I sometimes have pictures and videos that I plug right in – nice that you can do that these days with almost no effort at all. But what if you want to share some larger files with people, say that video montage that you made from old BlackAdder episodes that isn’t really appropriate for YouTube, or a video game that you’ve slaved on for months? I’ve search for file hosting for a while, found a place called FileFactory that’s decent... but it’s still not ideal, as it has quite a few limits placed on downloads. Maybe Torrents are the way to go now, cloud computing and all that...

Aug 12 - Falling Silicon

Architecture is one of my interests, though I admit it’s more of an admiration of the unique than anything to do with structural engineering – mathematics of that level are simply beyond me without study and practice. One place I keep coming back to look at year after year is Fallingwater, the house constructed by Frank Lloyd Wright that many consider his masterwork. C|Net has a visual tour of the place online as of today, and I think it’s well worth the browse. If I ever come into major money, I would seriously consider building a similar home in a similar setting, here in BC, rather than buying a new-built place or renovating an older place somewhere.

Despite my current lack of success in repurposing my 7-year old PC as a media server, I’m still much in favour up upgrading one’s older PC instead of buying a new one every other year – within limits. Gizmodo has a great Upgrade Guide On The Cheap, which I like very much; some sound advice in there. I’m planning on upgrading both my laptops in the new year with SSD drives, which will improve their speed and lower power usage considerably. Huzzah!

Aug 13 - Lucky Moi

Unlike some people, I don’t give Friday the 13^th much thought, as I have a lot more to worry about than unlucky superstitions. Really, who has time to watch for black cats, ladders, and other things that supposedly herald bad luck? I have news for you folks: so far, I’ve had an eagle eye out for GOOD luck, as I have all the bad luck I can handle, thanks. It’s then that you make sure your appreciate the little good things that keep popping up, like the coffee shop keeping the last peanut butter cookie aside for you, since you always come in on a certain day to ask for it. Those are the little things in life that you should love, and bad luck has nothing to do with them at all.

The second of my two replacement adaptors arrived today, along with record temperatures outside, which I find amusing in an annoying way. Most laptop power adaptors run hot, so in the interest of keeping these two replacements alive, I have them cozened up to a large fan to keep them cool 24/7 – my online research indicates that nobody out there makes cool-running adaptors for laptops. Sure, you can buy tons of cooling gear for your desktop PC parts, but nada in the way for laptop power. Hmmm... apart from the sizzle of overheated adaptor, I smell an opportunity here. Anyone want to come up with a business plan with me?

Aug 14 - Undead Browsing

FireFox is the browser I use day to day, due to its stability, huge number of customizable options and continual improvement. I stayed away for a while a few years ago when the program became bloated and buggy, but the newest versions are solid and great to use. Apart from such great extensions  like Xmarks, WheelOfTrust and BarTab, you can customize the look of FireFox with themes, like this one - by Thundara!

The movie for tonight was George Romero’s 1990 remake of Night Of The Living Dead, starring Tony Todd and my fave gal Patricia Tallman of Babylon 5 fame. Like a lot of horror movies up to and from that era, the special effects / gore are the real stars, despite the human drama. Indeed, at the end things are really, really preachy about the barbaric nature of humanity in its treatment of zombies... weird, but there you are. Mmmm... brains?

Aug 15 - A walk...

Today was my typical Sunday off: get up ‘late’ after 9am, enjoy a leisurely breakfast, and then hop online to see who’s around for Xbox. Turns out nobody, so I went for a bike ride along the unfinished main entrance to Bear Mountain, which is quiet, scenic, and chock-full of rocks – have a look:

The afternoon was spent playing BF2, which saw some really high scores( thanks to a couple of 5K achievements )and some really, really bad scores. Fun was mostly had, and I rolled into a game of Borderlands with Lucas that saw some decent progress made – apparently the Berserker is not to his taste, but suits me fine. Great game, in that we can keep coming back to it.

One advantage( and one of the few good things )about working so much this week and last is that I’ve been able to enjoy solid air conditioning all day long. Today was a scorcher, closing in on 38C outside, but thankfully with very little humidity – I love BC! Still, when you’re sweltering inside at a few degrees below that, it’s not all that great anyway. Taking off to spend some time in a cool coffee shop is a great way to beat the heat, which I did today – finding a cool pool, shopping mall or library also works quite well.

I’m typing this outside on my balcony, where the patio stones are radiating heat well after 9pm as the late summer sun sets over the forested hills here. A light breeze has picked up to cool the air and it’s just perfect – no bugs to bother me, nothing but the sound of the frogs in the pond below and the occasional little human sounds coming from the area around. Lovely.

Wasps, Work and Wednesdays

An even shorter version of the blog this week: half in haiku and link-free!

Aug 2 - Happy BC Day, Canada!

Being busy can be painful.

Sometimes it seems you move backwards slowly.

Dealing with it is artful.

Today was BC Day here in British Columbia, a holiday not shared by all the other provinces. Usually it means people get outside to enjoy themselves, but today I put myself on the schedule so I could give my staff each a 3-day weekend. Silly me. It was a busy day, like Friday, Saturday and Sunday were as well so I got little done aside from the usual daily operations tasks. Nothing like falling behind by inches to make you wonder about the order of things. However, my nausea seems to be under control, thanks to my Tecta once a day; the prescription costs about a dollar a day, which is manageable given that I don't worry overmuch about feeling sick of a sudden now. though I still have moments that I have to talk to the doc about, it's about 90 percent licked.

Aug 3 - Visitors

If Tuesday is like Monday,

How well does that bode for Wednesday?

The week can be confusing.

Yesterday was busy, and today was as well. I had a visitor from head office here for the entire day to better “get a feel” about how the retail end of things work, and boy did she get an eyeful. Most of my afternoon and evening was spent at the counter serving customers, doing my ready best to provide top-level service perfection to show how things should be done in every transaction. By the end, I was quite tired and my throat was hoarse, but I felt I had given a good accounting for my visitor.

Aug 4 - Calling Friends

Days off are very precious.

They should be spent like precious gems,

To be treasured, like friends.

My one day off, and I still had enough left to catch up on at work that I had to go in for 4 hours at noon. Thankfully, I managed to dodge enough phone calls and emails to get what I needed to done, which was somewhat of a surprise at the end. I made it out after 4pm in time for a 5pm doctor's appointment in Victoria, after which I went down to the beach at Beacon Hill Park on Dallas Rd and spent a little time watching the waves at work. The walking paths extend all along the south shore of Victoria and are a haven for joggers, dog walkers and other nature-lovers. There are quite a few places along the walk to relax, on benches or down stairs leading to various scenic spots. It was quite relaxing, and the evening was capped off by a surprise call from Lucas, which was over an hour of great topical chat. S'what friends are all about, really – thanks, Lucas!

Aug 5 - Ouch? It's all gone hazy...

Today, nature hurt me some.

A wasp stung my finger; it swelled.

It just made work harder.

The day started out fairly well; I went over to the Mountain Bean for a bit to relax before work. It was nice, given that it's been hazy all week due to the more than 400 forest fires burning on the mainland here in BC – there was a rare air quality warning today on Vancouver Island, as the wind had blown huge drafts of smoke our way, making the sunset last night a strange orange-red colour. At work, I went out to lock the garbage bin with our new lock... and was stung on my left index finger by a wasp for my trouble, for no reason I can tell. It swelled up hugely and was quite painful, so I called BC Telehealth for advice; they told me what to watch for in case of an allergic reaction to the sting, as I couldn't recall the last time it had happened to me. Some antihistimines brought the swelling under control within a few hours, so I soldiered on for the rest of my shift quite annoyed at the randomness of life. At least I had another blazing red hazy sunset at the end to make things seem rosy when I went home.

Aug 6 - Working yet again...

eBay came through for me.

My adaptor arrived today, making me happy.

The laptop thanked me too.

Six days of seven I've worked this week, which seems to be all the blog is turning out to be – considering that as of day's end today I had worked some 47 hours already, it's truer than you think. All that time was well-spent though, as I felt fairly caught up by today, with only a few hours of manager tasks awaiting me next week – including another visit from the higher-ups at head office that is always stressful if you're not prepared enough. On the bright side, both of the stores I am managing are doing very well, with some of the best numbers of all the stores in the district and some of the best staff too. So I'm hopeful that the tide is turning and that the remaining months of the year will see less stress for me and more positive results for the stores.

Aug 7 - Saturday Sliding Away...

After work, I was tired.

But still, the police needed my memories.

After that, my arm hurt.

It wasn't a bad day at work, all in all – I managed to wrap most of my work up today before leaving a little early, well before 4pm. I didn't go home though; I had an appointment at the RCMP to do a photo lineup to identify a suspect in a stolen cheque case from a few weeks ago. I was happy to oblige, as it would likely mean more serious jail time for the suspect, given their already large police file. Another stop for a tetanus shot( recommended by the BC TeleHealth for the wasp bite and I needed the update anyway )then it was home for a relaxing evening... but without my laptop. The AC adaptor felt FAR too hot, and refused to charge my laptop even with intense fan cooling – so much for surfing the 'net or other tasks. I consoled myself by watching TRON, which was a lot better than I had expected – I'd not seen it in almost 25 years or more and it held up very well overall, despite some differences in what 'cutting edge' meant then and now.

Aug 8 - Blast it!

Skags are hungry and vicious,

But still pale next to real people.

Battlefield and Borderlands all day.

After giving up on charging my older laptop, I decided today was a wash for getting anything done on my various projects since I didn't have access to any of the files on either of my laptops. So instead, I hopped onto Xbox Live and didn't look back – it was late afternoon by the time I had played through 20 levels of character development on Borderlands with Lucas, which was damn good fun. Later on I joined Dave, Bill and a few others in blasting bad guys on Battlefield 2: Bad Company where I held my own for most of the games, making it to level 5 and unlocking a few more weapons, gadgets etc.

Since my Compaq's replacement AC adaptor failed yesterday, the blog was back to basic notes for this week. I hope, I hope, that the adaptor for my newer Gateway arrives early this week, as that laptop's been gathering dust for 2 weeks now. Very frustrating, I have to say, being denied easy internet use as well as all the other PC functions that we're used to.

Tecta, TMNT and Trevor

The word of the week is foreshortened – deal with it.

July 26 - Be My Guest!

On my way to and from bear Mountain, I see at least one or more deer a day, lingering quite close to the roadside( if not on it! )and almost unafraid of cars. Really, they should have named the place Deer Mountain, as there have to be hundreds of the creatures in the woods of the area. When I called the Langford City Hall to ask why there weren't deer warning signs on the roads leading up the mountain, I was told “All the locals know there are deer, so it's not necessary” - rather rudely, at that. So I presume that all the tourists and visitors to the area have foreknowledge of the deer somehow, and that when the inevitable happens and someone gets hurt in a collision, that the city has that excuse ready and quite lawyer-proof...

I was at work earlier than I expected today, as we're now 'hosting' staff from our local head office every few days for training. Specifically, I've been singled out as the 'best able' to present how staff and stores function at the Retail level, so as to help Head Office staff understand how to better help us do our daily jobs. While some people would turn this into an hours-long complaint fest, I look at it as an opportunity to get Head Office staff focusing on how to quickly solve Retail problems. Which means in essence that instead of Retail staff seeing their requests end up in an electronic black hole when trying to get Head Office to help with something, we might actually make lines of communication easier and more productive. Which in the end would make my job easier – so I show up early today and teach, no big deal really and I think it went very well indeed.

July 27 - Meeting Surges

Morning saw me in Victoria for an early doctor's appointment, where I picked up a solid prescription for Tecta which is making a big difference my my nausea bouts. Seems that one of these tiny pills a day keeps the barfing away, which I can appreciate as it gets in the way of my job when I have to excuse myself from the counter constantly during the day. Whatever the underlying condition is, so far the Tecta is treating the symptoms, which reduces one more stress factor from my massively full plate. The rest of my day was spent in a monthly manager's meeting, which I won't detail – suffice to say that more was loaded onto our plates with firmly-fixed smiles and the subtle glitter of dire punishments if we failed to figure out how to balance things anew – nothing surprising there at all.

I surfed around a few of my fave tech shopping sites that evening while on the balcony, again using my parent's Dell laptop as mine were out of power. I was looking for a portable surge protector, specifically one designed for laptops. There were no solid ones on eBay, so I went to NCIX.com, TigerDirect.ca and a few others until I found a good APC protector on BPDirect.com – for less than thirty dollars including shipping I bought peace of mind. Silly when you think about it; I've had a UPS on my home PC's for years, but I never thought that I would need one while OUT of the house, not being one used to having a laptop. Goes to show you have to really try to think of things ahead of time, to be prepared for the Law of Unintended Consequences. Damn you Murphy!

July 28 - Make Beer, not PC's

Most of my one day off today was spent trying to get my older PC working using a variety of methods and operating systems... to no avail. Ubuntu, RedHat12( and 13 )as well as Windows Home Server simply won't install on the machine, for various reasons. In all cases, I blame Murphy: each failure drives like a sliver of bamboo under a fingernail, as I'm THAT close in each case to getting it to work, except for one minor glitch each time that prevents me from completing the install. Very, very frustrating, especially as it would give me a PC to use apart from the currently-defunct laptops. I hate to see good hardware idle and I am angered that I can't get the damn system to accept an OS. It's not TOO much to ask, really... is it?

The origins of Beersbee seem shrouded in mystery, according to a few web searches I did today. On the one hand, there is the history listed at Beersbee.org along with rules and some photos, as well as the listing at RealAlberta.com – seems to be a different game than the one I am familiar with from Ontario, which involves no poles and has only two players at a time. Seeing as I barely get out here as it is, it's highly unlikely that I'll run into a BC variation of the game around here – I'll have to think of my own variant while planning for next summer's outings.

July 29 - Trevor Visits! No BPA!

Today I left work a few hours early, in order to give Trevor and his family a tour of Victoria. We started out things right with a late lunch at John's Place downtown, which won praise for its fantastic food and unbelievably low prices. The bread especially was pronounced superb by one and all. After settling them into the Scots Hotel near the harbour, we went over the Parliament buildings and took a tour of the provincial digs, including the grand entry hall where $10,000 of gold leaf adorns the walls – our taxes at work, though 10K is really peanuts all in all. Following that, we enjoyed some great root beer floats down on Government street, watched a few street performers put on their act, and toured the downtown pedestrian areas along with a fair crowd of other folks walking hither-whither. As dusk approached, I caught a ride back to Bear Mountain from Trevor, but we idled a while on the patio at Jack's Place to shoot the breeze, enjoy the lovely summer evening weather and to speculate on the total lack of mosquitoes and other sundry airborne pests in BC. All in all, it was a grand day that I enjoyed immensely, as I believe Trevor and his family did as well.

Remember the BPA scare of last year? Well, it's back, this time in the form of cash register receipts – go figure. Seems that forty percent of US receipts tested contained levels of BPA, which has set off alarm bells all over the place – not here though, which I found surprising, as people were quick to get rid of water bottles containing BPA. Strange, as receipts are everywhere – have YOU seen anyone putting on gloves to handle receipts this week?

July 30 - Sainted Alias

A fairly long day at work, begun early and seasoned with a smattering of schmucks throughout the day – trying to help people is its own reward, because they sure don't appreciate it sometimes. I was told a few times by my staff that I have the patience of a saint, as I managed to turn several customers from venom-spewing idiots into people who listened attentively to what I had to say, as it meant that their problems would be solved simply and quickly. Why complain loud and long, if the alternative is to listen for a few seconds to someone who's been doing this sort of thing for almost ten years? Makes sense, right? Anyway, I lent a hand at both stores today and managed to get home before 8pm, making it 'only' a 12-hour day...

While worn out, I did manage to catch up on a few more episodes of Alias tonight to finish off the fourth season finally. It's been a long time since I started watching the series, but thanks to Mike I managed to keep my interest alive to make it to the final season this week – I'll hopefully start it this weekend. In the meantime, I still think Ben Afleck must have worked some kind of hypnosis on Jennifer Garner; how else could such a babe fall for such a goof?

July 31 - Demolishing Cartoons

Saturday morning cartoons stink nowadays – the heyday of the Eighties has long since passed, and I don't recognize a lot of what's out there when flipping through the channel listings before work. A lot of shows seem like commercials for Japanese toy systems, and while the TMNT are still around they seem somewhat less... fun? If that's possible? Makes you wonder if kids and TV are parting ways, to make way for video games and the online experience in general. I see more and more people texting / talking on cells when I'm out, lost in their own little worlds and removed a step or two from the reality around them.

Demolition Man was on tonight, which I always enjoy catching on TV as it has the lovely Sandra Bullock in one of her earliest roles. Bonus that she wears spandex for most of the movie too. Not a bad flick really, even factoring in Stallone and Snipes, who put on a good show of hating each other's guys without too many snarls or long-winded jibes. Definitely re-watchable, as even the parts with Denis Leary in them aren't hard to take... mostly.

Aug 1^st - Summer's Half Done? 

Not much to say about today – I worked again, giving my staff each a 3-day weekend. The branch was busy, so much so that I didn't manage to catch up on any of the 'must-do-now' projects that I had hoped a Sunday would provide me some time to work on. I averaged one customer served every nine minutes for the sever hours the doors were open today, which as you can imagine leaves little time for aught else when you factor in the daily paperwork, calls etc that each day loves to provide one with.

Creating the blog tonight using OpenOffice on my parent's laptop, as I'm still waiting for one or the other of my replacement power supplies to arrive from eBay. I'm also still waiting for the manager from The Mountain Bean to call me; I'll stop in Tuesday I think to have another go at actually talking to her. For now, I'm just relieved that neither laptop seems to be damaged – I could claim that the USB ports on my newer laptop were fried, but they stopped working months ago and I'm not that kind of person. I see enough of people trying to take advantage of my company every day; at least today there was some payback, as a fraudster was arrested at another branch late today - I had left notes in the computer directing staff to call police should he be dumb enough to show his face again at one of our stores, and today he proved my predictions right. Goes to show that greed will overpower common sense time and again. Made me smile - briefly.

That's it for now - I'm just waiting on NewtAndJohn tonight, really.

A placeholder ...

Until I manage to extract the blog notes I've entered all this week from my laptop, this minimal blog entry will suffice.

Why do I need to do this, you ask? Well, I blame The Mountain Bean - specifically, their electrical outlets. 

A few weeks ago, I was typing away at the Bean on my older laptop and after a while I decided to plug it back in to charge the battery up again, as it only holds a charge for about 30 mins or so now, being aged and all. Lo and behold, as soon as I did that, the screen began to flicker strangely and I heard the AC adapter making a buzzing sound. I quickly unplugged it and then fired off an email to the eBay seller I had purchased the adapter from asking for a replacement under their Lifetime Warranty, then thought no more of it.

On Saturday, I went over to the Mountain Bean on the first of my days off, thinking to spend some quality time relaxing, surfing and so forth to the accompaniment of hot tea and peanut butter cookies - was I ever wrong. I sat at my usual window spot, set the tea down and plugged in my laptop... only to smell something burning a minute later. Imagine my shock when I looked at the AC adapter to my left to discover wafts of white smoke pouring from it! I whipped the plug out of the wall socket and fearfully checked over my newer and much-more-irreplaceable Gateway FX laptop for damage. Thankfully, it seemed unharmed.

Unfortunately, that leaves me with two laptops without power and batteries that will soon run out - it will be a week or more before replacement AC adapters arrive from eBay, which thankfully are still available and don't cost too much overall. I'm quite miffed at The Bean and I'll be talking to their manager Monday, though in the main I'm just concerned that there's an electrical problem and that it doesn't happen to anyone else. If I have the replacement costs of the adapters covered along with a few free cookies, I'll be satisfied - though a LOT warier about plugging in my expensive and delicate machinery into any old strange socket.

Budgets, Birthdays and Bladders

The Word of the Week is... obdurate

July 12 – Hit Me!

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

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

July 13 – Excel-ing at Handshake

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

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

July 14 – Zerg My Pager!

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

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

July 15 – Mom’s Operation Success

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

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



July 16 – The un-Birthday

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

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

July 17 – Comics and Happiness

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

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

July 18 – Friends and Fools

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

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

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

Laptops, Lifestyle and Longevity

The Word of the Week is... allegory.

July 5 – Writing Art

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

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

July 6 – Crows or Ducts?

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

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

July 7 – Hot Lap Movies

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

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

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

July 8 – Social Drive

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

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

July 9 – On Friends

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

July 10 – Typing Cool

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

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

July 11 – Energy Sweat

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

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

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

Webisodes, Wants and Waverings

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

June 28 – Cops and Webbers

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

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

June 29 – Get Out, Cheaply

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

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

June 30 – Movie Recreations

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

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

July 1st – Canada Day already?

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

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

July 2 – Ponderings

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

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

July 3 – Saving up and Staying Up

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

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

July 4 – Shooting Aliens

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

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

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