Wednesday, June 30, 2004

My Weekend Plans

Mmmmmmmm, 5 day weekend, what to do what to do? Well I think I will start with a little web slinging action from Sam Rami's Spiderman 2, I wonder if Ivan Rami, and Stan Lee have there requisite cameos? Then a good nights sleep and its Canada Day! So I shall celebrate my Canadian pride with some sleeping in, reading, and video games, followed by a 3 hour drive to the cottage. Sweet sweet cottage, well its been a family dream to own a cottage for years, Erin's (for those who just tuned in Erin is my fiancé) parents own a beautiful cottage on Georgian Bay, just about 20-30 minutes past Perry Sound. The cottage is a 3 story A-Frame that stands at the mouth of a small bay, at the bottom of a big bay on Georgian bay. Actually there may or may not be one additional level of bay in between, but the last two bays in the bay hierarchy are Dent Bay and Carling bay (I think.) All these bays aside, the cottage is nice and high with a beautiful view of the bay(s,) and no neighbours crammed up your nose, there are neighbours, just not too close. So I will fritter away Friday and Saturday in cottage style, with lots of sleep, great food, swimming sun and a few light chores. I think I am on task to change the 15 smoke detectors around the place. Just for good measure I think I will add in some video game playing to my task list, I don't want to miss anything important. So if you suckers are reading this, then I hope where ever you are connected to the internet is as nice as mine, and that hopefully your weekend is as good as mine.

Georgian Geoff of the Bays

My mom when grew up in Montreal

Rod's Place

I had a chance last weekend to visit my school buddy Rod at his new house, new to him the house is one hundred years old I'm told. I must say I was surprised, first off his property backs right on to the escarpment in Grimsby Ontario making for a nice backyard. His neighbour had this cool layered thing going with a sauna or something, and Rod said he and his soon to be Wife will be following suit. The deck, the outside of the house, and the garage are awesome. They are mostly new, clean and in great repair. The inside is well laid out, but needs a lot of work; good thing Rod is a handyman, because his floors are going to take forever. Ancient painted and repainted hard wood that is rotted in places is going to be quite the challenge, but if all goes well he should have the place in great shape by the wedding, which is in November. My only negative about the whole trip is that the city planners of Grimsby aught to be taken out back and beaten with a 2x4. Who puts a billion unmarked turns in Main Street? Its freaking MAIN STREET people, the MAIN street of the town, the Street which acts as the MAIN source of traffic and reference for your city, and yet you twist it all up and don't tell people what's going on. I think you have a better chance of finding the end of the rainbow, or at least getting a box of lucky charms before you would find the end of that street. City planers, what can I say, GET A CLUE?

Road induced rage, as opposed to driver induced rage they name is Main Street.

The Majestic Butter tart




Here is the teaser and the link to a great article in today's Toronto Star about the butter tart, yet another Canadian delicacy.

Patriotic pastry
Oh, Canada. You confound us in our search for a unified culinary identity. The regions are so individual and the myriad cultures so diverse, it seems impossible. However, there are a few dishes that are definitely Canadian. And the flakiest, the ooziest and the sweetest of these is the butter tart.

My Weekend Plans

Mmmmmmmm, 5 day weekend, what to do what to do? Well I think I will start with a little web slinging action from Sam Rami's Spiderman 2, I wonder if Ivan Rami, and Stan Lee have there requisite cameos? Then a good nights sleep and its Canada Day! So I shall celebrate my Canadian pride with some sleeping in, reading, and video games, followed by a 3 hour drive to the cottage. Sweet sweet cottage, well its been a family dream to own a cottage for years, Erin's (for those who just tuned in Erin is my fiancé) parents own a beautiful cottage on Georgian Bay, just about 20-30 minutes past Perry Sound. The cottage is a 3 story A-Frame that stands at the mouth of a small bay, at the bottom of a big bay on Georgian bay. Actually there may or may not be one additional level of bay in between, but the last two bays in the bay hierarchy are Dent Bay and Carling bay (I think.) All these bays aside, the cottage is nice and high with a beautiful view of the bay(s,) and no neighbours crammed up your nose, there are neighbours, just not too close. So I will fritter away Friday and Saturday in cottage style, with lots of sleep, great food, swimming sun and a few light chores. I think I am on task to change the 15 smoke detectors around the place. Just for good measure I think I will add in some video game playing to my task list, I don't want to miss anything important. So if you suckers are reading this, then I hope where ever you are connected to the internet is as nice as mine, and that hopefully your weekend is as good as mine.

Georgian Geoff of the Bays

Canada (cont)

Continuing on my sojourn into Canada and Canadian culture I shall examine the beer. The beer is good, in variety and volume; if libations were a bullion currency then the Canadian standard is gold, or maybe platinum. Expert beer consumer Chris Ness has this to say, "it's the middle road, its not quite German quality, but it is better then American beer. You can also get some bad Mexican beer." Really isn't that what's important, I mean who wants to be as crazy and single minded to the devotion of beer craft as the Germans? If we were where would me find the time to have such a high nation sex average (time / year) or time to partake of the nectar of the grain? Yet we do strive for a level of quality far above that of our southern cousins, because they drink shit! So raise your bottles, cans or kegs in salute this weekend, and drink Canadian Gold.

Canada

As Canada day is approaching the annual migration of city dweller to weekend dock rat takes place, I thought I might share my feelings on this fair land of ours. In light of recent elections I have found my Canadian pride and nationalism rekindled, especially by the Bloc Quebecquois. I wonder if there is anything else so distinctly Canadian is having an official political party devoted towards breaking up the country. I mean in any other country you would be committing an act of treason, look at Chechnya. I think in the US as long as you stay on your plot of land, and only come out in the open once in a while to burn a flag, and buy big big big guns you are tolerated, but if you actually started to openly try and divide the country you would probably find yourself in court on treason charges, and my guess is that in some states that carries the death penalty. In Canada mind you, it is a very different story, so different in fact that 12% of the population can elect 18 % of the federal members of parliament. In fact if you take into account the eligible voters who aren't worth a damn (see Minority Government) only 7.2% of the population elected the Bloc into 54 ridings. So here we have this federal party of whiners telling us that Quebec is hard done by and abused by the rest of Canada, and they want Sovereignty. Now I hope Canadian's will recall that Sovereignty as defined by the last referendum lets them keep their Citizenship, passports, currency, and a bunch of other Canadian niceties, but they get self-government. Well, I think it's a load of bullocks, and if Citizens don't like Canada they can migrate, but Quebec is a part of Canada, a part of our history and a part of our national character, and without Quebec we wouldn't have Poutine, and then we might as well just be the 51st State. So fie on you Gilles Duceppe, because I am willing to fight for my right to put cheese curds and gravy on fries!

To say that is the only reason I like Canada is an injustice to Canada and myself, so here are some other things I love about our fair land. Our national/provincial parks, trails and wildlife preserves, if you haven't noticed, Canada is just teaming with nature. To start with we are the second largest country in the world, but population wise we are far from it, and with most of us living with one hour of the border, that makes Canada one seriously empty place. In that emptiness I find beauty that for some has only been shared through the brush strokes of folk like Tom Thompson and the rest of the Group of Seven. At times Canada is sharp, and rugged, great mountains rise like teeth high into the sky, white topped and beautiful. Then Canada can go to the opposite with its majestic forests, and waterways like those of Algonquin Park. I am not a hard-core camper and as such much of Canada isn't open to me, but even when standing at the doors to this great land I am overcome by is wonder. At times the only way I can express the diversity of Canada's nature is with the songs of the Canadian comedy band the Arrogant Worms. In such songs like Rocks and Trees:
Cause we've got rocks and trees, and trees and rocks,
and rocks and trees, and trees and rocks,
and rocks and trees, and trees and rocks,
and rocks and trees, and trees and rocks,
and water.
Or Canada is Really big:
our mountains are very pointy, our prairies are not
the rest is kind of bumpy, but man do we have a lot!
(we've got a lot of land, we've got a whole lot of land)

And the list of patriotic comedy ditties just goes on and on and on. That's another thing about Canada, we can laugh at ourselves and say boy aren't we silly, everyone one has a few jibes, a few laughs and then we move on. Its not like we need some massive documentary that rips off book titles to get our political views across in a hostile manner.

Well my train just pulled in, so off to work I go, I hope this makes it clear I think Canada is great, but if not I have all Canada to drink Canadian beer, sit on a dock in majestic lake country ponder and blog about it.

My name is Geoff, and I have a Canadian problem
"Hi Geoff"

Blogging and word

I would just like to say that Microsoft Word is not blog friendly. In fact while preparing my blog entries from within word I find myself at the mercy of the auto correct feature. Part of it is words tendency to replace apostrophes and quotation marks with stylized equivalent. I suppose that in a word document it is kind of nice to have your 66 99 and 6 9 style punctuation. The problem I have is when they are copied into a pure text editor they are properly displayed, but when they are submitted in the blogger.com's web form, they become horribly mutated and discombobulated entities. Like so "" = “” and '' = ‘’. Don’t get me wrong, I like word, this is just a pet peeve of mine. It just means that my entries require reformatting before posting.

The Punctuationator

Tuesday, June 29, 2004

Minority Government

Well P.M. is still the PM, but other then that everything else has changed. No longer will the Liberals control the house, instead they will have to fight for every inch, and compromise with the other factions. Honestly, I think this is great! I know I have said that I stand behind Paul, that statement is true, but I think in this case, that with the Liberals having a clear minority, it allows them to lead a mandate down the middle of socialist, ecenomic and ecological change. With the checks and balances added by the other stake holders Mr. Martin will have his hands full, and maybe the government will collapse in 12-24 months, but the exciting chance for change in that time can't be ignored. Money for defense, cuts to bloated federal departments, health care, and maybe some excitement in the land of civil liberties, who knows, anything and everything might happen. So common kiddies hold on your seats (for those incumbents who were lucky enough,) and lets see where this country is going.

As an aside, for you worthless shits who didn't vote, yeah you know who you are you 40%, if I catch you bitching about anything that happens between now and your next opportunity to vote, I am going to tell you to stuff it. You had your chance to vote, and only that vote give you the right to my attention. You could have spoiled your ballot, or did a protest vote, or officially abstained, but doing nothing was not an option. You should have gone down to your polling station and made your mark where ever that may be, but for not doing that, you have dropped to the lowest level of my regard, I value the opinion of a Marxist over you, because at least he had the courage to voice his opinion. So between now and then even if the they pass a law to double taxes to all the people who didn't vote I don't want to hear a word out of you, because you don't have a say, you forfeited that privilege!

Lighting effect

Isn't that cool how the light caught the reflective parts on the shoes?

Well I think it is.

These are my new running shoes, and some socks to go with them. Thanks to my friend Kevin, and my scary doctor I started running a few weeks back. It whips the living shit out of me, but I feel energized when I'm done. So after a few weeks in my feet started to hurt. From the get go Kevin kept disrespecting my old shoes. He told me I needed to get proper shoes designed for running, and to my style of running. So after enough pain I did. Boy did it help! Tonight I easily ran most of my route, by at least a full 1/3 more then usual, and when I was not running it wasn't because of pain in my legs, it was because my heart/lungs were pushed to the max and I needed a breather. So thanks Kevin, I'm glad I listened, these shoes ROCK! Also congratdulations to Kevin on completing his triathalon two weeks back.

Popcorn, Satan Cinema's and all things Hydrogenated

!!!!!Warning the following is a highly biased rant, and I don't care!!!!!

When I was but a wee lad of nary a few more winters then seventeen, I worked for a media mega complex of the devil. Not satisfied with an abusive summer job of regular portion evil, I had to super size, so I threw in my lot with Viacom, one of North America's largest forces for the perpetuation of evil. In my part as lowly drudge, I slaved for one particularly sinister subdivision of Viacom, specifically Famous Players. I worked for the dark lord's omni-mega-ultra-demon-plex also known as the Coliseum Mississauga. Now, I would like to clear up any misconception that I might be unbiased in my opinions of this place, but let me state up front 1. I was fired, and 2. I hated them before I got fired, getting fired just helped me hate them more. So let me delve into the evil that is done by this business in a more organized fashion, because if the preceding style is allowed to fall any further below its level of comprehendability, its going to start looking like some crazy guy with a pair of scissors and a news papers cut and pasted it together.

How I knew that the Coliseum was affiliate with the dark lord.

1. Dark Symbols: Specifically the organization and construction of the building placed key components of the building (Box office, managers office, concession, ticket line up, and the washrooms,) at perfect mathematical position to form a pentacle (a known symbol of evil if TV has taught me anything) around the main concession stand.

2. Cacophony of evil praises: At the centre of the theatre stood a gigantic alter to evil, which sprayed forth kernel's, nearly constantly, of evil high into the sky on a regular basis, with each kernel was released and ear splitting cry in praise of dark practices performed in the building.

3. Murder most fowl: Well not murder per say but definitely assisted suicide, under the false pretence of health. To start with MOVIE POPCORN IS BAD FOR YOU! Didn't know that, want to sue them? What are you an ignorant shit, or someone out for cash? Fast food is bad for you, hot coffee burns, if you break into my house and fall down my stairs, tough shit, you're a moron, and Darwin would be proud you are out of the gene pool. That sub-rant aside, would you like topping with that? Or should I say would you like a heart attack with that? Movie popcorn topping hides its true evil under the guise of its associate brand name, Becel. Becel happens to make a particularly health conscious margarine. That is not what they put on your popcorn, what goes on your popcorn is 100% hydrogenated vegetable oil, also known as heart attack in a squirt. You might as well get the butter; it tastes better and probably is better for you (I don't have the science behind that, but I do know that they are both bad for you, who can say what's worse.) So what you say? Well they take your knowledge that Becel makes a good margarine to get you to put topping on your popcorn, to get you to like it more, to get you to buy more, to help you kill yourself!!!! MURDER I say MURDER!

4. Dark Practices: The economics of the movie theatre is pure genius, and evil all at once. First off ticket prices, 13.50 – 14.50 on a Friday night, that's awful, and in spite of popular belief that those go straight to the distributor, that is a load of bull crap, a lot of it does, but a nice hefty margin was tacked on at the beginning of the megaplex era for the theatres to take home, which more then covers the cost of theatre operation and employees. That leaves money from the concession sales to go straight into their pockets, and boy does it ever. 50 lb bag of popcorn = 10$ It makes probably 200 –300 large bags of popcorn for customers, add on a .05 cent per bag price, and maybe .03 worth of the aforementioned murder sauce. You get a per bag cost of about 13 cents. Pay some moron minimum wage to sell it for 4.50 a bag and remember on a Friday night you sell that many bags in less then an hour, and you are making about 4.33 a bag. You get about 30 hours of solid sale in a weekend, your making 26000 in popcorn money alone, and I promise you all those numbers are far below actual numbers, as I know for a fact on an average weekend the theatre would make ¼ to ½ a million, and over a million on blockbuster summer long weekends. That kind of extortion is absurdly evil, what's even worse is that people are willing to kill themselves for that price. You know they (they being the news paper or web site I am likely misquoting) are estimating that by 2020 a night out (dinner and a movie for two) will exceed $200 go go gadget inflation!

5. They fired me, me, darling me, who would want to fire me. Actually this is embarrassing and in fairness I will share. The day I got fired I was working a special shift, you see the fry guys (the guys who worked in the new your fry stand) were lazy lazy lazy people. At the end of the day, they were supposed to take all the left over French fries and uncooked (but cut) potato's out to the trash compactor. Instead they would bag'm and drag'm the minimum distance they could and leave them just outside the door on the way to the compactor. This process created a problem as now all the bags were slightly damaged by the drag. Some times they would life these damage bags into the trash trolleys used to collect garbage around the theatre. In this one exertion of bag liftage, about half the time those bags would break spilling their contents all over the trash trolleys. The guys on garbage duty would never empty the loose potato's into the compactor, so these would build up and rot. On this particular day I was tasked, with two others, to empty the four trolleys that were full, because this had been going on for weeks, and now all the trolleys were unusable. Now you have to understand, I can't stand mold, makes me hurl, so here I am with too co-drudges shovelling rotting potato in the burning sun and then bleaching them out, for like 4-6 hours. When it was all said and done, they gave us a pat on the back, said "you stink go home," and sent us home for the day without paying us for the rest of the shift. Now maybe it was my encouraged ego from the slight complement, maybe it was me trying to show off to friends, maybe it was mold fumes getting to me, or maybe it was because EVERYONE INCLUDING THE MANAGERS DO IT! What ever made me do it, who can tell for sure, I decided that night to go to a movie with my friends and not pays (GASP) so we walked up to the place they rip your tickets, said "hey were sneaking in," there person was like "sure." So we walked into the theatre. Sadly, I got caught in the theatre, and decided to be honest instead of lie and say I lost my ticket. So the sacked me, and the girl who let me sneak in. What really made it worse was that it was 'Night of the Roxbury', I mean really fire me for sneaking into something good, laugh at me for sneaking into something CRAP! What really chaffed my ass was that the girl was rehired for crying and she was so useless that she made useless tits contenders for MVPs on NHL teams even though they don't know how to skate… AND Breath, 2, 4, 5. So, I really didn't do anything that wrong, they just nailed me up as an example. I mean I was guilty, but so were all the other employees and managers, I mean the managers used to pick up girls by giving them free passes with their home numbers on the back
Alright I am going to call a stop to this tirade, it has gone out of control, and I don't want to proof read it. Suffice it to say I don't like famous players, nor do I like movie popcorn, yet I like a good little automaton will continue to go to movies and buy popcorn. Like tomorrow night I am going to see Spider Man 2. So there me!

The Bitter Bitch

Catch up time

So I've been a little remiss in my blogging, and my readership of one has take offence that he has been forced to stare too long at images of my boo boo's. So, I will try and catch up with my life today, as uninspiring as parts of it has been. First off, I'm excited that I now have a reader, other then my mother, no offence to my mother but she has to like what I write, my non-related readers don't (have to, nor do they, but they are reading it any ways. In part it is that readers fault that I am blogging right now, as he complained that I have a duty to my readers as an unspoken pack to keep this blog up-to-date. Dammit he might be right, except I explicitly said early in this endeavour that if everything goes to hell and I don't blog for a couple weeks/months/years then meh! Don't get me wrong, I like blogging, I get to be expressive and play with English, but I am not going to let it rule my life. At the moment though, I find myself in possession of about an hour to blab, so blab I shall.

Thursday, June 24, 2004


Oooooooo

Well the shelf is officially finished, and now up in my room, here are some pictures of it, and the wound I suffered in moving it into place. Stupid stupid other shelf that I moved out had non fixed shelves, and when I picked up holding onto said non fixed shelf the shelf came out of the support pegs and the pegs into my hand. On the upside, the new shelf looks good!

Wednesday, June 23, 2004

Lazy Poster

Hey I was doing great there last week and I fell of the wagon. Today you are getting just the facts.

I have 7 Gmail invites... Want one? email me gcpeart[at]evermeet[dot]org

Raiders baseball...
well we lost I think it was 10-2, or 9-2. I blew my quad and my back out again, so I'm on a no exersise hiatus until it heals, which has allowed me to get back to basics, like data modeling and video games.

Speaking of video games, been playing Crimson Skies. All I can say is I like it so much I didn't blog last night!

peace out!


Thursday, June 17, 2004

Posh New Clothes

Well I think I feel about as awkward as the emperor would if he knew he was naked, and I'm even wearing clothes. They just seem to 'hip' for a old fart like me, but what they are is comfortable. I really needed some clothes to play squash and run in because to be quite frank, cotton is terrible!!! So I have some new nike shorts and a dry fit top, I think my buddy kevin would be proud ;) Well now that I am wearing'm I don't have much choice but to exercise!!!

Squasher Jones

Be Careful what you wish for...

All I wanted was a tool upgrade, how was I to know that the tool didn't keep a consistent data structure from version 5.0 to 5.1 So now I'm rebuilding my application, that's how I like to spend my evenings.

Salt Miner

Wednesday, June 16, 2004

GMail invite

First come first serve who wants one? I have a couple.

Best Toby Maguire Quotation Ever!

Within the context of Toby being asked about his Spiderman role, and the whole Peter Parker, Mary Jane Watson thing.
"Go ask Mary Jane to be with you, or at least get laid!"

Blog, Blog, Blog, Bloggity, Blog

Have you ever noticed, 1. I have been writing a lot more recently? 2. Blog is not in the Blogger.com's dictionary? Well its not, actually a lot of words are not, it's a funny dictionary, and the 'learn' button does nothing. If I were blogger.com, I would call up my coworkers at gmail.com (since I am pretty sure they are all one and the same,) and I would share the technology for gmail's spell checker, by far an easier tool to use! While I was at it, I would also see if I could steal the 'label' concept and implement it into blogger, imagine all your posts labelled to what categories they fell into, that way you could have pages set up to archive by label, and pages to archive by date. I think that would be boss! I wonder if they are open to feedback, because I think I am going to recommend this very thing. Oh and as for the prolific, mediocre, writing, I have started doing it on the train, so I have 1.5 hours a day dedicated to plumbing the depths of my mind.

Bloggity Blog has left the building!

Credit where Credit is Due

I just want to thank my Dungeon and Dragon's Group of yore, as in trying to find a seed of an idea on which to write, I have naturally drifted back to my creative high school years. Now I will admit here and now that I was a massive nerd in high school, D&D, AV Club, Drama club, heck I'm marrying the head prefect for that matter, but you know what, I'm proud of those days, I had a lot of fun, and don't regret a moment of it, especially note the head prefect, I particularly like her! So digging back to those days I find that some of the stuff my D&D group made up in the dank basement is just damn funny, and in some cases epic. So if any of you guys out there read these stories and remember, yes I am stealing those nights and bottling them up for the net. So, to Trevor, Mark, Ken, and Chris (who is also my webmaster,) thanks, and to the rest of the crowed of occasional wanders who joined in and departed our rag tag cadre thanks to you as well. Also Steve, Bob, Dave and that Guy who moved to France, my university crew, I might steal some of that as well!

Cheers.

Fantasy: A Night at the Dirty Elf Tavern

On many a night hence, I have return to the Dirty Elf to reveal in the stories of my new friends, the pungent 'eroes Scobar and Mombo. Tonight I was privy to a new form of entertainment that these two dwarf gentiles introduced to me. The game, if such an activity could be called a game, is known to the boys as Mugs. Mugs doesn't it, in my mind at least, have a clear victor, nor are all the participants voluntary. The game progresses like so: First player orders, and chugs a tankard, second player selects a patron at the bar, first player then whips his empty tankard at the head of the patron, then its second players turn to drink and throw. The game proceeds until the players are too drunk to throw, or the patrons are all unconscious, or a fight breaks out. With their dwarven constitution, I don't think Scobar and Mombo even understand the concept of "too drunk". As for the patrons being unconscious, possible I suppose, but I have never seen it happen. Now, as for a fight breaking out, that is pretty much the expected norm I suspect. I think the whole game is pretence for a good honest brawl, and given the crowd at the Dirty Elf, I'm not all together surprised they oblige the dwarf's their game. As I have mentioned, the Dirty Elf is a squalid whole in Waterdeep's Adventure quarter, with the seediest bunch up in comers and the most retched bunch waiting to receive their comeuppance. There isn't a green warrior in the bunch, or at least not by the end of the night. So my readers, that is the game of mugs, and now I must lay myself back down, as I have a terrible bruise on the back of my head, alas me thinks some one mighten have thrown a mug there!

Darthrin Strongbow, sports commentator to the Sword Coast.

Tuesday, June 15, 2004

Debate or blood bath or Tastier Canada?

Wow, I'm watching the Canadian Leadership Debate, and now I know why the liberal colour is red, because they are bleeding out there. I suppose it is tradition that a seated party should draw the most targets as their opposition tries to unseat them. I'm in agreement with my parents on this one, and that is, I feel Paul Martin has a passion, and a vision, and can make a difference, but he has to untangle himself from the scandals of the past and push forward. I'm afraid his attack campaign has worked against him, and with 11 years of liberal government behind us, just sheer will for a change might be enough to boot the Liberals, and I think its a real shame. Layton (beside from looking weird...) is just unrealistic, and while I sometimes find myself on side with the NDP, I turn around and watch unions destroying industry. Remember people a union should never have the right to penalize you for working harder, or protect you for being a lazy waste of air. I still feel union's have a place in this world, but working and legal conditions have changed, and union's haven't, its time to grow up! Harper, well, I'm not sure he is that scary, but I think the extreme right of his party is going to make us Mini-America and bleed our individuality dry in the process. Duceppe, I just can't be pro-separatist, although he seems to have a fairly good left of centre policy, ironically he makes a pretty good opposing when he is not trying to divide the country. I think most telling in this election is the undercurrent of conservative defection, these are hard-line traditional PC candidates jumping ship to the Liberals? Gah, this is just unnerving and after watching the debate I'm just all the more disgusted at the childishness of the other leaders. So who am I going to vote for? Well I think you would guess Liberal, and at any other time in my life I would agree, but right now, I think I will vote for Carb Option's party, because they at least are promising a tastier Canada.

Batteries dying dying dying, dead.

Stupid batteries, my gameboy has been providing a new source of entertainment with Sword of Mana, Sword of Mana is in itself pretty good, but not the topic of this rant, the rant is about battery life, sleep mode and stupidity.
First off battery life, the life on the gameboy's lithium ion battery is pretty solid, about ten hours of game time when the back light is on. I hesitate to even try and speculate the life without the backlight, but I would assume it is substantially more. Now I think my battery is showing a little bit of age and I think I only get like six to eight hours these days, but I'll manage somehow. My problem is the battery light, with its evil red glow telling you, "times up" but the truth is, "times up" is more like, "please save soon, your battery is dying and could go anytime now sir." I have noticed that from the time the light goes on to the time the screen winks out can be anywhere from ten to thirty minutes. That's a lot of time to save. Yet it still triggers that battery death reaction where you panicked search about for a save spot. That panicked look becomes a reckless search, and recklessness leads to death, and death means no saving, so its a vicious circle, one that doesn't need to happen in light of 30 minutes of battery remaining.
That brings me to the sleep function, what a great bloody function, battery running low, that's okay, put the gameboy to sleep, and then you can wake it back up when you are plugged back in, so my question is, with this awesome function, why don't more games use it!

New Link

There is a new link on the page for those observant visitors, it goes off to http://artsandlettersdaily.com/ which is sort of a blog, but more of a collection of blogs, or even go as far to say its Slashdot for literature. I got the link from a times article on blogging which I am going to post about later.

Banana-na-na-nanana

Monday, June 14, 2004

Fantasy: 'ero's Wanted: Come in bar

As you saunter though the of the Dirty Elf Tavern, in the bowels of Waterdeep's Adventure Quarter, you are greeted by a strange weathered note pegged to the door frame by what looks like a large animal fang. In nearly illegible common is scrawled the words, "'ero's Wanted? Come in bar! Cee Spiky Dwarfs!" At first glance one must wonder if this is the note has been written by a four year old, and proudly pegged up by his father, (the barkeep?) for all to see. On second glance your realize no self respecting four year old would right so messy. Filled with a bizarre curiosity you, as I was, you might wander in to the Dirty Elf to have a gander at what this sign might mean. Now if it should happen that the last fool to stand where you did followed up on this sign right and proper you might not be greeted by anything but a dusty old tavern filled with adventures and has-beens sucking back a few pints and glorifying the time the beat up the Orc Widow. On the other hand you might see what I saw on that fateful day on the Sword Coast. Before I illuminate what I saw, I want to talk to you about some math, now I hear this form of math is all the rage in Candlekeep, as snooty old sages discuss at length how best to get from point A to point C with as little fights at point B along the route, the call it Optimizacracy, a special subset of Divination I am told. What this fancy number magic might tell you is that if one were standing at the door and were to find the perfect seat at the bar that's the optimal distance from the bar, the outhouse, and the nearest fight, then the two men I met were at that spot, and if you nothing about those men you would say they were powerful sorcerers, but in fact they don't have half a brain between them to make one eighth of a brain for magic. If we can see our way clear past the math of it, you will find standing that this probabilistically perfect spot two men, and I say men in the loosest of terms, because what I saw where two four foot tall creatures, armour from top to bottom in the a mishmash of tattered hardened leather scraps riveted together, but looking as if they are mostly held together by old grog stains. Mixed into that mangled mess of so-called armour are spikes, and by spikes I mean jutting sharpened steaks of partially rusted iron. Topping these stout figures is a pair of beards that could rival the main of any savannah lion. To the left the red headed one with a full head of hair and beard that don't differentiate on where one starts and where ones ends, and generally spread outward until it his a fuzzy region of tangled food remains and crusted grog. To the right is bald on top but braids all the way down, and dyed green, or perhaps moulded, I pray not check to deep, as neither one has a temperament or a smell that tolerates investigation. Who are these dwarves, they are the "ero's" Mombo and Scobar, Heroes, Warriors, Drunkards, Battleragers. Should it happen that you have cattle to save from ravaging Orc's these are not the heroes to call. If it were the case that Troll's ran off with your daughter these are not the heroes to call, but if hundreds of dragons were swarming an orphanage of help less children and maidens, then call Scobar and Mombo. For in the thick of battle and destruction, when the odds are insurmountable, and survivability drops to nil, that is where these two will put an ale in one hand axe in the other, and screaming at the top of their lungs charge headlong into battle, and win. To the dragons who here this tale I warn you one thing, if you dare to spill that ale, then no longer will your death be swift and gentle, but like the winds of Hades burn you until your flesh melts away into dust and death.

Blogging is not Mirror Masturbation

I do realize that what I say here to a sometimes-vacant audience could be perceived to be me stroking my own ego, but really it is an exercise in my literary skills, and an attempt to add humour and satire to my life, and the world. Perhaps, blogging is also a chance for me to hone my skills and produce something of interest and quality. What I do take offence at is Illiad’s jokes about blogging in his comic User Friendly. Most recently, here, Here>, and here Illiad has made reference that blogging is no more then an author jerking off in the mirror as opposed to some run of the mills smut. I suppose as a doyen of technical humour it is both his job and his place to express his opinion through the media of his choice, which just happens to be comics on the web, wait a second there, so if I can draw, it legitimizes and social commentary I might make, or perhaps personal anecdote of my life I want to share (no offence to Scott Kurtz on this one, just this PVP is illustrative of that last point.) Now here is the trick, Illiad, you are entitled to your opinion, and can express it how you choose, the upside to blogging is I CAN DISAGREE, so I do disagree, I think there are plenty of legitimate reasons to blog, are not memoirs just dead tree blogs? So you blog your way, I blog mine, and if we both keep it up, and millions more join us, one day the web might represent more then a gigantic porn hole (no pun intended.) Instead it will be a land of people talking, and people listening, and maybe in that space we can bridge our differences and become a global community, hey, it’s got to start somewhere.

Raiders lose to Royal Pain, in a painful string of injuries

The Raiders came out swinging in the first but were met with staunch resistance, nearly scoring a run but getting forced out at first. As the Raiders took the field things started out a little loose, and Royal Pain capitalized on that with some stellar surprise hitters, remember, just because a girl is at bat, doesn’t always mean the can’t hit. The third inning was a catastrophe for the Raider’s as a bad call at home left the team demoralized for the remainder of the inning. In the last few innings the Raiders picked it back up to keep the scoring in check, but in spite of some power hitting innings were unable to battle back. Left rover, yours truly, made some good plays early on, but was hindered by a pulled quadriceps. Star second baser Jane made a good play for a rocket from the outfield, but it bounced funny and took her in the face. All in all a great effort, and some solid playing, obvious room for improvement, but the potential is there, and most of all it was fun. Final score was 7 to 19!

Blog Power Hour: The Test of Time

First off this is me trying to catch up on some much needed blogging, it is 6:55, and I have until about 7:55 riding the train home, so lets see what I can get in. The Test of Time is a double reference to a band called Test of Time, who made a great song that was available on mp3.com, it was the warez song, great stuff. I will find the link when I get home, and put it right here (note MP3 stopped carrying the link.)

Sunday, June 13, 2004

I was going to post

I was going to post tonight something more then anecdotes, but they I decided to play Splinter Cell Pandora Tomorrow, you really can't blame me, I think I made the right choice.

A little add on to Murphy's Law

"The thing that scares me the most about Murphy's Law is that Murphy
*WAS* a rocket scientist" -- Colin's Commentary on Murphy's Law.

Friday, June 11, 2004

Erin Westman, Supragenius

Hi people, I would just like to take this opportunity to gush about my sweet heart, while she knows I feel this way, sometimes I just am so happy I have to share. Now I don't think she actually reads this, so I can't embarrass myself too much. So here goes, my love, Erin, is the smartest person in the world, okay so smartest person in the world may be going a tiny bit to far, but she is damn smart! This week, Thursday, to be exact, she is graduating from the University of Guelph with a Honours batchalor of Science in Microbiology and Genetics, with a minor in Philosophy. That's a lot to say, but man did she work hard for it. Now here comes the horn tooting, not only did she graduate from that really really hard sounding faculty, she is proceeding to do her Master's in the generally the same area (my fingers were sore of typing it all out. :) Add to that Master's (and maybe a PHD,) she is being super funded by NSERC (for non-Canadians that's a HUGE deal.) Also she is receiving additional funding from the University of Guelph since she is such a smarty pants. Finally the fill feather in her hat, is that she is receiving an Award for the Highest cumulative Average of a graduating student in MBG. SO there you go, my sweat heart is a super-genius. I'm just soooo proud of her, she has worked really hard to earn that, and definitely deserved it!

So to my Erin, congratulations! You did it baby, now just a few more degrees :)

Quotation out of desperation.

One of the individuals whom I work with came up with a great quote, we were talking about software bugs, and I said to it him "dammit Sean, your and your pessimistic law, I am expecting things to go wrong and they are going right. (thinks you need to know here is I was referring to Murphy's Law, while not strictly his, his name is Sean Murphy and hence we always joke its his law, and in this case I figured things I want to go wrong going right in this case fell under the category of 'anything that can go wrong will.' Also Sean asked to be given the reference for the following quotation, hence why his name is being mentioned otherwise I wouldn't name anyone from work.)"

His response was
"That's not an application of Murphy's Law, that Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, An watched error condition never expresses itself."
Sadly that is not a direct word-for-word quotation, it in fact sounded much better at the time, but since, as Sean says, there is no room in the budget for him to have a personal scribe follow him around all day, such exact witticisms are lost.

So I guess we can say that this is some how adapted from the following paraphrased statement about uncertainty, "One can know the exact position of an electrons, and not its velocity or vice versa"

The more precisely the position is determined, the less precisely the momentum is known in this instant, and vice versa.
--Heisenberg, uncertainty paper, 1927

So we shall now adopt the Murphy-Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle

The more precisely the position of an error condition is determined, the less precisely the error conditions will be expressed in this instant, and vise versa."
-- Sean Murphy, random cubicle retorts, 2004.

Wednesday, June 09, 2004

I'm a closet separatists

Apparently, if a candidate was running in my ridding I should be voting for the Bloc Quebecois. Go figure, I have always been a pretty rowdy pro Canada kind of person, and her I am waving the separation flag. Or at least according to this quiz.
So who knows, I know who I am voting for, and only because I stand behind the convictions and potential of the leader, not the foolishness of his predecessor, and his cronies.

Tuesday, June 08, 2004

Raiders battle back valiently in the end...

to lose 14 to 4 to the team with BB on their jersies (who ever they were.)
Inspiring words from coach loosly quoted, "There are some fundementals we need to work on, like hitting, catching, fielding, and uh softball, yeah we need to work on playing softball."
In spite of adversity, strained muscles, and blisters, a good time was had by all.
Keep listening sports fans, as we will be playing once a week all summer.

Oh yeah, and Tampa Lost!!!!

night all

Sunday, June 06, 2004

Misc: Terrible Storm

She lay alone in her bed, alone in her heart. The soft patter of rain on the matted straw, tormented her restless ears. Lightening flashed in the distance, sending beams of white light casting though the shutters, each flicker brought to life the shadow monsters. Those beast who haunt cluttered rooms at night, terrible beast of fang and tooth, who evaporate by light of day, leaving just clothes, and lamps, and misplaced things. With a guttural roar the beast shook the room, the shutters shivering in their frames as the lightning's boom reached for her. In fear she clutched the blankets close to her bosom, trying to gain some measure of comfort from them. No such peace could be found, for on the heels of one bolt, came the next, each one tearing the night with their discordant energy. Far off in the distance, lightening touches the top of a tree, like some divine figure smiting one who stood to proud and tall against his might. Instantly, the tree genuflect to its maker, bursting into a thousand repentant shards. Glowing, they fall to forest floor only to have their last ounce of life doused by the moist, moldering remains of last autumn's dross. The storm raged on, her mind raged for that she was without. The winds wailed through the rafters, crying out for her grief. She slept not, nor did the storm. How much? she thought must one bare. "HOW MUCH?" she queried to the empty night. In answer the storm split asunder another tree, as if to say, "all that has been taken from you, and more, it is all yours to bare." She wept, and the storm rained harder, she wailed, the winds blew harder, she raged against the failure of her life, and lightening begot her fury upon the world.
got stuck here, I know where I want to go, but can't get there, just not sure how much, or how little I want to say... well we shall see next time.

"My Mom says I'm Cool"

Well, I have at least one reader, and that's my mom, and she likes what I write, and since I know she is going to read this too, that's okay. It just reminded me of some movie, or maybe it was a Simpson's episode, where some character said "My Mom says I'm cool!" Which is almost, for a kid, making the exact opposite statement. I think, for other less subjective^2 things that a mother is a perfectly acceptable provider of critic, even if slightly biased, but I will take what I can get until this place picks up a little. For a quick side note subjective^2, ^2 indicating squared, or power of 2 for non math/computer notation geeks, means, at least in my make believe land, quality or value of a subjective nature, that is subjectively applied. Like coolness, it means different things to different people, is valued differently by different people, and is definitely doled out at what might appear to an outside observer in a completely random way. What might be cool one day is anti-cool the next, unless you are of some level of coolness, and then your are retro cool, what the bear!

Anyways, in light of my recent praise, I believe I am going to try something, something I actually recommended to someone else. I am going to write a story. Sort of, one post at a time I am going to look into the lives of some characters, at first it is going to be really really bad, and then we will see what emerges from the my literary primordial soup and transforms into something real. I will try and keep things some what in order, as order appears probably by prefixing the post title with some sort of grouping name like "Fantasy:" or "Bob's Life:" or whatever else I want to call that thread. So join me on this ride, and lets see what happens.

By the way, this idea came after I had a fight with my younger brother Alex. The same Alex I posted about earlier. I had a disagreement with him about the way we both perceive how one should act in regards to the requests made upon them. Suffice it to say, I think he is lazy, and he thinks I am a tyrant, and while I would like to be a 'cool' brother, I end up just being a jerk a lot because I hate living in his filth, and in any case we really don't communicate very well. So in a subversive way of making nice and getting him to communicate better, I set up him the blog (someone set up us the bomb get it? get it?), and encouraged him to develop is writing, because he really can write. I think I said all that before, so I'm off for tonight, and tomorrow I shall try and make my first story post.

Till then, avast ye scurvy scallywags!

Elections...

Well I tried to have a good rant about the election, but my computers hard drive died. So much for those IBM commercials about the new t-40's "bracing for impact." Or the magic blue button, to make it all good. Oh well, so I lost that rant, I don't think it had a moral, other then vote. I said something about civic duty, and your responsibility to vote. Yeah that's about it.

Also I set my brother up to start blogging.

http://gcpeart.evermeet.org/shadowfire/

They say he writes well, I haven't really seen a lot of it so I can't say one way or the other, but I have encouraged him to write, and let himself be heard. In any case he now had the ability to do so, so lets hope he does.

geoff out

Thursday, June 03, 2004

I'm a corporate shill

Well I have sold out to the man, am I ashamed, not really. Okay so
google provides my mail, and google provides the tools I use to build
my blog, and google provides me with daily news, and all my searching.
So if google does all this for me, for free, and I don't click on
their ads to often, then I am just a jerkish sponge. So here is the
deal, I put google ads on my website to assuage my guilt, so that
anyone coming here can help pay google for all their great stuff. If
I make a little on the side, I am sure it is peanuts compared to what
google makes, and everyone is happy. Google because they make money
and stay in business, me because I get to use all of Google's stuff
because they make money and stay in business, you because you get to
come to my site and click on all these topically related links. Isn't
it great :)

Purple tree monkey out!

Tuesday, June 01, 2004

Long night new design

It was a very long day (turned into night) at work, I guess working a long day isn't that bad, I just would have liked to play squash.
C'est la vie. As for the page, those who follow will notice the change. I picked up a different default template, and have begun work to totally revamp it, but until that work is done, I'm not going to post the changes, I prefer big bang of new stuffs to show up, instead of incremental stuff. N e way it is late, and I am tired,
peace of 3.14159 out.