tbit :: still... ver3.0

Tuesday, December 31, 2002.

9:12 PM - So I was in the LCBO seeking out a nice bottle of sparkling cider (to be honest I cannot drink any champagne less than $100; it just doesn't taste right) in a bottle that would go pop. But the seasonal employee never heard of it and told me the only cider they had was StrongBow. Anywayz, as I hunted on my own I blundered into the "vintage" section and found a bottle of Absente, Absinthe Refined. Absinthe is the one narcotic I have always wanted to try. It's the history more than the affect that intrigues me. This lesser version without the poisonous wormwood additive and only 110 proof versus the original's 150 proof, comes with a sugar spoon and the pastis glasses at work would be fine for sipping it. But it is $50 so....

8:54 PM - Here's to hoping that George Lucas will plagiarize someone else's ideas for Episode 3. Matt lays out a very moving plotline for the third installment, where we sympathize with Anakin Skywalker and are appalled when he falls to the Dark Side. Unfortunately, I cannot see it happening. Lucas has already setup Anakin as a petulant brat who can only go further in his self-superior thinking. There won't be A Fall, so much as a "oh hurry up and fall into a lava pit" feeling for the third. But I am sure Yoda's CGI will be better than Gollum.

10:21 AM - OK, who is the sick sad fuck who was at Forever A Kid Adult Baby Clothing before coming to my site, thus putting it in my referrers?

Monday, December 30, 2002.

11:33 PM - Oh oh oh !! Teach, teach !! Is this a good example of interactive animation in Flash?

Yes, Little David, Fly Guy is not only a good example but it is also incredibly creative. A gold star for both of you.

(via Pete Bevin, of the random-act school)

10:57 PM -

And I said mama, mama, mama, why am I so alone?
I can't go outside
I'm scared I might not make it home
I'm alive, I'm alive but I'm sinking in
If there's anyone at home at your place, darling
Why don't you invite me in?

Don't try to bleed me
Cause I've been there before and I deserve a little more
I belong in the service of the Queen
I belong anywhere but in between.
She's been lying, I've been sinking
And I am the Rain King.

Rain King - Counting Crows

7:22 PM - I finally got around to finishing the BFF "A Storm of Swords" by George RR Martin, a wonderful medievalist romp of regicide and the cheapness of life. As always I am left with a room full of books to start (she reads 10 for my every 1) and I thought I would toss up a bunch and ask you faithful readers (or unfaithful blunderers) as to what I should start next:

"Forests of the Heart", by Charles de Lint. A Newford story that I have started about 3 times only to find myself to stressed to fall into his serene landscapes. This one brings Charles' fascination and love for the american mid-west to the forefront with the tale of la brujeria come to Newford from the desert. Newford is one of my favourite cities and I would be living there now if it wasn't imaginary.
"Memories of Ice", by Steven Erikson. Another BFF but this time less medieval and more iron-age. The third in a series which is brutal beyond belief, focuses on the soldiers of a disgraced army as the Gods play with them. The last book was unbelievably red and dusty, focused on a rebellion in a distant desert land while this one will be back on the main continent and seems to be very very cold.
"Brightness Reach", by David Brin. The first book in the second series of the Uplift tales. This one gives us a planet that has been set as off-limits by those who run the galaxy but is settled by the refugees of six races. I love the Brin books as they present a galaxy where the opposite of ST's prime directive rules supreme -- older races are expected by galactic law to teach younger races how to evolve.
"Eva Moves the Furniture", by Margot Livesey. Richard gave me a perfect Xmas gift in beer and a book and this tradepaper gives me the tale of a scottish woman companioned by two ghosts. It is not part of a nine-part series with seven followup books.
"Everyone In Silico", by Jim Munroe. I put this cyberpunk down a lil while ago as it didn't keep my attention but I know I will finish it as I did enjoy what I had read. My genre moods change like the diagnoses and cures for ADD. This is a tale set on the west coast where people are abandoning their meatlives for a perfect world in cyberspace. Of course, it cannot be all it is cracked up to be, can it?

Wednesday, December 25, 2002.

12:50 PM - Well. White Xmas has foiled our first family event in over ten years. The bro-in-law got as far as Pickering before the unplowed streets turned him around. We might do something after work tomorrow.

Pierogis and cabbage rolls for Xmas dinner !! And I am having red wine for breakfast :D

10:40 AM - Huzzah, the laundry room is all mine!

10:04 AM - Yay, white Xmas.

Tuesday, December 24, 2002.

3:18 PM - Treking here treking there: tourtiere, J gifts, turkey & fixings, baby gifts, more J loot, wine & cider. I am bushed and need food. Stop for a glass of milk and some raspberry chocolate balls. And read The Two Towers as a bad D&D game!! Be warned, there are spoilers.

11:27 AM - After about ten years of not being around any family for Xmas, we are going to the bro-in-law's place for dinner tomorrow. Kids and presents, turkey dinner not made by J and hopefully some spirits... oh gawd let there be spirits. This is the first Xmas day for ages that I am not claiming as my "i am not doing a fucking thing" day. It would be my day of salvation from work or not working, from the emptiness of the season, from all the things I knew I should be doing. On Xmas morning I would sleep in late as J arose early to start her traditional dinner. I would hide under the sheets for an appropriate amount of time and then we would exchange wrapped gifts. Then the stuff from our families and any grab packages from around Canada. I would usually be breaking fast on cookies or chocolate -- it's MY day y'know? I would offer to help J with the coming Xmas din din and be kicked out of the kitchen. Sofa lounging and maybe a nap and playing with my toys would be the rest of the day until gorging myself on J's heavenly (and i mean heavenly) turkey & fixings.

This year we head off to Whitby around noon. A little bit of exchanging, someone else's dinner, a 4 year old and an 8 year old and a 150 lb lap dog. It should make for interesting day or at least a change of pace ;) Yeah, it is going to be nice to be around family for once in a decade even if it's not my family.

Here's to ya folks, have a merry holiday and spend time with loved ones and drink grog if you can get it :D

*clink*

Sunday, December 22, 2002.

11:22 PM - This is an interesting bit of media support. The BBC Buffy page has RPG rules and an adventure. That is strange, very strange. It lays out, at least to me, what the Web should be all about. You take a property that people are attached to and you supply all the support you can for that property. Not just message boards, desktop images and episode guides but well-rounded amounts of material. I like. (via Whedonesque)

Friday, December 20, 2002.

11:23 PM - So last night on "Speed Channel", we caught the last two of this season's Bmw films. They are those short films with Clive Owen as the driver of a BMW sports car, directed by Hollywood well-knowns and starring some other well-knowns. I don't give a rat's ass about the cars so the advertising is lost on me, but the man is cool, my choice for the next Jimmy Bond.

10:27 PM - A few things about the Two Towers:

The music used in the trailer is actually from the "Requiem For a Dream" soundtrack.
There wasn't one frickin' hoom-hoom-haroom from Treebeard >:(
I believe Figwit bought it at the battle of Helm's Deep >:)

Wednesday, December 18, 2002.

11:50 PM - I knew it was going to happen sooner or later but to be honest, I was just glad to be putting in hours, accomplishing tasks and collecting an amount of money. It did interfere with finding "life's grand goal" (a.k.a. a job that will allow me to pay my debts) but it was better than the previous year. Today I got the "talking to" which defined how little I will be used in the coming year. It was only hours reduction but it feels like another layoff notice. Funny thing is that I was just beginning to feel like I was actually contributing rather being a body.

So, on that front, can anyone suggest any reputable "Career Counselors" that could help me re-vamp my resume and cover letters? I have to stop blaming the Industry for my dry spell (kinda Death Valley dry...) and I am not going to discount all my experience and knowledge and feel even more terrible about myself. I am going to see if it could be my self-presentation and fix that.

Monday, December 16, 2002.

5:53 PM -

And I've been up all night
I might sleep all day
Get your dreams just right
And let them slip away

Up All Night - Counting Crows

3:31 PM - Hey hey hey, the mayfly project is here for another year. I have a feeling my entry is not much different than last year, other than a new city.

2:28 PM - Having distinct DigiCam envy, I still have a distinct desire to get the low-tech Sony Mavica MVC-FD75. The weird thing is that it is still so expensive for a sub-MegaPixel camera that uses floppy disks.

2:08 PM - I have been thinking about this concept of 101 Things To Do In 1001 Days as seen on Jeremy's site and themed out elsewhere. It reminds me of the commercial (for some financial company probably) where the person gets to cross one more thing of their "Life's ToDo List". The 1001 Days thing just seems to be the Generation XYZ culture's equivalent of getting things done with your life idea, expanding upon it a hundred fold.

But why? Why is my generation and the one after me, so obssessed with experience, especially when the Internet and media, speedy information exchange and the ability to go just about anywhere are so easily attained? Sure, alot of Jeremy's goals are not lofty nor unattainable but would his life be so shortchanged if he didn't accomplish them? Hell knows, I am very about ToDo Lists and scratching them off but I wonder about this worry we have in needing to accomplish so much. Does the access to just about every written word, every piece of music, every taste experience and every place in the world make us a little crazy? Do we feel left out if we are not constantly trying to attain this? Sounds like ADD as a lifestyle... and no, not AD&D.

10:57 AM - Well that figgers. Give me one thing to hurry home on friday nights to rewind the tape and enjoy something so keenly well written and they will cancel it.

10:23 AM - Speaking of, congratulations go out to my friend Johnny Tarponds, who in the land of Great Unemployment and Pogey, had his contract renewed for another year.

1:12 AM - Work is good for me. So my daddy told me. Is work good for you?? (via RR)

12:35 AM - *mrrffl*

The annoying thing is that everyone who needs to see this guy on a soapbox will miss it and keep on sending me annoying emails. (via martine)

Saturday, December 14, 2002.

11:01 PM - Holy fuck, did you see the move Legolas uses to get onto the back of Gimli's horse?!?!

*big silly grin*

6:27 PM - Grrk. Sometimes it is great to see the same anxiety, regret, and vexation reflected on someone else's webpage. I never really have the courage to vent the repeating drama in my head, but for in long drawn out letters (which in their current frequency, could just be photocopied as events & feelings are just about the same) to V. But...

6:17 PM - Do you think it would be worth it to dedicate my life to these 10 Technologies that Will Help You Stay Employed ?? I am thinking that by the time I can learn enough to put all ten on a resume, they will have a new list. (t'was circadian shifted)

*shrug*

Or should I just become a baker? Bread is bread is bread.

6:10 PM - The store was busy. The store was very very busy. From 9am's high decibel Customer Service Issue to 5pm's "can someone climb the 12' tree to get the last Kissing Ball" I never stopped moving. Aisles full of shoppers and browsers, constant calls for items sold out last week, screaming (and i mean screaming) kids and Billy Squire's Xmas carol just made it chalkboard scratching stressful. But for some reason, maybe attached to caffeine input, I smiled and hummed through the whole thing. Not having any money this season tells me I am not going to spend a day doing the madness nor do I have any kids that have to be dragged anywhere. And the Boss gave me a cookie. I like cookies.

Friday, December 13, 2002.

6:55 PM - You all know I like paper and I like making CD covers. But if you have blundered by the list of CDs lately, you knowticed it hasn't been updated. The lack of ready cash to actually print the suckas sorta eliminates the drive to do any. But that still leaves me tons of CDs needing labels and with my recent purchase of a tumbler, I need storage -- my collection of old jewel cases is depleting.

Gasp, now that was one frickin' preamble. So, now I can make a paper cd case, printed with my selections. Tis neat. Tis the season. (via aaronland)

Thursday, December 12, 2002.

11:01 AM - Do you have any permalinks on your site that you never click but do not delete because they seem to be very very important?

10:38 AM - While I am not beyond believing that the US Govt is going to over-react based on this Get The Terrorist law, I am hesitant to believe this story about a photographer arrested. Before I published the story I think I would have asked the guy how he feels about alien abductions and if he has ever worn tinfoil on his head. (via mikel)

Wednesday, December 11, 2002.

10:43 AM - Real life has only distracted me in minor ways:

successfully creeped my way onto the glass floor at the CN Tower.
got mildly *ahem* drunk at the company Xmas party.
finished GTA-3 for the PC.
bought a new wallet as the latest exploded plastic cards everywhere.
replaced the futon in the front room and spent 20 minutes in the futon store watching them play GTA3-ViceCity.
received 9 papercuts and one box-cutter slice.
adjusted to the ugly green shirt uniform now required at work.
finally put up our movie shelves.
hung photos and art.
contemplated blogging but couldn't get into it.
hummed 9 dozen xmas carols.
hunted under sofa pillows for xmas spirit and found none.

Monday, December 09, 2002.

2:17 AM - Inversely, a man who has been to his first corporate Xmas party needs to blog about it as much as a man with his first newborn needs to avoid his blog and just live.

Thursday, December 05, 2002.

11:57 AM - OK, this post is an excuse to blog about how much i love the name of this place called another.weekindebt; man, that domain just touches a part of my heart so dear.

Anywayz, when we arrived in QC years ago J went ahead this time and took residence in a co-worker's empty room on Fullum. I had plans to mail a bunch of useful stuff to her so she would have it before I arrived. The rest of our personal possessions were to be saran-wrapped to a pallet at a shipping company and the whole shebang sent for $425 -- about $2575 less than any other moving quote we found. All the furniture went in one haul of a furniture (junk) company for $125 -- how much they paid me to take an entire apartment's worth off my hands. Damn, I miss my big poofy sofa.

I arrived on December 23. My mom's xmas packages arrived a few days later and I had no problem picking them up at the local Depanneur. Where were the packages from Edmonton? I called Canada Post and they said they had been in QC for about a week and we should have recieved a notice. A notice arrived; back to the Dep and... no boxes -- call this number. I called the number and the CS guy spoke broken English to me, then J talked to him. "We will look for boxes," was the gist of his response. I call a week later and get same response. I call another week later and get same response but this time I ask where his offices are and go and bug him face to face. I am angry. We yell at each other in broken English and French.

A few days later a notice arrives. This time it is for a pharmacy at the other end of the Plateau. We trek there in January snow and winds and are told that there are no boxes here and call this number; you know what number it is. I call back and yell and he basically tells me he can do nothing but look for the boxes. A week later another notice arrives telling me that if I do not pick up my boxes that they will be returned to Edmonton. I lose it and call CS in Ottawa; I end up talking to their nationwide complaint department. I explain everything, give all the tracking numbers and she tells me that the system says they are all sitting in the depot where the cranky guy works. All of the boxes arrive the day after I make the call to Ottawa.

11:34 AM - Heeey, this might be helpful. Don't snakes eat bugs? (fr. the caper)

Tuesday, December 03, 2002.

7:21 PM - I won't go into the whole "abandoning this shite entirely" debate that I have been having in my head for the last 6 months, but let it suffice to say that I am glad that someone else do the RDF/RSS reading & research that I have been allowing the debate stop me from doing.

7:13 PM - At the store we sell Advent Calendars -- little box-like cabinets that you are supposed to fill with candy treats or what-not and let the kids open one for each day of this holy season. Many are being returned with broken doors, 23-25-24 screwups and whatever. I wanted to grab a return and do something fun with it, giving my own spin on the holiday event. But Hoopla's Advent Calendar, 2002 does it so much better :)

Hey, that was almost an interesting "look! neat!" segue.

Monday, December 02, 2002.

2:21 PM - So, it seems some kids have invented anti-gravity. We are reaching pretty far for a meme these days.

10:25 AM - No pithey post, just a *snicker*

Sunday, December 01, 2002.

10:37 PM - OK, I tried again. I tried to watch Episode II and enjoy it. (ed. note: i had seen it in the cinema) I rented the DVD on my friday night alone, a can of Coke and a bag of chips -- primed for personal time. Wide screen active and piped in through the stereo I began. Coruscant is cool and so is the idea of seeing it's night life but once again I find myself unhooked. Something is just not clicking. I try my best but I cannot get past my boredom, my desire to just slap Anakin and a need to mess with Obi's hair. What is it? Are the scenes too short? Is the acting that wooden? Too much CGI? The story just doesn't flow for me, it doesn't entrap me in a way all the others have, even Episode 1. Hell, Jar Jar annoys me less than Darth Whiner. I think I will like the Kenobi-on-his-own story thread but I yawn. I don't even get as far as the supposedly ultra-cool Clone Wars before I turn it off. I just don't see the point. The only thing that seems to catch my attention is the Anakin backstory, the unwritten parts that I see happening -- such as him manipulating Padme from almost their first meeting, him reaching out with the Force and changing her behaviour slightly. I believe he telepathically rapes her into falling for him. And I believe there is a subtle scene of him influencing Watto, the one race that cannot be manipulated by Jedi but who must be susceptible to Darth Dweeby.The trouble is that it is not part of the straight-forward story and does not warrant me enjoying things. Yoda the Super Ball doesn't do it for me. CGI C3PO doesn't either. The teddy bear stormtroopers are a bit of a giggle but that's it. So what is it, why do I not enjoy this movie so made for my demographic?

And for that matter, why could I never finish Moulin Rouge! when I love Baz Luhrmann so much?

9:18 PM - We have a smaller apartment. I currently doesn't have space for two desks in the computer room. Thus the second pooter (J's) sits on the desk next to the first pooter (mine). Thus while I am trying to check my email and read a few blogs, J is over my shoulder making her Sims go, "Hey pup pup pup pup pup !! " and nibbling my ear to encourage me to leave the computer (desk) to her. Worse things could happen....

2:51 PM - While urban music only interests me in a periphery fashion, I find that the style lends itself to sooperheroes quite easily. I am a huge fan of BodyBags by Jason Pearson. No, urban style is not the main point of the comic (killing things is, of course :) it is apparent in the way he designs his character. Something about the clothes and attitudes is very appropriate to wiz-bang crime fighters ... or criminals for that matter. The Action Figures at Kidrobot.com can show you what I mean. (link via nelson)

I have to stop trying to find a good way to phrase a paragraph in order to just go, "Look !! Neat link !!"