I realized that a lot of my entries talk about the weather. So I finally decided to get it out of the way: I added a little module from The Weather Network that displays the current weather in Calgary! Well, as current as they have it, at least, which is updated pretty regularly.
The module is located in the right sidebar, under the links section (so you might have to scroll down a bit to see it).
Enjoy!
Air, it's a good thing.
You might have gathered from yesterday's post (and a bunch of previous ones) that I watch Space a lot. When working from home, having human voices in the room really helps. They have good shows, Space, much better than watching the soaps of "daytime television" -- although usually not as completely out there.
Up until a couple of weeks ago, my afternoons started with a good doze of Buffy. It played every day, and so I watched it. And life was good.
Now they are playing Dark Angel. Yuk. I wished they, at least, had played Buffy until the last episode instead of not showing the last season at all. Then they could have replaced it with Angel or something. I mean, the old Battlestar Galactica in place of Relic Hunter is fine by me. But Dark Angel? Come on.
With that, my constant watching of Firefly and the Serenity movie that will be added to my collection as soon as it comes out, I really should buy me a t-shirt...
This morning, on Space, was the weekly episode of Firefly, which happened to be Jaynestown, one of my favorite. That episode makes me laugh out loud every time. Heck, I was reading through the script and laughing.
The reason I read the script is to find the lyrics to the song, that "Ballad of Jayne". And as you would expect, but still be surprised to learn, someone tabbed it.
That song is now in my repertoire!
(Ok, my repertoire at the moment is that song and that other from Clapton which I can't quite remember the lyrics for. But as soon as I get back to actively playing my repertoire will include this song!)
Today is one of those days where I feel like a chicken that just got his head cut off. Running around like an idiot, doing a ton of stuff completely unrelated to each other, trying to get things done only to realize that it's quitting time and my to-do list is just as full as it was when the whole mess started.
Even this entry. I started it about 30 minutes ago and just now got the chance to get back on it. And I'll submit it with this feeling of "it's not quite complete", but thinking it's better than waiting until tomorrow...
Man I can't wait to get some time off.
Warning: this entry contains explicit material not suited for younger readers. If your kid reads this and starts repeating the bad words, it's your damn fault, k?
Language is a powerful thing. I mean, nuclear bombs ain't got nothing on this stuff. To think that two sounds put together, say "you" and "suck", can actually convey images and emotions is mind-boggling. I can't wait for us to find the babel fish, 'cause from where I'm standing the fact that we managed to create so many different coherent ways of communicating is the most improbable thing ever. Forget sliced bread and the wheel, this is the shitnitz.
I won't go into that l33t sp34k kids are throwing around these days. First I don't understand most of it, and second it'll make me want to grab one by the neck and squeeze until he admits that "ZOMG" doesn't make any sense. Grr.
What I mean is: wow, check out that language stuff doesn't that blow your mind? I can communicate in French and English somewhat fluently (although my spelling sucks just about as bad as them l33t punk ass kids) (man, them kids, I just wanna... grr!) and it occurred to me a couple of times in my life that I would like to learn to communicate in other languages too. I took a Japanese class in CEGEP, though that was a complete failure on my part. I learned a couple of words in Spanish from Vero, but I always forget them. But there's this one language that interests me above others: sign language.
I know, I have no reason to learn to sign -- I don't have any mute relatives or friends -- but it's still the coolest thing to me. Past the fact that you can put sounds together to actually express something, to me at least, is this ability to put movements together to express something. Wow. That's really impressive and so darn attractive to me that it makes me wanna sign up for a class.
I can see myself at the supermarket, standing in front of the canned goods while Vero is getting some milk and asking her "do we need soup?" without having to scream. Wouldn't that be the coolest thing? I think it would. If you don't, you're wrong and you suck.
Vero had a sign class in university and she knows a good deal of them. She started teaching me a bunch and, whadayaknow, I remember them. I can even make a sentence! So I know the signs for "water", "boy", "girl", "chocolate", "want" and how to spell my name. But more importantly, I know the signs for "throw up", "shit" and "sex". I'm still trying to figure out if "fuck" is the opposite of "shit", a variation of "sex" or something else. So I can now make sentences, like "I want sex", "you want to shit?" and, the always fun, "chocolate, chocolate, chocolate, throw up".
Ah! good times.
Of course, I'm just using these signs to have fun with Vero, but it leaves me wanting for more. So it's a discussion I started with Vero: should we sign up for an ASL (American Sign Language) class?
To be continued...
Yet some more talk of the Calgary weather. I'm still getting used to the whole thing, so every time something weird happens it blows my mind. Give it a couple of years and this stuff will become normal...
Until then, this is really freaky.
This is the weather we got yesterday:
The view from behind our house at 12:26PM. Yes, it was snowing. Big time. It melted to water when it hit the roads and sidewalks, but covered the rooftops and grass (and, obviously, barbecues) about a centimeter deep.
The same view, at 6:15PM. That's right, less than six hours later. And the reason it's six hours is because I didn't think of taking a picture earlier, because by 4PM the snow was gone. It's a bit difficult to see with the sun, but look at the large version and you can see it: no snow anywhere.
Freaky, I tell you. I love it!
If you remember from previous entries, the month of June this year was wet. Very wet. We had two weeks of non-stop rain, rivers overflowing, all kinds of nasties. Well, it wasn't really nasty, more like inconvenient.
This week we received the Waterways news letter, a monthly little piece of paper distributed by the city to keep us up to date on what's going on with the city's water. In it is a section about the floods of June, "by the number" as they say.
Average rainfall for June (years 1971-2000): 79.8 mm
Average rainfall for June 2005: 376.5 mm
Wow. People told me the constant rain was not typical of the region. I really believe them now.
When I first visited Calgary, a local I talked to told me that the best part of the city was the sunset. I didn't get a chance to experience it then, but I do now every day and, lemme tell you, they ain't lying.
That local just forgot to mention the sunrise.
The sun setting over the mountains, which we have a view of from our living room, is amazing. The sun rising, which I have a view of from my office, is just as spectacular. It needs the right conditions: just the right amount of clouds in just the right spot so the sun can shine on their undersides. Lucky for us, that happens very often.
The sun does not rise over the mountains, obviously, but shines in their direction, making them look more orange and red than usual. It's tough to make out the mountains from the picture, but very easy when you're standing there. The best part is the color of the clouds, such a contrast to the ones on the other side of the house, the next picture. Both pictures were taken within four minutes of each other.
You can't really see much of my desk because of the different light levels inside and outside of the house, but you can clearly see the view I have: a sky that seems to be on fire.
I took a similar picture a little while ago, which I put in my daily picture. It's in the same direction as my office's view, except it doesn't have the neighboring houses in the way.
Alberta is known for it's impossibly beautiful skies, and I can confirm that. Some of our visitors were never lucky enough to see it, but quite often we have sunrises and sunsets that seem to set the sky on fire, and quite often we have the deepest blue skies you have ever seen. Combined with the mountains, it makes for a really great outdoor experience, and we try to take advantage of it as much as possible.
There's two types of popcorn in this house: the kind that comes in a Kernels bag and the kind that is stuck on the ceiling.
That first one is the good kind.
A guy just came to "fix" a small area of our ceiling above the dining table. It got damaged one night when some rainwater leaked through the roof. That was a month ago, and since then the roof vent has been changed and the "damaged" ceiling fixed. Good points back to the builder.
I say "damaged" and "fixed" in quotes because, honestly, it wasn't very necessary. I didn't even notice it myself. Just a slight discoloration where water touched during that one night. No biggie.
As the guy is fixing the ceiling, I figured I would ask him what is the best way to remove that popcorn, the bad kind.
I don't like the popcorn ceiling, but now I understand why builders do it. I'd like to get rid of it, but I'm not sure when we'll have the time, the energy and the money to do it...
Here's how it goes:
Step 4 is the tough one. Builders like the popcorn because it saves them that step: the texture hides all imperfections so well that they don't even bother with the plaster. Saves them a lot of effort and drying time for a good enough look. Problem is that when you want to fix it you'll have to take on that work yourself. No simple task.
So the plans to remove the popcorn have been shelved for a little while...
How much can I read on a plane trip Calgary -> Toronto -> Montreal -> New York -> Toronto -> Calgary? A little more than the 367 pages of R.A. Salvatore's The Thousand Orcs, book 1 of The Hunter's Blade Trilogy, the latest series in the Drizzt books.
Therefore, I'm up to the 16th book about the adventures of Drizzt and friends. Vero is up to the 11th -- The Silent Blade -- and catching up.
I came back from New York last night. I should say this morning, actually, as it was 1AM when I got home. I don't much like traveling for business...
I thus spent two days in New York, in meetings. (There is no "Ting" person, that's just me making a funny.) I showed up at the office at 9AM, sat in a conference room, had lunch in it and finally left the room to leave the building completely. Two days in a row. Yesterday, I had to run out basically mid-sentence from that meeting to catch the already waiting cab that took me to the airport.
So a very busy couple of days.
And now I am back, happy to be home again.
I'm back in Montreal! I just happened to show up in a humid spell, lucky me. For the first time in over a year, I woke up this morning with a thin film of sweat covering my body. I forgot how much I hate that...
I say it every time I'm in town, but every time I forget what it really means. The humidity here is a big shock for a little Calgary guy like myself; it's not that bad, in the end but, compared to the dry climate I now live in, this place hits you pretty hard.
But it's all good in the end. I have a chance to go out with good friends and eat good food and see a good (and not so good) movies. So I can't complain, really, because I'm having a great time.
Other than complain about the humidity. Because I'm human, after all, and complaining is my birthright!
Believe it or not, they are releasing a movie based on the Doom game. I think it's actually based on the first game, not the second or third.
I have mixed feelings about the previews. I mean, how good can a movie about that game be? Plus you have the Rock as Sarge. Oy. On the other hand, they seem to have some first person perspective (all you see on screen is the hallway and a gun bobbing around), they actually use the chainsaw and it's just possible that they are taking this with a grain of salt the size of Mars. So I'm on the fence: I don't know if they'll just try to scare us with stuff jumping from around every corner or actually try to entertain us by bringing back the excitement we enjoyed playing the game.
It's coming out October 21st. I think I'll check some user reviews and decide whether I spend the money to see it in theatre or just wait for the DVD...
And like a flash it came to me: that's what I wanted to write about!
A little while ago we went with a friend to "the beach". The beach is this rather large lake about an hour and a half away from the city. It's basically the only one around and man was it ever packed. We had to squeeze ourselves into a small patch of sand, after having spent a good half hour looking for a parking spot. Quite the experience.
But that's not what I wanted to write about.
Our friend borrowed his sister's minivan and her two kids. Two really nice kids, a little under 10 years old both, nice to each other, smart and respectful of uncle's authority. I don't know the parents, but they did good.
That's also not what I wanted to write about.
Here is what I do want to write about. The minivan had a video entertainment system; a DVD player in the dashboard and a TV in the roof just behind the front seats. Once we got on the highway, we put on a movie for the kids which they listened to using cordless headsets.
I'm one of the people that have been dissing DVDs in cars. What is that all about, I've been asking? Why would you ever want something like that, which you can't even use while driving? My car is not so comfortable that I will rent movies to watch in there.
But I don't have kids. And now that I've experienced kids on a road trip my views have changed.
As soon as the movie started, silence took over the van. The kids weren't loud or annoying and didn't need any kind of discipline whatsoever to begin with -- like I said before, really nice kids -- but they were still kids and needed attention. As soon as the movie started, silence. Not a sound, other than the occasional muted laugh.
If you have kids, start thinking about getting a vehicle with a DVD system. If you ever wish to make road trips, it will save you from madness.
But do seriously consider the cordless headset. Without them, the sound comes out of the car radio. Not that it's a big problem, but what the headset gives you, that the car radio can't, is isolation. By putting headsets on your kids, you isolate them from each other. It practically eliminates all interaction with each other (the same way the movie practically eliminates all interaction with you), thus drastically reducing the likelihood of confrontation. Without headsets there is a chance they will start fighting with each other; with headsets, they basically forget each other exists.
Don't get me wrong, though: I'm not suggesting you isolate your kids from yourself and each other just so you don't have to deal with the noise. What I am suggesting is that during a road trip, when everyone is stuck in the same little confined space with no hope of moving around, isolating and distracting your kids is not such a bad idea. Lets face it: a car is not a fun place for a kid to spend hours and hours. But a DVD system does make it a lot more fun.
And that is why I will consider having a DVD in a future vehicle, when we have kids old enough to understand what the pretty moving images are.
Last night was the premiere of Canada's Worst Driver, a new "reality" show on the Discovery Channel.
The premise is simple(-ish): they took eight people from across Canada that were nominated by friends or loved ones as "the worst". These eight people, along with their nominators, will spend some time in a "driving rehabilitation center" where they will be evaluated and taught driving skills in an effort to make them better drivers.
I like the idea of the show. They have a good sample of different "bad" drivers, from a couple of speed demons to some very infrequent drivers, basically covering the range of the bad drivers we share the road with every day. In theory, the show is not just about singling one as THE worst, but doing so by making everybody improve their skills through coaching and practice -- that's a good idea to me. In application, the show is quite over-dramatic with the host going on long rants to blast these poor skill-less souls. I could live without that part, but short of that the show is quite a positive one.
Watching the show, now that is scary.
First of all, they introduce the drivers by mentioning their "rap sheet". You have people with more than 30 reported accidents (which excludes minor dents that nobody else saw). One has gone through 10 cars in the last 20 years. One has a paralyzing fear of left turns -- I'm not even kidding. Quite... mind boggling. All these people have their driver's license and most of them drive every day.
In the show, they set up some driving challenges, little obstacle courses they have to drive through, where the goal is, quite basically, to not trash the car. Luckily they are driving old cars used only for the show, because after the drivers go through the course the cars need some serious body work. The host, a regular actor and nothing particularly special behind the wheel, goes through the course first to set the bar. Every time he, and the car, comes out unscathed. Then the "contestants" go at it and side mirrors start flying off, cardboard pedestrians get run over and the sweet sound of metal-on-metal makes you cringe.
For most of the challenges, the host sets the bar at a decent height -- say 2 minutes here, 5 minutes there or 45 seconds to parallel park -- then you see the other drivers take 10, 15, 20 minutes -- one actually took an hour! -- and try to parallel park 17 times in 20 minutes...
They also had one where they showed the drivers five actual road signs and only one guy got all of them right. And they weren't particularly difficult, like two cars side by side with a red circle around and a bar across, which means "no passing". I mean, most of them couldn't answer that! And you should hear what they do answer!
The first two episodes were last night, with the other episodes scheduled, I believe, for every night this week. I think it's worth watching out of curiosity just like an accident on the highway is intriguing, though with this show you're not causing traffic by stopping to watch. Plus, it's quite likely that the highway accident was caused by, or involved, one of these drivers...
Check out the show's website, particularly the "drivers" section where they have a short description of each. Quite the interesting read...
