It's okay, really. Sometimes I just need to express myself. Now for some random thoughts!

- I have a new blender. This one. With beverage dispenser. Yay fancy.

- Hexakosioihexekontahexaphobiacs is the term for people who fear the number 666.

- Winter in Vancouver is depressing. The sun is low in the sky. It's dark when I get up AND when I come home. There's no snow, only cold rain. Depressing.

- It feels good to be off the WarCrack again. But now I'm hooked on the Zelda. How could one not be?

- Yay astronomy!

- I have no idea how to cook a rutabaga.

- Spew. Narf. Poit. Helloooooo nurse.

That is all.

Posted at 03:01 PM | Comments (9)

Posted at 04:13 PM

You don't know the power of the Catholic side...

Posted at 08:13 PM | Comments (3)

I wish I had something meaningful to say.

Posted at 10:08 PM | Comments (3)

It's been a while since I started working at Automated Filing, so when we initially wanted to track down that Trident Gum commercial with the big song and dance, it was impossible. But now, thanks to YouTube, everything is online, even gum commercials from 2001. I can't say that it's the same type of filing, though.

In other news, Weird Al still has his finger firmly on the fluttering pulse of the nerd (I actually do own the Klingon and Javascript books referenced in the video, but I'm hardly fluent in either).

Lastly, if you want your lighthearted childhood memories rendered as an intense, X-treme nightmare, (assuming they aren't already) then you're probably going to love Michael Bay's Transformers movie. Trailer here.

Posted at 08:58 AM | Comments (0)

In the new Zelda game, you encounter the land of twilight. It's not necessarily an evil place, but it is a land of perpetual twilight; lit only by that gentle, dim end-of-day glow.

Today is the winter solstice, and that's how it feels. Let me dispel any notions my international readers might have that I live in the great white north: there's no snow up here now, just lots of cold Vancouver rain. However, living closer to the north pole, I can really tell that this is a day with only 8 hours of light. Even at noon it feels DIM, as if the twilight of Zelda has enshrouded Vancouver. All day I've felt so sleepy. My body thinks I ought to be hibernating through this strange period of the year. The streetlights seem a bit confused as to whether they should be on or off. By the time I leave work at 4:30, it will be night outside.

Thankfully, I get tomorrow off. So I can sleep in briefly before I run around like a headless chicken finishing my various errands. Yay Christmas!!!!1!

Posted at 02:21 PM | Comments (3)

For the past few months, I've been getting these mysterious calls on my cell phone from a 519 area code number (London, Ontario). Whenever I answer, I'm greeted only by silence. Today, one of the damn calls interrupted me at work while I was talking to a client. I had gotten to my limit on the matter.

Thankfully, our glorious edifice of technology, Google, was able to give me the answer that a reverse directory lookup couldn't provide. I found the answer on a site called whocalled.us, where users collaborate to to find out who is calling and hanging up, or using autodialers.

It is TD Canada Trust. The crappy financial institution which I affiliated myself with only briefly to secure a line of credit to pay off Steph's auto loan acquire her car. The line of credit was paid off ages ago, and I've been enduring months of anonymous harassment for... what reason exactly?

When I get home, some poor hapless TD customer service agent is going to have to endure quite an earful.

Posted at 02:54 PM | Comments (4)

Wow, busy week...

I have to say I feel somewhat isolated these days. I mean, I've been seeing Angela a lot and that's great. But sometimes it feels like some of my friends have dropped off the face of the earth.

So there's this big to-do about the arm-straps for the Nintendo Wii remotes. As someone who has played one frequently, I want to give you the official signal that this is basically bullshit. That strap is quite securely fastened to the Wiimote. When there's talk of people throwing them into their wall or T.V. or injuring themselves one can infer that it was perhaps the behavior of the user that caused the calamity. People seem to lack crucial understanding of a very important factoid: ELECTRONICS ARE DELICATE. I remember hearing about people suing Apple because they put their iPod nano unprotected into their jeans pocket and the LCD cracked. Really, what did they expect? That the iPod fairy would provide some sort of mystical protection? It just seems to me that if people break their expensive toys through stupid behavior, then they themselves should pay for it, not the company that made it. Otherwise, when people like me phone up with genuine technical problems we must wade through ridiculous red tape designed to discourage/support the multitudes of users reporting type ID:10t errors.

Anyone who doesn't live in the lower mainland probably doesn't know that we were battered by our third powerful windstorm of the week. The Lion's Gate Bridge has been chronically closed for safety reasons, and traffic lights have gone down frequently, making the traffic in the area between my home and workplace a continual nightmare. People on Vancouver Island have now been without power for several more days and have, in some cases, been advised to leave their homes. The noon news had three distinct (and many more word of mouth) stories of people who were awoken last night by the noise of the wind and went downstairs to make tea/watch TV/feel safer. They then heard a huge crash and went upstairs to find a tree lying on their bed, or their bed covered by debris from a fallen three, or the spot where they were sleeping impaled by a tree branch. It's truly a miracle that no one was killed.

Posted at 02:35 PM | Comments (3)

Slashdot posted a link to this "map of the internet" as made by some cartoonist. Actually, the map shows the assignment of IP number blocks to different authorities (ie: I'm in the address block 209, because my IP is 209.139.232.228).

You can see how North America has a few chunks of address blocks allocated to itself. Then there's a huge space allocated to the United States and Canada. Then there's the cable allocation block (24). THEN there's chunks that are allocated to major companies like Apple, IBM, Xerox, DuPont, (etcetera ad infinitum). Huge blocks are allocated to Europe. (Multicast, Loopback, Private, and Local are used for various TCP/IP technical functionality).

Having an IP block gives you control of about 16.6 million "REAL" (static) IP numbers. Considering that the finite number of blocks makes them a valuable commodity, the way in which they're assigned (largely based on how the internet was originally set up years ago) is of interesting note.

Posted at 03:26 PM | Comments (3)

A am a fucking prophet.

Here's a reminder in case you'd forgotten.

Posted at 02:23 PM | Comments (0)

I realized this morning that I probably hadn't been updating my composition catalog. It's a document I've kept the last ten years or so to help me remember when I started and finished any music I've ever completed. Since I compose a lot less these days, I forget to add pieces to the list.

So I just added "Green Arrow" today, and saw that it was piece number 50. It's kind of nice to see a milestone like that. Now all I have to do is write 12 times as much more and I'll be caught up with Mozart.

I'm still young.

Posted at 09:28 AM | Comments (0)

I have probably babbled about this subject to most of you at some point or another: I've been working on a project for work to put a Mac G4 tower's motherboard into a Rackmount server ATX case. It's my first real mod and it's now complete and running. In true nerd form, I documented the process so that others can repeat my foolishness bravery. So here's my guide: A G4 motherboard in a rackmount ATX case.

Posted at 11:56 AM | Comments (5)

Somebody thinks that Tokyo should have a Godzilla building. I can't say I disagree.

Posted at 08:40 AM | Comments (1)