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01-30-09
Friday, January 30, 2009
I don't think I have ever had as much unbridled hate for a fictional character as I do for Lt. Felix Gaeta right now.
Frak you, you traitorous little rat. You'll get yours.
01-29-09
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Yesterday's Activities:
- Noted how many signs there are proudly advertising the WTF Group in Toronto.
- Wandered around. Saw CBC building and Glenn Gould statue on bench.
- Went up CN Tower. Had top of CN Tower entirely to myself.
- Learned that CN Tower is kind of a ripoff. Learned things about acrophobia.
Today's Activities:
- Met Angela's cousin Beth for the first time ever.
- Attended awesome concert at Roy Thompson Hall, featuring Evelyn Glennie playing a new percussion concerto by John Corigliano.
- Rediscovered my love for music.
- Went with Beth to "Big Daddy's Crab Shack".
- Drank beer. Ate deep-fried alligator for the first time.
- Received high cousin-approval rating.
- Write on blog to describe day's events and profess deep lovingness and missingness for Angela. ♥
01-27-09
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
I can't not take some pictures:
On King Street, across from my hotel, the block is packed with trendy restaurants in old, brick buildings:
This town is starting to grow on me. I still love Vancouver, of course. But man, Toronto's restaurants give Vancouver one hell of a run for its money.
Angela's cousin and I are going to see a TSO concert at Roy Thompson Hall. Now I can truly call myself a member of Canada's cultural elite. Also, Iain is coming down from Kingston later this week. We're gonna tool around town on Friday and see the sights.
Even if it's mostly work, this trip has been a blast. Miss you all!
01-25-09
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Good evening everyone, and welcome to a special edition of GeekMan's World, live from Toronto.
"What am you doing in Toronto?" you might ask. "None of your damn business!" I might answer. Nah, I won't do that. But I'm more likely to give you a more detailed answer in person. For now, it will suffice to say that, "I am here on business." And: "Ooh, ooh, ooh! Jesse's first business trip!"
It is cold here, but not that cold. Vancouver's recent winter woes have hardened me. Plus I have a toque and scarf.
I have been trying to wake up extra early these past few days so that the time shift isn't quite to jarring for me. Nevertheless, I can tell that getting up for a regular Toronto workday tomorrow morning is going to hurt somewhat. Hopefully these cruel Torontonians will go easy on me.
I am right in the downtown core, and it's the first time I have been since I was a kid too young to remember it. Like Montreal, and unlike an American city, it still feels like Canada. But the scale of everything has been amped up by a factor of ten. Nondescript office buildings are a full block wide and as tall as the tallest buildings in Vancouver. 5-lane highways and railroads go right into the heart of downtown. The CN Tower looms overhead.
An interesting note! Walk into a Shoppers Drug Mart in downtown Vancouver and you are immediately hit by a particular (pleasant) odor made up of an assemblage of smells. The Shoppers Drug Mart next door to my hotel smells exactly the same. Coincidence? Or olfactory engineering at work?
I had previously decided that the best way to charge my phone while here was to simply plug it into my computer. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that my clock radio has an iPod dock, perfect for charging my phone while I sleep. Marvelous! The room also has a 50-ish inch flatscreen embedded in the wall across from my king size bed. Strangely, there is no minifridge, and while the shower looks amazing there is no bathtub. Priorities!
On the flight over, I amused myself much of the time watching Discovery channel on the mini-TV in the seat in front of me. For a while, I was wondering if I could endure the unsettling irony of watching an episode of Mayday whilst in-flight.
It wasn't on. Probably for the best.
01-22-09
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Well, it turns out that Battlestar Galactica's first episode of season 4.5 has proved me utterly wrong. Oh well.
There's a whole lot going on with me right now, and I have very little time to blog it all. However, I just wanted to let you know about some upsetting news regarding the latest Batman film, The Dark Knight.
The nominees for the 81st Academy Awards were announced this morning, and many (including myself) were shocked to learn that Dark Knight has been snubbed for the Best Picture category.
The nominees for best picture:
Frost/Nixon
Milk
The Reader
Slumdog Millionaire
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Admittedly, Dark Knight faces stiff competition from all these films, most of which are styled to be Academy darlings. The most uncomfortable selection though has to be The Reader, which, while being a solid romantic-historic-political-drama (and a film that Angela and I would like to see), has gotten lukewarm reviews from critics, standing at 60% on Rotten Tomatoes compared with Dark Knight's 94%.
The Academy also snubbed Christopher Nolan in the Best Director category, as well as the powerhouse composing team of Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard in the Best Score category.
Politics? Probably, because you can be there will be a riot in Hollywood if Heath Ledger doesn't posthumously win in the Best Supporting Actor category for his frightening performance as the Joker. And the darkly psychological The Dark Knight is not an Academy-friendly movie.
It's also sad to see Wall-E waving from the kiddie table in the "Best Animated Picture" category when it deserves to be in the "BEST PICTURE" category. I hope it takes home Best Screenplay, it certainly deserves it.
Too sad.
01-14-09
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
More on Battlestar Galactica, because I know that you all love it, and if you don't, you SHOULD.
I bought the Season 4.0 DVD set the other day. I was a little bit miffed because it included the Razor DVD, which I had already bought separately. That will kind of make me think twice about buying any BSG TV-movie DVDs in the future (there is at least one more on the way). Oh well.
I had enough trouble finding the set that I bought. When I went to FutureShop last week, they only had the "steelbook" version of the DVD set: the special metal-cased ones that only FutureShop sells. Well great, I have four other BSG DVD boxes that look one way, and now I'll have one that doesn't match the rest? No dice, FutureSlop. I got mine at HMV.
Last but certainly not least, if any of you have PVRs and are planning on recording the first episode of 4.5 for later viewing, beware: the episode will run over time by 3-4 minutes. Chances are that reruns will be cut-down to fit in the standard time slot. Not that it will be a problem for me, since I'll be glued to my T.V.
So say we all...
01-09-09
Friday, January 09, 2009
01-08-09
Thursday, January 08, 2009
AHEM.
Apparently some of the concerns which I surlishly raised in my last post were construed as, shall we say, "a fine whine". Allow me to underline their genuineness.
Firstly, I want to make it clear that I'm not going to completely ignore personal responsibility in this matter. I'd very much like to get some snow tires. I simply don't know where I'm going to PUT my regular tires in the meantime since, y'know, I don't have a garage. I have avoided driving, as per the city's advice (It's times like this that I really miss my Sidekick and its fuel-efficient 4x4). Nevertheless, I still need to be able to get around via transit.
As for chains, anyone who puts chains on their tires in an urban area is a complete idiot. The chains will help you get out of your unplowed side-street, but once you're on the cleared main roads, you are damaging not only your chains but a public street. And no, I don't think I'll be trying to pull over to yank them off or string them back on in the muck every time I go from main road to side-street.
Next, a very important point needs to be addressed. It may have been implied by a commenter that, since it doesn't snow that often in Vancouver, we shouldn't bother being prepared. An interesting notion! Maybe I can tell that to my boss: "Sorry, can't come to work AGAIN today, car's showed under, transit barely running." Well, I'm sure I'd stay employed with that attitude. Unless we're prepared to throw up our hands, shrug, and shutdown all of Metro Vancouver every time we get more than a few inches of snow, we should be better prepared as a city. I might remind readers that Vancouver is very much a service-based economy. In this world, clients worldwide who can't get their work done by the chaps in Vancouver on the day they need it done are very likely to send it to the chaps in India instead.
And yes, it DOES snow in Vancouver. Last year, we got a several fairly significant dumps of snow, which were largely washed away from the roads (and apparently your memory as well) by big dumps of rain a few days later. However, in that period before the rain, we were paralyzed by the snow. Cars were sliding down hills and transit was hooped. So, do not tell me it does not snow in Vancouver.
Another important point! I grew up in Ontario: I know what a "REAL CANADIAN WINTER" is like *thumps chest impressively*. The difference is, in Ontario, they actually do a good job of keeping their roads clear, and I'm pretty such they aren't suffering under the load of repressively huge municipal taxes. Part of that good job is not just resources, but knowing how/when to use them. An example: here in Vancouver, the city wasted all of its precious salt reserves just before the snowfall and just after, then plowed all of that salt aside. When it rained a bit and froze, turning our roads into ice rinks, the city complained that it was out of salt! Can anyone spot the problem?
So, does anyone actually care about this issue except for spoiled, whiny, F-list bloggers? Why yes! VANOC, the Vancouver Olympic Committee, is actually fuming mad with the city. You see, exactly a year from now, Olympic athletes from around the world will be visiting Vancouver to train on our courses, facilities, and equipment. VANOC is obligated to guarantee to the Olympic committees of many, many different nations that those athletes will all have their equal turn training on site. Unfortunately, it's going to be a little hard to do that if it snows. "What's that?" says the Norwegian OC chair, "You're the winter Olympic host, and you're having a problem with the snow? No, I'm still here, you just need to give me a few minutes to finish laughing at you." VANOC is convinced that the city is heading towards a major embarrassment, and if anyone is going to convince the city that improvements are needed, it's VANOC.
Now, just to prove I'm not some endless complainer who's full of shit, allow me to provide some positive feedback and propose how this issue might be addressed. Currently, the way city budgets work is on a use-it-or-lose it basis. If your department is budgeted a million dollars per year, and you only use $100,000, that's all you get. This is kind of a silly model for weather-mitigating services: we could have no snow one winter and a GOD-DAMN SHITLOAD the next. What do to? How about this: if the City of Vancouver budgets $1,000,000 a year for snowfall control, and it only uses $100,000 that year, take an extra $500,000 anyway and bank it. That way, you build up a buffer of funds that you can use in case of a major snowfall. Put rules in place to allow for the funds to be used as a tax break in case the buffer account gets too high.
Maybe some of you are content standing outside in your shorts chanting "It doesn't snow in the Lower Mainland", hoping that if you wish hard enough, it will become true. I am not one of those people. I believe that if you prepare for the worst, you can usually expect the best.
I mean damn, I don't think we can expect an earthquake in Vancouver every year, but I sure hope to GOD that we're fucking prepared for it.
01-04-09
Sunday, January 04, 2009
It's 8:40PM and I'm in bed. This doesn't feel very odd at all to me for two very important reasons. First, I'm sick and feeling slightly less miserable in my warm comfy bed. Second, it's already been dark outside for four hours.
This winter in Vancouver has given a whole new meaning to the term "White Oppression". We've been assaulted for several weeks now by nearly continuous blankets of snow. Just when one blanket melts enough to give us hope that things will be getting back to normal, another dump of snow shows up to remind us who the boss is.
Besides utterly exhausting us by forcing us to constantly shovel our walks and parking spaces before we can actually go anywhere, the amount of snow adds an additional annoyance: we're simply running out of places to PUT the damn stuff.
And if that weren't enough, I have learned the unpleasant lesson that we can't rely on the City of Vancouver at all to help us out. They've barely plowed our street on a bi-weekly basis since the start of all this great-white-winter, leaving our street a snow-filled skating rink that's nearly impossible to navigate. If that weren't insult enough, they've also decided if the streets aren't plowed, they can't be bothered to come pick up our trash either. We're running out of places to put THAT, too.
I can't wait for spring.
01-02-09
Friday, January 02, 2009
Ladies and Gentlemen,
In two weeks, on January 16th, 2008, the final season of Battlestar Galactica will begin, and we will finally be treated to the answers to two tantalizing questions: Who is the final Cylon, and Where is Earth?
Last June, just before the airing of the final episode of season 4.0, I hinted that I had figured out "the riddle" of Battlestar Galactica. At first, I only thought I knew where/what "Earth" is. But now, I believe that it also leads me to the final Cylon. So before the final half-season gets under way, I'm going to put my cards on the table, and we'll see if I turn out to be right. Those who don't wish to be possibly spoiled should look the other way, now...
Continue reading "BSG: Will I be right? We shall see..." »
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