In-flight entertainment

I'm writing this on my laptop while flying over the blackness that is Lake Ontario at night. Through the clouds, I can occasionally see some lights off to our left, which must be the east end of Toronto, or possibly even further east, like Pickering or Whitby. I'm on Air Canada flight 310, flying down to Reagan airport in Washington DC. Tomorrow and Wednesday, I'll be meeting with some contractors who are doing a security evaluation of the database product that I work on, Adaptive Server Anywhere (ASA). This evaluation is required before a software product can be used by the US government and its agencies, so getting the evaluation done opens a bunch of doors for our sales people. I'm the technical lead on the project, so over the past three years, I've put together lots of documents describing the product and how it works, and written lots of tests and documentation about these tests. It's been a long and ardous project, but for the most part, it's been part time - a few hours here and there, rather than 8 hours a day every day. I will be glad when it's all over though.

Starting this morning when I got up, I've been very nervous about this trip. Not because of what will be happening when I get there, but the flights themselves. I can't explain why - I've flown many times, and I've never been the least bit nervous about it. In my previous job, I flew down to Boston all the time - probably averaging every other month over three years, as well as a couple of trips to San Francisco, one to Naples, Florida, once to DC, and once to New York City. And that's just work trips with Comnetix - I've flown to Baltimore three times with Sybase (though not for over 5 years), and many times on various vacations. I've never been nervous flying, but I had butterflies in my stomach all day, and they got worse as the day went on.

My only guess as to the reason is that it's the first trip I've taken away from my family since Ryan was a baby. The most obvious fear is that the plane will go down and Gail will be left to raise the boys on her own, and they will grow up without a father, and that idea scares the hell out of me. I have every confidence in Gail's parental abilities, and I'm sure she'd do fine, I just don't want her to have to. The weird thing is that Gail and I flew down to Las Vegas back in October without the kids, and I had no qualms about that. If there was, um, an incident during that flight, the kids would grow up without either parent, and would be raised by my sister. With all due respect to her, that would be far, far worse, and yet, I felt no nervousness about that flight. I don't get it.

Looking out the window, I can still see lights off to the left. We must be far beyond the lake now, over New York state somewhere. For some bizarre reason, I felt this urge to time the flight, so I started my stopwatch as soon as the wheels left the ground - 29 minutes and 30 seconds ago. Actually, flying time is supposed to be about an hour, so we're probably at our cruising altitude of 25,000 feet, and roughly halfway there.

We started boarding the flight around 5:45, and just before then, I realized that Gail had already picked up the boys, and was probably at home fixing dinner. The boys would be in the family room, glued to today's episode of What's New, Scooby Doo? which we tape every morning. I thought of calling just to tell them that I love them, but this would be weird for me (telling them that I love them wouldn't be weird, I do that all the time, just calling from the airport specifically to tell them). I know that Gail would immediately ask me what was wrong, and I don't want her to worry about me, so I didn't call. I hope I get to the hotel in time to call before bed - I'd really like to talk to Ryan and ask how his day went - he had a test on owls, which they've been studying for a few weeks now. Did you know that an owl will eat pretty much anything smaller than itself, including bats, rabbits, and even other owls? I did not.

Sometimes talking to Nicholas on the phone is fun too - he's too young to have any real concept of how far away I am or when I'll be back. Ryan, simply because of his age, has a much better understanding of the concepts of time and distance. I keep forgetting how much younger Nicky is - almost three years. Nicky sometimes talks about Figgy and the fact that he died -- and then asks when he's coming back. When we tell him that Figgy's not coming back, he never gets sad, he just sort of says "oh, right", as if he simply forgot. Ryan, on the other hand, started to sniff and almost cry when we drove by the vet's a few weeks ago, because he remembered that that's where we took Figgy when he died.

The captain is talking now - we're at about 15,000 feet, and we'll be touching down in about 10 minutes, so I'll have to shut the machine down now. I'll probably write more on the return flight.

b2 and 0-3

I tried the b2 thing on Saturday night to watch the Toronto Rock game in Rochester. More on the actual game later. b2 basically takes whatever video feed is available (local TV or whatever) and streams it out onto the 'net for $6 a game. For some games, the only video available is the video shown on the scoreboard, complete with crowd shots, "kiss-cam", and whatnot. In this case, the game was being shown on a local Rochester channel, so we got the feed for that, including commercials. I streamed it to my laptop and plugged the laptop into the TV, so I didn't have to watch it on the laptop screen. It was OK, in the sense that I could watch a game that I couldn't otherwise watch, but the video quality kind of sucked. It was sometimes possible to read the names on the back of players' jerseys, but not always. Following the ball was next to impossible, though.

There's another thing out there now called lacrossetv -- for $10 US/month, you get a box that you have to plug into your broadband connection, and then you get lots of games - live games as well as older ones available on-demand. Sounds pretty cool, but (a) I don't know where we'd put the box, and (b) I don't know when I'd have time to watch older games anyway.

Anyway, onto the game itself, which the Rock lost 14-9. I only saw about half of it, since it started at 7:30, and by the time the boys went to bed and I read them their stories and such, it was into the 3rd quarter. The Rock gave up 12 goals in the first half, and were losing 12-4 at one point. The 12 goals were the most the Rock have ever given up in a half, and after 10, Watson was pulled for backup goalie Phil Wetherup. He only let in 4 goals the rest of the way, so he did a great job in a backup role, but the Toronto offense couldn't get anything going. Manning had another frustrating game, only getting 2 assists, where Josh Sanderson had 2-and-3.

Shawn Williams had a great game for the KHawks - 4 goals and 3 assists. Shawn is my buddy Mike's nephew, so we all like to see him do well. I'm sure he especially enjoys playing well against the Rock, since he was once a member of the Rock (won a championship with them in 1999), but was then traded to Buffalo for nothing but a draft pick -- and the guy they chose with that pick never played a game. Don't know why that trade was made, but Shawn spent one productive year in Buffalo before being traded to Rochester in a blockbuster deal the next season, where he's played really well ever since. On any team not featuring John Grant or John Tavares, Shawn would probably be the number one forward.

So the Rock are now 0-3, and are off to the worst start in franchise history. However, 4 of the 5 teams in the east make the playoffs, and the playoffs are all one-game things, not the best-of-5 or best-of-7 you see in the NHL or MLB, so as long as we get into the playoffs, it's still quite possible for the Rock to repeat as Champs. Either way though, I just want to see the Rock playing the way we know they can.

Another close one

The Rock lost their second game of the season to the Buffalo Bandits last night, 13-11. Other than the outcome, it was a great game - kind of chippy in the 1st half though. It seemed for a while that we wouldn't have 5-on-5 lacrosse at all - there would always be someone (or two or three) in the box. Josh Sanderson, who didn't show up in game 1, came out guns-a-blazing last night, and ended up with 4 goals and 3 assists. Blaine Manning, who had a great game 1, got no goals and a single assist. If this trend continues, both Manning and Shooter will have a great game tonight, and Doyle will do nothing.

The defense played pretty well, though stopping Mark Steenhuis on transition is next to impossible. Man, that guy's good. He's one of those annoying little pricks that you hate to play against, but you'd give your left nut to have on your team. He ended up with 5 goals and 4 assists. Chugger put on a clinic, although a lot of shots seemed to hit him square in the chest. Watson made some really nice saves, but also let in 12 goals on only 44 shots.

The most interesting part of the game was a fight (well, sort of) that I actually agreed with. Normally, I don't much like fighting in lacrosse or hockey; most of the time, it's seems pointless. But when Chris White gave Toronto MVP Colin Doyle a cross-check to the head after the whistle was blown, Toronto enforcer Tim "The Surgeon" O'Brien went after White and started pounding him. White immediately turtled, dropping to the floor and covering his face. Since White never threw a punch, he didn't get a fighting penalty, and O'Brien got 5 for roughing. (White did get 5 minutes for cross-checking.) Like I said, I don't generally like fighting, but when someone hits your star player with such a cheap shot, I have no problem with sending someone after him.

Toronto plays in Rochester tonight, trying to avoid starting the season 0-3. Winning in Rochester, however, has never been easy for the Rock - I think they've only done it once ever. (Of course, that once was the 2004 NLL Championship.) The game is on b2, which is some live video streaming thing that I've never tried, but I've heard good things about it, so I think I'll give it a shot tonight.

I'm Rich!

I got an email today saying that Sir Dennis Thatcher, late husband of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, passed away and left me $750,000! That's right, a famous rich guy that I've never met left me a fortune! All I have to do is send an email to this guy in England (he's a reverend, so you know you can trust him).

Strange that an English guy left me a nice round number of American dollars, but like I said, if you can't trust an English reverend, who can you trust?

Drinks are on me, boys...

When hot ain't so hot

I got one of those HotWash things for Christmas - you know, the thing from Canadian Tire that you hook into your windshield washer system and it heats up the fluid before it gets squirted onto your windshield. Supposed to clean it better, and melt ice and snow faster, and get rid of bugs better in the summer, all that good stuff.

Well, it's supposed to be easy to install, but I'm no mechanic (anything requiring more skill than changing the air filter is beyond my capabilities), so I brought it into the Canadian Tire in Burlington to get installed. The installation cost me $45, so big whoop. So then we have the warmest January ever, and I never get to try it on ice and snow. Just to make sure it works, I wash the windshield and feel the fluid temperature. Cold.

So I take it into Canadian Tire in Waterloo (near work), and tell them it doesn't work. They fix it, then I come home and try it again. Cold. (Stupidly, I decided to wait until I'm home before trying it again, instead of trying it in the CT parking lot.)

I took it back in again this morning, and they told me that the fluid is only heated to about 70°F, so it's not going to be super-hot, and that the unit is indeed working. So I check the manual and it says "...allowing the windshield washer fluid to be heated to 60°C (90°F)." Well, first off, 60°C is not 90°F, it's actually 140°F. Secondly, if the thing only heats the fluid up to 70°F, then both numbers in the manual are wrong anyway. Good to see Canadian Tire's quality control department is working overtime.

The Great Debate

Read an interesting article on the Dilbert blog today, regarding the whole Intelligent Design vs. Evolution debate. The article itself was mildly interesting, but the comments are the cool part. Everything from atheists like myself who believe in evolution to religious extremists who believe that people and dinosaurs existed at the same time, and everything in between, including God-fearing scientists who believe a bit of both.

I find these kind of debates interesting. I get a kick out of some (not all) of the creationist points of view that end up reducing to "God must exist because it says so in the Bible. The Bible must be true because it was written by God." This is the quintessential example of circular logic. Maybe God exists and maybe not, but you can't assume the existence of God in order to prove the existence of God. You just can't.

I once saw a bumper sticker that I found intriguing - "Spiritual people enlighten me. Religious people frighten me." I'm not anti-religion, despite my atheism. I have friends of many different religions, and I don't think any of them are delusional or stupid. If you feel that religion gives your life purpose or meaning, or you just find it fun, then as Bob McCown might say, giddy-up. Go to town. Have a ball. Just don't try to push your beliefs on me, and we're good.

Rock lose in OT and Wireless G

Cool - a rhyming title. Gotta like that.

Lacrosse season is back! The Rock played their first game of the season on Saturday night, and lost to the Arizona Sting 14-13 in OT. It was a rematch of last year's final, where the Rock won something like 19-13, but this time, the Sting were the dominant team. They had a 9-3 lead at one point (after an absolutely awful 2nd quarter), but the Rock battled back and tied it at 11, then 12, and then again at 13 with 36 seconds left in regulation. But 2 minutes into overtime, Andrew Guindon put a shot past Whipper to end it. The Rock were rather rusty - lots of dropped balls, passes that went nowhere, and even shots that missed the net by miles. Josh Sanderson looked like a rookie - taking a stupid penalty less than a minute in, and only ending up with 3 assists. Other than the 2nd, Whipper played pretty well, and Brad MacDonald, who came over in a trade with Calgary, made an amazing play to save a goal late in the game.

Arizona started Mike Miron in net, which kind of surprised me, considering they acquired Rob Blasdell in the off-season. I assumed Blazer would be the starting goalie, with Miron as a solid backup, but perhaps it's the other way around, or maybe they'll platoon, as Whipper and Cosmo did a couple of years ago in Toronto. Miron played a pretty good game though, so it's possible that the Arizona GM and coaches know more about lacrosse than I do.

On an unrelated note, I finally managed to get my new wireless G router set up the way I want it - all of my machines can connect to the 'net and each other, and no other machines can use it (using MAC filtering). I had to download a firmware upgrade and reset the router to factory defaults at least four times before I got this done, but it eventually worked. It's kind of a waste though - the old wireless B router gave us 11 Mbs, while the new one gives 54 Mbs. Sounds great, except that the 2 machines upstairs only have 11 Mbs cards in them, so they don't notice any difference, only our laptops (both from work) do. However, the cable modem coming into the house only gives about 3 1/2 Mbs, so the laptops don't notice any difference either, unless they're copying files between each other, which has never happened. Long story short - the new router gives exactly the same performance as the old router. I'll have to look for cheap wireless G cards on eBay or Factory Direct.

Luckily, the router was on sale - after the $20 mail-in rebate, it only cost me $10. The mail-in rebate should come in 8-10 weeks - if it doesn't, I'll probably have long forgotten about it by then, and even if I haven't, it's not like there's anything I can do. I was promised a mail-in rebate (something like $60) when I bought 3 seasons of Star Trek: The Next Generation on DVD, which I did (I eventually bought all 7), but 8-10 weeks later, I received a letter saying that I hadn't included proof of purchase from each DVD package, which I had. But of course, I had no proof of that, so I was SOL.

Words of wisdom

Yesterday Nicholas said something rather profound, for a three-year-old, anyway. He was trying to do something (don't know what), and was not having much luck, and started to get frustrated. Ryan told him that he needed to be patient (Ryan being the poster-boy for patience), to which Nicky gave a big sigh and said "It takes too long to be patient". Truer words were never spoken.

So spam ain't that useless after all

Here is a story from boingboing about a guy who received the ubiquitous spam email supposedly from the FBI saying "we have logged your IP address on some illegal websites and now you're in big trouble", yadda yadda yadda. He figured the email was real, and turned himself in to the police, who found lots of child porn on his computer.

One more kiddie porn scumbag off the streets, and it's all thanks to SPAM! I have long hoped for a day where spam would simply cease to exist, but if the existence of spam helps to get these people off the streets, then sign me up for your mailing list! I want to buy a cheap Rolex knockoff! I want to increase the size of my manhood! I want cheap xanax and alprazolam and propecia and other drugs I've never heard of! I'm excited that hot teen sluts are just waiting for me to call them!

Actually, thinking about it some more, keep me off the mailing lists, and just send all my spam to the stupid kiddie porn people. Thanks.

Jasper secrets revealed!

My boss discovered my blog today, thanks to the link on my family web site, so I thought I'd scare him a bit. Jasper is the code name for the next release (version 10.0) of SQL Anywhere, the RDBMS that I work on. It's not scheduled for release until sometime in 2006, so revealing the new features and stuff here would be a very Bad Thing™ and could get me fired. So, no, Mark, I have no intention of posting any secrets here, except to say that Jasper contains more new features and big changes since ASA 6.0 back in about 1998.

BTW, all of the major releases since version 7.0 have had code names, and they've all been ski resorts: 7.0 was Aspen, 8.0 was Vail, 9.0 was Banff, and 10.0 is Jasper. We haven't picked a code name for 11.0 yet, but apparently Chicopee, the staggering 200-foot-vertical ski hill in nearby Kitchener, is not in the running. By way of comparison, the hills in Jasper, Alberta have a vertical rise of about 3,000 feet.

Music stuff

Here are a few lists of music-related things:

Good Band Names

• Blue Rodeo
• The The
• Barenaked Ladies
• The Thompson Twins (there are 3 of them, and they're not related)
• Rage Against The Machine - not a big fan of their music, but good name
• Strawberry Alarm Clock
• Bands named after people who don't exist (Max Webster, Pink Floyd, Jethro Tull)
• Death Cab For Cutie
• Rainbow Butt Monkeys (now known as Finger Eleven, another good name)
• Bourbon Tabernacle Choir
• Buddy Whasisname and the Other Fellas
• Bruno Gerussi's Medallion
• Me First and the Gimme Gimme's

More good ones here.

Bad Band Names

• The (anything) - post-1980. The Cars? The Smithereens? The Salads?
• Bands that name themselves after a place (Toronto, Boston, Kansas, Chilliwack, Asia, Chicago) - The Bay City Rollers are exempt from this because they picked their name by throwing a dart at a US map
• Audioslave - great band, boring name, especially considering the members came from Rage Against The Machine and Soundgarden, both good names

Just Weird Band Names

• Chumbawumba
• Bowling for Soup
• Hoobastank
• The Meat Puppets
• Toad The Wet Sprocket
• Mott The Hoople
• Ned's Atomic Dustbin

Great Album Names

• Not of this Earth - Joe Satriani -- After listening to his guitar playing, you might believe he really is not of this Earth.
• Break Like The Wind - Spinal Tap
• Tragic Kingdom - No Doubt
• Yes I Am - Melissa Etheridge -- Doesn't refer to her sexuality, but since it's the first album since she came out, it sounds like it does
• Rockihnroll - Greg Kihn -- He also had albums named Kihnspiracy, Kihnspicuous, and Kihnsolidation

Generally bad album names:

• Anything non-debut album that's self-titled (see Peter Gabriel, Weezer)
• Any numbered album (Led Zeppelin, Chicago)
• "Untitled" albums (Led Zeppelin "IV")
• "Greatest Hits" if you're a band that didn't have any actual hits, i.e. on the Top 40 chart or whatever. Pearl Jam is immensely popular, but has had very few big hit singles. If Pearl Jam were to release such a compilation, "The Best Of Pearl Jam" would be a better option than "Pearl Jam's Greatest Hits".

Best Guitar Solos

• Comfortably Numb - Pink Floyd
• One of these Nights - The Eagles
• Alive - Pearl Jam
• Free Bird - Lynyrd Skynyrd
• Shine - Collective Soul
• Layla - Derek and the Dominoes
• Sultans of Swing - Dire Straits
• One - Metallica

Dork Tower

Hilarious picture from Dork Tower.

CD Baby, baby!

I ordered Heather Hill's CD from cdbaby.com, and got this email once it shipped:

Your CD has been gently taken from our CD Baby shelves with sterilized contamination-free gloves and placed onto a satin pillow.

A team of 50 employees inspected your CD and polished it to make sure it was in the best possible condition before mailing.

Our packing specialist from Japan lit a candle and a hush fell over the crowd as he put your CD into the finest gold-lined box that money can buy.

We all had a wonderful celebration afterwards and the whole party marched down the street to the post office where the entire town of Portland waved 'Bon Voyage!' to your package, on its way to you, in our private CD Baby jet on this day, Saturday, December 10th.

I hope you had a wonderful time shopping at CD Baby. We sure did. Your picture is on our wall as 'Customer of the Year'. We're all exhausted but can't wait for you to come back to CDBABY.COM!!

The subject of the email was "CD Baby loves Graeme". It's nice to be appreciated.

Guess who hit the big time

We received a Christmas card the other day from a couple with whom we exchange cards every year, but we haven't actually seen them in a number of years. We knew he had started his own company, but we had no idea how it was doing, so just for fun, I googled him. After finding some stuff about him, I asked Gail if there was anyone else she wanted to look up, and she said she was wondering about her first-year university roommate, Heather Pirie, who we lost touch with a number of years ago. We knew she had gotten divorced, but nothing else. The first search turned up an entry that started "Heather Pirie became a full-time singer/songwriter...". Gail was immediately skeptical that I'd found the right one, until I read the rest of the entry: "...after leaving an executive business development position in the corporate world of Internet software publishing", which describes what Heather was doing the last we heard. Then Gail thought for a second, and remembered that Heather was a very good piano player and did like to sing, so maybe... After some more searching, we found that this was indeed the Heather Pirie that Gail had roomed with, and she had changed her name (presumably she is now re-married) to Heather Hill. We found her web site, listened to a couple of tracks from her debut CD, and then ordered it. I hope this doesn't sound condescending, but good for you, Heather, for following your dreams!

Note about the title of this article - it's from "Lucky Ones" by Loverboy, and the complete line is "Don't ask me how, but guess who hit the big time". Just wanted to say that the "Don't ask me how" part doesn't apply here. I've only heard a couple of the songs, but she sounds like quite the talented singer.

Which OS are you?

Which OS are You?

A Clandestine Meeting

Gail and I started a Christmas tradition a couple of years ago -- on Christmas eve, we have fondue for dinner (bread and cheese fondue first, then beef fondue, and chocolate fondue for dessert), and then everyone puts on brand new pajamas, and we all do a big jigsaw puzzle. I bought some puzzles on eBay the other day just for this reason, and noticed that the seller lives in Hamilton. I asked him if he wouldn't mind me picking the puzzles up to save myself shipping costs, and he said no problem. Once I won the auction, we arranged to meet at a Tim Horton's (how Canadian, eh?) across from Limeridge Mall. I told him I'd wear a red baseball cap so he'd recognize me (Gail thought that the whole "red baseball cap" thing was very funny), and he said to look for an old man with gray hair and a cane.

I was going Christmas shopping anyway, so I showed up a little early and had dinner. Vegetable soup and chicken salad sandwich combo. On whole wheat. With a Coke. I finished that and then went back up for a donut and hazelnut smoothee (mmmmmmmm... hazelnut) and while I was enjoying that, a woman who was the quintessential "little old lady" came up to me and said "Excuse me, but are you the puzzle man?" I told her I was, and she motioned me over to where she and her husband were sitting. Her husband was the man with the cane - there was a large tree in between where they were sitting and where I was sitting, so I hadn't seen them (good thing I wore my red baseball cap!). We chatted for a minute or two, I thanked them for meeting me so I could save the shipping costs, and went our separate ways.

My car still smells like hazelnut smoothee.

Harry the Fourth

Gail and I played hookey flexed some work time this afternoon and went to see Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. The movie raised a few questions: How many times can you say that the fourth movie in a series was just as good as the first, if not better? How many movies would Gary Oldman agree to be in if he was offered maybe 3 minutes of screen time, and you could barely even recognize him? How do you make a 2 1/2 hour movie out of a 700 page book without skipping any important stuff?

It had its flaws (Harry, Ron, and Hermione all look older than the 14 they're supposed to be), and some stuff was missing (the Dursley's and Mrs. Weasley weren't there at all, Fleur and Krum said almost nothing, and I missed Krum's trouble with Hermione's name - "Herm-o-ninny") but we really enjoyed it. As usual, the views of the school and surrounding grounds were amazing, Snape was sufficiently slimy (though less negative towards Harry than in the previous movies), Draco was somehow a bully and a chickenshit at the same time, and Ron was scared silly (though this time, it wasn't spiders or other monsters that scared him, it was (gasp) girls). The only person who seemed out of character was Dumbledore - he seemed more angry than usual, and also seemed to have more energy than a man his age should have.

It'll be a two-year wait, but we're already looking forward to the next movie - Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix!

In other news, I ordered a new home gym yesterday, and it's being delivered tomorrow. Click here, then click on Strength, and look under "Northern Lights Multi Gyms" for a model called Granite. I didn't get the 50 lb extra weight - 150 lbs should do me for the time being (and the forseeable future). I'm not planning on entering any weightlifting or bodybuilding competitions or anything, I'm just hoping to tone a little and hopefully lose the "love handles" around my waist. I started working out shortly after Ryan was born - we bought a treadmill, and I lost 25 pounds in about 4 months. I bought a cheap little weight bench and a few free weights a year or so later, and I've been using them ever since, though the fact that I work out alone and don't have a lot of time to be switching plates and stuff around meant that the number of exercises that I could do was very limited. With this thing, there are tons of things I can do, I can change weights in seconds, and there's no danger of dropping the weights on my chest or neck or anything, so it's safer. I'm really looking forward to this...

Things are more like they are now than they ever used to be

I remember a time, not too long ago, when a 540 MB hard drive cost just over $500 - the rule of thumb for disk storage at the time was roughly a buck a meg. Right now at Factory Direct, you can get a 250 GB hard drive for $119, which is less than 50 cents a gig. Which means that in less than ten years, the price of hard disk storage has come down by a factor of two thousand.

Our first computer (in 1982) was a Commodore VIC-20, with 3.5 kB of usable RAM, and the only storage was tape casettes. It cost something like $400. After a while, we got a 16 kB expansion cartridge, and I didn't know what to do with all the extra memory. Eventually (maybe 1985) we moved up to an XT with an 8 kHz processor, some terribly small amount of RAM (definitely measured in kB, not MB), and two floppy drives (no hard disk) - this machine cost over 2 grand. My dad bought a 10 MB hard disk a little while later, and we were on the leading edge of computing. Now, twenty years later, there's a far more powerful computer embedded in your average vending machine, and I have a little two-inch-long thing that hangs on my key chain that can store 128 MB.

It's almost scary to think what computing will be like 10 or 20 years from now. This post kind of reminds me of the book The Age of Spiritual Machines by Ray Kurzweil, which I read a year or two ago (and inspired the album Spiritual Machines by Our Lady Peace). Kurzweil talks about how much more powerful (and cheaper) computers are getting, and eventually, they will be as powerful and fast as the human brain -- and what happens then? Will people start getting microprocessor implants to enhance memory, intelligence, or even things like strength or muscular endurance? How many such implants can one have before the line between human and machine gets blurry? A really interesting read.

Ovechkin and Ponikarovsky

I've heard quite a bit about Alexander Ovechkin recently. He was the first pick just before the "season that wasn't", but then seemed to have been forgotten about, what with the lockout and then the end of the lockout and then the whole Sidney Crosby mania. He won't be forgotten about for long though - he's rivalling Crosby for most points by a rookie this year. The way they talk about him on the radio is impressive - he's a scoring machine, who has as good a chance as anybody of scoring 70 goals in the next couple of years. Considering 50-goal scorers have been rather rare in the last couple of years, this would be quite an accomplishment. Anyway, I heard an interview with him the other day, and he said that he wants to play as much as possible - forward, defence, on the PP and PK, anywhere. He just loves to play. His coach said that he's adapting to life in North America quite well - he's working hard on his English, and even turned down an offer to be roommates with one of his Russian teammates, figuring that if he's bunking with a native-English speaker, his English will improve that much faster. Nice to hear about a hard-working athlete who is playing because he loves to play, and doesn't consider himself God's gift to his sport (are you reading this, Terrell Owens?).

Also heard another nice story about the Leaf game yesterday - Carlo Colaiacovo took a shot towards the net that Alexei Ponikarovsky seemed to deflect into the net. Ponikarovsky was given credit for the goal, but immediately went to the ref and told him that he didn't touch it, and that Colaiacovo should be given credit. He also knew that it would have been Colaiacovo's first NHL goal, so he went and grabbed the puck. After talking to the ref the second time, he gave the puck to Colaiacovo, and credit for the goal was changed. He could easily have just taken credit, but went out of his way to make sure the right person got the goal. Attaboy.

New Toys and Psychic Nikki

On Mix 99.9 this morning, they had Psychic Nikki on as a guest - she comes on now and again and they get people to call in and ask her questions about their love life, job, financial situation, stuff like that. What a crock. Every single person who calls gets a positive response - yes, your money situation will improve. Yes, you will meet the person of your dreams within a few months. Yes, you will get promoted or get a new job. This morning she was also doing "past lives readings". Humble Howard apparently was a German fighter pilot in WWI named Deiter. The funniest part was the very first caller - she asked about her past lives, and Nikki told her she was one of Henry VIII's wives, who was beheaded. Puh-lease. There are approaching 6 billion people in the world today, and the first person to call the Mix this morning happened to be one of Henry VIII's wives in a past life? Come on. I get a kick out of Psychic Nikki whenever she's on - it's such crap.

Now for the real fun stuff - toys! I went out to Factory Direct yesterday and picked up a PVR card and DVD burner for $60 each. I need to put a cable TV jack in the office now, but there's one in Ryan's room which is on the other side of the wall, so I could probably just cut a hole in the office wall opposite the jack in Ryan's room and move the jack over. Then plug the cable into the card and voila! I can record TV shows on the computer, then burn them onto DVD. I have anothor thing called a Dazzle, which plugs into the computer, then you plug the video camera into that, and it allows you to transfer video tape to the computer. Now we can transfer our video tapes of the kids to the computer, and then onto DVD. This will obviously make watching them easier, but will also allow us to put the original video tapes in the safety deposit box - backup and offsite storage is a critical part of disaster recovery, dontcha know.

The PVR card also has a FM tuner in it, so I was able to listen to the radio through the computer yesterday as well. I'm sure I won't use that feature all that often, but it's cool nonetheless.

Top 10 Great Album Names for Bad Albums

10.	Songs about Fucking - Big Black
	Honestly, I have no idea what this band sounds like, but you just gotta love the honesty of the title.
9.	Eat 'em and Smile - David Lee Roth
8.	All the Best Cowbows Have Chinese Eyes - Pete Townshend
7.	Vigil in a Wilderness of Mirrors - Fish
	Not that bad an album, but not nearly as good as his stuff with Marillion.
6.	The Spaghetti Incident? - Guns 'n Roses
	After Appetite for Destruction and the Use Your Illusions, this one was a bit of a downer.
5.	Counterparts - Rush
	Not a great album, as Rush albums go, but the album art plays on the word "Counterparts" very well, listing a bunch of words that go together, as well as pictures of things that go together, and other things like a blueprint of a kitchen sink and parts of a clock (get it? Counter parts?).
4.	Happiness Is Not A Fish That You Can Catch - Our Lady Peace
3.	Badmotorfinger - Soundgarden
	I loved Superunknown, and had heard lots of good things about this one, so I bought it. It's OK, but Superunknown blows it away.
2.	Sailing the Seas of Cheese - Primus
	Tommy the Cat and Jerry was a Race Car Driver are both good, but the rest was rather forgettable. Frizzle Fry is a much better Primus album.
1.	Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence - Dream Theater
	Again, not a bad album, but not as good as other Dream Theater albums. Awesomely cool album title though. This one gave me the idea for this list.

Update: Honorable mention to The Worst of Jefferson Airplane by (who else?) Jefferson Airplane. This one's good not only because of the good name, but because (I believe) it was their debut album.

Maybe next I'll list the worst album titles for great albums -- pretty much any self-titled album (that's not a debut album) or numbered album (Chicago II, Chicago III, Chicago IV, ..., Chicago XVII, ...) would count here.

Optical illusion

Check out this optical illusion - takes a few seconds, but it's quite cool.

Blogging

Here is a comic about the blogging craze. Makes me wonder why I write in this blog - is it for the money? No, though it's kind of nice. For the chicks? No, though, again, that's a welcome perk. Because my thousands of devoted readers are clamoring for more of my innermost thoughts? Um, no.

I don't really know why I have a blog. Sometimes I think it's kind of a historical document - so in a few years, I can read what I was thinking way back when Figgy died, or when we went to Vegas, or something like that. Other times, it's just an outlet for me to vent about stuff (ObVent: if someone passes you on the right, in all probability it means that you're in the wrong lane, not them!), and sometimes I feel like I want to share my opinions with someone, but I don't know who, so I just post 'em here.

It's funny - I'm not sure if Gail even knows I have a blog. It's not a secret - there's a link to it on our own web site fer cryin' out loud - and I'm not trying to keep it from her, I just haven't made a point of telling her about it. And I know why I haven't -- the first thing she'd ask is "why?", and I don't really know the answer.

Gambling and lotteries

I read somewhere that while gambling is legal in Nevada (there were even slot machines at the gate in the airport), lotteries are illegal. This is misleading, though, since there's a game called Keno available in every casino we saw -- and even in some restaurants. Keno, which has the highest house advantage (see below) of any game in Vegas, is simply a fancy version of Lotto 6/49 - you get a card with numbers, pick a bunch of them, turn your ticket in, then a computer picks a bunch of random numbers and depending on how many numbers you got right, you win varying amounts of money. There are lots of different ways to win, but it's essentially a lottery.

The "house advantage" is the amount you can expect to lose at a particular game over a long period of time. For example, Keno has a house advantage of something like 30%, while slots are under 10% and poker and blackjack are under 5%. Roulette is pretty high as well, but I don't remember the number. Basically, the more skill you require, the less of a house advantage. My problem with gambling is that I get bored at slots because there is no skill involved whatsoever, but games like blackjack or poker require more skill than I have (to do anything other than lose consistently), so I'm outta luck. I did have fun playing video blackjack though, and had some luck the first night. I would like to learn more about blackjack though, and maybe next time I'm in a casino, I'll have the confidence to actually sit at a table with a real dealer!

One thing struck me as funny while gambling in Vegas -- the number of people who are frighteningly uninformed on games of chance. People who won't play a slot machine because it paid off recently - or try to play machines that have not paid off recently, figuring they have a better chance of winning there. The funniest thing was the big video board next to each roulette table, listing the previous 20 numbers that came up -- like this gives you any useful information whatsoever. One board I saw showed that four of the previous seven spins had been 1. Question: does this tell people to bet on 1 because it's coming up a lot, or don't bet on 1 because it's already come up more often than the "law of averages" allows? Answer: It tells you nothing. On a wheel with both 0 and 00, the probability of getting 1 on the next spin is exactly 1/38, regardless of whether 1 has come up recently or not. I wonder how much money casinos make because people can't seem to figure that out?

Funny, except not

On Wednesday, while taking a cab to one of the shows we saw (at The Bellagio, I think), the cab driver asked us where we were from. When we said Toronto, he asked if we'd had any snow yet. We laughed, and told him it was only October, and we don't generally get snow until December, maybe late November.

It's snowing right now.

Viva Las Vegas!

Gail and I are back from our 5-day trip to Las Vegas, celebrating our 10th wedding anniversary. I never really had any interest in going to Vegas, since I don't gamble, but Jeff and Kerri went last year, and had a ball, and after they told us all the cool things they did, we decided to check it out as well. It was well worth it.

We stayed at The Mirage, with a great view of the Strip (well, we started off on the 4th floor, with a great view of the roof of the parking lot, but we asked to be moved to a room with a better view, and the next morning, we were given a room on the 21st floor. Much better). We saw a celebrity-impersonator show called Legends in Concert (very good), a typical Las Vegas revue-type show called Jubilee (not so good), and "O" by Cirque du Soleil, which was amazing. Jubilee was topless, which was a first for both of us, and was quite disappointing. The dancers were all lovely and great performers and everything, but the fact that they were topless certainly didn't add anything to the show - it made Gail uncomfortable, and I have to say, didn't do much for me either. The weird thing was that some of the dancers were topless while others weren't. One of the words used to describe the show was "sexy", but I didn't find it sexy at all -- seems like a paradox, but I think it would have been sexier had all of the dancers been covered up.

The size and scope of things (note that I'm no longer talking about the topless show :-) ) along the Strip was just unbelievable. Caesar's Palace is FOUR separate buildings, at least two of which look like they're 20+ floors, and takes up a full city block, and it's not the biggest hotel there -- that would be the MGM Grand. It seems weird that you can forget about places like the Flamingo, Imperial Palace, Monte Carlo, Aladdin, and Harrah's, all of which are multi-hundred-million dollar hotels with over 1000 rooms and numerous restaurants and casinos and shows, and would be the largest hotel in just about any city in the world — but along the Strip, they pale in comparison with the MGM Grand, Mirage, Caesar's, New York New York, Venetian, and Bellagio.

Anyway, I could sit here all day and compose pages and pages of stuff about our trip, but I think I'll break it up into smaller entries. For now, suffice it to say that we had a great time. We took something like 12 rolls of film and an hour of video - once we get the rolls developed (Gail still refuses to be dragged kicking and screaming into the world of digital photography), I'll scan a bunch of them and add a Las Vegas page to our web site.

Figaro

We had to have Figgy put down this afternoon. He seemed to be getting better for a while, and then worse. His vet's appointment yesterday morning showed that his liver enzyme numbers were elevated again -- not as bad as the first appointment, but still 4-5 times higher than they should be. They gave him an ultrasound yesterday afternoon, where they found cancer in the lining of his liver. Perhaps he had fatty liver disease as previously thought and perhaps not, but either way, the cancer was there too, and so there was nothing that could be done.

Obviously this was a very difficult decision to make, but at the same time, it was a very easy decision. At best, Fig's uncomfortable and unhappy, and at worst, already suffering in pain. Either way, the suffering would get worse, and there is no chance of recovery, so ending the suffering was the only choice we had. Anything else would be prolonging his pain.

The weird thing is that once we found out about the cancer, and brought him home for the night, he acted differently, almost back to normal. He even ate some dry food this morning, which he hasn't eaten in 2 weeks. He slept beside Gail last night, and purred when we pet him, and didn't try to hide under or behind things. It's almost as if he understood what was happening and had accepted it.

Sleep well, Figgy. You will be greatly missed.

Pandora

I discovered a cool music web site the other day (again, through wilwheaton.net) called Pandora.com. It allows you to set up "stations" which play a variety of music. The cool thing is that you can give it a band or song and it will choose songs from its huge catalogue that are musically similar to the one you chose. By "musically similar", I mean it ignores the "style" of band or the popularity of the band, and just goes by the song itself. It even tells you why it chose a song -- one such description was "Based on what you've told us so far, we're playing this track because it features mild rhythmic syncopation, a subtle use of vocal harmony, minor key tonality, mixed acoustic and electric instrumentation, and many other similarities identified in the music genome project." Several were chosen at least partially because they contained "a dirty electric guitar solo". :-)

My first station started off with Dream Theater, and it chose bands like Dio, Chris Cornell, Korn, Anthrax, Three Days Grace, Triumph, Tool, Obituary, Ozzy, Sevendust, and a few bands I'd never heard of like Angra, Shadows Fall, Avenged Sevenfold, Further Seems Forever, and Soak. Some of them were a little heavier than I like (Dio, Ozzy, Korn, Anthrax -- the Obituary song (Dying) was very cool musically, but the vocalist was a little too death metal for my tastes), but in general, they were all similar. I just added Rush to the station, so it should start choosing songs that are similar to both Dream Theater and Rush, and perhaps get a little further away from the death metal stuff.

It's free for 10 hours, and then you pay $36/year. I've been listening to this all day, and I think I may subscribe.

Burning question of the day

If C-3P0 is fluent in over six million forms of communications, why can't he teach R2-D2 one that isn't the vocal equivalent of assembly language?

Free-as-in-beer music

A band out of Seattle called Harvey Danger has released their latest album "Little by Little" on the internet as a free download. I've never heard of the band at all, but I downloaded it anyway because (a) I can, without feeling guilty, (b) if the band is keeping track of how many people do this, higher numbers might push other bands to do the same thing, and (c) maybe they don't suck.

Turns out that they don't suck. I've only listened to it once, and I don't know if I actually like it yet, it'll take a few more listens. But they're competent musicians, the singer has a pretty good voice, and the production is pretty good (i.e. it doesn't sound like it was recorded in someone's basement).

I read about this on wilwheaton.net. Actually, it was on Wil's temporary blog site, since his main site is experiencing technical difficulties. Please stand by.

Cool stuff

I saw an article today on the 100 best (computer-related) products of 2005, so I thought I'd come up with my own list of products that I can't live without. Well, OK, maybe "can't live without" is a little strong, but here are some products that I really like.

• Mozilla Firefox. It blocks most pop-up windows, allows multiple pages in tabs, has a google search feature built-in, and allows smart keywords (i.e. I can enter "wiki <anything>" in the address bar, and it will load wikipedia and search for the "anything" that I entered. And it doesn't allow useless and dangerous ActiveX controls. And it supports web standards like CSS way better than IE. In short, it just rocks.
• A few extensions for Firefox: Adblock, Web Developer, and Add Bookmark Here are all very useful.
• The MP3 player in my car. When the CD player in my Grand Prix got flaky, I replaced it with one that also plays MP3s. I quickly created a few disks with lots of albums on them, and now I'm hooked. I can put in a disk in, hit shuffle, and not hear the same song twice for days or weeks. I have a single CD with the entire Tragically Hip collection, plus one or two other albums, since there's room.
• IrfanView. It's an image file utility that can do things like display slideshows and stuff, but the only thing I use it for is batch image conversion. For example, I had a directory containing 25 .jpg files that I wanted to scale down -- they were all something like 3300x4800 pixels, and 800 dpi. For the web, I only wanted maybe 150dpi and 800x1200 or thereabouts. With IrfanView, I selected the images, told it what I wanted it to do, and it did it to each one in turn. Very cool.
• My universal remote control. I use it to control the following components in our family room: TV, DVD player, VCR, receiver, CD player, and even the ceiling fan.
• Wireless networking. We bought a wireless router about 4 years ago (cost something like $350 for the router and $150 for a wireless card - way cheaper now), and I don't know how we survived without it. I guess before Gail and I had laptops, we just used our PC, which was always in the same place, so there was no problem. Now, I bring my laptop home from work and turn it on, and it immediately connects to the internet, and I can do this in any room in the house.
• My cell phone. I don't get a lot of calls; about 90% are from Gail, asking me to pick up dinner on the way home from work, or stop off at the grocery store, or whatever, but I always make sure I have my phone with me whenever I go anywhere.

One more item that's on the very cool list, though I've never really used it, is Mac OS X. I've never been a Mac guy at all, but I did work at a company that did NeXTStep development. NeXTStep was the best development environment I've ever worked in. Once NeXT was bought by Apple, they kind of based OS X on NeXTStep, and made it even cooler. I've only seen it a couple of times at work when John (a faithful reader of this blog, and quite possibly the only reader of this blog) shows me the cool stuff his Mac can do. It's basically your standard Unix system, but the GUI is far cooler than any other Unix GUI I've seen. It does cool things like being able to temporarily tile all of the windows, allowing you to pick one, and them moving all the windows back to where they were. The Windows UI team could learn a thing or two from OS X.

Figgy's coming home

Heard from the vet today - Figgy's going to be fine. He's been eating pretty well, and his liver enzyme numbers are way down (one of them is supposed to be under 120 -- his was up over 940 on Friday, and down to about 240 today), so the doctor said he'd be happier in his own home environment. Gail's going to pick him up this afternoon. You can be damn sure that we're going to pay closer attention to the amount of food he eats from now on!

The Figster and Runnin' for the Cure

Had a bit of a scary day on Friday. I went to the dentist in the morning and when I came back, my cat Figaro was sitting on the kitchen chair, looking at me. I noticed that his ears and nose seemed a little yellow, instead of the usual pink. Upon closer inspection, I found that they were quite yellow, as were his nose, lips, and the whites of his eyes. Gail and I had noticed the day before that he hadn't been himself for a day or two. I immediately called the vet and brought him in. She examined him and told me that he had liver disease. She said that most of the time, this is caused by cats simply not eating. After a while, their body starts to process their body fat, and sometimes the liver gets overwhelmed and shuts down. Then this causes nausea, which makes the cat even less likely to eat, so the whole thing spirals. He's lost a pound (i.e. 10% of his body weight) since his last checkup a month ago (at which time he seemed in perfect health). She told me that they'd have to keep him there for the weekend.

The type of liver disease that she thinks he has is very treatable - as long as he starts eating again, his liver will start to regenerate itself, and he'll be fine. They started him on anti-nausea medication, and managed to get him to eat something, though he threw everything up Friday night. We went to see him Saturday morning, and he did seem a little less yellow, and a little less lethargic as well. We tried to go again Saturday afternoon, but they were just starting a procedure on a dog, so we couldn't go through to where Figgy was, and they were about to close. The doctor called me a little while later, saying that he hadn't thrown up all day, and was eating some more, and was even more bright than the morning, so this is good news. We heard nothing today (vet's office was closed)- she's going to call with an update tomorrow, and hopefully he can come home.

Figgy's been with Gail and I almost as long as we've been together -- we started dating in February of 1992, and we found Fig (he was a stray) in November of '92. I know that he's not going to live forever, and I know that at 14, he's already lived longer than most house cats. If anything were to happen, Nicholas is too young to understand, and likely won't remember Fig for long, but Ryan seemed genuinely upset on Saturday, and said a number of times that he hopes Figgy gets better. Gail would be devastated, and I'm not sure I'd be much better. C'mon, Figster, you can beat this.

On another topic, we all walked in the CIBC Run for the Cure this morning. It's a 5k run/walk to raise money for breast cancer research. My mother and Gail's mother are both breast cancer survivors, as was Gail's late grandmother, so this is a cause that's important to us. We raised $325 ourselves, and the event, held at over 40 different locations across Canada, raised over $21 million. Last year, the four of us plus my parents walked the 2k leg, but we decided to walk the full 5k this year. We knew the boys wouldn't walk the full 5k, so we brought the wagon -- good thing too, since they both stayed in the wagon the entire walk. Gail and I split pulling the wagon, so we each walked 5k, 2 1/2 of which was pulling a wagon holding 80 pounds of Perrow kids.

Spam-o-rama

At work, we use the services of SpamShark to filter our email spam. Every now and again, I log in to their web site and peruse the spam I've received, on the off-chance that some useful piece of email was accidentally marked as spam. The top four types of spam I receive seem to be:

1. Cheap drugs (Viagra, Cialis, et al)
2. Porn
3. Stock tips
4. Watches

The first three I can understand - sex, drugs and money - but watches? Who the fuck cares? For me, a watch is a tool that tells you the time. If it's got the date too, alarms, stopwatches, etc. that's great, but the time is the important thing. My watch is a cheap Timex Expedition - $40 at Wal-Mart, and I've had it for years. If I were in a different line of work where I had to deal with customers face-to-face, and wear suits and stuff, then sure, I'd probably get myself a nicer watch. But are there really that many people who are dying for a Rolex or a Rolex clone? If I see someone wearing a Rolex, I think that either (a) he bought a cheap knock-off to try to impress people, or (b) he's got more money than brains. Either way, I'm not terribly impressed.

It's the same with wheels on cars - when I was picking out stuff for my car, upgrading the wheels is about the last thing I'd spend money on. I simply do not care one iota what the wheels on my car look like.

Castle on a Cloud

We went to see Les Misérables last night in Toronto. I really like that show; this was my fourth time seeing it, and Gail's third. Most of it is not especially upbeat or happy (as Gail mentioned to Kerri last night, Mamma Mia this ain't), but it's a very powerful story, and is all about love - Fantine's love for Cosette, Valjean's for Cosette, Eponine's for Marius, Cosette's for Marius, Marius' for Cosette, and eventually even Marius' for Valjean. The actors playing Valjean and Javert were both excellent (I saw Michael Burgess playing Valjean a few years ago, and he was amazing - this guy was about as good). Cosette was more of a soprano than I'm used to (my parents used to play the soundtrack CD a lot when I lived at home, so I'm very familiar with the music), but I wasn't that thrilled with Eponine. She was pretty good, but not at the same level as the rest of the cast.

The title of this post refers to a song sung by the young Cosette. It, along with Hold On by Sarah McLachlan, is one of the saddest songs ever:

There is a castle on a cloud
I like to go there in my sleep
Aren't any floors for me to sweep
Not in my castle on a cloud

There is a room that's full of toys
There are a hundred boys and girls
Nobody shouts or talks too loud
Not in my castle on a cloud

There is a lady all in white*
Holds me and sings me a lullaby
She's nice to see and she's soft to touch
She says "Cosette, I love you very much"

I know a place where no one's lost
I know a place where no one cries
Crying at all is not allowed
Not in my castle on a cloud

Call me a wuss, but I get choked up whenever I hear that song. No child should ever have to feel that much depair.

* This song is sung shortly after Fantine (Cosette's mother) dies - during her death scene, she wears a white gown, and has a bright white spotlight shone on her.

Deiter's Love Golf Tournament

I played in the Deiter's Love Golf Tournament this past weekend - this is the one that I'm doing the web site for. There were well over 100 golfers, so it was by far the largest tournament I've been in. I was in a group with my friends Jeff, Steve, and Doug, all of whom are better golfers than I am - though Jeff hasn't golfed much in the past few years, so his game has dropped off a little. I couldn't hit anything off the tee most of the day, but my short game and putting were pretty good. I did come within about an inch of a natural birdie on a par 4 -- we used my tee shot, then my chip pitch onto the green (I learned the difference between a chip and a pitch as well), and then I almost sank the birdie putt. Luckily, someone else sank the putt, and we birdie'd the hole. We played pretty well overall - no bogies at all, and four birdies, so we ended up 4 under, which was good enough for 5th overall. Note that this is the 5th best score overall - there were at least 4 teams with lower scores than us. Could be that 5 teams tied at 5 under, putting us 9th, not 5th.

After the tournament, there was a dinner and a silent auction of hundreds of items ranging from toys to gift baskets, golf equipment to crafty things. There was even a big bag of dog food and a can of ceiling paint. My friend Wendy got the ceiling paint - doesn't seem that exciting, but she paid less than half of what she would have at a store. Hey, if you need it anyway, may as well.

I bought a couple of things at the auction - a putter and dozen golf balls for about $55 (the golf balls are normally about $25, so I got a pretty nice putter for $30), and a picnic set, which consists of a big cooler bag, and another bag (that attaches to the first one) containing plastic plates, cups, cutlery, a little cutting board and bread knife, and some other stuff. Not bad for about $50.

I'm not really sure why I decided to bid on the putter - maybe just because I golf left-handed, and it was a lefty putter. The thing is, I already have a pretty good putter, which I'm perfectly happy with (used it to sink a long nasty putt on our last hole, thankyouverymuch). I'm probably done golfing for this year, so I'll have to wait until next spring to figure out which putter to use.

Published again!

I wrote a letter to the editor of the Flamborough Review last week, and it was published in today's edition. There was a column last week suggesting the possibility of a "gas-out", i.e. a day where everyone doesn't buy gas, forcing the gas companies to lower prices. I pointed out that if you don't buy gas on that day, when you normally would, you'd have to buy it the day before or the day after, and so demand over that three day period wouldn't change. If gas prices drop at all, they'll climb right back up the next day.

This is the second time I've been published in the paper -- I had a letter to the editor of the Hamilton Spectator published a couple of years ago.

Creating gradient images

So I'm working on this web site I mentioned before, and it's got a purple gradient image down the left side -- i.e. it's purple right at the edge, and then it gradually fades to white, like this:

I like it, so I put it on the new site. Stacy also likes it, but says she'd rather have it green, not purple. Well, I'm not a graphic designer, I just know HTML, CSS, PHP, stuff like that, so I have no idea how to change it from purple to green, or to create one from scratch. I do some googling and asked Gail, and she suggested that Microsoft Word has a thing called WordArt which does this sort of thing. So I played with Word until I found it. I managed to create the green gradient following these steps:

1. Used WordArt to create a word that changes from green to white. It can only do this in the background of the word, so I made the word "WWWWWW", just as wide as the old image. (I figured that W takes up more room than any other letter, so I would have the least amount of playing to do. Thinking about it later, I think using "IIIIII" would work better.)
2. Save the document as an HTML page. Word saved the document as a gif.
3. Load the gif into Microsoft Paint, and copy pixel colours until I have a single line of pixels that goes from green to white. Save as a png, otherwise Paint messes the colours up.
4. Create an html file that contains the style "background: url(images/greengradient.png); background-repeat: repeat-y;", so that the image is repeated down the left side of the page.
5. Load this html file in a browser, maximize the browser, and use the PrtScrn key to copy the desktop onto the clipboard.
6. Chop up the image until I have an image that's the size of the gradient on the original image (with the heart logo and the purple gradient), then copy it to the clipboard.
7. Load the original image in IrfanView, select the old gradient, and paste the new one on top.
8. Save the new image as a new gif.

Whew! Lots of steps, but it ended up looking pretty good. Unfortunately, Gail thinks the green at the left is too bright, which means I'll have to do the whole thing again, starting with a different green. Groan.

A Special Day

Today is a special day for two reasons: First, it's Ryan's 6th birthday today, and second, it's the first day of school. Ryan started Grade One this morning, though wasn't sure how he felt about it. I guess Adam told him on the weekend that there's no playing in grade one (though Adam is himself starting grade one, so maybe Liam told him). We tried to assure him that there was indeed playing in grade one, though perhaps not as much, or maybe a different kind of playing than in SK. We went to see his classroom when we dropped him off this morning, and his teacher happened to be there, so Ryan confirmed with her that they do get play time. After that, and after seeing his SK friends in the YMCA before-school program, he was fine.

Jeff had his annual golf tournament this past weekend, and Gail and I both played in it. There were only 16 golfers playing - I'm sure Jeff's had a lot more in previous years. Our team included Steve and Laura, both of whom golf a lot more than Gail or I do. Gail only golfs once a year, but she had her worst day ever - she was hitting the ball a lot better at the driving range than on the course. Steve reassured her that everybody hits better at the driving range than on the course. She did rebound on one hole though, and almost got herself a natural par. We used her drive and her chip, and then she left her putt maybe one inch short of the hole. I had a pretty good day - and even got my first-ever birdie. Our team did pretty well - we shot 1-over for the day, placing us second, Steve won the men's closest to the pin award, and Laura won the women's longest drive award.

Win some, lose some

I've abandoned my www.stelcoball.com web site - the one for my Wednesday night baseball league. The convener wouldn't give me updated rosters or game results, so the site is hopelessly out of date, and almost nobody in the league was looking at it, so I dumped it.

Then this week, I offered to build a new web site for my friends Stacy and John, who are running a golf tournament in memory of their son Deiter, who died at the age of six months while waiting for a bowel and liver transplant. This is almost the same transplant as our friend Sarah had when she was six months old. Sarah is now a happy and healthy eight-year-old, who's in the Guiness Book of Records, as the youngest ever multi-organ transplant recipient. Anyway, I'm playing in the golf tournament in September, and I suggested to Stacy that I could create a web site for the tournament. She said that they already have one, but it's out-of-date, and she would be happy to let me build a new one. I've already done a prototype site that looks very similar to the old site, and Stacy's going to get me some pictures of Deiter to put up, and possibly some pictures from previous tournaments (this is the third one, I think).

Important note: If you haven't signed your organ donor card, please make sure you do! There's absolutely no downside, and you could save more than one life.

Work sucks

Well, not really (actually, I love my job), but I'll bet the title is eye-catching to any of my colleagues who happen to come across this blog. I found out today that two of the aforementioned colleagues, John and aListair are both active in the blogosphere.

John obviously has a digital camera that he uses frequently, so his blog is fancy with pictures and everything. I, on the other hand, have a 35mm film camera (purchased in the previous century), so there are very few pictures on my blog. I'm trying to convince Gail that we need a digital camera as well, but she won't go for it.

Wacko Creationists

Dr. Kent Hovind is the founder of Creation Science Evangelism, which is a ministry that teaches that the Bible is "literally true and scientifically accurate". He believes that the world was created by God in 6 24-hour days about 6000 years ago, and that dinosaurs (which humans called "dragons") lived at the same time as humans. He has even offered to pay anyone $250,000 for "scientific evidence" of evolution.

The offer is, of course, horseshit, as this article describes. In essence, the only way to win the money is to prove "beyond a reasonable doubt" that God does not exist. This is obviously impossible, and so the fact that nobody has yet won the money proves exactly nothing.

It is amazing to me that intelligent, educated people can still believe stuff like "since there is no evidence that life can be generated from non-living matter, then God must be responsible". The fact that we have not yet discovered the answer to a particular question (indeed, our minds may not yet be advanced enough to be able to understand the answer) does not mean we should just chuck all of our scientific knowledge and go with "God did everything".

Sherlock Holmes once said "Once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remained, however implausible, must be the truth"1, and this seems to be the reasoning behind intelligent design / creationism — evolution is "obviously wrong", and therefore the only alternative is that God did it. First of all, "obviously wrong" is rather vague - there are never any scientific exlanations for why evolution is wrong, just the standard "if evolution is right, then how did X happen?". Again, just because we don't know the answer to every question, this doesn't mean that the theory is wrong. Secondly, even if our current theory of evolution is wrong, why is creationism the only alternative? You cannot prove creationism true by proving evolution false. Proof by contradiction doesn't apply here - evolution is not the "logical opposite" of evolution.

Here is another interesting article, this one by the editor-in-chief of Scientific American, listing some popular arguments against evolution, and why they are all bogus.

1 - Note that this is probably not a direct quote - I'm quoting Lt. Cmdr. Data on Star Trek: The Next Generation, who quotes Holmes in one episode.

States I've visited

Here is a neat little site that shows all of the US states you've visited. Here's my map:

The only eastern ones I'm missing are Delaware, Rhode Island, and Connecticut.

Update: Made the picture smaller so that IE doesn't get screwed up when trying to display the columns.

Update: Added Nevada and Arizona!

A Month of Sundays

I used to work for Harvester
I used to use my hands
I used to make the tractors and the combines
that plowed and harvested this great land
now I see my handiwork on the block
everywhere I turn
and I see the clouds cross the weathered faces
and I watch the harvest burn

I quit the plant in '57
had some time for farmin' then
banks back then was lendin' money
the banker was the farmer's friend
And I've seen dog days and dusty days,
Late spring snow and early fall sleet
I've held the leather reins in my hands
I've felt the soft ground under my feet
Between the hot, dry weather and the taxes and the cold war
it's been hard to make ends meet
but i always kept the clothes on our backs
I always put the shoes on our feet

Grandson, he comes home from college and says,
"we get the government we deserve"
Son-in-law just shakes his head and says,
"that little punk, he never had to serve"
and I sit here in the shadow of the suburbs
and look out across these empty fields
I sit here in earshot of the bypass
and all night I listen to the rushin' of the wheels

The big boys, they all got computers
got incorporated, too
Me, I just know how to raise things
that was all I ever knew
And now it all comes down to numbers
now I'm glad that i have quit
folks these days just don't do nothin'
simply for the love of it

I went into town of the fourth of July
watched 'em parade past the Union Jack
watched 'em break out the brass and beat on the drum
one step forward and two steps back
and I saw a sign on easy street,
said "be prepared to stop"
pray for the independent little man
or I don't see next year's crop
and I sit here on the back porch in the twilight
and I hear the crickets hum
I sit and watch the lightning in the distance
but the showers never come
I sit here and listen to the wind blow
I sit here and rub my hands
I it here and listen to the clock strike,
and I wonder when I'll see my companion again

Don Henley "A Month Of Sundays"

What an amazing song.

Showin' Shaq the money, and goodbye to Joe and Gary

The Miami Heat signed Shaquille O'Neal to a 5-year $100 million contract today. This will actually result in a pay cut for Shaq, because his old deal (which he has now opted out of because of the new deal) would have seen him make over $30 million next season, but it gives the Heat more flexibility to be able to sign more players and still stay under the cap. The quote from Shaq that I thought was funny:

This contract allows me to address all of my family's long-term financial goals while allowing the Heat the ability to acquire those players that we need to win a championship...

Sorry, Shaq, but if you haven't addressed your family's long-term financial goals by now, 12 seasons into your hall-of-fame multi-million-dollar-per-year career, either your financial goals are a touch lofty, or you really suck at financial planning.

So Gary Roberts and Joe Neiuwendyk (yes, I had to look up the spelling) have signed with the Florida Panthers, and so will not be back with the Leafs next season. I liked both of them, but I can't say I'm really all that broke up about it - both of them are still good players, but well past their prime and too expensive. I'm sure players that are just as good, younger, and cheaper are out there -- one of whom is Jeff O'Neill, who the Leafs just signed. Now if I could only convince the Leafs not to resign the vastly overpriced Tie Domi (unless he agrees to a big-time pay cut), I'd be a happy guy.

Hockey's back!

So the lockout's over, and hockey will return this fall. We've got the salary cap that the players insisted they would never accept, as well as the 24% salary rollback, although the minimum salary is now an insane $450,000, so presumably the lower earning players actually got a raise despite the rollback. Most interesting of all, however, are the rule changes, intended to make the game more entertaining. I'm not a big fan of the shootout, mainly because it seems unfair to decide the output of the game based on 3 shots by the best shooters - this is a team game, not an individual competition. However, there's no denying the excitement of watching a shootout, so I'm sure I'll get used to it. I like the new icing rule - if you ice the puck, you can't make any line changes before the ensuing face-off. So if you're killing a penalty, you have to actually work to get a line change - you can't just grab the puck and fire it down the ice. Tag-up offsides are back, and the red line has been removed for two-line passes, although I don't know the intricacies of the game well enough to know what effect that will have.

We took Ryan out to ride his bike yesterday - only about his 4th or 5th time on a two-wheeler (with no training wheels), and he's almost mastered it. When I last went with him, he could go maybe 10 feet, rather wobbly, and then put his foot down. Yesterday, Gail gave him a little push to start, and he was off - probably went by 5 or 6 houses before stopping. By the end of the route around the block, he was starting by himself, and not even wobbling as much as at the beginning. I'm impressed with how fast he's learned - his first time ever was the July 1st weekend in Ottawa.

The Trial, day 3

It's over. We were told that there were some more "matters" that the court had to deal with without the jury present, so we waited from 10:00 until about 11:30 when we went into the court room. The judge immediately told us that there was a "matter of law" that forced him to discharge us - that our services were no longer required. He thanked us for our service, and told us that we were free to go. And that was it.

We were later told that it had something to do with something that we heard yesterday - something that someone had said, that the other side did not have a chance to rebut. We're not sure exactly what was meant by that, but we suspect it had something to do with the testimony of one of the witnesses. He started to tell us something during cross-examination, at which point the prosecuting attorney objected, citing hearsay. The defense attorney told the witness that he couldn't tell us what the other person had said, just what he did in response to it, but the witness ended up telling us anyway. Nothing was said at the time (though the defense attorney looked a little frustrated), but I think that may have had something to do with it. I certainly don't know the law well enough to know for sure, but that was the only thing that happened yesterday that was controversial in any way.

I really enjoyed my time on the jury, for two main reasons: I got to see the way our legal system works in great detail, and it gave me time to finish Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix - all 760+ pages of it - in about four days.

The Trial, day 2

We had our first full day today. We started around 10:20, since there were some "matters" that needed to be dealt with, without the jury present. Again, I can't go into any details about the case, but the prosecution finished with the complainant (alleged victim), brought in two witnesses, and then rested her case. The counsel for the defense then brought in the defendant to testify, and that's where we finished off, around 4:20.

I'm finding the whole process rather interesting - not significantly different from what you'd see on Law & Order or any other trial show, though those ones are usually about murder or rape or something more serious than aggravated assault. Since it's not a high-profile case, they're not too worried about it, but we've been told not to read the local papers, in case there are articles about the case, and we're not supposed to watch the local news and stuff like that. Again, given the nature of the case, it's not likely to show up on the news, but you never know.

They don't call it a "confrontational" system for nothing though -- the defense attorney (I know that "attorney" is an American term, but I'm used to that term, having watched the various Law & Order series' religiously for several years) certainly pounded on the prosecution's witnesses pretty hard, asking the same questions over and over, and pointing out any inconsistencies numerous times, even making a few snarky and sarcastic comments, but was very nice and gentle (and quiet) when the defendent was testifying. We'll see tomorrow if the prosecutor is as sweet and friendly on cross as she was when addressing her witnesses.

So far, I'm enjoying this jury thing!

I, the Juror

I reported for jury duty this morning at the John Sopinka Court House in Hamilton. I was one of about 60 members of the jury pool for one of two trials - one criminal, and one civil. We were told to be there by 9:30, and were told at that time that they usually get started around 10:00. Well, we sat until about 12:15 (good thing I had brought my Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix book, of which I read about 300 pages), at which point were shuffled into the court room to start jury selection for the criminal trial. First they got rid of people who knew the accused, or the complainant, or the lawyers, or any of the witnesses, then people who had vacations planned, or medical conditions, or other reasons why they couldn't be jurors. I had none, so I just sat quietly.

Eventually, they started calling people to be on the jury. They called 20 people, and I was about the 8th. One by one, we were brought up to face the accused, and the lawyers could either accept us onto the jury ("content") or "challenge" us, in which case we would sit down again, to rejoin the jury pool for the civil trial. I was accepted by both lawyers, so I became juror #4. We then broke for lunch, and the actual trial started around 2:45.

I'm not allowed to discuss the case outside of the jury room, so I'll just say that it's an aggravated assault case that took place about a year and a half ago. I'll post some more details once the trial's over, if I'm allowed. The trial is estimated to be about 3-4 days. Lucky for me that I was accepted into this jury -- the civil trial is estimated to be 6-8 weeks. Then again, I have two pre-paid vacations booked (OK, well, we haven't paid for Tyrolean yet, but we're booked) for that time period, so I probably would have been excused anyway.

Anyway, it's been interesting so far. We start around 10am, get a 15-minute break around 11:30, then lunch at 1:15 to 2:15, then another break around 3:30, then we're done around 4:30. We will only need to be sequestered during deliberations, otherwise we can go out for lunch and come home at night and stuff, and we don't need to stay together. I'm getting a good look at the legal system -- moreso than the last couple of times I was in a courtroom. Last time was earlier this year when I fought a ticket for running a red light - the cop forgot his notebook and the case was thrown out. The other time was during 2nd year university when I had to face the serious offence of violating the Retail Business and Holidays Act -- the drug store I worked in during high school was open on a Sunday back when Sunday shopping was illegal. I was charged along with all the other employees, but the charges were supposed to be dropped when the store paid its fine. The crown attorney screwed up and forgot to drop the charges, and we all had to appear in court a couple of years later (during finals in 2A), at which time the charges were immediately dropped.

NHL playoffs and Roger Clemens

The NHL has apparently decided to add 4 more teams into the playoffs each year, for a total of 20 teams, and now 5 rounds. This is insane. Not only do we now have 2/3 of the league making the playoffs, but the regular season is 84 games, and now a team could have to play 31 games in the playoffs as well? The playoffs already end in mid-freakin'-June, why extend them? I could see it if the first round was best-of-3 (as it now is), then the second (and maybe even third) rounds were best-of-5, and the last two best-of-7, but FOUR best-of-7 rounds is just too much. All it means is that four extra teams will make big playoff dollars each year.

Roger Clemens has stated that he does not want to pitch in the All-Star game if Mike Piazza is catching, so he'll only pitch later in the game, once Piazza has been taken out. Pardon my French, but how fucking stupid is that? Should we have to tell a 41-year-old man to grow the fuck up? Apparently so.

I don't know what to think about Clemens. He's easily the best pitcher of the last 20 years (only Randy Johnson and Greg Maddux are even close), and is still a force to be reckoned with at 41. I respected him as a member of the Red Sox, and grew to like him even more when he played for the Jays (probably because he was just so damn dominant, and won 2 Cy Young awards in the 2 years he was here). Then he basically said "This team sucks, so I demand to be traded to a contender", which the Jays promptly did. I lost a lot of respect for him then, as did a lot of other Toronto fans. For whatever reason, I gained back some respect over the next few years, then lost some after the Piazza incident. In the last year or two, since he came out of "retirement", I've started to like him again, and now this. I think I've now decided that he's simply one of those people who is an outstanding athlete, but a total prick off the field.

Kids and safety

I was astounded yesterday when leaving work. I was driving down Hagey Blvd, just north of the University of Waterloo, about to turn left onto Columbia. On the right side of the road, there's a day care centre, and a woman on a bicycle came out of the day care centre ahead of me, and crossed over until she was on the left side of the left lane (she didn't cut me off, she was far enough ahead). The light was red, so I stopped, and she came up beside me (on my left), and turned sharply to the left and proceeded across the crosswalk. The thing that astounded me was that she had a child seat on the back of the bike, with a small kid in it. The kid couldn't have been more than 2. Maybe I'm just paranoid, but I wouldn't have crossed over the street into the left lane with a kid on the bike.

I sometimes wonder if Gail and I are too paranoid when it comes to the safety of our kids, but I guess if you're going to be too paranoid about something, it may as well be safety. (I'm also too paranoid about other things too, like the kids making messes or lots of noise, but that's another story.)

The car seat thing is the biggest one, though. The car or van does not move unless the kids both have their seat belts done up -- I can probably count the number of times that they've been in a moving vehicle without seat belts on (backing out of the garage a couple of times, once at John & Jackie's place after I drove into a ditch, and of course various busses). We brought our own car seat when we took one-year-old Ryan to England because we were unsure of the quality of the car seats we'd get from the car rental company. And we get quite angry whenever we see any kid standing up in a moving car, or any kid that should be in a car seat but isn't. We watched a biography on Princess Diana recently, and there was some footage of her carrying the infant Prince William right after he was born - she got into a limo, carrying the baby in her arms, and the limo immediately took off. There wasn't enough time for her to get a seat belt on, and there's no way Wills was in an infant carrier. Gail, who was a big fan of the Princess, cringed.

When I think about all the security issues that we as parents have to deal with that our parents did not, it makes me wonder if our kids will grow up safer, or just more sheltered. Things like:

• bike helmets - our kids are not allowed to ride bikes or scooters without one, and I never even had one. Actually, that's not true -- I did have one, as well as elbow and knee pads when I got my first skateboard (when I was about 8), but the first time I was laughed at for wearing it, I took it off for good.
• car seats - I remember being annoyed when I grew too tall to stand up the back seat of the car, and I rarely wore seat belts
• food allergies - we were certainly allowed to bring peanut butter to school, Ryan is not
• strangers - we were told simply "Don't talk to strangers", but that policemen were OK. Now, we have to tell our kids who they can talk to if they get lost at the mall - don't look for a policeman or security guard, because pedophiles have been known to dress up for just that reason. We tell them to go to a store and talk to someone behind the counter, and let them get a security guard if necessary.
• It's only been this year that we've let them play in the backyard without one of us being out there with them -- and if it were only Nicholas, we wouldn't.
• When playing outside in front of the house, one of Gail or I must be there, and the kids aren't allowed to go far enough away that we can't see them. I'm sure that rule will get relaxed in the future, but not to the extent that Gail and I remember as kids.

Now they're coming out with cell phones aimed at kids as young as 9 - they can have something like 5 numbers pre-programmed, and can't call any other numbers. I'm sure we'll get one for our boys eventually because we'll want the security of knowing that they can get in touch with us at any time if they need to (or vice versa).

Are we too paranoid? Maybe, but I prefer to think of it as "safety-conscious".

Fun at Darien Lake

We went to Six Flags Darien Lake last weekend, and stayed in the hotel there, with the Wadsworths. This is our second time there with the kids (went two years ago with the Wadsworths and Scanlons), and they had a blast. There were lots of kids rides for them, and Ryan is big enough now to go on some of the bigger rides, one of which gave Gail and Kerri headaches. We also went to the water park and wave pool, which was a lot of fun as well, though the water was rather chilly. There are a bunch of cool water slides there as well as a new thing called the Tornado, which looks like a giant funnel, but Ryan was too small to go on those. Next year, we probably won't be able to keep him off of them...

Didn't go on any "grown-up" rides this year - last time, Kim watched all the kids while the rest of us went on Superman, which is this monstrous coaster, and Gail and I also went on the Boomerang (same as the Bat at Wonderland - goes forwards and then backwards). Quite honestly, the first drop of Superman scared me more than I thought it would, and I have no real desire to go on it again. I wouldn't have minded doing the Mind Eraser again though, and the Boomerang was fine last time, so I haven't completely lost my taste for coasters.

After the last few weekends (haven't slept in my own bed on a Saturday night for 4 weeks), it'll be good to do nothing (except entertain the in-laws, but that's not bad) next weekend.

Selling outside of eBay

So I've sold about 12 CDs on eBay up to now. The other day, a bunch of my auctions ended, and a few CDs ended up unsold. I then got an email from someone who wanted to buy one of the unsold ones for the $1 original bid price. I replied telling him that eBay doesn't allow selling of items unless they are won through an auction. His reply follows:

Thanks, I appreciate your responding quickly and your desire to be a good ebayer. Just to let you know, however, once an item goes through the auction process unsold, two people can always agree to buy and sell an item - it's called commerce. Ebay may not like it - saying 'it's not safe nor protected' but also because, having put people together, they cannot collect additional fees to relist - but they cannot stop it. We just communicate with each other using our respective emails and can pay via paypal if necessary. There is nothing immoral or illicit about it. I encourage you to broaden your horizons. Good luck with your auctions.

He's correct that the buying and selling of good is not controlled by eBay. The thing is, his reply is too "rehearsed" for this to have been a one-time offer -- sounds to me like he does this all the time. Sure, it's legal to do this, but it's against eBay policy, which both of us agreed to when we signed up.

The only difference between him offering me $1 for the CD and him bidding $1 on the auction is that (a) he won't get outbid if someone else wants it, and (b) I won't have to pay to relist the item, meaning that eBay will not get compensated for the sale. I guess it could be argued that eBay is getting compensated, since I had to pay to list the item in the first place. But then again, I could also be losing out here -- if I relist the item and other people want the it, it could sell for significantly more than the $1 he's willing to pay me. (One other CD I sold went for over $20.) If he wants it so much, he can bid for it, like everyone else. If he gets it for $1, then good for him. If someone else bids for it, then either he has to pay more, or not get it - either way, I get more for the CD.

I haven't responded to him, and I'm not sure I will. I'll just relist the item, like I told him I would, and see if he bids.

Everyone loves Marineland

We went to Marineland yesterday. Gail and I had each been there as children, but not for 25 years or so. We had a pretty good time, but I could not believe the admission charge -- it cost us $115 just to get in, and Nicholas was free! The boys liked the dolphin / sea lion / walrus show, and even got to pet and feed the beluga whales - that was very cool. There's also a deer farm, where they have hundreds of deer just wandering around (no fences). They're very tame, and very hungry. You can buy small ice cream cones with deer food, and the deer are happy to lick it out of your hands. They're kind of on the aggressive side, though, so the food was sometimes licked out of the air as we poured it into the kids hands.

There are a bunch of rides there too, but we didn't go on any of them - no time. They had a deal on where you can upgrade your admission charge to a season's pass for an extra $5 (which we did), so if we go back sometime this year, it won't cost us any more (except for lunch, deer food, fish food, etc.), so we'll do some rides then. We're going to Six Flags Darien Lake this weekend, and we have season passes for Canada's Wonderland as well, so we have lots of opportunities to do rides.

A couple of complaints - the park is just too damn big, and not signed very well. There are a couple of places where there's a sign saying "Rides and Attractions", with an arrow, but then you have to walk for 10 minutes just to see another sign. When we finished lunch, we had about 20-25 minutes to kill before the next dolphin show, but that wasn't enough time to get anywhere and back (with a 5- and 3-year old), so we just wandered around the games arcade. Also, there is ONE restaurant that serves anything more than just popcorn, which means that everyone is in the same place around lunch time. We luckily got there a few minutes before the previous dolphin show let out (the restaurant is right next to that theatre), so the lines were pretty short for us, but 10 minutes later, they were huge. There is another restaurant, but it's almost right next to the first one, and it was also closed. Kerri, who's been there a number of times, tells me that the other restaurant is always closed, or at least every time she's gone.

Anyway, aside from those issues, and the fact that the decor at the park hasn't been updated in 25 years, it was a pretty good day.

EBay shipments

I've now sold a number of CDs on EBay, and have shipped to the following locations:

Ottawa, ON
Thompson, IA
Laval, PQ
Mt. St-Hilaire, PQ
Tomah, WI
Columbus, MI
Hope Mills, NC
Santiago, Chile
Fort St. John, BC (same guy bought 3 CDs)
Bessemer, AL
Oklahoma City, OK
Carollton, TX
Grimshaw, AB
Memramcook, NB
Oshawa, ON
Rochester, NY
Vancouver, BC
Beaverbank, NS
Quinto di Treviso, Italy
Brescia, Italy
Lisbon, Portugal
Lithgow, New South Wales, Australia

I'll update this list as I sell more stuff.

Update: Sold 2 more CDs!

PVR

My friend Ajai has quite the little home theatre set up in his basement. Big screen HD TV, a couple of DVD players, full 5.1 surround sound, and a couple of other components that I didn't even recognize. But the latest very cool thing he has is the Windows Media Centre PC. It's a standard PC running Windows XP, with an application called Windows Media Centre. He's got his digital cable running into the PC, and he can use it as a PVR. He's got the PC set up to "broadcast" throughout his house on channel 80, and you can then use the remote control to control the PC output - get live TV (including pause and rewind), or set it up to record stuff to the hard drive and then watch it at your leisure later. He's got tons of his CDs ripped so he can play any of them at any time, and even has tons of digital pictures saved on there, so he can do slide shows.

I don't have the need (or the money) for a brand new computer, but since most of the processing power is in the PVR card anyway, I don't need one. I can get a card and a new hard drive (one hour of TV is about 1 GB), and if I can get the PC to broadcast out over the cable, then all I need is a way to send the remote control signals upstairs to the TV, and I can do that with a remote control extender - about $40 at Radio Shack. This could be extremely cool.

Golf Lessons pay off

I took a few golf lessons last summer - Gail got me three lessons for my birthday. Mainly, the guy adjusted my grip and told me to stop moving my feet so much. He said I had an "open swing", like Ben Hogan, though I don't remember what that means.

Anyway, I went out golfing with my friends Ajai and Gordon on Saturday, and found that they really paid off. I shot a 51 for 9 holes, and beat both Ajai and Gord by 4 strokes! I think this was not only the first time I've won a golf game, it was the first time I'd ever beaten anyone who plays more than once a year! I was fairly consistent overall - mainly bogeys and doubles, with an 8 and a couple of 7's to bring me back down to Earth. I lost a few, and took a couple of mulligans, but generally, my driving was very good, my short game didn't suck as bad as normal, and my putting wasn't too bad. Thanks to the lessons, I don't hate my driver any more!

We also played 9 on Sunday at a shorter course, and I didn't have as good a day - shot a 54, while Gord and Ajai shot 45 and 46. My consistency was all over the map on Sunday - on one hole, I hit a huge drive off the tee into a sand trap, then drilled it from there into another sand trap beside the green, then hit it out of there pretty nicely, setting up a 15-foot par putt. Then I three-putted from there.

I borrowed a "Big Bertha"-type driver from Gordon for a couple of holes on Saturday -- way bigger head than my driver, and weighs almost nothing. Both times, I hit it dead straight down the middle of the fairway, close to 300 yards. I must get one...