Rants from Cold Cold Canada

I cause power failures

2005-11-15T18:50:00.000-05:00

I'm told that Windsor gets more thunderstorms than any other city in Canada. Consequently, Windsor seems to get a lot more power failures than any city I'm familiar with. I guess that the power grid gets zapped so often that something is always just a hair's breath away from breaking and plunging some or all of Windsor into darkness.

Because it was failing so often, this summer I just gave up on keeping most of the clocks in the house accurate. I'd set the one or two that I use most and just not bother with the others knowing that I'd just have to do them all again in a few days. But earlier this week, I decided that thunderstorm season must have finished and I could probably count on a steady supply of current until it's knock out by a blizzard, or ice storm or god knows what some time over the winter. So a couple days ago I set the clocks. All of them.

I woke up (late) to a power failure covering several blocks around my house. Clearly my smug clock setting had angered the gods and this was their punishment. Power stayed off for about 45 minutes and then flicked back on.

Not one to surrender to the whims of the gods, or for that matter to logic, I reset the clocks. That may not have been the best idea since it's thundering out now...

An Interesting Evening

2005-11-10T02:23:00.000-05:00

I've had quite the evening. But I'm feeling tired and lazy, so instead of typing the whole thing out, I figured I'd just post the conversation I just had with Mary about it. (with some minor editing)

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CanadaDave: I've had an interesting evening...

mary ann: oh??

CanadaDave: I was sitting and happily vegging in front of the TV when my phone rang

mary ann: k

CanadaDave: It was a number and area code that I didn't recognize, so I answered it.

mary ann: okay

CanadaDave: It was WereGirl. She'd been in some sort of accident on her way home from Toronto and wanted me to get hold of PilotBoy and tell him to meet her at her house.

CanadaDave: She hadn't been able to reach him

mary ann: oh no

CanadaDave: So, after a few phone calls and checking her house to see if he was there, he finally got back to me

CanadaDave: He was home in Michigan and was heading over as quickly as possible

mary ann: i guess so

CanadaDave: I talked to WereGirl again, and she said she'd meet me at my house since she was being being given a lift by a nice man driving a semi.

CanadaDave: So, PilotBoy showed up at my place a little while later and we hung out and watched for WereGirl.

mary ann: she hitched a ride in a semi?

mary ann: that's not safe.

CanadaDave: She did

CanadaDave: Eventually a big truck pulls over and PilotBoy helps WereGirl out of the passenger seat and we all thank the driver profusely

CanadaDave: She then fills us in on what happened while we drive her to the hospital.

CanadaDave: She'd been driving home and run out of gas.

CanadaDave: He car normally bugs her when it's low, but it hadn't this time, so she'd just run out

mary ann: oops.

CanadaDave: So, she got the jerry can out of the trunk so she could walk to a gas station to get some gas

CanadaDave: Except that it was really windy here and the can was blown onto the highway

CanadaDave: Her first instinct was to chase it, but she caught herself before she made that particular mistake

mary ann: this doesn't sound like it is going well for her

CanadaDave: Instead, the can was hit by a truck and smacked her in the chest and face.

CanadaDave: Hard enough that she thought she'd broken her collar bone

CanadaDave: So, it's dark, windy, and she's in pain, but the gas can is alright and she starts walking to the gas station, sobbing as she goes.

mary ann: oh wow.

CanadaDave: At this point the nice man in the semi pulls over.

CanadaDave: She realizes that getting a lift in a semi is not safe, but she just wants off the road and is willing to risk whatever might happen in the truck so that she can get off the road and not be creamed by a car blown off the road...

mary ann: i can see why she took the ride, although why she didn't just get gas and drive home....

CanadaDave: Well, she tried

CanadaDave: They went to the gas station

mary ann: k

CanadaDave: she filled the can and he drove her back to her car.

CanadaDave: She put the gas in the tank, but the battery was dead because she'd left her four way flashers on

mary ann: oh

CanadaDave: So, the nice trucker agreed to take her to Windsor and even let her use his phone to call me.

mary ann: why does she leave her home?

mary ann: ever?

CanadaDave: No one knows

CanadaDave: She really ought not to

CanadaDave: So, we drop her at the hospital and PilotBoy and I head out to deal with her car

CanadaDave: We find it on the side of the road and vainly struggle for a while trying to boost it.

mary ann: it wouldn't go?

CanadaDave: Nope

mary ann: ack

CanadaDave: We tried and we tried, and only succeeded in damaging the hood. It ended up catching a gust and getting blown all the way back

mary ann: oh my

CanadaDave: Eventually we gave up on that nonsense and I called 411 to get the number for a Tow Truck company

mary ann: k

mary ann: good idea

CanadaDave: The first one I called was busy so he gave me the number for a second one

CanadaDave: The second one was busy, so she gave me the number for a third...

mary ann: oh my

CanadaDave: The third finally agreed to send a truck

mary ann: hooray!

CanadaDave: Which took, like, forty minutes.

mary ann: how long since released was weregirl at this point?

CanadaDave: Dunno. But she called while we were on the way to the dealership asking what was up.

CanadaDave: Eventually she took a taxi home. At least I hope she had better luck with that than, well, anything else tonight, since I haven't talked to her since before she hailed the cab..

mary ann: y'all really shouldn't let her leave her house

CanadaDave: She really shouldn't

CanadaDave: But then the house would likely fall down or something

mary ann: fair enough

CanadaDave: So, it's been quite the evening. We spent a long time in the wind and cold trying to make that car go.

mary ann: i bet

mary ann: i spent twenty minutes on an elliptical machine and i thought that was eventful

No Candy

2005-11-01T16:15:00.000-05:00

Just a quick post to share this pic I took of a neighbour's pumpkin last night. There's just something about it that I find funny.

American Politics

2005-10-03T22:16:00.000-04:00

I've been finding American politics to be particularly fascinating lately. Part of it may be that my course load has a couple of classes on the US this semester, but I don't think that that's all there is to it.

On of the stories I found to be of interest was Bush's reaction to the hurricanes that hit the gulf coast. When the first one hit he was on vacation and seemed a little reluctant to cut that short. He eventually did, and then kept such a close eye on the events that he believed that FEMA's Michael Brown was doing "a heck of a job".

Bush's approval rating rather predictably took a hit over his handling of Katrina and its aftermath.

The really interesting part is what happened when Rita started heading towards the gulf coast. Clearly Bush and his staff had learned that people expected him to actually do something when a natural disaster strikes. The problem looks to have been that neither Bush nor his staff seemed to have a clear grasp on what precisely that something should be. The solution was simple enough and is something I've been guilty of trying now and then myself. Bush simply had to look busy. Now, my preferred strategy while trying to look busy is walk quickly while frowning and holding a piece of paper. Bush was going to need something a little more creative, so his staff arranged for a few photo ops. He was photographed looking at maps, photographed being briefed, he even wanted to be photographed overseeing hurricane preparations. (Because that wouldn't have been disruptive at all. The Whitehouse press corps and the United States Secret Service are both well known across the world for being subtle and unobtrusive. Thankfully that photo op was cancelled).

The other fascinating and slightly more recent event are the two indictments brought down against House Majority Leader Tom Delay. The charges themselves are not surprising and frankly, from what I've heard it sounds like there's more than enough to convict him. The interesting thing to me was something that was just mentioned in passing in the coverage I was listening to. Apparently Mr. Delay's lawyer is a little worried about his client's ability to get a fair trial. Seems he thinks the jury pool might be tainted because citizens of Texas are a little angry at Mr. Delay because he spearheaded an extremely partisan redistricting of the state that gained the GOP several more house seats and the majority in the House.

Now, that kind of partisan redistricting is technically known as "gerrymandering" and is one of the more unethical things one can do as an elected official. If Mr. Delay suffers at the hands of the people he willfully attempted to disenfranchise, then I believe that that is what is technically known as "poetic justice".

I hate Detroit

2005-09-20T17:31:00.000-04:00

Last weekend I went for a short flight with WereGirl and PilotBoy. We flew to a nearby airport, had dinner and flew back. The flight itself was pleasant and uneventful as was dinner. Generally a good time was had by all.

Where things got a little interesting was my trip back to Windsor from PilotBoy's house, which is in a nicer suburb of Detroit. WereGirl was staying over, but since I had to work the next day, I was borrowing her car and driving back. The trip to Windsor from PilotBoy's place normally takes about half an hour and is not a huge deal, plus, it was the middle of the night, so traffic should be light to non-existent. I don't know the area very well, but generally am fine once I get on a highway. So, I made sure that I got detailed instructions that far, and trusted that everything would be pretty simple from there. Nothing that involves WereGirl's car is ever that easy.

Anyone who has heard me talk about the roads in and around Detroit has heard me compare them unfavourably to the streets of a country that has recently gone through an extremely destructive civil war. Basically, they suck. The city of Detroit, however, seems to have realized this and has basically undertaken to fix them all at once. I suspect this has something to do with the fact that they are hosting the Superbowl this year.

Whatever the reason, the end result is that every single highway going into and out of Detroit has some sort of lane closure or some kind of detour happening at all times. So, driving in the Detroit Metro area is currently an exercise in frustration, at best. The likelihood of lanes or exits being closed seems to be directly related to how much I'd like to use them. Detours are long, convoluted and seem to go through neighbourhoods that I'd usually prefer to avoid.

So, I had found the highway and was nicely on my way home in WereGirl's car, whose controls are a little unfamiliar to me, and is arguably a little cursed. (Presumably due to a lot of close exposure to WereGirl.) The first little problem was that a bright red SECURITY warning light lit up on the dash. My guess was that this was because I was using a copy of WereGirl's key. (WereGirl had given it to me after a previous incident in which she had managed to be locked out of her car for about a week after losing her only key.) This was my first time driving with that key and I wondered if there was something about it that the car had decided that it didn't like. Maybe it would eventually shut down the engine. No, that was ridiculous and would be remarkably unsafe. Maybe next time I shut down the engine it would refuse to start until WereGirl's key was put in. I decided that that was pretty likely. But that was okay. I had plenty of gas and had no reason to turn the car off before getting to WereGirl's house.

During this time I'd started passing a few signs saying something about lanes being closed. I didn't recognize the roads being referenced, but hoped that that section of the highway would be after the exit to the bridge. Quite the optimist am I. Shortly thereafter a line of pylons gradually forced me out of the express lanes and into the collectors. Okay, that was fine. Traffic was relatively light and this shouldn't affect me all that much. Then the pylons forced me off the highway I was on, and onto another one.. One which I'd failed to take note of the name of. Things still weren't that bad, though. There were detour signs, and I was still on a highway. I stayed on this new highway for a while, taking some comfort in the friendly detour signs the reassured me that I was going in the right direction. This was a little inconvenient, but things seemed to be well under control.

That is, until I saw a sign that seemed to indicate that I should take the next exit. I can only surmise at this point that the sign meant I should have taken that exit, because there was nary a detour sign directing me where to go where I got off the highway. There was a sign directing me to the University of Detroit Mercy, which I was passingly familiar with, having visited it a couple times during my first year of school. Sadly, after two signs directing me along the way, I must have missed one that wanted me to turn.

So, I was lost. Lost somewhere in or around Detroit. And I couldn't stop to ask for directions, since I wasn't about to get out of the car and leave it running and I didn't think it would restart if I turned it off.

My method of getting myself un-lost, something I have to do startlingly frequently, usually involves basically driving by zen until I see something familiar. The trouble with doing this in Detroit is that there is a rather copious lack of landmarks I recognize.

I wandered. It started to rain, creating a fog that obscured any potential landmarks more than a block or two away. I flicked on WereGirl's wipers and realized that the blades had likely last been replaces sometime in the Palaeolithic era. I wandered some more, squinting through the windshield. I found what looked like a broken water main in a dip under a bridge and wondered briefly if I was going to be testing WereGirl's car for any amphibious ability it may or may not have. Wandering through Detroit is a little frightening. There are a lot of homes and businesses that have been boarded up, and the citizens, especially those on the streets this late at night, don't exactly radiate friendliness. I had visions of the police eventually finding my bullet riddled body and wondering just what I was doing in some bad area of town.

Eventually I saw a sign pointing me towards the bridge to Canada. I think I actually said "Yes!" out loud and may have actually pumped my fist in the air a time or two. Mind you I never did find the bridge, but it did get me pointed in the right direction.

Somehow I stumbled upon the tunnel a gratefully made my way back to Canada. Where I immediately made a wrong turn and ended up driving away from WereGirl's house for a block or two...

When I did get to her house, I experimentally shut her car off and restarted it, just to see if it would work. Of course it did and the little red SECURITY light even switched off.

I was still muttering about that, the city of Detroit in general and the Michigan Department of Transportation people in particular, when I got in my own car and drove home.

This and that

2005-08-23T10:15:00.000-04:00

After spending a whole lot of my summer in Orillia, I have now returned to Windsor and should be here pretty much until Christmas. Reason being that I have started a part time job for the fall which involves working twelve to five every Saturday and Sunday. The good news is that it's a decent gig, isn't all that hard to do and pays okay. The bad news is that I can't do much on weekends and it's only ten hours a week, so despite a more than adequate hourly wage, I won't actually be earning as much as I'd like.

Now, as much as I'd like to blog about certain aspects and happenings in my new job, I shan't. At least until I no longer work there. I have no desire to be fired because I wrote something the company doesn't think is as funny as I do here.

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In other news, the swim mentioned in my previous post went very well. My mom swam steadily across the lake while I swam in circles, around her, under the canoes, under water, here there and everywhere.

It's 5 kilometers across the lake, but we managed to make it 6 due to everyone's inability to actually swim in a straight line...

Anyway, my mom raised a lot of money for charity and we both got out picture in the local paper, horrible picture that it was...

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This blog turned one year old, oh, about two weeks ago. A fact that I celebrated by not realizing it or posting. So, ummm, happy belated birthday blog. I promise I'll try to neglect you less in the coming days and months.

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I've been in Michigan a fair bit over the past couple days, hanging out with WereGirl and PilotBoy around his place and doing some flying with them. Now, I've criticized the roads and highways around Detroit before. Lots, in fact. But what I wasn't expecting was for them to try and fix them ALL AT ONCE. There is more road construction, closed exits and detours in and around Detroit than I have ever seen in my life. This makes getting around the area very close to impossible. Certainly impossible to do efficiently. Especially for me, since I have a bad sense of direction and can barely make my way around that area the best of times. I have grown to hate orange signs from my time around Detroit.

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If you pay attention to the little counter at the top of the page, you'll know that I am shockingly close to my 30th birthday. No more twenties for me. I'm not really pleased about this. Frankly, I've not accepted leaving my mid-twenties.

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Anyway, that's all I'm going to write for the time being... I promise to try and come up with something funny or interesting in the next few days...

The Swim

2005-07-28T22:11:00.000-04:00

Growing up in a city that borders two lakes, I did a fair bit of swimming growing up. I took swimming lessons at the local park as a small child, and later joined the local swim team. (Checking my ribbons was a good way to tell how many guys in my age group were entered in a particular event. First place meant I was the only one. Second meant there were two of us and on down from there.. But I digress.)

I'd gotten out of the habit for a few years, swimming rarely, yet enjoying myself when did. I'm swimming a lot more lately, though. Partly because I'd like to get in better shape for my upcoming 30th birthday (see the countdown above) but also because I promised my mother that I'd accompany her on the cross lake swim she's doing in honour of her 60th birthday on August 10th.

It's not a big lake, by any stretch of the imagination, but it should take more than a couple hours to swim the 5k across. It should be a good swim and I'm looking forward to it.

My mom is using the opportunity to raise money for a few charities, including the one she works for, by taking pledges for the swim. Me, I've been mostly focusing on the actual experience and less on the money raising part. That said, if you'd like to sponsor me and contribute either to NSVCS or to the CanadaDave Student Beer and Pizza fund, email me using the link at the bottom. Contributions to the former as even tax deductible for Canadians. Not so much for the beer and pizza fund.

Close Call for the Communicator

2005-07-08T16:32:00.000-04:00

Yesterday's attacks in London struck fairly close to home, since London is the current home of my brother, the Communicator. (Hence the London weather link on the lower right side of the page.) Thankfully, he ended up being inconvenienced, but not hurt and also on the front page of my hometown paper. (Not sure how long that link will keep working) How he ended up in London is a story in and of itself.

My brother graduated from university with a degree in commerce and went into investment banking. He worked for several companies for a few years, working insane hours and making what I gather to be a rather decent buck. He'd dated the same girl since high school, lived in nice apartments, played hockey and was mostly pretty predictable. Or at least it seemed to me. We're not terribly close and rarely see each other or speak outside of family occasions.

The joke had always been that one day he'd call me and say "So, uh, are you free this weekend? I'm getting married." That didn't happen. The Communicator and the girl I called my "sister in-common-law" broke up, and then I think possibly aliens took over my brother's body.

First he fairly abruptly quit his job and then went to Europe on vacation for a few months. I guess he liked it there because shortly after he came back he started talking about finding a job in London.

Since our grandmother was a British citizen, my siblings and I are allowed to work in the UK. So, after some paperwork and some packing, off he went. He landed a job fairly quickly there, doing the same sort of investment banking stuff he did here. (I have only a faint idea of what it is he actually does. It involves lots of money and natural resources).

He shares a "flat" with two 23 year old Swedish girls and a Norwegian chef and from all accounts is having quite the time there.

He was quoted in the article as saying "I won't let it (the attacks) affect how I live my life."

Frankly, neither would I.

Dave Day

2005-06-13T15:26:00.000-04:00

Tomorrow (June 14th) is international Dave Day. And to quote another famous Dave, I am not making this up.

If you haven't finished your Dave Day shopping, you best get a move on. It's probably too late to beat the inevitable Dave Day crowds, but you certainly wouldn't want the important Daves in your life (cough, me, cough) to be disappointed.

Guest Entry

2005-05-19T13:07:00.000-04:00

WereGirl has enjoyed the stories about her enough that she thought she'd have a go at writing one herself. I can only speculate as to why she wrote it in the third person (because she's nuts?), but she did. Anyway, here it is for your enjoyment.

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A long long time ago, in a land far far away (well ok, maybe not that far) there lived an evil monster Weregirl likes to refer to as the Provincial Offenses Office of Toronto.

The story begins some 2 and a half years ago on a cold dismal night in February. Two days after a lonely valentines day, Weregirl decided to visit her friend crochety in her west end too posh for kind people apartment on the west side of Toronto. Weregirl has a nasty habit of forgetting to put gas in her car, and this night was no different. She heard the echo of her gas guage as it reached empty and she thought to herself, "ahhh...no big deal, I have enough gas to get there and
back...this car has made longer trips on empty before." Yes, despite the fact that Weregirl is aware of her ridiculously bad luck, she still enjoys tempting her arch rival the Fate God, and yes, the Fate God beats her every time! So, Weregirl passed three gas stations on her way to Crochety's house, and spent some 'not so quality time' with Crochety until the wee hours of the morning. Upon her return, Weregirl's car began to lurch...no problem she thought "I'll just put the car in neutral and coast down the hill on lakeshore to the gas station on the other side." So, Weregirl put this brilliant plan in motion, stomped her foot heavily on the clutch, and shifted into neutral. At the time, Weregirl was travelling at a modest speed, however her car quickly accelerated down the hill and in no time she was travelling 30 kilometres above the speed limit. "Wow, this is great" she thought, "at
this speed, I'll be able to make it to the gas station with fumes to spare!!!" Unfortunately for Weregirl, the Fate God wasn't impressed with having been tempted twice in one night, so he decided to retaliate against Weregirl. Just as Weregirl rounded the bend and approached the gas station she saw the twinkle of starlight in her rearview mirror, followed by the colours of the star spangled banner...yep, that's right, the police had clocked her going 30 km over the speed limit at 2 o'clock in the morning, with not a car in sight but hers.

"Are you aware of how fast you were going ma'am?" exclaimed the officer better known as "Chip".

"No officer" Weregirl sheepishly responded.

"Well is there any reason that you were travelling 30 Kilometres over the speed limit ma'am?"

"Actually...." she paused... "I'm out of gas and..." she began to explain, however, Chip's eyes grew thin as he scowled at her lame excuse..."no, really look" Weregirl pointed to her gas guage that was reading below the empty line.

"Yes ma'am, I see that, however your car is off, all cars read empty when they're off, let me see your license and ownership please."

"Honestly officer, its empty" she exclaimed as she turned the ignition key to once again start the car. Weregirl is actually brutally honest, and so although her explanations are often beyond comprehensible, she never softens the truth, no matter how dumb it makes her look and sound; this time, she was cracking the scales on the dense-o-meter. She proceeded to beg the officer to once again poke his head into her car to examine her gas guage. Reluctantly, he did so, and as the Fate God
would have it, she indeed was almost completely out of gas. Chip unfortunately was not overly impressed with Weregirl's stupidity and reiterated his request for her license, ownership and registration.

Weregirl began fumbling around trying to find her paperwork. Naturally, this was no small task. Weregirl has enough clutter in her glove compartment to send Martha Stewart and all of her wanna be compulsively organized cronies to the looney bin for good. Needless to say, Weregirl was not able to produce all of her paperwork and sure enough, more annoyed then ever, Chip left the car in a huff. He returned to her car with 3 tickets, one for each piece of paperwork that she was missing and one for her expired plate sticker. (If you are doing the math right now, as shocking as it sounds Weregirl actually had her driver's license on her for once, so 3 tickets was all she got.)

The officer reminded her that she was lucky her story panned out and that she actually was coasting down the hill to save gas, otherwise he would have given her a speeding ticket as well, however he decided this time to let her off with a warning to slow down. Weregirl thanked him and Chip bid her A Dieu. As Weregirl watched the police car pull out from behind her and speed away, her car began to sputter. Sure enough she had been idling since Chip reluctantly poked his head into her
window for the second time. Weregirl listened closely to the sounds of the Fate God chanting his victory song "put, put, sputter, put, put" the car moved 4 feet and then died. The Fate God had won again. Weregirl was left alone and deserted on lakeshore boulevard with nothing but 3 tickets, a cell phone with a dead battery (yep, she always forgets to charge her phone) and a horribly cluttered and immobile car on the side of Lakeshore Boulevard.

Tune in next time to read what happens when Weregirl tries to fight the tickets at the Provincial Offenses office...

Mistaken Identity in the Dryer

2005-05-06T17:07:00.000-04:00

Before leaving for her summer job last week, WereGirl did a humongous amount of laundry here. (I have a washer and dryer, she doesn't, so she sometimes does laundry here). WereGirl has enough clothes for about 5 girls, or (with some suitable substitutions) 87 guys. I know this because I helped her pack last time she moved. The bags of clothes completely filled the bed of a full size pick up truck. Completely, as in no more would fit and it's entirely possible that one or two fell out. I counted them at the time, and I remember it being an impressive number, but it has long since faded from my mind.

Consequently, WereGirl doesn't need to do laundry very often, but when she does it's a major production. She also tends to start and not finish, so I usually have a load of two of her clothes stowed somewhere. This time she was here every hour or so for a couple of day, bringing more dirty clothes, taking clean clothes away and putting the wet clothes in the dryer. And after all that she almost finished. Almost. When she left for her job she left a load in the dryer, but this is the smallest amount of WereGirl's clothes I've had here for a quite some time.

But the load abandoned in the dryer reminded me of one of the first loads left there a couple of years ago. At the time WereGirl had two roommates living with her. One we'll call "Miss Independence" and the other isn't important enough in this story for me to bother thinking up a clever name. Miss Independence also did laundry here now and then when she lived with WereGirl. The girl other did not. I have no idea where or even if she did laundry. Anyhow, on one of her infrequent visits, Miss Independence did a load and then completely forgot about it in the dryer. I'd just done laundry, so the load went unnoticed and unattended to for about a week.

The next weekend I left town for reasons that I no longer remember. What I do remember is that when I came home WereGirl was folding a recently finished load of laundry. I put my bag away and noticed that she had put Miss Independence's load of laundry on my bed, with a black pair of panties placed jauntily on top (which I didn't notice as having been done intentionally at first). I put the laundry in a basket and carried it back out of my room.

"Did you see the laundry on your bed?" WereGirl asked pointedly, clearly very annoyed about something.

"I did. It's actually a load Miss Independence left here." I replied.

"Oh..."

WereGirl, had obviously thought the laundry was mine. And the panties... Well, me, I can think of many reasons why I might have women's underwear in my home. I could have had a visitor since she last was there, for instance. Also, there were two girls who both did laundry at my house. These were not the sort of conclusion that WereGirl drew.

It's important to note at this point that WereGirl is a pretty small girl. She doesn't really think so, and rarely behaves that way, but she is. She's an inch or two over five feet tall and very slim. Miss Independence is a more average sized girl, and thus wears slightly larger underwear..

"Did you see the underwear?" WereGirl asked.

"Yes..."

"I have a pair like that. I thought you'd stolen them and had stretched them out by wearing them." She admitted.

WereGirl can be a little strange sometimes.

Stir Crazy

2005-04-29T19:28:00.000-04:00

After handing in my last exam a little before 4:30 today I finished school for the semester. My plan for the summer is to make like any other student and get a summer job. I really could use even a brief respite from the whole poor student shtick and I'd like to try and minimize my loans for next year. To that end, I've sent out a few dozen resumes.

The glitch in this idyllic plan is that I may as well have sent each and every one of those resumes into a black hole and not to potential employers. In fact, I'm not entirely certain that some flaw in the time space continuum is not sucking them into some sort of quantum singularity (I love Star Trek techno-babble) as I've yet to get even a nibble from a potential employer. It's not like I've been overly picky. (thought I have been a little bit). I've sent out resumes for postitions I really want (Like a fun sounding job at the Windsor Library teaching basic computers skills. I'd be really good at that.) and for jobs that I'll do if they hire me and agree to pay me money (deliver flyers, a well trained chimp could do this).

Consequently right now, as of about three hours ago I have nothing to do and no money with which to do it. Which means that I'm going slightly nuts. Which, frankly, took about 20 minutes.

I may be forced to do something productive like spring cleaning or something...

In the meantime, if you'd like to hire a former IT support guy (who is at least as skilled as a well trained chimp) for the summer, shoot me an email... (seriously, really... The address is at the bottom of the page...)

No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

2005-04-18T22:38:00.000-04:00

My good friend WereGirl is, if nothing else, an excellent source of blog fodder. You see, WereGirl does not have good luck. WereGirl has phenomenally bad luck, luck that you really can't understand without spending time with her. There's an ancient Chinese curse that states "May you live in interesting times." I'm not sure exactly how WereGirl managed to piss off the ancient Chinese, but this curse fits her life to a T. The last couple of stories prominently feature her, and this one will too. For most people, myself included, these events would be exceptional. But they're just par for the course (or, perhaps curse) for her.

Our latest story starts when WereGirl's boyfriend boyfriend, PilotBoy, had to go to a funeral in central Michigan. What would have been the last snow of the year had been forecast and because the Family Truckster does not handle well in the snow, WereGirl had insisted that they trade cars for a couple days and so he could take her car north. It didn't actually end up snowing, but it was a nice, caring thing for her to have done. Unfortunately in, especially for WereGirl, no good deed goes unpunished.

I enter the story once again hanging out at WereGirl's house. She told me that an employee of her mother's had had car problems and needed a lift home, across the river in Detroit. Being the good person that she is, WereGirl had agreed to take her across in the Family Truckster. In hindsight we should have taken my car, but WereGirl is a silly girl and felt that asking ne would be an imposition. It really wouldn't have been, except for the fact that the Family Truckster is far more comfortable for three people, but like I said, she's silly. This was another good deed. So, now she was really due some punishment.

I knew that she wouldn't want to be driving in Detroit after dark, so when she asked if I'd tag along, it wasn't really a surprise. So, we headed off to her mom's store picked up our charge, and then to the border.

American Border guards almost always like to know who you are and exactly why you'd like to enter their fair country. It took a while for WereGirl to explain that we were driving her boyfriend's car, and that no, that wasn't me. Two of us were Canadians, one of us was an American. I volunteered that I was coming across to keep WereGirl company on the way back "since Detroit doesn't have the best reputation" (this elicited a bit of a scowl). Eventually we were deemed worthy and granted access to the United States.

The actual drop off went without a hitch, though I swear that Bosnia has better roads than Detroit. One in particular was a series of potholes separated by speed bumbs. We got slightly lost but eventually found our way back to the border where the real fun began.

I've never had much of a problem with Canada Customs. When SouthernKitten and I were dating I crossed every couple of weeks and the most thorough interrogation I received was when an agent asked "Are you sure?" after I'd said I had nothing to declare. The longest I'd ever spent at customs was after my last visit to Kentucky, just before the day before the US election. The guard was bored and wanted to talk US politics for a while.

This time was different. The woman in the booth noted that the Family Truckster had Michigan plates, and since neither WereGirl or I were US residents, she said that we were not entitled to bring it into Canada and would have to pull into the inspection area to discuss it.

Once there, we were approached by a pair of customs agents, a veteran officer and a young one. The veteran did most of the talking. WereGirl wanted to have her mother (who is a US citizen) meet us and drive the car into Canada. However, since WereGirl had admitted that her mother was a resident of Windsor, this wasn't going to fly. Her next idea was for her mother's boyfriend (also a US citizen, but one she had not admitted to be a resident of Windsor) do the same thing. Again this did not fly. The agents were concerned that we'd just cross the border, then she'd resume driving. The agents wanted the Family Truckster out of the country and back in Michigan.

At this juncture WereGirl and the customs agents both felt the issue had been resolved, though both had completely different ideas about just what this resolution was. The agents said they'd open the gate to let us out and send us on our way. The gate led back into the tunnel and ultimately back into Michigan. WereGirl had somehow gotten the impression that the gate led to the impound yard and that customs would be keeping the Family Truckster until PilotBoy could come and pick it up. The agents instructed us to wait and told they'd be back.

The younger agent came back with a piece of paper that would allow us back across without paying a second toll. Suddenly WereGirl understood what they wanted and took this opportunity to re-open negotiations. She basically offered the same solution, but the younger, more inexperienced agent fell for it, er, I mean, agreed.

WereGirl called her mom at home and her mom and her mom's boyfriend headed to the border to meet us.

A couple of minutes later a very chagrined younger agent re-approached the car. The older agent had apparently vetoed the idea and chewed him out a little. We'd have to figure something else out and the car could not proceed into Canada.

We spent some time trying to come up with a plan. Then another customs officer, this one female, approached the car and knocked on the window. WereGirl rolled it down.

"You have to leave." said the officer.

"But we're waiting for my mom and-" Weregirl started to reply. Her mom was on her way there and would be rather confused if we weren't there once she arrived.

"She can't drive the car. This has been explained to you, you have to leave" interrupted a rather bitchy customs officer.

"I know, but she's on her way and-"

"This is a Saturday night and we're busy, this is not a parking lot and you have to go." Officer McBitchy interrupted again.

At that moment WereGirl's mom's boyfriend strode into view. Apparently her mom was waiting inside. I headed inside to let her know what was happening and let everyone else sort out what was going to happen.

I found WereGirl's mom and we chatted idly about WereGirl's luck for a few minutes while a new plan was formulated. Eventually WereGirl joined us and filled us in on the new plan.

Her mom's boyfriend would drive the Family Truckster back into the US. WereGirl's mom would take us back into the US where we would meet him, then they would go back home to Windsor and WereGirl and I would take the Family Truckster back to PilotBoy's house where we would meet him when he returned the next morning.

Because of our rather complicated story and reason for going back into the States this time, WereGirl's mom decided that we should just tell the US customs officer a little white lie about our reasons for crossing. It would just be so much easier to tell the little white lie and get across than to re-tell the whole story. When we pulled up to the booth at the border, however, we recognized the guard as the same one we'd seen on our way across an hour or so before. Now, I'm sure that border guards see hundreds, if not thousands of people a day and probably remember almost none of them. But WereGirl is an attractive girl, my last name is pretty distinct and I'd insulted what may well have been his home town. If he was going to remember anyone, it seemed pretty reasonable that he'd remember us.

"Why do you want to enter the US today?" the guard asked.

WereGirl's mom opened her mouth, set to tell the lie.

"Well..." WereGirl interupted, just in time.

Asside from a whole lot of ranting on WereGirl's part, the rest of the trip to PilotBoy's house went smoothly.

In the end what had been intended to be a 20 minute hop across the border turned into an ordeal of several hours and an overnight trip.

Just another day in the life of WereGirl.

Ottawa Part II (finally)

2005-04-11T21:03:00.000-04:00

A long, long time ago the universe was created in a violent explosion that scientists call the big bang. Shortly after that I posted the first half of this story and haven't gotten around to finishing it until now. My apologies for the delay.

Anyway, when we left the tale, WereGirl and had hopped into a cab for a ride to the dealership so we could check out her car.

Upon giving our destination to the cab driver a few facts became evident. 1) English was not this gentleman's first language, nor possibly his second or third.. And 2) He didn't know Ottawa and seemed to have even less of a grasp of where we wanted to go than we did. 3) He was a little lacking in what are traditionally called "People Skills"

After some pointing, hand gestures and a long conversation with dispatcher, we were on our way.

The dealership was a rather large one with many building and departments. The driver picked one seemingly at random and let us out there. We advised he that we'd need to go in to get the chit to pay him. This did not please our driver at all. He grumped loudly about it but gradually came to the realization that we just didn't care that much, so he followed us into the dealership muttering under his breath.

We arrived at the service desk and were met by a pleasant young man who had no idea who we were or what we wanted. After explaining or circumstances to him WereGirl gave him the name of the woman she'd spoken to. This elicited a blank stare and he asked for the woman's last name, which WereGirl had not been told.

Eventually he managed to figure out which department we'd need to deal with after having had a car accident and gave them a call. They seemed to have a bit more of a clue. So, he filled out the chit for the hostile taxi driver who then left our lives, hopefully forever.

The building we needed to go to was "next door", yet he offered to have a car take us. This was a little confusing and seemed like more hassle than we wanted to go through to travel what we figured must be 50 to 100 feet. The man looked perplexed and started giving directions. By the third or fourth turn we concluded that possibly his definition of "next door" and ours may have varied slightly and we reconsidered the car offer.

After being driven several blocks to the repair shop we had a look at WereGirl's poor, beat up car. It had arrived only recently and was still coated in ice and had about 15 pounds of weeds wedged into every crack and crevice in the front end, including a number of cracks that hadn't been there when we left Windsor. WereGirl discussed the next steps with the young gentleman staffing the shop who had remarkably few answers. Someone else would have a look, and they'd get in touch. I think WereGirl filled out some papers, we cleaned about 87 coffee cups out of the car (WereGirl has a "mild" caffeine addiction and didn't want auto mechanics thinking she was a slob.)

That taken care of we walked out of the dealership. Somewhere along the way (I don't remember when exactly) PilotBoy had called back with the results of his research on how to get us home. The plan was that WereGirl and I would would take a commercial flight to Toronto where he would meet us and drive us home in his car, affectionately known as "The Family Truckster".

Our next step was to get to the airport. We were on the completely wrong side of town, low on cash, WereGirl's cell was dead and mine just barely hanging on. We walked about a block to a nearby diner, sat down, grabbed a bite and tried to figure out how to get to the airport. The first step was to call friends in Ottawa who might give us a lift. DevilBoy lives in Ottawa, but was on springbreak, and out of town. Eggman also lives in Ottawa, but had moved a while back and I hadn't gotten around to putting his new number in my cell. WereGirl's also had a couple of friends there, but just couldn't manage to track them down.

After 45 minutes or so of abject failure WereGirl had the brainwave that we could just take the bus. Brilliant plan, now we just needed to figure out which buses to take from where we were. WhereGirl found the number for Ottawa transit and got directions. The man sitting at the next table, however, was an Ottawa Transit driver and felt that the route we'd been giving was... sub-optimal. He gave us new directions and he and his wife were even nice enough to give us a lift to the proper stop to get us on our way.

The bus ride was mostly uneventful. It was a bit tricky making sure that we didn't miss the stop where we needed to change buses, and then spent what seemed like an eternity shivering there, waiting for the next bus.

The bus dropped us conveniently right in front of the terminal. After a bit of confusion we managed to find the right ticket counter and pick up our tickets. We checked in, found our gate and sat down to wait.

Predictably our flight was delayed. In fact, the plane had been delayed an hour in Montreal by the same storm that had gotten us into this in the first place. Flying from Ottawa to Toronto takes about 50 minutes, so the delay was actually longer than the flight itself.

I enjoy flying, so the flight itself was fun for me. WereGirl wanted to sleep, but had foolishly choosen the window seat, so my leaning over to stare out the window and chatter about the various great things I could see outside kinda precluded that...

After our short hop, we landed in Toronto and disembarked at the new terminal. I'd never been there before and both of us were at a bit of a loss on how to get out and couldn't figure out why PilotBoy hadn't met us at the gate. We called his cell after finding some pay phones and discorevered that, predictably enough, he was waiting at arrivals and gave a gate number that made no sense with what we could see. There were plenty of signs for restrooms, telephones and assorted other things, but none that really directed us out or to his location. We wandered in what seemed like an appropriate direction and eventually found a map. Having been awake for over a day at this point the best our sleep addled brains could figure was that we needed to go down a floor... We continued wandering, finding a dead end or two, before finally our way to the arrivals area and found PilotBoy.

We made our way to the Family Truckster and headed for Windsor. PilotBoy is a good guy. He's drive three hours or so to Toronto for Detroit, waited a few hours in the airport and now was driving us the three hours back to Windsor. I stayed awake for part of the trip, but once we left to Toronto, the almost 30 hours of wakefulness caught up with me and I blissfully passed out.

It was 3:00 in the morning by the time they dropped me off, seldom have I been so glad to see my little house or my bed.

Ottawa, part I

2005-02-24T08:40:00.000-05:00

I had planned on making this entry another rant. I’ve been stewing about stupid things Tom Wappel has been saying lately, the federal budget and miscellaneous other political things.

Then last Sunday and Monday happened.

They were a rather eventful couple of days. On Sunday I was hanging out at WereGirl’s house watching West Wing DVDs and generally relaxing. The weather was unpleasant, but I didn’t need to be anywhere, so everything was tranquil in my world.

WereGirl, on the other hand, had an interview in Ottawa (8 hours away on a good day) Monday morning. She planned on driving all night, doing the interview and then driving right back. She’s a little nutty that way. With the weather being nasty, however, she didn’t want to make the trip alone. PilotBoy, her boyfriend, was in Arizona doing a mountain bike race that weekend, so that left me.

“Dave, come to Ottawa with me!”

“Can’t, I have class.”

“Pleeeeaaaase!”

“I would, but I have class.”

(repeat the above about a dozen times)

“If you don’t go, I’ll have an accident and die!”

Ah, guilt… Yeah she had me here.

“Ok, fine, but I’m doing school work on the way home”

So, around 10pm Sunday night we left for Ottawa. We could not have picked a worse time to travel if we’d tried.

WereGirl drove and fought her way though blinding snow, ice, sleet, big trucks and roads that had not been cleared. I think we ended up in the middle of a weather system heading east and were keeping pace with it. It was really the worst driving imaginable for almost ten hours. The trip was scary in places, but generally not bad. We chatted, called her boyfriend to find out about his race (he’d not had a good weekend and was on his way home) and stopped for coffee and rest stops occasionally.

When we made the turn north on 416 the weather gradually seemed to clear. Things were looking good. It was not no longer snowing, sleeting or raining and the sun was up, so visibility was good. We’d left most of the big trucks behind us on the 401 and it looked like we’d make WereGirl’s interview with about half an hour to spare.

The highway, however still needed clearing.

I don’t know exactly how it started. My nose was down, looking at a map on my notebook when the car hit ice, snow, slush, or something and swung to the right. WereGirl managed to stop it, but we ended up swinging a bit further to the left. Then back to the right. At this point I was a little concerned. Further to the left, and back to the right. At this point we were basically perpendicular to the road and I knew there would be no recovering from it.

“This is gonna hurt…” I thought to myself and held on tight to the door handle.

Off to the right of the highway was a large ditch, about 13 feet deep and filled with weeds and rather wide.

We shot off the edge of the road, flew through the air and landed in the ditch. Dirt and snow flew up and slowly covered the car.

WereGirl and I slowly gathered out wits about us. She noted that the car was still in 4th gear and was currently idling, that wasn’t a good sign.

We got out of the car, and had a look around. WereGirl’s car had no visible body damage at this point, but both drivers’ side tires were rapidly deflating and the rear one was at a pretty odd angle. Three or four other cars had pulled over after having seen us fly off the highway. There occupants were on their way down to the car and asked if we were alright. We responded that we were, and most went on their way. One man stuck around for a bit and eventually agreed to take WereGirl and I to her interview. I grabbed my laptop out of the car, and off we went.

Traffic in Ottawa was pretty awful. But after making a pit stop to find a washroom for WereGirl who by this point desperately had to pee, we arrived at the interview only 15-20 minutes late. Not bad, all things considered.

I went and grabbed some breakfast in the building’s food court while WereGirl went off to do her thing. After a while I finished and decided to explore a little. The office building was only a couple blocks from Parliament Hill, which I thought was pretty cool. I walked up and down Sparks Street for a while. Sparks street is pretty neat in that it’s right in downtown Ottawa, but completely closed to vehicle traffic. I wandered for a while, made note of a pub and wandered back to the building to wait for WereGirl.

She had just finished and was chatting with a fellow applicant when I got back. I waited for her to finish, and then we had to figure out what to do next..

WereGirl made a few phone calls to try and get things moving. She called the local dealer for her car, her insurance company and the police. Everyone seemed a little confused about the fact that we were no longer with the car and promised to get back to us.

We left the building, and wandered Sparks st. a little. We stopped at a couple little stores and explored. Eventually we stopped at the pub I’d found, waited there for her phone to ring and had a couple beverages and some food.

We finished, paid and left. More phone calls had been made, but nothing had really been resolved yet. By this time PilotBoy was home from his trip, and she had him doing some research on the internet for the cheapest way to get us both home.

After a long time the police found her car and examined it, then a towing company got it out of the ditch and to the dealership. There would be no charges laid against WereGirl, and we needed to get out to the dealership to have a look at the car.

WereGirl called the dealership and inquired into getting a shuttle sent out to pick us up. One was not available, but if we used a certain taxi company they’d give us a taxi chit. So, WereGirl called a cab and we stood by the road waiting for it.

A cab from the proper company pulled over, and we hopped in.

To be continued…

Be sure to check back later for the rest of the story, including checking on WereGirl’s car, and our trip home.

Inside the ping pong ball

2005-02-16T18:29:00.000-05:00

Valentines day unexpectedly turned into quite the adventure for me this year. My plan had been to do some moping and possibly post here about how I dislike Valentines day since it mostly serves to entice people in relationships to spend money and make those outside them feel like crap. Still stinging from the abrupt end of my last one I am firmly in the latter category. None of that changed, but I didn't do any moping about it.

First a brief bit of background. WereGirl recently started dating a guy whom we shall be calling PilotBoy. Now, as you may have guessed, he earned this moniker due to the fact that he actually is a pilot. Thus earning big points right away with me. PilotBoy is also an American and lives just a little outside Detroit.

For Valentines Day PilotBoy planned on taking WereGirl out to dinner. Not overly exceptional in an of itself. The interesting part was that he planned on taking her somewhere out of town. Way out of town. Flying was to be involved in getting there. Because I have a bit of a thing for airplanes and had been agitating to be brought flying, they both agreed that inviting me along would be a nice thing to do, too. This was going to be lots of fun.

I think the plan was originally to go somewhere in Cleveland. (He was going to surprise us) But the weather was kind of bad, it was raining and cold, so we decided we'd take a shorter trip and have a more modest meal.

We had a pleasant flight there and PilotBoy had me help out with the checklist and let me fly for a bit. I thought this was great. Dinner was at a small restaurant at the airport and wasn't bad at all. Things got a little interesting after dinner.

The weather had changed and the rain had begun freezing. Freezing rain and small planes with no deicing equipment do not get along. We had no choice but to wait this out.

First, we walked to a nearby bowling alley and bowled a couple games. I discovered that I still suck at bowling. The weather was no better by the time we had had enough bowling.

Next we took a cab to the local movie theatre. We saw Million Dollar Baby, which was okay, but really a chick flick and very, very long. (or at least seemed that way). It was, however, not long enough for the weather to clear. By this time it was after midnight, so we decided that we'd best find a hotel and spend the night.

PilotBoy called the cab company and was advised that the soonest they could get a cab to us was forty minutes from then. He negotiated them down to twenty, but that still wasn't great. So, we interrogated the staff and the few other patrons there about hotels that might be within walking distance of the theatre. We didn't get any very promising leads, but a couple we'd asked came back and found us once they'd ventured outside. The weather was nasty enough that they didn't think anyone should try walking in it, so they offered us a ride. PilotBoy cancelled the cab and we thanked them profusely.

We arrived at the hotel and went to check in. The lady behind the desk advised us that she was in the middle of doing an audit and thus would be unable to give us a room for about twenty minutes. We negotiated, but she wouldn't budge. We decided to try the hotel next door instead. This one was also doing their nightly audit, but the man behind the desk was either less lazy or more competent, as he agreed to take our information down give us a room and put it all in the computer once the audit finished.

We ordered a wake up call for quarter after five and retired to our beds.

Morning came way to early. The hotel had a nicer than usual complimentary breakfast so we dug into that and then took a cab back to the airport. WereGirl had a class at 8:30 that morning and we were well on track to get her back in time for it.

The weather looked better and the threat of ice had passed, so we broke ground and headed home.

The sky was still overcast and we entered the clouds almost immediately after takeoff. Most of the flight was like flying inside a ping pong ball. The wings and wheels of the plane were visible out the window, but everything beyond them was pure white. The only times we broke out or the clouds was to briefly skirt their tops. PilotBoy is qualified to fly by instruments (IFR) and had filed the proper papers for that prior to taking off, so this was fine. He navigated us to our home airport and tried to line us up to land.

The weather was uncooperative again, though. There was a massive crosswind, a lot of turbulence and the bottom of the clouds eluded us. PilotBoy aborted the landing and we went back into the pattern. The air traffic controllers directed us around, and we went to try again. As we were climbing out WereGirl declared her own little in flight emergency - she had to pee. Badly. Having warned her to visit the washroom before we left, and because I'm mean, I found her discomfort to be pretty funny. The second attempt was not a lot different than the first. As WereGirl squirmed in her sear we tried one more time, and again were foiled.

PilotBoy decided that we might have better luck at an alternate airport. One was found nearby with a higher cloud ceiling and less wind. Our decent into it was less bumpy and we popped out of the clouds with the runaway just a little ahead of us and to our right. PilotBoy gently set the plane down, and the tower directed us towards the general aviation terminal. On the way there we had to cross an active runway and the tower instructed us to hold for a while before crossing it as there was other incoming traffic. WereGirl was about ready to explode by this time. She joked about the possibility of just getting out and squatting. PilotBoy took a quick look around and told her to go for it.

So, PilotBoy opened his door and WereGirl stepped out of the plane using the open door to shield herself from any onlookers and the wind. PilotBoy and and I intently studied a B-52 bomber parked at the museum in the opposite direction on the airport grounds while WereGirl made a new puddle on the already damp runway.

We taxied the rest of the way to the terminal and disembarked. We would have to try to wait out the weather again. We wandered around the terminal, snacked on popcorn from a popcorn machine, sat around and chatted. By lunchtime things had not improved. PilotBoy rented a car and we went into town for some lunch.

The weather was no better when we finished. So, we waited around for a while longer and then PilotBoy decided that further waiting was likely to be futile and drove us back to Canada in the car, deciding to go back for the plane later.

WereGirl made her last class of the day and I went home and played airplane games on the computer.

With any luck I'll get to go flying again sometime soon. I can't wait.

Just Another Diatribe on Gay Rights

2005-02-06T08:08:00.000-05:00

At present there is a bill before the House of Commons that would legalize same sex marriage across Canada. This takes us in pretty much the complete opposite direction of the US, where proposals to constitutionally protect "traditional" marriage passed last November in all 11 states where they were proposed.

Those who oppose gay marriage have already reached an unprecedented level of insanity in the States(protesting SpongeBob? Honestly, how is anyone supposed to take them seriously after that?!). Opposition here has been quieter, but they seem to be gearing up now.

At a recent protest near Hamilton, Ontario an anti-gay marriage advocate encouraged his supporters to lobby their MPs by, among other things, calling their constituency offices after hours and clogging their voicemail systems. (As heard on the CBC news this morning, I'll post a link if/when I find one). I take issue with this, both because clearly I disagree with them, but also because constituency offices do important work that they wish to disrupt for their own ignorant ends.

Constituency offices are there for people to access the federal government. People go there for passports, (especially when they need them in a rush for family emergency, etc), they go when they are having trouble getting government benefits they are rightfully entitled to, basically they go there when they need help. Disrupting this work for political reasons is, in my opinion, despicable.

These folks wish to disrupt that important work because seeing two dudes kiss is icky... Which, incidentally, is seriously the best justification I've seen so far for opposing gay rights. The only other non-vague and actually specific reason I've seen is that some groups seem to feel that gays are secretly trying to "recruit" them or their children, which I find ludicrous. I don't know about anyone else, but I don't care how socially acceptable it becomes, sleeping with a guy just doesn't appeal to me. Honestly the only people I can see this argument making sense to are closeted, self hating homosexuals. I just don't know who else would feel the temptation to cross over and then be so angry about it.

Gay rights is not an issue I want to care about. I was happy enough sitting on the sidelines of the issue, quietly being pleased as they won court case after court case. It meant that society was becoming more tolerant. I like tolerance. Unfortunately, the march of gay rights reached a point where it inspired a backlash. Primarily religious, which I also don't understand.

Every mainstream religion preaches love and forgiveness. Every religion also has various sets of rules to live by. Some have been deemed arcane and are basically ignored. Homosexuality seems to fit well in that list. However, clearly it's not. Religious organizations like Focus on the Family seem fixated on it. They do not love gay people. They fear them. A lot. They fight against teaching children tolerance. To me this seems to clash with the fundamental principles of the church. Which makes it even more bizarre that this group is referred to as "Fundamentalists".

This backlash is the reason I've been speaking up on the issue. I guess I'm the backlash to the backlash. (does that make me the forwardlash?) I just don't like seeing people treated the way the these people treat the gay community. It offends me. Also, I'm reminded of the following quote:

First they came for the Communists,
and I didn't speak up, because I wasn't a Communist.

Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak up, because I wasn't a Jew.

Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn't speak up, because I was a Protestant.

Then they came for me,
and by that time there was no one left to speak up for me.

by Rev. Martin Niemoller, 1945

These people want to come for the gays,
and though I am not gay, I will stand and fight.

(granted, at least on this side of the border, it's nice to have the government on my side)

State of the Union

2005-02-02T23:30:00.000-05:00

I watched US president Bush's State of the Union address this evening. I chatted online with mary throughout it, booing and heckling when appropriate. (In other words, a lot)

The really fun parts were where Bush obviously contradicted himself.

On exporting democracy:

As a new Congress gathers, all of us in the elected branches of government share a great privilege: we have been placed in office by the votes of the people we serve. And tonight that is a privilege we share with newly elected leaders of Afghanistan, the Palestinian territories, Ukraine, and a free and sovereign Iraq.

What a nice list of places the United States has played a major roll in bringing democracy to. Afghanistan and Iraq most obviously and most recently. Ukraine by economically destroying the USSR and Palestine mostly through diplomacy. Democracy is good. I like democracy.

The United States has no right, no desire, and no intention to impose our form of government on anyone else. That is one of the main differences between us and our enemies. They seek to impose and expand an empire of oppression, in which a tiny group of brutal, self-appointed rulers control every aspect of every life.

Ummm... Democracy is good... But, uh, yeah, you kinda actually have been imposing it on other countries. Like those ones you just mentioned...

Today, Iran remains the world's primary state sponsor of terror - pursuing nuclear weapons while depriving its people of the freedom they seek and deserve. We are working with European allies to make clear to the Iranian regime that it must give up its uranium enrichment program and any plutonium re-processing, and end its support for terror. And to the Iranian people, I say tonight: As you stand for your own liberty, America stands with you.

America stands with you, but if/when they invade they promise not to impose anything... I guess they'll just bomb you...

On social security:

Today, more than 45 million Americans receive Social Security benefits, and millions more are nearing retirement - and for them the system is strong and fiscally sound. I have a message for every American who is 55 or older: Do not let anyone mislead you. For you, the Social Security system will not change in any way.

For younger workers, the Social Security system has serious problems that will grow worse with time. Social Security was created decades ago, for a very different era. In those days people didn't live as long, benefits were much lower than they are today, and a half century ago, about 16 workers paid into the system for each person drawing benefits.

Our society has changed in ways the founders of Social Security could not have foreseen. In today's world, people are living longer and therefore drawing benefits longer - and those benefits are scheduled to rise dramatically over the next few decades. And instead of 16 workers paying in for every beneficiary, right now it's only about three workers - and over the next few decades, that number will fall to just two workers per beneficiary. With each passing year, fewer workers are paying ever-higher benefits to an ever-larger number of retirees.

Oh my, that sounds pretty bad. But everyone 55 and up can relax as none of this next bit is going to affect them.

Here is how the idea works. Right now, a set portion of the money you earn is taken out of your pay check to pay for the Social Security benefits of today's retirees. If you are a younger worker, I believe you should be able to set aside part of that money in your own retirement account, so you can build a nest egg for your own future.

Wait... If today's workers are paying for today's retirees... And they're gonna set aside money for their own retirement too... Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't that either mean less benefits to current retirees or higher deductions? Or maybe everyone can have their cake and eat it too...

---

It was a big speech and there are a few more, but those two were my favourites. The really sad thing about the State of the Union speech was that it preempted West Wing and a smarter president I like a lot more...

Boy, do I feel safe...

2005-01-25T23:57:00.000-05:00

Noticed this in the news recently.

"(CNN) -- A water leak at the Fermi II nuclear power plant outside Monroe, Michigan, forced a shutdown of the facility Monday, but no radioactivity was reported to have escaped and no evacuations have been ordered, authorities said."

I noticed this plant from I-75 when I was driving back and forth to Lexington. (A drive I oddly find myself missing). That thing is close. About 50km away, according to a map actually..

I'll have to look up what kind of fallout I can expect next time...

(Edit: It leaked again when they tried to restart it... That thing makes me nervous.)

More snow

2005-01-21T23:38:00.000-05:00

Like a lot of places in this part of the continent, Windsor is currently bracing for a pretty heavy snow dump. For me this is inconvenient, since I had planned on going out of town for a good chunk of the day tomorrow and would rather not be driving on snow and ice covered highways. (Even with the new Hummer-like abilities my car now has with snow tires).

But, before I complain too much about this, I should also take a minute to remember the fond memories of snow I have. Most from growing up in Orillia, which gets just a lot more snow than we do here.

Those of you playing the home game will remember that for a few years when I was in high school, I was a ski instructor. I trust I don't have to go into too much detail about how nice a good dump of snow was there. This was especially true early or late in the season, since it meant either an earlier start or later finish to the season.

Also, all throughout grade school in Orillia a major dump of snow brought with it the possibility of a snow day. A great little unscheduled vacation. One of those in particular stands out for me.

DevilBoy's dad was the principal of my high school for most of the years I spent there. This both had perks (access to the school, even when it was closed) and drawbacks (at least one teacher hated me because of my friendship with the princepal's son).

Anyway, this day didn't start off as a snow day, merely a day where it was snowing rather heavily. Not enough had fallen by the time it was time to leave for school, so, everyone had to show up. But the talk in the halls was all about the storm and how the school would certainly have to be closed any minute now. At any time we expected the closure to be broadcast over the school's intercom system.

In home room, we stood for the national anthem and then the principal (DevilBoy's dad) came on the intercom and read the morning's announcements is his distinct British accent. He concluded with "There will be no snow day today! Simcoe County Board of Education policy does not allow snow days!"

The school day progressed, and DevilBoy's dad made announcements of that type a couple more times. The storm ignored him, and the Simcoe County Board of Education policy and continued to pile higher and higher and the roads got worse and worse. A large number of students were bused into my high school (not me), so this was a matter of some importance.

After lunch DevilBoy's dad came on the PA system one last time...

"I realize that I said before that there wouldn't be a snow day. This was not entirely correct..."

Just a funny link

2005-01-19T03:10:00.000-05:00

Apologies for the lack of updates. I've been dealing with some insomnia of late (note the time this was posted) and haven't felt especially creative...

More updates will be forthcoming later. In the meantime, check out this link. I found it pretty amusing.

Student Funding

2005-01-13T23:14:00.000-05:00

If you'd like to experience bureaucracy at it's finest, apply for a student loan in Ontario. The program is called the Ontario Student Assistance Program (OSAP).

Applying for OSAP is a kind of involved process...

Step 1: Log into the website linked above and fill out a lengthy form. An estimate on possible OSAP funding will be provided. Ignore this number, it doesn't really mean anything.

Step 2: After receiving an email, go back and look at new numbers. These are the real numbers. Their origin is a mystery.

Step 3: Print out pages from the website. Sign them and take them to the financial aid office. You do not receive any money at this point.

Step 4: After about a month, receive an email from student aid. Go back to the office, this time you need to see someone, so stand in line and wait. Get to the front of the line, present drivers license and social insurance card. Receive new papers, but no money.

Step 5: Take the new papers to the university cashier's office. Stand in a new line. Present student card and social insurance card. The university will mark on the papers how much they will be taking off the top for tuition, then stamp them. You must sign the new papers again at this point. Receive no money.

Step 6: Take stamped and signed new papers to the post office. Wait in line. Present student card, social insurance card and a void cheque. More stamping. More signing. Receive more new papers. Sign them roughly 8732 times. Leave the originals at the post office. Return home with copies of the papers and no money.

Step 7: Wait about a week or so. The money (the part the university didn't want) magically appears in your bank account. Yay! Money!

Step 8: Repeat every semester until you leave school one way or another.

I just did it for the fifth time, and it's still as much fun as ever.

There are a few possible variations in this process depending on a few factors. For instance, sometimes there are loans people in the student center and you can go stand in their line instead of the one at the post office.

I have no idea what the student loan process is like in other jurisdictions... Hypothetically it could be worse, but I don't want to think about that.

Nevermind about the hiatus

2005-01-12T07:58:00.000-05:00

I've decided that my planned hiatus may have been an over reaction.

What happened, basically, is this:

SouthernKitten and I split up the other day. I took it pretty hard. Blogging no longer felt like something I really wanted to do. Also, I was concerned that if I did, you'd just be reading CanadaDave whine on the internet. You don't want to read it, I don't want it in my blog. Hence the hiatus plan.

Over the past couple of days, however, I've found a little more perspective. The Earth continues to spin, my classes have restarted and life goes on.

Additionally, I understand Jennifer Anniston has also recently become available. Convenient,eh?

Hiatus

2005-01-09T20:12:00.000-05:00

For personal reasons I'll be taking an indefinate hiatus from blogging. I might come back at a later time. I don't know at this point.

Assorted Miscellany

2005-01-07T00:04:00.000-05:00

I have a few short thoughts on a few different subjects today.

The Indian ocean tsunami has been in the news a lot lately, in fact it's been leading the news every day since it happened. To that extensive coverage, I can't really add very much. The number of casualties is beyond comprehension. The closest I can come is the population sign on the way into this city which reads 209,000. The vast majority of this town would be gone.

---

In this country, after negotiations on offshore oil revenues broke down, premier Danny Williams of Newfoundland ordered Canadian flags taken off all provincial buildings.

In Canada the provinces can be divided into two financial categories, traditionally know as the "Have" (like Ontario and Alberta) and "Have not" (like, say, Newfoundland). "Have not" provinces receive federal equalization payments funded by the federal government and the "Have" provinces. So premier Williams stripped the Canadian flag from buildings funded by the rest of the country, something I personally find appalling.

Additionally, the negotiations basically broke down because the offshore oil revenue has the potential to take Newfoundland from the ranks of the "Have nots", but Newfoundland does not wish to give up their federal equalization payments. I can understand why they'd like to continue receiving them and, in fairness, Newfoundland has been robbed in natural resource deals before, but I'm not sure why we in the rest of the country should continuing subsidizing Newfoundland once they have the means to stand on their own.

---

On a completely personal level, my car now has snow tires and the difference between them and the all seasons I've used in the past is just phenomenal. With all season tires I'd routinely get stuck three or four times doing something as mundane as going to the store. With snow tires I have yet to actually get stuck. Now, I'm not about to take my car off-roading, but really, it's a huge difference. My car no longer sucks in the winter!

Merry Christmas

2004-12-25T22:32:00.000-05:00

Best of the season, whatever the holiday you're celebrating.

Stranded

2004-12-23T19:04:00.000-05:00

Almost all of Ontario, as well as a lot of places in this part of the world, got a fair bit of snow yesterday. It wasn't the first snow of the year, but it may be the first snow that sticks and was definitely the first big dump of the year.

It wasn't a surprise. The day before the radio had been saying "If you want to leave town, do it now". I couldn't because I had some loose ends at school that I wanted to tie up before I left. So I stayed and waited for the oncoming storm, hoping that as usually seems to happen here, the forecasters would predict a huge storm and it would completely fail to materialize.

My plan had been to leave this morning. This morning the roads were chaos. I decided I'd wait until the roads cleared up. The roads persistently remained chaotic. I'd check the highway status on the web every couple hours. Eventually, I decided that I'd leave when all the sections of highway I needed were open at once. This did not happen until after five. Since it's over a five hour drive, I decided that driving in the dark and the snow didn't seem like a good idea. Especially in my car, which is rear wheel drive and has less then optimal tires on it at the moment.

My car is not a good winter car. It's good in the spring, fantastic in the summer, lots of fun in the fall, but winter... No good. Imagine, if you will, a road with the smallest possible hill on it. Now put an inch of snow on that hill. Most cars, no problem. My car, will slide backwards.

Getting home should be fun.

But it could be a lot worse. Take WereGirl, for example, who is currently sitting stranded somewhere in the Calgary airport. If she is very lucky she may get home for Christmas, in 2005.

Both Mary and SouthernKitten should also be traveling tomorrow. Mary, like WereGirl, by air and SK, like me, by car. I hope they both have better luck.

In fact, a lot of people out there will be traveling tomorrow, if you're driving please be very careful. Especially if you're driving near me.

Cold Cold

2004-12-20T00:05:00.000-05:00

Cold Cold Canada is really living up to it's name this week. As I glance at the weather it's currently -15 C in Windsor, -27 in Orillia (where I will be later this week).

Living here in the far southern reaches of Canada seems to have thinned my blood a little. There was a time when -15 wouldn't have bothered me that much. Now I consider it really rather cold.

Only a couple of years ago I was much tougher.

That year I went on a January business trip to Timmins, Ontario. (Home of Shania Twain, which they seem extremely proud of)

For those of you unfamiliar with Northern Ontario, Timmins is here:

Note that I currently live just across the border from Detroit, and Orillia is just a little north of Toronto. So far as Ontario is concerned, Timmins is pretty far north.

I was traveling with three coworkers who were raised a little further south than I was. I'd wander about Timmins, coat unzipped, laughing at the silly southerners who'd sprint from car to building, and then shiver for half an hour.

And, of course, going a little further back, those of you playing the home game my remember that a little over a decade ago (wow, I'm old), I was a ski instructor. I pushed small children around in the snow in -30 C weather and would sometimes declare "I am a ski instructor! I do not GET cold!"

That was then, this is now. I am no longer a ski instructor and -27?

Cold

Beer Commercials

2004-12-15T15:09:00.000-05:00

In Cold Cold Canada, much the way it is in the US and perhaps the rest of the world, the quality of a beer is usually inversely proportional to how funny its commercials are. In other words, the funnier the commercial, the worse the beer.

In the US, a great example is Budweiser/Bud Lite. Funny commercials, bad beer. (Though embarrassingly my and DevilBoy's beer of choice when we were in high school and didn't know any better.)

I had some links to a few good ones here, but the page I was linking to seems to disagree with linking to it. So go to http://www.canada4life.ca/ and use the "Video" link on the left side to check them out. The vast majority are ads for Molson Canadian. But despite the funniness. Do not be tempted. Trust me. It's bad beer.

Snow

2004-12-12T20:40:00.000-05:00

It snowed here overnight in temperate temperate Windsor. It's not the first snow of the year, but it's the first substantial snow. Previous efforts were more light dustings. Snow that didn't even fully cover the grass and lasted less than a day.

When I woke up this morning and looked out the window my first thought was "Oh my God, my car's been stolen!!"

"Wait... No... It's still there, just hard to see as it's white, as is everything else... Wow! Snow!"

It takes me a while to get coherent in the morning.

Now, this is still pretty minor so far as snow goes, even in Windsor, which doesn't seem to get that much. Also for Toronto, which gets about the same amount of snow as Windsor, just doesn't deal with it very well.

I've been through some heavy snows. One of the more memorable ones was in the aforementioned Toronto... It was about 80 cm (over 30 inches) of snow over a couple of days. In and of itself that's not that bad, but Toronto doesn't really have the equipment to deal with that much snow, nor anyplace to put it.

I woke up that morning and found that the world was white and the wind currents behind my house had apparently caused a snow drift to form around my car. Also, the parking lot immediately behind my house had found it convenient to blow their snow into my driveway. I was not overly impressed.

I valiantly (and vainly) tried to get to work anyway. First, I dug out my car as my idiot roommates watched from inside the warm house. I say idiot roommates because they had actually buried it as a joke the night before and instead of helping me dig it out they were amusing themselves by watching me struggle with it. (Ha. Ha. Ha. Idiots) Then once that was done, I made an effort to get through the mammoth pile of snow the innept parking lot people had left. One man and a shovel wasn't going to cut it. Today I'd call the lot management and berate them until someone came to fix that, but for some reason I didn't think of it that day.

I called into work that I wasn't going to make it in. It was just as well, really, I'd have been practically alone if I had shown up.

Toronto had to call in the army to help dig out of that snow, but eventually things got back to normal. It was a bit smoother here today. The snow melted by itself by sundown.

Snowbirds

2004-12-10T23:54:00.000-05:00

Two planes from the Snowbirds, the Canadian Air Force's air demonstration team collided this morning. One pilot was killed, and another ejected from his aircraft and is currently in hospital.

The Snowbirds are spectacular to watch. I don't know how many times I've seen them, but it's certainly got to be somewhere around twenty. One of those times, unfortunately, had an outcome not unlike today's accident.

It's been a birthday tradition of mine for years to go to the Canadian International Air Show Labour Day weekend at the CNE. At first, my dad would drive me and a few friends down for the show, later I drove myself and when I lived in Toronto I'd bike or take transit to get there. This year, SouthernKitten and I went to Toronto for it.

In 1989 I went down to celebrate my 14th birthday. DevilBoy was definitely along for the trip, and I think Eggman may have been, too. We arrived and made our way to my favourite spot on a gravel beach. We got settled he show started with a performance by the Snowbirds. The first part of the performance went smoothly, then the team went into a maneuver called the "Upward Downward Bomb burst" involving half the team heading up from low level, and the other half heading from higher up, passing each other then switching on the smoke and splitting up. Normally it was very spectacular looking.

I first noticed that this was not a normal show when I saw the splash of a plane sized object going into the lake. At first I thought one of the planes had dropped something as part of the show. Then I noticed that another was on fire. That pilot ejected, and there was another splash as that plane went into the lake. Moments later we noticed a parachute drifting down. Once he hit the water, the downed aviator was picked up right away.

The crowd, including everyone in my group, was stunned. Had we just seen what we thought we had? Would they announce what had happened? Would the rest of the show be cancelled? What was going on?

I wouldn't learn the details of the accident until I got home. Apparently it's air show tradition to continue an air show (assuming it's safe to do so) after an accident, so the show went on.

Eventually I learned what had happened. Two of the planes on their way down had collided. Captain. Shane Antaya whose hometown was here in Windsor, never pulled up. Major Dan Dempsey, the team lead, pulled out of the maneuver only to have his aircraft catch fire. He ejected safely, and was hospitalized due to burns suffered in the fire.

That was a sad day for the team, just as today was. But they recovered and took to the skies again a short time later, as I know they will this time.

Shopping cart

2004-12-07T16:10:00.000-05:00

Evidence of the decline of western civilization, I believe, can be found in supermarket shopping carts. Yes, shopping carts. Those wheeled contraptions that you merrily push through the supermarket as you do your grocery shopping.

The evidence, specifically, can be found in what happens to the carts after they have been unloaded in the parking lot, and you're ready to head home. Do you put it in the conveniently located cart depots, usually located no more than fifty feet from where you parked? Or do you just leave it in the middle of the lot, taking up a parking space, or possibly rolling into someone else's car? The consequences aren't your problem, really. By the time that happens you'll have hopped in your car and be headed home to enjoy your purchases. Of course that shows a staggering amount of laziness and complete disregard for the welfare of your fellow shoppers.

Now, parking lots here in Cold Cold Canada tend to be mostly free of this problem. I'll cover the problems here in a moment or two. US parking lots (particularly Walmart lots), however, seem to be clogged with rogue shopping carts. My first exposure to this problem occurred years ago when I was visiting Eggman's family cottage in New Hampshire. Of course, the lot at the local grocery store had abandoned carts everywhere. Upon leaving the store we even caught a woman red handed abandoning her cart immediately behind my car. Clearly, I was going to have to move it to get out. Possibly it could have been caught in a gust of wind and dinged my car. Obviously those were not her problem. When asked why she was leaving it there she quietly apologized and hustled the cart into it's designated place, not twenty feet away. Visiting SouthernKitten in Kentucky has really shown me the extent of this problem. Carts are everywhere. More than once I have left the store and found that one had rolled into my car.

The problem in Canada seems to be with people "borrowing" the carts and leaving them in annoying places. Like, for instance, my front lawn. I awoke this morning to find one of these lovely contraptions there. It was not there when I came home last night, but there it was when I looked out my window at the rain this morning. I went out to examine it and push it off my lawn to the curb. A preliminary examination revealed very little as to the origin of the heap of metal sitting on my muddy lawn. "The Smart Choice" declared the handle. I had thought that if I could identify the rightful owner of the cart, they'd be happy to come take it off both my hands and my lawn. Thing is, I'm pretty sure that all supermarkets consider themselves "The Smart Choice" and searching Google for the phrase proved to be futile. A second, slightly more thorough examination yielded better results. "Price Chopper" was emblazoned on the bottom of the kiddy seat. Now I had an owner!

I called the store before class today. The gentleman I spoke to promised they'd come get it, but didn't seem overly meticulous in getting my address right. Guess we'll see if it's still there tomorrow.

The point of all of this really is that shopping carts demonstrate to me how so many people care so little for what happens to their neighbours. Disposing of a shopping cart properly in the lot doesn't take much effort. Whereas, transporting one the over five kilometers from the store to my home does. It's attitudes like that that surely will someday spell the ruin civilization.

But until then, anyone want a shopping cart?

In interesting internet finds today, I direct you here.

I know that for years Americans have been sewing Canadian flags on their backpacks when they travel in Europe, but this really brings it to a new level.

Bush-apalooza

2004-12-05T08:27:00.000-05:00

George W. Bush visited Canada last week, and for several days it seemed that the news media could talk about nothing but the visit and the protests it inspired. As someone whose views are pretty centrist and moderate (for Canada, in my opinion) both sides of the issue irritated me.

First of all, anyone who knows me, or has read any of the even vaguely political entries in this blog will know that I'm not fond of Bush. That being said, I had no problem with him coming to pay us a visit. Like it or not, he is the leader of our neighbour, biggest trading partner and closest ally. Some of the things on his agenda could have happened a little sooner (three years to thank the people of Halifax for taking stranded Americans into their homes on 9/11? C'mon, I know you can do better than that. Those who were stranded certainly have), but whatever. What specifically irritated me about the Bush visit was the content of what he said, and did not say. There are a couple of things that are huge deals in this country with regard to our relationship with our neighbours to the south. (Well, north from Windsor, but I digress) Among them are the issues like the ongoing dispute over softwood lumber and the current ban on importing Canadian cattle into the US. Lip service was barely paid to these issues. These were the things we wanted to hear about, but instead we heard very little on them and a lot on missile defense.

There are a few problems with missile defense. Primarily that it's ludicrously expensive and just plain doesn't work. Even if it worked as advertised (it doesn't), it still would do precious little to save the US from a nuclear attack. Honestly, any country with the wherewithal to build a nuclear warhead and an ICBM is going to know that using them against the US would mean that they would be vapourized minutes later. There are other, safer, less obviously traceable ways to use a nuclear warhead against the United States. For instance, there is enough commercial traffic into and out of the US that hiding a warhead on a ship or a plane would not only be more effective, but frankly, easier and cheaper than building and using an ICBM.

But W wants to do it anyway, and he'd really like it if we were in on it. And, despite the above, there are some good reasons for Canada to be involved. Mostly that Bush is going to do it with or without us, and because one of the most likely trajectories for an ICBM strike on the continental United States is over the north pole, we're kinda stuck in the crossfire. So, it'd be nice if we had some say with regard to when/if the system is used and where any highly radioactive missile debris might fall.

This puts Canada in a rather difficult situation. Really, we'd rather GW pack up those toys and go home, but it doesn't look like that's going to happen. Reminding us of that every seventeen seconds while you're here is just irritating. Shut up.

My other irritation was the protesters. Clearly I sympathize with a lot of what they were trying to say, but their methodology stinks. We had such creative displays as a group who brought a meter and a half tall effigy of Bush to Ottawa and then encouraged passers by to beat. Way to stand up for peace. Another great moment was the call some of them made for Bush to be arrested and tried for war crimes while has here. Yeah... That'd go over really well. Do you really think we could capture the man billed as the "Leader of the free world" without some sort of fight? And assuming we managed to somehow get around or dispose of the United States Secret Service, how long do you think we could hold him without the Americans coming north to liberate him and perform some "regime change"?

Even the more reasonable protests irritated me. How much do you think you're hurting Bush by blocking an intersection or fighting with the police? Let me assure you, not much. You are, however, getting in the way of average Canadians who have their own lives to lead and don't appreciate you and your beliefs getting in their face for no good reason. Have you let people know that you care deeply about this important issue? Sure, but they're too busy swearing at you to really embrace your point of view.

Well, if nothing else, the visit did inspire a decent, honest to God, rant, so I guess that much is good...

In rant related news, when I first started this blog I had every intention of doing a lot more ranting on it than I currently do. So far it's been mostly stories and the odd rant here and there. To that end I'm currently contemplating changing the name from "Rants from Cold Cold Canada" to something a little more accurate. Possibly just "Cold Cold Canada", possibly "Stories (or Tales) from Cold Cold Canada". Let me know if you have any thoughts or suggestions on the matter...

Oncoming Traffic

2004-11-27T10:20:00.000-05:00

The contest post from the other day came very close to being the last post by me to Rants from Cold Cold Canada or anywhere else for that matter last night.

I had decided that I would visit my parents in Orillia this weekend. SouthernKitten is visiting her parents, Mary is also visiting family, so the idea managed to get into my head that maybe I should visit mine. I hadn't been to Orillia since Canadian Thanksgiving, so it seemed like good timing.

It's a long drive, made longer when one stops and visits friends for hours at a time along the way. I try to make the most of it. I had my notebook hooked up in the car connected to my GPS and stereo, so I could see where I was on a bigger, better screen than my GPS has and listen to MP3s on the car stereo. It's really a very entertaining way to drive.

It was a pretty uneventful drive until I was just outside Orillia.

Traffic there was extremely light, with only the occasional car visible going either way along the divided highway I take into town. This was mostly due to the fact that it was very late at night. Because of my late departure time and time spent with friends, I had an estimated time of arrival at my parents' house sometime around quarter to two in the morning.

At around 1:30 AM, two pairs of headlights came into view in the southbound lanes (I was heading north). One pair had something funny about them, the driver was flashing their highbeams for some reason... That was odd.. Then I noticed that the second pair of headlights was NOT actually IN THE SOUTHBOUND LANE. He was driving south at 100 kph in the northbound lanes. I quickly made sure that I was in a different lane (I honestly don't remember at this point whether this involved changing lanes or not) and then the car whooshed by my left.

The combined closing speed would have been well over 200 kilometers per hour (Over 125 MPH). If we'd hit there's just no way I would have survived. All that would have been left of CanadaDave would have been a red ooze in the middle of a pile of twisted metal.

I immediately pulled over and called 911. After asking me where I'd seen him, the police advised me that they were aware of the car and were on the way. I saw a couple cruisers screaming down the southbound lanes a minute or two later.

I hope they caught managed to stop him without any casualties. Also, to the driver of the second car, the one flashing highbeams, Thank You. Your actions meant that I noticed something was wrong a second or two earlier and may well have been the difference between life and death.

American Thanksgiving Contest!

2004-11-26T01:54:00.000-05:00

It's been a longer week than I really expected, hence the non-completion of the car story, which I will get around to later.

In the meantime, in honour of American Thanksgiving, I have decided to run a small contest for prizes of completely negligable value!!

I've been using Gmail for a couple weeks now and it's probably the best free webmail service I've encountered. Today I received some Gmail invites to distribute at my discretion. Now, I could sell these for upwards of a dollar each, but instead I will be giving one of these away to each of the first THREE people who email me and request one! (my email is hidden somewhere on this page)

It's probably too late to be the first on your block to get Gmail, but you can hopefully avoid being the last!

The Sex and the City Curse

2004-11-23T19:40:00.000-05:00

We're going to take a break from the car story today so I can get something off my chest.

As part of my ongoing efforts to be a good boyfriend, and because I love her I like to buy SouthernKitten little presents from time to time. This fall, I'd thought it would be nice to get her some Sex in the City DVDs.

I thought this would be fun. Whenever SouthernKitten travels or otherwise has access to HBO she invariably gets sucked into watching Sex and the City. Wouldn't it be great if she could watch it at home!?!

So, I set out to find the DVDs I was looking for on eBay. EBay has traditionally been a great place to find all sorts of different items for me. Surely they would have these DVDs! SouthernKitten was going to be so pleased!

When I searched eBay for "Sex and the City" the first thing I discovered was that a whole lot of the DVDs offered were being shipped from various parts of Asia. These ones tended to be ridiculously cheap with very high shipping costs. Some came in funny cases, some came without cases, most looked cheaply made and had Chinese subtitles. All in all it seemed very sketchy.

"I will be wise" I thought to myself. "I will avoid being ripped off by finding a vendor in the US or Canada".

This was a great theory.

The first DVDs I bid on were the first season. I was bidding reasonably early and expected to be outbid. But that was fine, I'd deal with that when it happened, this was more dipping my toe in the water than anything. Then I found the first THREE seasons going for only a little more. It was ending soon so I slipped my bid in under the wire and won that auction. I just wouldn't rebid on the first one and everything would be good.

Predictably, no one else bid on the first set, so I won that auction, too. This would mean I had two copies of the first season. Slightly annoying, but no big deal. I'd resell one of them, or give it away or something. All an excellent theory.

My first problem was that the seller of the three seasons didn't send me an email acknowledging payment or giving me an estimate as to when the DVDs would arrive. That's not altogether unusual in and of itself. I've purchased a lot of things on eBay and with some of them I just didn't hear from the vendor until the item arrived. When a couple of weeks passed and the DVDs had not turned up and I started getting concerned. So I emailed the seller. No response. I tried again. No response. After several emails went unanswered, I noticed that the seller had relisted MY DVDs!! I left negative feedback on eBay and a complaint on PayPal.

My negative feedback was read by another user who'd also been having problems with this vendor. She'd had more luck getting her to reply to emails, but the same complete lack of results in actually getting her item shipped. We shared our stories and she told me about how she would take the vendor to small claims court if her money was not refunded.

Around this time the vendor got in touch with me. Eventually she agreed to refund my money, and if she is true to her word will have put a money order in the mail by now.

I was a sad that SK would not be receiving three seasons like I'd hoped, but I figured that this would solve my duplicate problem... One season was still nice and a good start.

At least that's what I thought.

The vendor for the single season had started off very responsive. He'd sent emails advising me on the status of the DVDs and given me an estimate on their time of arrival. So I was very comfortable that all was going as planned. Then the arrival date came and went with no DVDs arriving. This wasn't good. I emailed the vendor and asked for an update. He apologized and advised me that there'd been some sort of mix up and that he'd thought the DVDs had already gone out. He promised that they'd be shipped right away. This seemed reasonable to me, so I waited another week, confident that SK would soon have the DVDs in her little hands.

No DVDs.

I sent another email. No response. And another. Still no response. A check of eBay showed that he was no longer a registered user. For all intents and purposes this vendor appears to have vanished from the face of the Earth and taken my money with him.

So, the long and the short of it is, God does not seem to want SK to have Sex and the City DVDs, and if I'm lucky I should get most of my money back.

I will not, however, be using the money to buy any more Sex and the City DVDs. Arguing with God is counter productive.

Fun With Fords

2004-11-22T23:57:00.000-05:00

I've been looking at the new Ford Mustang a lot lately. If I weren't doing this whole school thing I'd be all over one of those. Not that I'm deprived in the car department or anything. I love my car. It's a wonderful toy and getting to and from Kentucky a lot harder without it.

I got my first car in 1998. I'd just changed jobs, was making $10,000 more a year and the one and only time I'd taken transit there (for the interview) it had taken six hours. Clearly I needed a car.

I decided that I wanted to buy the car in Orillia instead of Toronto. I'd need my parents to co-sign my car loan, so this would be more convenient. Also, I trusted the Orillia dealers a little more than the ones in Toronto.

The first dealer I visited was a Pontiac dealer. I liked the look of Sunfires and wanted to have a look and test drive one. However, the salesman I met wasn't really interested in showing me a new Sunfire. He was more than happy to show me the used ones, though, and was really pushing a white one with a gaudy red interior.

Ummm... No.

Next stop was the Ford dealership. The car that both caught my attention and was within my price range was the ZX2. It looked great, it had nice sporty performance and it was relatively cheap.

The next step was a test drive, but that wasn't going to be as easy as you'd think. You see, I really wanted a car with a standard transmission but didn't know how to drive one. I just knew the advantages and knew it would be more fun to drive... The salesperson took it in stride, though. She said it would be no problem to teach me how. My first time out wasn't bad at all. I think I stalled once or twice, but I didn't grind the gears. (that would come later).

I did a number a test drives before finally deciding to get my car. It mostly went pretty smoothly. I did have a few problems and almost gave up a couple of times. My most notable issue was that I had a huge problem turning left for some reason. I stalled almost every time. I sat through stop lights, I cursed, I pounded the steering wheel but the car wouldn't move. I'm not entirely sure what the problem was. Possibly the fact that I had to drive across the oncoming lane, get the car moving and turn the wheel all at the same time.

That wasn't the only challenge. I started my new job several days before the car would be ready. I had a week to learn to drive in a big city on a rented automatic before being thrown into the fray in my new standard. If was enough to figure out my commute and the neighbourhood around work but not much more.

It went a fair bit better than I expected. I normally stalled it about once a day, but it was pretty smooth. Somehow I never got stuck trying to turn left in a major intersection... I think I avoided doing it, frankly.

My little red ZX2 served me well for a couple of years, it really was a great little car, but in 2000 I moved on to something a little bigger and got my current car.

More on that tomorrow..

Blah!

2004-11-18T09:04:00.000-05:00

Yesterday Mandiola left a comment requesting a particular story from my time at company I'll be referring to here as Landacom. This was my last job before going back to school. I was one of two tech support guys in the customer service center (CSC) at Landacom.

Landacom is mainly a software company and their main product is a database that customers access through the internet. One of our support procedures was that in the event access to the database went down for any reason someone from CSC had to send a voicemail to a large distribution list that included pretty much anyone of any importance in the company, short of the CEO. VPs, Managers, team leads... Important people. Sometimes this was part of my job.

Access to the database usually didn't normally go down that often, but like all complicated pieces of technology, now and then it had it's moments when it just didn't want to work. (Often at the worst possible time, but that's a story I won't be telling here)

This story involves one of the times went down while I was on phone duty. I collected the details, accessed the voicemail system and started leaving the message to all the important people.

"This is a Landacom system status update," I started "access to the Landacom system is unavailable at this time" so far so good "more details will be - should be - will be - Blah!" I finished, tripping over my tongue.

No problem, though. I'd just delete and start over. No big deal. I hit 79 to delete it and start over.

"Message sent" said the voicemail system.
(76 is delete...)

GAH!! It had sent. There was no way to retrieve it, no way to get it back. Whithin seconds everyone of any importance in the company would be under the impression that I was an idiot!

The only thing I could do was to send a new message and prepare for the consequences.

"Please disregard the previous message" I began...

A Few Stories About Skiing

2004-11-17T08:17:00.000-05:00

It's getting chillier in Cold Cold Canada as winter rapidly approaches. My home town has already seen snow and the east coast has already been hit by the first huge snow storm of the season. Here in sunny, temperate Windsor it's getting a little cold. The temperature has dipped below freezing overnight a time or two and the heat has been on in my little house for some time.

This has really got me thinking of winter, winter sports and such. When I was a small child, like many small children in Canada I played ice hockey. I was not overly good, or really good at all. As I recall I played hockey until it was made clear to me that I had a choice. I could sleep in Saturday mornings in the winter, or I could play hockey. Hockey didn't stand a chance. I am not a morning person.

A few years past and the year I was in the fifth grade I changed schools and on a school trip I was introduced to downhill skiing for the first time. Several of my friends had been skiing for years. Both DevilBoy and Eggman had been doing it since about the time they were able stand on their own. So, I was coming to this party a little late.

My first lesson went rather well. I mastered the snowplow and was going down the medium difficulty hills in no time. It was great and I wanted to do it again.

So, my family joined a ski club and myself, my brother, my sister and mother all learned to ski. (As an accountant, winter is my dad's busy season. Hence, no skiing for him)

Years passed and eventually I became a ski instructor. Ironically this meant getting up crazy early in the morning again. But at least this time I was getting paid for it.

My job consisted of showing up early in the morning, doing some early runs and development with the rest of the instructors, then I'd meet my class for our morning session. I'd teach until lunch, break for an hour, and then do the afternoon session.

I always taught small children, from preschool to maybe 6 or 7. They were... Delightful.

I remember one little boy who did not like staying with my class and doing nice big turns down the hill. He'd break away, bomb down the hill and meet us at the bottom. I asked him not to do that a couple of times and was ignored. I then scolded him mildly and told him that he must stay with the class. His rebuttal mostly involved sticking his head in a snow bank. I wasn't really able to come up with a retort that matched that... Luckily for me his dad happened across my class at that point and told me that he'd take care of his child and I should just continue with my class. This seemed like a splendid idea, so off I went. I was later told that his father had not had much more luck with my favourite student who had, in fact, left his head in the snowbank until he came down with frost bite.

Another great story involved a the time I lost another little boy on the chairlift. I'd just started my class on the big hill at the club. Getting to the lip of this particular hill involved backtracking a little bit down a gentle slope the way the chairlift had come. I was passing over that area in the chairlift with the boy by my side when I put the safety bar up, possibly a little early. I liked to do that so I'd have plenty of time to prepare to get off. This time, however, it didn't turnout to be such a good idea as my little friend dropped off the chair shortly after I did that. My first reaction was panic. I had to get to my possibly injured student, who had clearly fallen from the chairlift as soon as possible. I briefly contemplated jumping after him, but looking at the hard packed snow 10 feet beneath me convinced me that this was not a good idea. Injuring myself would not help anyone. So, I rode the chair to the end, silently urging it to go faster. Once I got off I skated to where my student had landed and fast as was humanly possible. The kid had landed in the one area of powder snow the chairlift passed over and was fine. Also, the event that just nearly caused me a heart attack and stress aneurysm hadn't been an accident. The darling child had jumped.

Later in the day the students father told DevilBoy that he'd considered joking with me over taking legal action, but after having seen how pale and shell shocked I was after the incident, decided that that might not be the best idea.

There where a few lighter moment caused by instructors, too.

Once year I was paired with DevilBoy to teach a class and he showed up one morning after over indulging more than a little the previous night. I addressed the class to explain my friend's condition.

"Children, we're going to be very very quiet today. DevilBoy does not really feel very well."

To their credit, I think they were very quiet. DevilBoy kinda hung back and was pretty quiet himself that class.

Then there was the day that when we held the morning instructor ski and some of the hills had not been groomed and were still covered in a couple feet of powder. Powder is great to ski in, once you've had a little practice. You don't get that much skiing at a little resort in Ontario. After our last run we met at the bottom of the hill near the chalet. One after another, each of the instructors lined up. I was last. I was also completely covered in snow from head to toe, having taken a tumbled in the deep powder.

Not all of the misadventures took place on skies, either.

The ski club had a social aspect as well, and had a few parties a year. The ski instructors normally hung out and socialized at these events. Often we'd manage to get ahold of some beer (we were underage at the time) and possibly get a little over refreshed.

This hadn't been a good day for skiing. Freezing rain had been falling, covering the hills. By the time of the party, and the hills were covered in about an inch and a half of ice. Clever people that we were, we decide that it'd just be stupendous fun to climb up (the chairlift had been closed for several hours) and then slide down the steepest hill on our butts.

Up the hill we trudged. On instructor who was even swifter than the rest of us dragged a GT Snowracer behind him. Once we got to the lip of the hill, his common sense kicked in. Sadly, mine did not.

"I don't think I want to ride this thing down, after all" The instructor who'd had the sudden attack of logic said.

"I'll do it!" proclaimed a very drunk CanadaDave.

He handed over the sled and I hopped on it and headed down the hill. It was at about this point that I started to realize that this may not have been a really good idea.

Then, suddenly, I realized that I was no longer on the sled. I was actually going down the hill on my back. Head first. The GT Snowracer was racing down the hill beside me. Somehow I managed to escape with nothing worse than a bunch of ice crystals down my back.

I haven't done much skiing over the past couple of years. I'm hoping to get out a time or two this year, and I'd also like to teach SouthernKitten to ski. With any luck she won't stick her head in a snow bank.

New Thingy

2004-11-16T23:46:00.000-05:00

Because we here at Rants from Cold Cold Canada care about YOU our loyal readers, and (mostly) because we enjoy tinkering with odd interweb stuff, we have installed, on the right side thingy (that's a technical term) a link to so YOU (I just like using caps on that) can join a list thing that will update you when I errr.. WE get around to putting up new posts. After considerable effort (I needed to fiddle with it for upwards of ten minutes) and expense (it was free), it is now fully functional (at least in theory).

Right above the RSS thingy that's been there for a while, that I don't really understand, but Mary assures me is a wonderful thing.

Rants from Cold Cold Canada. Bringing you the latest (well, this isn't more than ten years old...) interweb technology for your moderate amusement.

Spam Spam Spam!

2004-11-15T23:37:00.000-05:00

Like most anyone who's ever been exposed to spam, I hate and loathe it. At this point I've all but abandoned what used to be my primary email account because it's just too painful to wade through the buckets of garbage to get the one or two messages I really want.

Spam, much like porn, has spread to every form of communication yet developed.

Print:	Check
Phone:	Check
TV:	Check
Internet:	Double Check!!
Cell phone text messaging:	Check

(Side note - In rather disturbing turn of events, lately I've even been seeing spam left in the comments on blogs. How low is that?)

That last one is both very new and very low. And I've received two (TWO!) in the last month! I received one tonight, even. And it was worse than normal spam. It was stock scam spam:

Subj: -Stock
Alert- :
Ticker: CRAP (not the real ticker)
160% price
jump over last
5 days, with
target of
$1.00 by end
of monday.
Presently at
$0.159. (CRAP)

First of all, in case you missed it, CRAP is not the real stock. I changed it since I have no wish to take the slightest risk of helping the slime who sent me this. I picked that particular fake ticker because I thought it was funny. I do not know if CRAP exists, and I in no way shape or form suggest you buy it.

Ok, now that I'm reasonably sure that no one will sue me...

Text message spam is evil. More evil than email spam, even. That's pretty evil! Why do I say that? Well, first of all, on most plans, each text message you receive actually costs you money! (usually around 10 cents) And if the message is sent over the internet (which these invariably are) there is no cost to the sender. 10 cents isn't that much, but 10 pieces of spam a day would be pretty moderate for email. If text message spam catches up that'd be a dollar a day, or about thirty bucks a month. Seems a bit much to pay for an inconvenience.

Text messages also demand attention. If SouthernKitten sends me a text message the interrupts class or even wakes me up, it's no big deal. I like SouthernKitten, I enjoy hearing from her. Expecting to see a nice little message from my girlfriend and receiving garbage is just plain annoying.

The ad I received in particular was just plain insulting. Clearly it's what is known as a "Pump and Dump". How stupid do you have to be to buy a stock based on random, anonymous recommendations that show up on your cell phone?!

So, basically, to sum up, SPAM BAD.

No More Free Cable

2004-11-12T18:08:00.000-05:00

A couple of months ago the cable company was doing some work near my house and accidentally left the cable turned on. It was great I love free cable. Unfortunately they realized their error earlier this Wednesday, switched it back off and left me a lovely letter advising me that a routine inspection had discovered their error and they had fixed it. They did, however, offer to switch my cable back on in exchange for vast sums of money. I won't be taking them up on that.

It remind me of some other experiences I've had with free cable...

The condo DevilBoy and I rented when we lived in Toronto was brand new, we were the first people to live there. It had the normal amount of new building teething problems and mess ups, but was the nicest place I've ever lived and I miss it.

After we'd moved in DevilBoy and I had decided that we didn't want to pay to have the cable switched on. In the place I'd moved from I'd gone a year with just rabbit ears and had been happy with that. I really didn't see the added value I'd get from sending forty of my hard earned dollars each month to a company owned by one of the richest men in Canada. So we used the rabbit ears and found that to be perfectly adequate.

One of the little snafus in the building, however, was that when the cable was installed in the building it was installed switched on. Something neither the cable company nor DevilBoy and I were aware of. I don't remember why we tried it, but after around a year of using the rabbit ears we did try it and were rather shocked to discover that we had full cable! It was great, it was free, and all we'd had to do was actually plug the silly thing in. The cable company hadn't noticed in a year and, to my knowledge, never did notice.

I was spending a lot of time with WereGirl at the time. Both because I enjoyed her company and because I was (completely unsuccessfully) trying to convince her to date me. When I told her about the free cable, she was a little jealous and wondered if we could hook hers up like that too without the cable company noticing. I agreed to try.

Hooking up the cable wasn't much of a problem. Once I found the box, I took out the little filter piece and Voila! Free cable! For about a month.

I think one of WereGirl's neighbours must have seen me messing with her cable box and narc'ed to the cable company, because about a month later her roommate got a phone call from them in the middle of the day. They told her that they suspected something and were sending someone over to check it out right away. She called WereGirl at work, WereGirl called me at my desk (We worked for the same company) I called her roommate and at first tried to walk her through the procedure for re-installing the filter piece. Unfortunately her hands just weren't strong enough to undo the wires. Feeling slightly panicked, I left my desk, told my co-workers I'd be back in a bit (fortunately my boss was out for the day) and hailed a cab to WereGirl's place.

When I got there I discovered that my hands were also, as it turns out, too weak to undo the wires. This wasn't good. The cable man would be there at any second, and the cable was still hooked up. In desperation I called DevilBoy, hoping against hope that he did not have a gig that day and was home. DevilBoy has tools and is capable of building and wiring an entire house, should the need arise, so he could certainly help here. Fortunately, he was home.

"Can you come to WereGirl's place with your pliers right away?" I asked in a tone that made it clear that this wasn't really a question.

"Uh, sure" he responded.

For several agonizing minutes I wondered who would get there first, the cable man or DevilBoy.

DevilBoy did. I showed him what needed to be done and with the proper tools he was able to do it with ease. And after we discovered that I had instructed him to put the filter in the wrong place, he was able to remove it again and put it in the right place, also with ease.

If the cable man did ever show up he didn't announce himself and would have found everything in order.

That was the end of WereGirl's free cable, just as Wednesday was the end of mine.

Breaking News

2004-11-10T23:53:00.000-05:00

Dit-dit-d-dit-dit (Teletype for no good reason)

For the third time is as many days, major news outlets are declaring that Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat has died.

Authorities expected him to be declared not dead by some time tomorrow morning.

Monty Python could not be reached for comment.

(Sorry, couldn't help myself)

Ding Dong

2004-11-09T19:08:00.000-05:00

A few years ago my mother spent some time doing bereavement counseling for a funeral home. Consequently, conversation at home sometimes strayed into funerals and funeral planning, and I acquired a definite morbid streak to my sense of humour. This story involves a little of both.

For a long time my mother has said that she'd like the hymn "Ode to Joy" to be played at her funeral. For those not familiar with it, it's based on Beethoven's 9th symphony and is a hymn I actually rather like. Mother has not been subtle about the fact that she'd like it played.

One day we were sitting in the kitchen of my parent's house and Beethoven's 9th came on the radio. Seeing a opportunity to remind me again about her hymn of choice, Mother asked if I remembered which one she wanted. Without missing a beat I answered "Ding Dong the Witch is Dead?".

This is the part of the story where a look of shock normally crosses the face of whomever I happen to be telling it to.

Mother, however, thought this was just about the funniest thing ever. She's told countless people (who also tend to adopt shocked expressions), including the organist at her church.

He thought this was a grand idea and agreed to cooperate if she went before he did. Initially the plan was for him to work it into the miscellaneous organ doodles that are used to fill the silence during a church service. Since then the plan has escalated. Now the plan is to include the song as a hymn insert.

Just picture a priest standing in front of the congregation and saying:

"And now please stand for the next hymn, found on the insert, Ding Dong the Witch is Dead"

Aw, common, that's funny! Wipe that look of shock off your face!!

Evol Knievel

2004-11-08T19:04:00.000-05:00

Today I'm going to tell another of my old stories. This is another that makes you wonder how exactly it was that I survived to adulthood.

Our story takes place one summer when DevilBoy and I were, at most, ten. Anything more accurate than that has been forgotten by the both of us.

Like most kids that age, our primary mode of transportation at that time were our bikes. And, much like an older kid will do with a car, when we weren't using our bikes to go places, we were using them to do stupid things. In this case we were playing Evol Knievel.

DevilBoy's house was on a reasonably steep part of a large hill with three or for good sized houses to the nearest uphill intersection. So, we had a great way of getting up a lot of speed zooming down the hill on the way to his house. We just needed something creative to do with it.

To easier facilitate getting bikes up and down the front walk and to and from the shed, DevilBoy's father had had a ramp built for one particularly high step. This ramp was eight to ten inches high, about 18 inches long and made of wood. This made it perfect for our uses and very portable.

We put the ramp in front of DevilBoy's house and, for reasons I no longer remember, we decided that I would be the one to zoom down the hill and hit it. But first, in one of the precious few good ideas that day, we decided that I should wear some sor of head protection. DevilBoy had something that fit the bill nicely so I strapped on an old ski racing helmet that had been lying around his house.

I biked my BMX style bike up to the top of the hill and, a little tentatively the first time, rode down the hill and hit the ramp. I flew a little bit and had an easy landing. This really wasn't bad at all! I tried a few more times, peddling harder and harder each time. I jumped further and further. This was great fun! But... It wasn't enough. Eventually I reached a plateau and couldn't jump any further. Clearly what was needed was a bigger jump.

We looked around for a way to make the jump bigger... We searched and searched and eventually DevilBoy found a cinder block. The idea was that we would use it to prop up the jump, and then I would go soooo much further and higher after hitting this now much steeper jump. We congratulated ourselves for being so brilliant and I headed back up the hill.

I remember peddling hard. I remember passing under a tree branch. After that it gets pretty foggy.

According to Devilboy, I hit the ramp, then something went tragically wrong. I was catapulted over the handlebars and free of the bike, then landed on the hard concrete of the sidewalk. Apparently I laid there moaning for a second or two. And then the bike landed on me.

DevilBoy helped me up and then helped a very battered CanadaDave walk towards his house. I had scrapes and bruises all over my body. My hands, my back and my knees all had taken a beating, as had the helmet which almost certainly had saved my life. I have a very vague recollection of DevilBoy's mother coming out the door very alarmed.

I assume she drove us to the hospital, where I assume I was treated. I do know that I was bandaged up and diagnosed with a mild concussion, which explains why I remember only bits and pieces of this part.

My memory gets much better for that night. My poor mother was instructed to wake me every couple of hours and ask me a few questions to make sure that I was still coherent and not suffering any kind of serious brain injury. This normally consisted of asking me my name and where I lived. Which she faithfully did until early the next morning.

She knew for sure I was alright when sometime that morning I answered "My name is Darth Vader. I live on the Deathstar!"

Just Some Odd Stuff From the News

2004-11-06T22:48:00.000-05:00

Every so often the news is filled with stories that I find to be, for lack of a better word, ridiculous. Now is one of those times.

I really just had to share these.

First there is the tale of the man in Taipei who thought that the lions at the zoo really, really needed to be saved. Now, I don't mean released from captivity, or any animal rights type issue. He thought they should be saved in the Christian sense. He wanted the really big carnivorous cats from Africa to invite Jesus into their hearts. There's a Christians and lions joke in the somewhere...

One of the lions bit him.

People sitting in their living rooms around the world watched this on their TV's and applauded the lion's innovation on dealing with door to door evangelists.

Read more about it here.

Next we have an American Air National Guard F-16 Fighting Falcon that accidentally opened fire on a school. That in and of itself isn't that unusual. Mistakes are frequently made. Sometimes you hit the wrong target, it's unfortunate, but it happens. What makes this story unusual is that the location of the school. It wasn't in Iraq. It wasn't in Afghanistan. It was in New Jersey.

Read more about this on here.

Next, well, I promised I wasn't going to talk about the election anymore and this isn't about the presidential election, so I think it's ok. Besides, my blog, so I get to make the rules.

This story concerns the race for county commissioner in White Pine county, Nevada. What made this race unusual was that each of the two candidates received 1847 votes. Luckily Nevada law has a solution for such situations. Flipping a coin, drawing straws or picking a card. So they each picked a card and the candidate who drew the queen of clubs was duly elected. Well, it's Vegas...

But it could be worse, I know that if Bush were elected based on the luck of the draw, I for one would be pretty annoyed.

The details on this one are here.

Aftermath

2004-11-04T20:24:00.000-05:00

Enough of the ballots have been counted, the victory and concession speeches has been delivered and it seems that George W. Bush is going to remain president of the United States.

While I find that disappointing, they say that every dark cloud has a silver lining and this one is no different.

- I get to marry off DevilBoy
- Stupid president jokes are even better than dumb blonde jokes.
- There's sudden interest in moving to Canada.
- No inconvenient Democratic incumbent to get in Hillary's way in 2008.

SouthernKitten sent me this today:

I wouldn't have called the remainder of the US "Jesusland", but I still think it's really funny, and almost exactly what I was advocating last post.

But enough with the US election coverage. I'll get back to normal rants and funny stories next post.

Election Results, or Lack Thereof

2004-11-03T02:44:00.000-05:00

Well, it's almost three o'clock in the morning as I write this, and I officially give up on staying up long enough to get the results of the US election. I also give up on trying to outlast Dan Rather (I switched to CBS for the Dan Ratherisms).

I did, however, outlast SouthernKitten, Mary and my family so we'll call that a victory for CanadaDave!

The results as they hang now, rest on what happens in Ohio, a state I spend a lot of time driving through, and home of 40 foot Jesus. At present the networks disagree on whether Bush has Ohio, but it looks like the margin will be smaller than the number of provisional ballots. They can't even start being counted for ten days. I am not staying up for ten days!!!

Eleven states also voted on whether to ban gay marriage. At least ten passed bans and the last is up in the air. Yeesh. It looks like a lot of American voters failed to read my Oliver Wendell Holmes entry. Really... I'm straight... So long as straight marriage remains legal, why should I care about what gay men or women do?

But, whatever. American gay people can still move here to Cold Cold Canada where we have not managed to ban gay marriage quite yet.

And if Bush does win, reasonable Americans should also consider relocating here to Cold Cold Canada... Or possibly their states should consider succeeding from the Union and joining Confederation...

Especially Hawaii... It'd be nice if Canada were a little less Cold.

The Elephant Votes

2004-11-02T20:00:00.000-05:00

"Living next to you [the United States] is in some ways like sleeping with an elephant. No matter how friendly and even-tempered is the beast, if I can call it that, one is affected by every twitch and grunt."

-Pierre Elliot Trudeau. Former Prime Minister of Canada, 1919 - 2000

This is the best and most succinct descriptions of our relationship with the US that I have ever come across.

Today the elephant votes and predictably it's almost as fascinating to Canadians as Americans.

Personally, I'm currently glued to CNN and have 4 different browser windows open. I even had a long discussion with the Canadian official at the border about it when I came home from Lexington yesterday.

So far it's as close to tied as any major election in (at least my) memory.

It looks like it's going to be a long and interesting night.

Wisdom Teeth

2004-10-30T19:43:00.000-04:00

I'm in Lexington again this weekend. SouthernKitten is taking a nap at the moment, so I thought I'd take this opportunity to do some blogging. (edit: I finished and posted this a few hours later)

SouthernKitten's been complaining a bit recently about pain in the back of her mouth. She fears her wisdom teeth may be the cause but hopes it isn't as she'd heard a few horror stories of wisdom teeth coming out.

My experience really wasn't at all bad.

I first noticed what I assume was pain from my wisdom teeth the spring I was 18. Basically the back of my mouth was sore and tender. But, being a male I first used the "If I ignore it, it will go away" approach to the problem. After a couple of weeks it did.

A few months later, on my next visit to the dentist I was told they were impacted and would need to come out asap. We went to an orthodontist in Barrie (a bigger city, about half a hour drive south of Orillia) to have it done.

I have some rather gaping holes in my memory about the day of the operation. My mom drove me to his office, I sat in the chair, he injected me with something white and milky looking...

I woke up in the recovery room. I felt fine, so I sat up. A nurse rushed over and strongly advised me against that. I laid back down mostly to placate her. I really did feel fine, and this was a bit silly.

I next woke in my bedroom the next morning. I'm told that my mother had enlisted the help of the father of a fellow patient to help hold me up as I staggered to the car. I have no recollection of this at all. Nor do I have any recollection of the half hour long car ride home, nor of being put into my bed. I assume all these things happened, it's logical that they did, but it's really equally as plausible to me that I flew home in a UFO.

The next day was a admittedly unpleasant. The hangover from the anesthetic was as bad as my worst one from alcohol. I won't get more graphic than that. Use your imagination.

My cheeks and jowls were swollen enough that my family thought I looked like John Diefenbaker. I took the pain meds, but only for a couple of days. Soon enough the swelling went down I was forgetting to take my meds because I just didn't hurt that much.

My follow up appointment was like a mutual admiration society. My surgery had gone well, I thought the doctor was great and he thought I was a great patient.

Hopefully SouthernKitten won't have to have hers out. If she does I hope she has as easy of a time as I did.

Astronomical Phenomenon

2004-10-28T22:33:00.000-04:00

In case you don't follow such things, there was a lunar eclipse last night. I watched off and on and even tried to take a couple of pics of my own. Sadly my little cam was just not up to the task of taking clear photos of the moon. Or possibly it was and I just had no idea how to do so.

I've had a minor interest in astronomy for a while. Not enough to study it properly, but enough that I like to go outside and look up at whatever interesting and/or unusual phenomenon pass our way. Comets, meteor showers, lunar eclipses are all really neat to me. I can identify a few of the constellations and a couple of planets.

Well usually...

I remember a while ago I was out doing something or other with DevilBoy. I think I may have dragged him out to do some political canvassing of some sort, but I'm not really sure, and it's not important anyway. What is important is that I saw what looked like a star with a faintly red tinge to it. Clever guy that I am I immediately deduced that it must be Mars and pointed it out to DevilBoy. He disagreed, and said it clearly wasn't. We went back and forth like that for a little while. Right until "Mars" flew right over us, sounding suspiciously like a light plane...

I'm pretty sure that actually was an eclipse, though.

Great Balls of Fire!

2004-10-25T21:25:00.002-04:00

I haven't told an old story for a few days. Today we're going to remedy that.

Back when we were young, a favourite evening pastime for DevilBoy and his friends (including me) was to build a nice fire in his backyard and sit around it. DevilBoy's parents' backyard is huge in city terms, so we had lots of room for a nice fire. Like many 14 year old (I'm estimating the age) boys we had some pyro tendencies, and this was mostly how they were manifested.

At some point we were advised that a city bylaw stipulated that all outdoor fires either be enclosed or used for cooking purposes, so we'd have to stop. So we mostly did.

Some time later, a fire inspector declared that my parents would have to get rid of their fire places. The fireplace inserts were way to close to the wood. So, my parents ripped out the inserts and converted most of the fireplaces to gas, which was allowed... (Though much less satisfying).

But this meant that DevilBoy and I could grab a fireplace insert, but it in his backyard and have an enclosed fire. This was very exciting.

I have no idea how we got the thing into his backyard (His parents' house is two blocks north of my parents' place), but we did. (Maybe DevilBoy does and will remind me..) And he, Eggman and I installed in his yard got a nice fire going.

That was great. For a while. Buuuut... Little pyros that we were, it just wasn't enough. We wanted bigger, we wanted better, we wanted more exciting.

DevilBoy had been cleaning his bike chain in kerosene and had a margarine tub of the stuff sitting around in his shed. We decided that the chain was clean enough, and kerosene would make a great toy for the fire. We took turns pouring a little on the fire and had a grand old time making the fire go "fwooosh!" Until the kerosene ran out.

The plain old fire seemed so boring now... We need something else to entertain us. We cast about for things we could put in but were drawing a collective blank. At least until DevilBoy remembered that there was gasoline for the lawnmower in the shed.

Now, a mature, responsible adult would know that pouring gasoline on a fire is a Bad Idea. That's right, capital B, capital I. It's that bad. Since none of us were either mature, responsible or adults, we filled the margarine container with gasoline and walked back to the fire.

Somehow we decided that Eggman should go first. We were emphatic that he not pour much on. Not because it was extremely flammable, but because we wanted to make sure that we all got a turn.

Eggman poured on a little gas. The fire went "fwooosh!". Then it ran up the stream of gasoline and set fire to the rest of the gas in the container. Eggman took one look at the flaming container in his hand and got it out of his hand as quickly as humanly possible. He threw it behind him. The gas landed on a small tree, on rocks, on the grass... Pretty much everywhere. DevilBoy's yard was now on fire.

Fortunately, once the gas burned up nothing else really caught and we were able to stomp it out. Eggman then remembered his curfew and headed home rather quickly.

DevilBoy and I sat down in front of the fire, now quite content to let it burn as low as it pleased, and chatted for a while.

A little while later a strange man wandered into the yard.

"Who are you?" DevilBoy asked.

The man gave his name.

"No... Who are you?" DevilBoy repeated, unsatisfied with that answer.

"Oh, Orillia Fire Department. We had a report of trees on fire..."

DevilBoy and I gave him our best innocent faces and denied knowing anything about that. As he could see, our fire was small, contained, and legal.

The firefighter didn't push on the tree thing, but did advise us that our enclosure was still not legal and we'd have to put out the fire and not do that any more.

I don't remember where the fireplace went, or how it left DevilBoy's yard. But it did.

We didn't have any more fires in DevilBoy's backyard after that. Well... Not many. And the gasoline stayed in the shed for them.

Smelling the Digital Roses

2004-10-23T00:02:00.000-04:00

The Technology and the Interweb allow for some weird things now and then. For instance a little earlier tonight I was chatting with an old friend when at around 10pm he left to go find some lunch.

I've been using the Internet for about ten years now, and it still blows my mind that I can chat with a friend in Arizona, Kentucky or, in this case, Australia as easily as someone just up the street.

But the wonder of technology can also swing both ways.

Early last November we had municipal elections here in Ontario. I'd been working on a local campaign and the night of the election we had our "victory party" in a local restaurant. (You call it a "victory" party no matter what the outcome). At these events it's traditional to watch the results come in on the largest TV available. In this case we had a nice big large screen TV, but a little issue. I flipped through the channels looking for local coverage. There were hundreds of channels, but none offered what we were looking for. As it turned out the restaurant had satellite TV, and no cable. We could watch the local news in Tampa, Florida or one of seventeen action movies, but getting local election results just wasn't going to happen.

I ended up calling my dad in Orillia and having him look up the Windsor results on the Interweb and read them to me, so I could announce them to the crowd. I had to call home to get local news.

In the end technology fixed the mess different technology had created.

An example that is a little similar is what happens when SouthernKitten gets lost in a strange city. She calls me. Not because I am at all familiar with the city in question. Nor am I very good with directions in general. But I am good with Google, MapQuest and Microsoft Streets and Trips.

It's great. I've never been to Las Vegas but I can find and direct SouthernKitten to, for instance, somewhere nearby where she can get Thai food. Sometimes even by cell phone text message.

None of this is all that new. The Internet, MSN, MapQuest and the rest have all been around for years. I just like to stop now and then and smell the digital roses, if you will.

Me and 40 foot Jesus

2004-10-22T01:15:00.000-04:00

I felt that I may have given Forty Foot Jesus the short shrift yesterday. He's really fascinating enough to deserve an entry of His own.

Here's picture the picture I took again:

There's also a couple of great pictures at Roadside America along with some more info.

I think that the first think you have to ask yourself is "why?!". Well...

"One of the reasons Solid Rock exists is to let people know that God loves them. What greater symbol than the King of Kings for people who drive by and see it there's hope? Whatever circumstances they're in, they'll see that there's hope for them," said Ron Carter of Solid Rock Church in a quote given to local TV station WCPO.

Personally, the only real hope I feel when I pass it is for Canada. (Not that we don't have our own odd Jesus phenomenon)

I also browsed a few other sites and learned a bunch more about the Big Guy.

40 Foot Jesus was sculpted in Florida by a gentleman who normally does work for (surprise!) casinos in Las Vegas... Nothing says class quite like Las Vegas, eh? Also, wouldn't the sort of Christians who'd build a forty foot Jesus kinda frown on the sort of things that Vegas is known for? Mind you, I guess there just aren't that many options when you're shopping for someone to build your four story Messiah.

After he was completed he was loaded in 13 foot chunks onto trucks and shipped up I-75 to his home in Monroe, Ohio.

Jesus is 42 feet tall, has a 40 foot wing span and weighs in at over 13,000 pounds. He's been painted to look like He's made from marble, though He's actually made from fiberglass, styrofoam and plastic. I really wonder how He'll stand up to the elements.

There's no word on the cost, but they accept online tithe paying by credit card. And in order to be involved with any kind of church activity you must be able to prove you've consistently been paying for 3 months. Clearly this works. They built a really big Jesus.

As it turns out Jesus is not universally loved in Monroe. A recent online survey of residents of Monroe overwhelmingly called Jesus "an Eyesore, bad for Monroe"... Of course it's an online survey and one with very few respondents, so it's not exactly scientific... The local Highway Patrol is also not thrilled with their new resident, fearing that rubberneckers will plow into each other. Apparently Jesus causes traffic accidents.

Mary should be paying Him a visit this weekend. If we're lucky she'll share the pictures.

I can't wait.

Back from Lexington

2004-10-20T14:39:00.000-04:00

My apologies for the lack of updates over the last week. I was in Lexington and SouthernKitten's Internet access was on the fritz. No internet = No updates.

Anyway lately while driving I've been playing with taking pictures with my free hand. Now, just to dispel any fears you might have for my safety, I don't use the view finder. I just point and shoot. Since it's a digital camera it's not like I'm wasting film. More often than not the pictures don't turn out, but occasionally I get a really nice one and I'm getting better at it.

Here are a few from this trip(severely trimmed to both be small enough to post and to show only the interesting bits)

This is a shot of the cooling towers for the Fermi 2 nuclear plant in Michigan. I took it because I wasn't sure what it was, but thought it looked a lot like the nuke plant on The Simpsons... Turns out there's a reason for that...

This is a shot of a 42 foot statue of Jesus in front of the Solid Rock Church in southwestern Ohio, just a little north of Cincinnati.

I watched over a couple months as he was built in sections, the last being his hands. The hands seemed to take a while and he sat there with large metal beams sticking out of his wrists. During this period I called him "Laser Beam Jesus"...

He's quite the sight.

In the middle of Ohio I encountered a small convoy of three new-ish Corvettes. This is a shot of them in my rearview mirror after I passed them.

Who could resist photographing three Corvettes in their rearview? Clearly not me.

In other news, I've been seeing an ad on TV lately for prepackaged breakfasts from Jimmy Dean.

Among other things the commercial features an enthusiastic woman saying:

"The eggs come from real chickens!"

"The cheese comes from real cows!"

"The sausage comes from Jimmy Dean!"

Does anyone else find this disturbing?

Poor Jimmy Dean.

Fun With Computers

2004-10-13T20:47:00.000-04:00

I wrote my second midterm of the semester yesterday and since it was a Flash program written for my computer class, I figured I'd post it here.

Midterm

It's a little rough in places, but that's what happens when you only get about three hours to write something. Hopefully that'll get me a decent mark, though.

Learning Flash has been fun. I'd played with it a little before, and done some programming in different flavours of Basic and Visual Basic, so I had a little bit of a head start.

I've written a fair number of fun little programs, one or two of which might still be in use at my last job.

One of my favourites was a simple little program I wrote in (I think) GW Basic over a decade ago, back in the days of MS DOS.

When run it displayed the following:

***WARNING*** (flashing)
Auto destruct sequence initiated!
Please stand at least 50 feet away from the computer.
Destruct in 30 (counting down to 0)

When the counter got to 0 I believe it did something anti-climatic like say "boom."

My brother, The Communicator and a friend of his installed that program on the computer of a friend of theirs. The set up was perfect. They'd had the machine taken apart for one reason or another, then when their friend wasn't looking, had set this little gem to start when the computer was switched on.

Apparently when it came up he yanked the power cord out from the wall, pointed accusingly at my brother and bellowed "WHAT DID YOU DO!?!?!"

Maybe later I'll try re-writing that in Flash...

Just a Cartoon I Liked

2004-10-13T01:07:00.000-04:00

I found this in the Toronto Star today:

More of an entry tomorrow...

Home for Thanksgiving

2004-10-09T02:02:00.000-04:00

For anyone who doesn't know, this weekend is Canadian Thanksgiving. Our Thanksgiving traditionally involves a big family dinner involving turkey followed by pumpkin pie. So I've traveled to Orillia to spend the weekend with my parents, as have a number of my old friends, notably DevilBoy (as I mentioned a couple posts ago) and The Eggman and family.

The Eggman is the responsible, mature one among us. While DevilBoy and I didn't finish school the first time through, The Eggman did. Consequently he's married with a kid and has a real job, while DevilBoy and I are back in school with kids ten years our juniors. My TV is literally older than some of my classmates. The Eggman's daughter is a new addition to his little family and I look forward to meeting her.

I'd hoped that SouthernKitten would be able to make it up, since, being American, she is not expected to spend Canadian Thanksgiving with her family. I think it'd have been particularly fun for her to spend some time with my old gang. Unfortunately it didn't work out her as father was inconsiderate enough to have a birthday Sunday, so it seems that she actually is going to be spending Canadian Thanksgiving with her family after all.

Someone else who won't be making it for Thanksgiving is my brother, "The Communicator", who, in a move that shocked everyone, quit his very lucrative job at which he spent almost every waking moment, and has taken off to Europe for two months. I'll admit to being jealous, yet incredibly confused by this whole turn of events.

Using the name "The Communicator" for my brother is sort of an ironic joke as, well, he isn't and really doesn't. My favourite example of my brother's knack for communication happened back in high school. He'd won some sort of math award or something. It involved, among other things, having his picture in the local paper. Now, if I were having my picture in the paper, my family would know about it. If I thought there were a slight chance, they'd know to be looking.

I believe the first my mother heard of the picture was when the butcher said "That's a nice picture of your son in today's paper."

To which she responded with a blank look "Which son??"

When this story was recounted at the dinner table that night and The Communicator was asked why he hadn't told anyone about the award or the picture, he answered "You didn't ask."

He landed at Heathrow the other day. I imagine it'll be a great trip.

Anyway, I'm going to keep this entry pretty short as it's late and I really ought to be sleeping by now. I hope you all have a nice Canadian Thanksgiving. (Even those of you who are Americans and insist on celebrating it during the completely wrong month)

Wisdom from Oliver Wendell Holmes

2004-10-07T01:38:00.000-04:00

My views on the limits that should be placed on individual rights can be almost entirely summed up in a single quote by Oliver Wendell Holmes(1809-1894).

"The right to swing my fist ends where the other man's nose begins."

As a metaphor, this quote is surprisingly versatile and as such is equally surprisingly pertinent, despite the fact that the author was born almost 200 years ago. My views on hate speech, gay marriage and gun control among others are based on this simple statement.

The right to free speech is important. Authoritarian governments as rule supress it. Liberal democracies tend to allow it as much as possible, but there are always limits. The classic example is that of yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theatre. Similarly, if I posted here that I was going to kill US president Bush, the RCMP would knock on my door tomorrow. Both of these are prime examples of the swinging fist banging square into the schnauze.

In the US hate speech is protected under the first amendment (though the above examples oddly are not). Recently the University of Louisville in Kentucky has been embroiled in a debate concerning whether the Klu Klux Klan should be allowed on campus. These people preach racial hatred and violence and at least in my opinion their message is no less dangerous than my first examples. In Canada hate speech is banned. The KKK would not, under any circumstances be allowed on the campus of my school. There would be no debate.

Free speech is precious and needs to be defended. Insults and objectionable opinions may be unpleasant, and the fist may be invading personal space, but that must be tolerated. Hate speech tramples the rights of others. Hate speech is the squarely impacting the nose.

Gay marriage is a hot issue right now. I really don't understand the fuss. If two men or two women want to get married this doesn't effect me or other straight people in the slightest. My nose is fine. No fist is anywhere near it.

Right wing religious groups in particular are vehemently opposed to it. I just saw a preacher from a prominent Canadian television ministry promise to "defend traditional marriage" for the rest of his life. I fail to see how "traditional marriage" has been threatened. Gay marriage has been legal in Ontario since June 10th of this year. I don't feel that the "traditional" marriage of my parents has been deminished by this. Nor have the marriages of any other "traditional" couples I know of.

The only reasoning I've seen to justify this opposition is based either on "traditional" families being threatened (which, as we've discussed, I feel is bunk) or a quote from Leviticus, otherwise known as the crazy part of the Bible.
(18:22 - Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination.) Once the people using this argument start following every single other line of Leviticus, then their argument may hold a little water. Have a read and let me know how likely you think that is... Leviticus

In the meantime,there are no fists within visual range of my nose.

Gun control is a bit trickier. Most of the time, gun collectors are pretty harmless and not a threat to my nose. If Bob Smith (made up generic name) wants to keep a grenade launcher in his basement, odds are I'll never know and if I deprive him of his grenade launcher am I bopping his nose?

The potential problems with Bob's toy are when something goes wrong. If Bob blows a gasket, problems. If Bob's teenaged son take his toy for a spin, problems. If Bob's house is broken into and a criminal steals his grenade launcher, problems.

These are a lot of problems. Problems where I don't so much have to worry about a fist in my nose, as my nose being blown into little tiny nose pieces.

So, we have to weigh the benefits of the grenade launcher against the possible harm. Grenade launchers are cool. Blowing stuff up is a great hobby. If a bandit breaks in while Bob is home, instead of calling the police, Bob has the option of engaging him in a gun battle. In fact, if Bob brings it everywhere he goes, then he can engage in wild west style gun battles (but with more explosions!) everywhere he goes... But I think at this point we've left the benefits column...

So... Really we've got a lot of potential harm to my nose, with wild west style personal defense and "it's cool" being the biggest benefits.

Ixnay on the enade launchergay.

And while that may be an extreme example, I believe the same thing really goes for firearms in general.

All that from one simple little phrase... Neat, eh?

You're Fired!

2004-10-04T14:50:00.000-04:00

I've been having fun telling old stories of late, so I'm going to continue on that theme again today.

This one is one of my favourites.

My first job after I left school (the first time...) was doing over the phone technical support for a little computer company near Toronto. We mostly sold to the southern US, so I spent a lot of time walking Americans through fixing various things. I hated that job. A lot. I hated it with the power of a thousand suns. But, it was my first real job and it put food on the table and paid the rent. I hated so many things about that job, including the commute. At the time of this story it was taking about two hours on transit (subway then bus) to get to work, but only an hour to get home, because a friend would give me a lift to the subway. This actually cut way more than an hour off my commute because I worked the 4pm to midnight shift, and bus service after midnight is almost negligible in that area late at night.

So, it was a normal day at work. I was sitting at my little station, fixing computers over the phone and quietly hating the fate that had placed me into this job. My driving friend walked up and told me that he had to leave an hour early that night. If I could leave then too I could still hitch a ride, otherwise I was on my own. I didn't like the idea waiting an eternity for the late night buses and since I hated the job leaving an hour early seemed like a great idea.

I went and spoke to boss #1 and asked if I could leave early. He wasn't sure, and suggested I go ask boss #2. I asked boss #2. He also wasn't sure and suggested I go ask boss #1. Clearly this was going nowhere and I didn't think it was worth the hassle. I dejectedly went back to my station and took a call.

In the meantime, boss #2 (who was actual the more senior boss) approached boss #1 and suggested that maybe it would be ok to "let CanadaDave go".

Boss #1 called me into his office and fired me. I asked why and he simply answered "performance".

Boss #1 had been recently promoted to boss level and was really eager to assert his authority. So, while I more seasoned boss might have questioned such an instruction, he just didn't. That boss #2 just wanted to let me leave early would not become clear until later.

So, I gathered my things, said goodbye to my co-workers and I left. The car ride to the subway passed quietly.

They say that after losing a job one goes through the same five stages of grief as when a loved one dies. I quickly went through all five on my train ride home.

1) Denial - This had all been some crazy mistake (which oddly enough was true..). Everything would get worked out in short order and I'd get my job back.

2) Anger - How dare they fire me?! I was the smartest guy in the building!!

3) Bargaining - I just want things back the way they were!

4) Depression - How am I going to feed myself and pay my rent? I'm doomed!

5) Acceptance - Y'know, I really hated that job. Maybe this is for the best.

I figured I'd take things slow the next day. I slept in... Lounged for a while... Then eventually went out and got some take out chicken for lunch.

When I got back, the little red light on my answering machine was blinking. I listened to the message. I was working that job through an employment agency and the rep for my company had apparently called...

"Uh... David, I understand that you left work yesterday under the impression that you were fired. This is not the case. We'd like it very much if you'd come back. Please give me a call as soon as you get this."

I later learned roughly what had happened at my place of work earlier that day.

In a meeting the two bosses were discussing potential promotions with a more senior boss. One who I got along pretty well with. When they listed the people who might potentially fill a certain position the senior boss noticed that my name was no longer on the list and asked why.

"Oh, we accidentally fired him yesterday"

"You did WHAT?!?" the senior boss demanded.

"Fired him. By accident" They replied, apparently happy to continue their lives as if nothing unusual had happened.

"Don't think there's something you should be doing about this?! ISN'T THERE SOMEONE YOU SHOULD BE CALLING?!?" Asked an astonished senior boss.

"Oh.. I guess so..."

So it came to be that I came back the next day, and we continued on like nothing had happened. The company also took that opportunity to do a review of their firing practices...

I got paid for the day I didn't show up because I thought I no longer worked there, and, as penitence of sorts, boss #1 promised to drive me to work for the next week.

Eventually that company went under, and to this day still owes me money (which I will never get). It was probably a good thing that it went under. I'd tried to quit a while before they did and they'd talked me out of it. I'd pretty much concluded that for me to leave that company, one of us had to die.

I'm pretty happy that it was the company that expired...

DevilBoy and I Had Been Drinking...

2004-10-01T23:40:00.000-04:00

My parents are coming to visit and will be arriving tomorrow, which is a change of plan from when they were going to be arriving tonight, which was a change of plan from when they were to be arriving tomorrow. Nothing like following a plan...

My place isn't anywhere near as clean as I would like it to be, due to my having felt like crap over the last couple of days. I've had a nasty cold/flu type thing and for reasons I don't comprehend my lower back has really been hurting.

Next weekend will be Thanksgiving (Canadian Thanksgiving, obviously) and I'll be heading to Orillia. With any luck I'll be able to get together with DevilBoy and have a few drinks.

I haven't told any of my drinking with DevilBoy stories here yet, but there are quite a few of them. My favourite is probably what happened when I came back to Orillia one fall for my high school commencement.

I really hadn't been out of town that long, but it was my first time living away from home , so the couple a months had seemed like a really long time. DevilBoy and I had gone to our favourite bar and had what I imagine was a lot of drinks. The we left the bar and took a stroll, you know, to see the enormous changed that must have happened over the fall... One thing I really wanted to do for some reason was stick my finger in the lake to see what temperature it was. I have no idea why, but it seemed important at the time.

DevilBoy and I stumbled down to the beach. I stuck my finger in the water, thus satisfying my desire to learn that, yes, the lake was cold. DevilBoy didn't stop stumbling in time. He continued stumbling right into the water and then face planted into it. He expressed in graphic terms just how cold the lake really was.

For reasons that I don't remember DevilBoy ended up crashing on my floor. The next morning, he got up (still wet) and asked if he'd fallen off the beach. I just laughed.

We should have a good time next weekend, like I said, we'll likely get a few drinks, but I doubt we'll be going near the lake.

Really cold in Canada

2004-09-30T23:40:00.000-04:00

I've been feeling under the weather for the last couple of days, hence the lack of a post yesterday.

Today, I'm still feeling kinda crappy, so I'm going to reach once again into the bag of classic CanadaDave adventures for today's entry.

If you've read Cardboard Boats then you know that back in the early nineties I was the kid the political party I support called upon when something stupid needed to be done. This is another story from before the election of October 1993.

Our candidate was a rather athletic man. He was a member of a running club and was very fit. So, for another publicity stunt the candidate decided that he was going to do a cross riding triathalon. We decided that he would be accompanied on each leg by a volunteer. I volunteered to accompany him on the bike leg, but that spot was already filled and what was really needed was someone to accompany him on the swimming leg. I'm a pretty strong swimmer, so figuring this would be a piece of cake, I agreed. I'm just not that bright sometimes.

The body of water that we were to swim across is called Hogg's bay. It's a bay off of Georgian bay, near Midland, Ontario and about a kilometer and a half (about a mile) across.

Sometime in July we did a test run. It went pretty smoothly. I dove underwater, played and generally had a fun time with it. There was a close call with a float plane that almost ran us down (when it took off I could see the pilot), but that was not really a big deal.

The actual triathalon was in mid September. Hogg's bay had been used for a lot of Great Lakes shipping years ago. As such it had been dredged rather deep. I thought that this would mean that this big volume of water would retain heat well into September. I was not what you would strictly speaking call correct.

I did, however, borrow a partial wetsuit, just in case. I covered my legs, chest and back. My arms, feet, neck and head were exposed.

The day came, and I waited on this old industrial dock for the candidate to show up so we could start our swim. Eventually he biked up, dismounted and jumped in the water. I followed him.

The water wasn't so much cold, as ice in liquid form. It was very, very, very cold. For the first couple of minutes it was all I could do to keep my head above water. I basically tread water and said "Oh shit-oh shit-oh shit-oh shit" for about the first three minutes, which felt much longer. The candidate was pretty sure that I'd have to be pulled from the water. But I perservered and finally headed out into the bay.

I didn't dive or play this time. In fact, I don't think my head went under water.

After what seemed like an eternity, the finishing dock was finally in sight. Every fiber of my being screamed that I should get there as quickly as humanly possible, if not faster. The thing was, this was a media event, and finishing before the candidate, nevermind leaving the candidate in the dust (or possibly ice crystals) would be poor form. I had to let him finish first.

Buy the time I got out of the water my feet and arms were numb and all my finger and toe nails were a deep shade of blue.

You'd think I'd have learned after an experience like that not to volunteer for things....

No such luck. I'm sure you'll be hearing more stories of me doing stupid things for political reasons in future entries...

Rude Awakening

2004-09-28T18:44:00.000-04:00

I had a very pleasant stay in Lexington this past weekend. Well, mostly.

Sunday morning left a little to be desired.

SouthernKitten and I were peacefully sleeping as reasonable people tend to do at 5:30 AM on a Sunday. Then her neighbour's radio started playing loud enough that I wasn't sure it wasn't the radio next to the bed.

After a few minutes we decided that I should go knock on her neighbour's door and ask them if they'd please turn it down, seeing as it was stupidly early Sunday morning.

I got dressed, tracked down the source of the music and knocked. The music stopped and a short tubby girl in her PJs answered. I thanked her for turning off the music, explaining that it had woken SouthernKitten and I up, and went back to SouthernKitten's apartment and back to bed.

All was great. For about six minutes. Then either ShortTubbyGirl turned the radio back on, or she'd just hit snooze before and the radio had come back on by itself.

A few minutes later I got dressed again, trudged down the hall, and knocked again. No answer. I knocked louder. No answer. When I came back to SouthernKitten's apartment she advised that she'd actually heard the second knock.

Surely no one could be rude enough to blare their radio at that time, ignore a request to turn it off and then refuse to answer the door. Maybe ShortTubbyGirl was in the shower. Surely she just hadn't heard the radio come back on, and then also hadn't heard my knock. That had to be it.

SouthernKitten and I tried vainly to sleep through the 80s hair metal that was assaulting us through the wall, hoping against hope that ShortTubbyGirl would step out of the shower at any time, realize what was happening and switch off the awful awful music.

After another half an hour we decided that this was not going to happen. Once more I got dressed, once more trudged down the hall, and once more knocked, even louder this time. Once again there was no answer.

When I got back, SK told me I'd practically shaken the building.

Clearly ShortTubbyGirl had no interest in discussing her crazy loud music with me and was determined to disturb our Sunday morning (Hence her less than flattering pseudonym..).

We were going to have to change tactics.

We decided to see if the landlord could do anything. But, being reasonable people, decided to wait a few minutes and not wake him before seven AM.

We went to see the landlord. He was bleary eyed and didn't seem to understand my Canadian accent. But he did understand SouthernKitten and would see what he could do.

A few minutes later we heard him knock and shortly thereafter the bad bad music stopped.

I don't know why ShortTubbyGirl answered the door for him but not for me, and I didn't care that much. I was just happy that we could get back to sleep.

I felt that clearly we were justified in napping well into the afternoon.

Under the Knife

2004-09-27T14:58:00.000-04:00

(Part III, and the conclusion in the story of my knee. See part I Injuries and part II Bad Idea)

When we last left our hero (that would be me), I was scheduled to go under the knife on September 30th. That was just short of exactly two years ago as I write this.

Since it was a day surgery, and I was supposed to be fine the next day, I'd planned on taking just the one day off of work. Anyone I shared this with, to the person, told me I was nuts. But I was determined, not because I loved my job (actually I hated it), or because the company wouldn't give me any more time, but because... Um... Well... Possibly because I'm stubborn...

The day came and Devilboy dropped me at the hospital. It was my second time there, so I had a rough idea of where to go. (I'd been there a week or so before for some pre-op work, but it wasn't very interesting and I don't remember much about it, so I've skipped it). I checked in and was given one of those horrible hospital gowns that won't close properly to wear. I stood and waited for whatever was going to happen. A nurse came by and told me that I should go ahead and sit. I advised he that I was fine and that my current garment just wasn't that conducive to sitting...

Eventually a nurse who would be involved with my surgery came by. She asked me a few questions about whether I had been fasting, as instructed, and double checked which knee it was. She then drew a big X in magic marker on the problem knee.

Later the specialist stopped by. He asked me some similar questions, and then initialed my knee. At least I was pretty sure they wouldn't be cutting into the wrong one...

I was called into the operating room and instructed to lie down on the gurney. I didn't really expect it to happen that way. I figured I'd be knocked out somewhere else and be wheeled into the OR. Walking in under my own power just seemed wrong.

People started hooking me up to various machines that seemed to monitor all sorts of different life sustaining functions of my body... I'm sure that to a person with good eyesight they'd have been fascinating to watch... As it was they were rather fascinating blurry colours...

Next an IV was put in and I was given an injection of something. I asked if that was the anesthetic. No, I was told, this was just to relax me, the anesthetic would come later. I asked to be told when the anesthetic went in and was assured I would be.

When I regained consciousness, I was in some sort of recovery room, with similar gurnies on either side. I checked my knee, it was all bandaged up. They had indeed gotten the right one. Someone noticed I was awake and I was wheeled into a curtained off recovery room. Oddly, since I hadn't had a drink all day, I felt a need to visit the men's room. Possibly the IV had pumped some saline into me, I don't know. I was also anxious to test out my knee and see if it was indeed fixed.

It was! Finally!

A nurse freaked out that I was walking around, but pointed me in the right direction once I explained what I wanted.

I spent a little more time recovering and then my mother picked me up, and drove me to Orillia to finish recovering there. On the way I decided I really wanted something in my stomach, but wasn't really ready for a real meal. We stopped at McDonalds and I got some fries and a shake. Nice healthy recovery meal.

I ended up missing work the next day, as everyone predicted I would. I felt crappy but mostly really didn't want to go.

Turns out that my problem had been a "medium sized tear in my left lateral meniscus" and half had been removed. Apparently you don't need to whole thing... Or so I was told, and so I hope.

When the bandages came off you could barely tell I'd had surgery, and I had no stitches to speak of. Just three hole, each about an inch long. One at the top, and two on the bottom. I don't even have much of a scar to show for all my trouble!

My knee is mostly fixed now, it will never be quite the same again, though. I still walk with a bit of a limp when I'm tired, I just don't swear when I do it anymore.

Talk Radio

2004-09-24T13:10:00.000-04:00

This will be a short entry and the saga of my knee will continue next week.

I drove down to Lexington yesterday afternoon.

It's a five and a half hour drive and to entertain myself I listen to a lot of radio. I prefer talking to music, and my first choice is current events or news on CBC or NPR. If, they're playing music, or programming I don't like, I'll listen to all sorts of stuff... The nature of talk radio means I usually disagree with the opinions expressed, but I still find it interesting to hear exactly what the right wing lunatics are on about at the moment. I usually don't even get offended.

Yesterday I did, though. The host (whom I've listened to before) must have been off his meds or something... First he criticized Bush for failing to use nuclear weapons in Iraq. There are lots of things one can criticize Bush for. Tons really. I just don't think that's one of them...

Then he talked about the bill that passed the House yesterday that would prevent people from challenging the Pledge of Allegiance in court. Which I find to be both a waste of time and a preposterous idea. Apparently being opposed to this bill makes me not only a mental and spiritual degenerate but also a sexual one as well...

At that point I picked my jaw up off the floor of the car and changed the channel...

Bad Idea

2004-09-23T09:01:00.000-04:00

The saga of my knee, Part II

It had been three weeks since I hurt my knee. It was still sore, but I could put weight on it and walk mostly normal. I bought a brace like the doctor had said and figured I was good to go. Clearly the brace made me invincible!

So, I ventured out on to the Ultimate Frisbee field again.

The first game went alright. I wasn't exerting myself too much, but I could run, everything seemed to be well on its way to healing. Now and then my knee felt a little loose and unstable, but I was sure that would go away in time. I was back!

The next week was the playoffs. There'd be none of that namby pamby not exerting myself this time! I was, after all, back, I felt (mostly) good, and I wanted to win!

At this point I'm sure that everyone reading this know roughly what's going to happen next. If any of you have access to a time machine or temporal displacement device of some kind, would you mind traveling back and warning me? I'd really appreciate it. Thanks.

I played for a short while without incident. I don't remember what the score was or anything beyond the fact that someone had thrown a pass that was skimming the ground just ahead of me. I planted my left foot, put all my weight on it and lunged forward to catch the disc.

My knee buckled under the strain. I collapsed to the ground (again) and swore very loudly (again).

I hobbled to the sidelines and had a seat. Someone from the other team offered me a cold beer. I'm somewhat of a beer snob and normally don't think much of the brand I'd been offered, in this case I accepted it and was enormously grateful.

I grabbed my phone, explained my plight to Devilboy and asked if it was at all possible for him to come get me in my car.

"Dumbass" He said.
(Ok, whoever went back in time, you told the wrong person. Thanks for the effort anyway, though)

The field we'd been playing on was behind a school in the middle of a oval shaped running track. Part of the track ran close to the parking lot with only a thin strip of grass separating them. When Devilboy arrived he ran over that thin strip, and drove my car around the running track to get me. It was a pretty amusing sight, and I was really happy I wouldn't have to hobble any further than necessary.

Before this all started I hadn't had a doctor in Toronto. After my visit to the ER, I decided that I really ought to have one, and I also ought to have someone else look at my knee. Just to be absolutely sure. After eventually finding a doctor who was accepting new patients I'd made an appointment. That appointment was two days after the second falling down and swearing incident, so not being anxious to spend another evening in the waiting room, I opted to just gut it out for a couple days and wait for my new doctor to fix it.

The next couple of days passed slowly. I was back on my crutches again and generally displeases with the turn my life had taken. Finally, the day arrived. Surely the doctor would fix me! All would soon be well!

Not so much. Since this was my first appointment with her, my doctor wanted to do a full physical and get x-rays done before really dealing with my knee. I was poked and pricked and went through all the routine things one does for a physical, but was not a lot closer to having my knee fixed. My next appointment was in a few weeks. In the meantime I was supposed to get some x-rays of my knee taken.

The x-ray clinic my new doctor used did both mammograms and x-rays. There weren't a lot of men in the place. The woman who took the x-rays was either having a bad day, or just really didn't like men. I couldn't tell. Never in my life, though, have I felt more like a piece of meat.

I brought my set of x-rays with me to my next doctors appointment. I'd spent some time analyzing them myself and was confident I'd found the problem. I handed them to my doctor and waited for her to confirm my diagnosis. She only needed to look at them for a split second.

"Those are fine" she said.

She wiggled my knee, tested the range of motion and determined that there was definitely something wrong with it, though.

But it was not something she could fix.

She referred me to a joint specialist and instructed me to call his office to make an appointment.

I did so.

More weeks passed. I'd been limping for so long that my shoes had developed an irregular wear pattern.

Finally, the day of my appointment with the specialist came. This was clearly the day! I would go to sleep tonight without pain in my leg! Joy!

Ummm... No.

The specialist poked and prodded my knee. Asked if it hurt when he poked various places around it. I'd seen this show before.

The specialist told me I had two choice. An MRI, which would take months to schedule, and then weeks to schedule an operation if it was needed, or arthroscopic surgery, it had less of a wait, and he could likely fix whatever was wrong while he was in there.

I went with the surgery. My appointment was scheduled for September 30th. I'd hurt myself sometime in early June.

Tomorrow (or possibly Monday as I'm going to Lexington for the weekend) Part III: CanadaDave goes under the knife.

Injuries

2004-09-22T10:00:00.000-04:00

I was woken up this morning by an intense pain in my right knee, otherwise known as my good knee. I have no idea what I might have done to it, but I suspect I may have bruised it somehow by walking into something (I can be clumsy like that).

I call my right knee my good knee because a couple years ago I injured my left one playing Ultimate Frisbee and eventually had little pieces taken out.

Ultimate Frisbee is a great sport. There's a lot of running and it's supposed to be non-contact. I played for a few years on a great team called "Smackdown!" back when I lived in Toronto. I loved that team, everyone on the team was a great person and we were getting pretty good by the time I left.

I think it was during my second year playing when I injured myself. I had a couple of friends watching the game, so I was playing a little more recklessly than usual and trying to show off.

Someone threw a high pass and I jumped to try and grab it. So did two large gentlemen from the opposing team. We collided in mid-air. One of the gentlemen hit my left leg above the knee, the other below it. Consequently my knee bent sideways, far exceeding design specifications.

I fell down in a heap and swore at the top of my lungs.

On the upside two of my more attractive female teammates helped me to the sidelines (this was well before I'd met SouthernKitten).

I lay for a while on the sidelines, convinced that I'd be fine after a few minutes and could finish the game. The league rep happened to be spectating and, glancing at his clipboard, noticed that I hadn't signed the league release waiver yet that season. I signed one while lying on my side, applying ice to my knee. I stayed in that position for the rest of the game.

By the end of the game, my knee was feeling no better. I was beginning to think that maybe I'd better seek medical attention. I couldn't put any weight on my left leg and my knee was absolutely killing me. However, my team had decided to go out for drinks after the game, so that'd have to wait. One has to have priorities. At the bar, when the waitress came by and asked if she could get anyone a drink my answer was an emphatic "Good God, yes!!!"

After spending an hour or so at the bar, Devilboy (who'd been one of the spectators and had accompanied us to the bar) dropped me off at the front door of the local hospital. What neither of us realized at the time was that the emergency room was on the other side. I hobbled in. It was after hours at this point, many doors were locked and very few people were around. I asked a janitor how to get to the ER. His directions involved going outside and going around the block. What must have been a powerful look of dismay crossed my face. I still couldn't put any weight on my left leg and that was a long way to hop. Noticing the dismay, and my lack of mobility, the janitor took pity on me. He fetched me a wheelchair and unlocked a couple doors, allowing me to wheel into the ER.

Once I got there I filled out at small forest worth of paperwork and sat down to wait.

Among the problems with an injured knee is that it doesn't bleed, it's not life threatening and if you're not moving it won't get any worse. At a glance all of these seem like good things, but in ER working on the triage system, it put me at the very bottom of the list.

So I waited.

And waited.

Then waited some more.

And just when I thought it couldn't possibly take any longer.... It did.

After spending seven or eight hours in pain and bored out of my skull in the emergency room, my name was finally called.

A doctor examined my knee, tested the range of motion and declared that I should stay off it for a couple of weeks, but that I should be fine. He even said I could go back to playing sports in three weeks or so, as long as I used a knee brace. Then he gave me crutches and an aspirin and sent me on my way. Aspirin. Well, that was eight hours well spent.

Spending a week on crutches makes you realize just how badly some things are designed for people whose mobility is limited, even temporarily. Because I still couldn't put any weight on my leg, little things suddenly became a lot more challenging. The two inch barrier I had to step over to get into my shower now seemed about four feet high. The security door at work seemed just plain fiendish. The procedure was to slide your passcard in and out of the slot, type in your four digit code on the keypad, then pull open the door. This was not at all hard most of the time, but took on a whole new level of complication with a crutch in each hand. But there were one or two benefits, too. I always got a seat on transit and people seemed very eager to fetch things for me.

After about a week I didn't need the crutches anymore and happily limped around without them.

A couple of weeks after that, I bought a neoprene knee brace and wandered onto the Ultimate Frisbee field again...

Tomorrow - Episode II in the saga of my knee: Bad Idea.

Oops

2004-09-21T23:01:00.000-04:00

Because I'm feeling a little lazy today I'm going to post a classic CanadaDave story about a moment of unsurpassed brilliance. I'd documented it at the time, so this post is mostly a cut and paste job. It's the tale of the time I managed to lock myself out of the house for the second time in two weeks. (Including one time this summer I've now done that a total of three times... The first time was uneventful but maybe I'll post the story of the most recent time later. it's kinda funny too...)

I'd been going out to buy a few miscellaneous groceries and when I closed the door behind me and had the sudden, nagging feeling that something was terribly amiss… I checked my pockets. Crap. No keys. “Well,” I thought, “This sucks…” And I figured that I was going to have to call and get Weregirl (who as well as being my friend is also my landlord) to come and let me in… However, seeing as I was embarrassed to have locked myself out in the first place, did’t want to bother her and wasn't even sure that she’d be back from a trip she and one of her roommates had taken to Toronto that day, I decided that I was going to try reaching in through a missing window on my porch and unlocking the door that way. Weregirl had done this the summer before when we couldn’t find the keys, so I knew that is was at least possible… It is, mind you, worth noting that she is smaller than me. MUCH smaller… But, at that point, this still seemed like a pretty reasonable idea…

So, I took off my jacket, emptied my pockets, climbed up on the ledge and gave it a go.. My head got in without a hitch. Then my shoulders. Chest…. Nope. The lock was tantalizingly close. I could almost feel it, but it was still far enough that this wasn’t going to work. I got down from the ledge…

I was soooo close, though… I started casting about for ideas… Maybe if I could find a stick I could use that to turn it… Maybe I could pick the lock.. Maybe there was another way in…

Then I remembered that I was wearing a sweatshirt. It wasn't overly thick, but I didn’t need much more clearance… I had a t-shirt on underneath, so I wouldn’t be walking around half naked or anything…

Off came the sweatshirt and up I went. I was even closer this time. Still not all the way there, though. And… Wait… If I shimmied a bit I could get even closer… Closer… Closer… Got it! Victory!! Now I could just hop down and walk on in…

Yuh-huh. This is failing to take into account that at that point I was firmly wedged halfway in and halfway out of the stupid window. I tried to pull out… Yup. Pretty stuck… Not really going anywhere… I considered going all the way through… A little mental math suggested that there was, however, no way on this Earth that my hip bone was going to fit through that narrow opening.. K… Hmmm… That sucked… I began to wonder how long it would be before someone found me… Long time I thought… My cell phone was over on the porch with my jacket and sweatshirt… Besides, this was even more embarrassing than locking myself out… My legs were getting tired… This really was not a comfortable position….

K… I really couldn’t stay like that…. I kept squirming, trying one method after another, trying desperately to free myself from this amazingly stupid situation… Finally, after what seemed like an eternity… Ouch, oww, ouch, ouch, I was out!

I calmly opened the door and walked into the house…

Lessons learned…

Always, always, always check to ensure I have keys before closing the door.
There are more embarrassing things than locking oneself out.
If necessary, I could get in using the window trick. It just hurt. A lot.
I should secure my home a little better
(Which I did. This technique no longer works to break into my house...)

In other news, you may have noticed that I'm experimenting with a little animated title thingy at the top of my page. Leave me a comment and let me know what you think. I may keep it, I may not...

Also, SouthernKitten has safely returned from her trip to Reno!

Close to home

2004-09-20T13:42:00.000-04:00

Before moving to Windsor for school I lived in Toronto for several years. The last few were in a neighbourhood called "The Beaches", so named for the rather obvious reason that he neighbourhood abuts the lake, and as such there are a number of very nice parks and beaches.

It was a very pleasant place to live and I miss it a lot. The people were friendly, it had a lot of park land and there was a lot to do.

Devilboy, who was my roommate at the time, and I would often hike around they neighbourhood, exploring and drinking coffee. I used to walk a lot with Weregirl, who I had a thing for at the time. I played countless indoor and outdoor sports with the local sports league, and generally just loved the area. (But I did not love my job, hence why I am back in school and here)

The sad/scary part is that, since I left, the area has had a couple of significant near disasters...

The first happened this spring. A man who deranged man from New Brunswick (a maritime province on Canada's Atlantic coast) drove to Toronto with a car-load of guns because he planned to go on a shooting spree. Seems he thought the people back home were too nice, so he came to Toronto, more specifically the Beaches, my old neighbourhood to do his killing. He decided against it when he took a walk in the park, encountered a friendly dog, and decided that maybe my neighbours where also too nice to kill... story

The second happened this weekend. One of my two favourite sports was beach volleyball. This weekend a big tournament was scheduled and just as they were warming up, they discovered that someone had seeded the courts with blocks of wood with blades sticking out. story

Scary stories appear in the news all the time. Frankly, there are worse things in the news almost every day. But these strike a little closer to home for me and just feel a lot more personal. These sorts of things are not supposed to happen in Canada.

Cardboard boats

2004-09-17T21:08:00.000-04:00

Today we're going to tell one of SouthernKitten's favourite stories, so that she has something fun to read if she gets online in Reno.

A bit of background first, though.

Before the federal election in October of 1993, the last time my party had won my home riding had been in 1940. Back then my grandparents would have been a little youger than I am now, and neither of my parents had been born.

I've been politically active for as long as I can remember. I've done everything from fold pamphlets to manage election campaigns. The summer of 1993 I was almost 18 and I was the kid the local party recruited when something kinda stupid needed to be done.

This is the story of one of those times...

Orillia is situated between two lakes, so there's a lot of recreational boating that goes on. Every summer there's a big boat show at the lakefront park near my parents house. In 1993 a new event was introduced, the cardboard boat race.

The man who was party candidate at that time had been working for about a year at that point, trying to get his name out in the community. If there was an event where he could go out and meet people, he was there. Someone (I don't remember who, but it was probably my mother), came up with the idea that he should participate in the cardboard boat race. Everyone thought this was a splendid idea. We just needed someone dumb enough to build the boat and sail it with him. This is where I came in.

So, I set about building a boat. Now, it should be mentioned at this juncture how much I know about boats, boat design and generally all things nautical. And that is almost nothing. Boats float, and one end is usually pointy. The were the design specifications I was going with.

I recruited my good friend Devilboy to help with this little project. Our first step was to search out the raw materials we'd need for this boat. After a little searching, we found a huge pile of cardboard behind a local furniture store. This was going to be easy! This was going to be the best boat ever! We gathered up as much as we figured we'd need and trucked it back to my parent's house.

Next came the part where we looked at what we had and figured out how to make a boat out of it. The most promising piece of cardboard was a box that was about three feet, by three feet, by six feet. This was great! We'd just cut out one side, but a pointy nose on one end, reinforce it a little, slap on some paint, and voila, boat!

So that's pretty much what we did. We had a few visitors during the process, none of whom thought my creation looked all that much like a boat. I'd try to explain what we were doing, Devilboy would just shrug his shoulders.

After the boat was built, we needed paddles to propel it. Someone (possibly the candidate this time) thought it would just be a whole lot funnier if, instead of using proper paddles, we used a hockey stick and a broom, so some were acquired and off we went.

They day of the event my mom talked a local car dealer into lending us a cubevan to bring the boat to the park, so we used this enormous thing to move my creation the four or five blocks to the park.

We unloaded and got ready for the race. The competition was varied from boats that looked like they'd been built the night before, to ones that looked like teams had spent weeks on them. Ours was somewhere in the middle.

Once the organizers realized who our team was, the event was delayed. I later learned that someone had had to wake up the incumbent candidate so that he could rush down and be a last minute judge. (You don't spend 14 years in office without making a few friends). After a half hour or so delay, a sleepy looking MP staggered down to the park and was introduced as a special judge.

Then came the moment of truth, the race itself.

After the starter's pistol sounded, the candidate and I pushed the boat into the water, and jumped in.

Our first problem was that I rally hadn't accounted for how buoyant cardboard is. The boat, which I had anticipated sinking six inches to a foot into the water, didn't. Instead, maybe an inch was under. This made paddling from any kind of seated position impossible. We had to stand to paddle and anyone who knows anything about simple physics, nevermind boats, will tell you this is a bad idea. This also meant that the boat had no torsional stability and twisted down the middle with every stroke of the paddle. Lastly, brooms and hockey sticks - not good paddles.

The race was to another dock and back. Maybe 150 feet, all told. We got about halfway to the other dock and capsized. My beautiful creation became waterlogged and tore into little tiny pieces shortly thereafter. The candidate and I spent the remainder of the race in the water. The majority of the other boats did not survive either and many, upon disintegration, were found to contain (horror of horrors) wood! Oddly, the officials didn't seem to notice... But really, once you introduce wood, is it really still a cardboard boat? Isn't that more like just a regular kind of boat? But I digress...

We participated in the race a couple more times. Until I started working full time and no longer was home for the summers.

The other years were a lot of fun too.

Maybe some day I'll tell those stories, too.

Changes to my blog

2004-09-15T23:05:00.000-04:00

SouthernKitten leaves early tommorow morning on a business trip to Reno, Nevada. In honour of her trip I have added Reno to the list of weather conditions on the right side of my blog.

(edit - She's back so I removed it again)

Also, I was surfing, of all places, the Kentucky DMV website when I noticed that they had a little terror threat condition level on the side of their page. On closer inspection, all pages by the commonwealth of Kentucky have this little notice. As a member of a Kentucky portal, and not wanting to be left behind in this growing trend, I immediately added them to my page. You can find one for all the places I list the weather for. Note that since Canada does not use this system I had to set the levels for here myself. I'm considering raising Windsor to a Blue level, though... Detroit is awfully close and threatening...

Differences

2004-09-14T23:19:00.000-04:00

On my frequent trips to and from Lexington I have a lot of time to ponder various subjects. One that gets a lot of attention in particular is what exactly is it that makes Canada different that the US. Cynics here will say that we are just USA-lite. The US with a smaller population and a smaller economy. I don't think so. I like some things about the US, I like Lexington an awful lot, but it still feels just a little alien.

Our countries do share an awful lot. The language is almost identical (Though the US seems to have misplace an awful lot of "U"s from their words). We watch their TV and movies, read their books, eat their fast food and overall share just an awful lot of their culture. Of course, arguably, culture is the USA's main export. It's one of the reasons why every nation in the world is so aware of all things American and invading US culture is also one of the reasons why so many groups feel such antipathy and even sheer hatred of the US. But I digress.

Immediately after crossing the border I have a definite feel that I am in a different place. Of course, living in Windsor means that when I cross the border I'm in Detroit, and Detroit is not a nice place. But even once I've left Michigan entirely, I know I'm not at home.

There are a number of subtle and less than subtle reasons for this.

One of them is the way Americans wear their religion on their sleeves. Religion is pervasive in the US. It's much more subtle in Canada. In the US I can always find several religious stations when I scan the radio dial. These are few and far between here, at least in Southern and Central Ontario. Religion in the US everywhere and very public. There's a plastics company on I-75 in Ohio with a religious slogan (which escapes me at the moment) all lit up in huge letters on the front of their building, there seem to be a lot more churches, and even the money says "In God We Trust". Canada just isn't like this.

Religion plays a major role in politics in the US. The fundamentalist Christian vote was a major factor in putting GW Bush in power, and is a major influence in the Republican party. In Canada most politicians will attend church of some sort, but it's not a big deal. The religious groups make a lot of noise about abortion, gay marriage and a lot of the same things they make noise in the States about, but they don't often get their way. In the US the "young Earth" theory (which, basically, adds up the timeline of all the events in the Bible and thus concludes the Earth is really about 6000 years old) is a common belief. Here a politician once mentioned he believed it and he was mocked (Well, Stockwell Day was mocked for a lot of reasons).

Guns are another big difference. I listened to a segment on the radio this morning about a debate in Utah surrounding the question of whether concealed weapons should be allowed on the campus of the state university. A senior state Republican politician spoke in favour of allowing them. His rational basically boiled down to a "Wild West" mentality. The gun lobby both in the US and here seem to think that having a shoot out in public is a reasonable solution and/or deterrent to crime. The big difference tends to be that in the US these people have influence and people listen to them. We have a gun lobby here too. A few years ago the governing Liberal party passed a law requiring all guns to be registered. The gun lobby despised this law and vowed that it would be the downfall of the Liberals in the next election, then lobbied as hard as they could to that end. The next election the Liberal party won a huge majority. There were many reasons for this, but my point is that the gunners had a negligible effect.

I went to the bank in Lexington with SouthernKitten a while ago. On the door, next to the "No Smoking" logo was a similar "No Guns" logo. I found it terribly odd and went on a while about it at the time. It just seemed so obvious to me, don't run with scissors, don't eat yellow snow, don't bring your gun to the bank. I told this story to the man handling my student loan at my bank in Orillia. He was flabbergasted.

There are guns in Canada. The people that own them are very attached to them, but they are generally used for hunting, target shooting and the like. They are not carried in public (I don't actually remember it ever even being debated), and they are not part of home security.

There are exceptions to all of that. It's entirely possible that your roommate's brother's bestfriend's sister is a Canadian and sleeps with a loaded gun under her pillow. My point is that it's less common here and vastly so. (at least in this region of Canada, I really shouldn't speak for any other region. Canada is a vast and diverse country.)

This is an interesting topic to me and there are plenty of other ways Canada and the US differ, but that's enough for today. I'll likely come back to this topic now and then.

***

While I don't care that much about hockey, I'm still pleased that Canada won the World Cup of Hockey today. Mostly, I just like it when Canada wins things.

Sneak Attack

2004-09-13T13:20:00.000-04:00

For those of you playing the home game, September 7 was my birthday. My traditional birthday event involves me dragging a person or two to the annual CNE Air Show.

In roughly twenty years (I think), I've missed it maybe twice. I love the air show.

This year it was SouthernKitten who was my vict.. er, guest. SK has been very good about my airplane fascination. She willingly goes along to this or that airplane museum and only rarely tells me to shut up when I ramble on.

So, the Sunday of the Labour Day weekend SouthernKitten and I left at the very last minute and after a short subway ride and long walk arrived at the CNE at about the time the air show was scheduled to start. We picked the first available spot on a grassy hill and sat down.

The first thing we noticed was that we had wet bums. The second was that despite the show having be scheduled to start five minutes ago, there was a distinct lack of airplanes.

Being not that happy about the wet bums and less than impressed with our hastily selected spot, I suggested we move somewhere a bit closer, before the airplanes showed up, which I was sure would be any minute. SK suggested some rocks on the lake shore and off we went.

Ten minutes later, I was also unhappy with our new spot, and there were still no airplanes. I suggested a hasty relocation before, I was sure, the imminent arrival of the airplanes and off we went.

Our last spot was a seating are on a sort of a concrete ship looking thing that the CNE has for watching events on or over the lake. I was happy with this spot. My bum was dry and we had a spectacular view of the cloudy sky and no airplanes.

Eventually the show was cancelled due to a lack of visibility.

Not to be deterred by mother nature I managed to convince SouthernKitten (who is the best girlfriend in the universe) that we should come back the next day.

This time we didn't actually enter the CNE grounds, but hung out in a nearby park. The view wasn't as good, but we were stilled peeved about paying for admission the previous day and not seeing any planes. Also, we were a little short on cash. So, we plonked ourselves down on the base of a flag pole, and happily watched the airplanes for most of the show.

Then sprinklers popped out of the ground and started spraying the people twenty feet or so to our right. After indulging a little schadenfreund we went back to watching the airplanes zoom about. Shortly thereafter the sprinklers shut off and water started gurgling from the ground at the base of some bushes to our left.

"Do you think we should leave before it sprays us?" asked a wise Southern Kitten.

"Nah, it's just going to gurgle, not spray us" silly CanadaDave replied.

And gurgle it did, for a few minutes.

Suddenly sprinklers popped up all around the flag pole and started spraying us from several directions. I gallantly scurried away so the stream of water that had been hitting me smacked SK in the head.

After a moment of confusion SouthernKitten scurried with me and we watched the rest of the show from near a WWII monument.

The view was about the same but at least this time our bums weren't wet.

I am not dead.

2004-09-12T17:49:00.000-04:00

I haven't posted lately for a variety of reasons.

My last post was made from Orillia. I left there and came back to Windsor, but only for about twelve hours, and then I was off to Lexington. From there, SouthernKitten had a business trip to Indiana and I tagged along. Really, I could have posted from Indiana while she worked,and in fact meant to, but really, I guess I'm too lazy.

From there Southern Kitten and I came back here, but again, only briefly and then we were off to celebrate my birthday in Toronto. Since then I've been here. Southern Kitten left a few days ago and since then I had a bit of a financial crisis and had some technical difficulties with the internet.

It's all resolved and I'll be home for a while now, so, with any luck I'll get back in the habit of posting.

Now that the excuses are out of the way, on to something (hopefully) more entertaining..

***

The trip back to Windsor with SouthernKitten was not entirely as easy as one might have hoped. We got a little over halfway, well into Ohio, when Devilcat's sitter called.(Devilcat is SouthernKitten's, uh, kitten [cat, really, but he'll always be her kitten]) Seems that Devilcat had not been adjusting well to his temporary home. Consequently he'd been locked in a room upstairs. After a couple days of this the sitter decided that maybe he'd open the window and give poor Devilcat a little air.

This was not a good idea.

No one knows exactly how, but somehow Devilcat managed to pop out the screen and escaped out the second story, over asphalt, window.

The sitter looked for four hours, enlisting the help of several friends before he called. They made posters and everything. Clearly fearing the wrath of SK once she found out. He called just as we were entering the small municipality of Piqua, Ohio on I-75.

I could tell from the one side of the conversation that something bad had happened to Devilcat. Frankly, I feared that he'd fallen to his death. SouthernKitten asked that we pull over for a bit so that she could collect herself and then was ready to get back on the road north to Cold Cold Canada. This didn't seem like the best plan to me. Continuing north with a sobbing girlfriend in the passenger seat did not seem like much fun. (She figured I could just turn up the radio very loud and drown her out) Spending the next several days in Canada with the same girlfriend, now worried sick and likely occasionally still sobbing, also did not seem like much fun. (I didn't want to have to carry a radio everywhere) So I suggested maybe we should head back to Lexington. She didn't think we needed to. After repeating and rephrasing the question about a dozen times, she decided that maybe it was a good idea after all.

Devilcat is a... unique creature. He's declawed, which most of the time is good. (If he weren't, I'd have no legs left beyond the mid-shin level and he'd be a lovely rug) In this instance, out in the wilds of suburban Kentucky, no claws was a liability. As was the fact that his considerable girth means that running more that 15 feet requires a nap and his antisocial demeanor means that he won't respond to anyone but SK.

All this really meant that I thought that SK's immediate presence would substantially up the odds of a happy ending to this tale. (He comes when she calls. If anyone else tries this, including me, the most they get is a disinterested look)

So I turned the car around and we trundled back towards Kentucky.

About half an hour short of Lexington, SK's cell phone rang again. The sitter and his crack team of searchers had located Devilcat. In the middle of his neighbour's back yard.

So, Devilcat was successfully recovered and everyone was greatly relieved. Since it was now after midnight we decided that we'd crash at SouthernKitten's place and resume our trip the next day, after a bit of a rest.

All in all this little detail had meant that we'd covered a total of about 60 miles in about 7 hours using a full tank of gas.

Obligatory Olympics Post

2004-08-24T14:52:00.000-04:00

I feel that with something like the Olympics going on, I should probably at least mention them once or twice in my blog.

I'm not really a big watcher of sports. I don't normally watch any of the professional sports (even hockey, which is almost obligatory for Canadians). I'll watch football now and then, but only because SouthernKitten likes it and there is often beer involved.

The Olympics are different though. I've found myself watching the oddest things, but only because they are in the Olympics. I watched part of the men's rings competition, it looks hard, and I don't think I'd like to upset any of those gentlemen, but it's really an unusual program selection for me. I watched triple jump, which is interesting, but an odd concept. I watched rowing, and gymnastics and countless other sports. I don't know what's wrong with me.

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not constantly sitting in front of the TV watching them, it's just that they are always on.

The sport I've probably enjoyed the most though, is beach volleyball. And not just for the reasons JV enjoys it. Also because this is the first summer in a few years I haven't played it myself (no, not at anything bearing any kind of resemblance to the Olympic level), so I miss it. (I also miss Ultimate Frisbee, but it's not an Olympic sport [yet]).

Ugh

2004-08-22T15:06:00.000-04:00

I stayed out a little late last night and had a few too many beverages with Devilboy and Grover. Both had been roommates at one time or other, so we did some catching up and consumed more alcohol than may have been prudent.

We returned to DevilBoy's place and watched a movie (Hackers) and played computer games (America's Army) with his brother until about four AM. DevilBoy Jr and I had a good system going. He did the running and shooting part while I typed amusing things in the chat box ("Kill da wabbit! Kill da wabbit!"). I also gave him various strategic hints and tips. (Run! Duck! Duck lower! Shoot over there!).

Anyway, today I am paying the penalty and I feel rather gross.

In Orillia

2004-08-21T01:21:00.000-04:00

Well, I'm in Orillia.

Spent the evening drinking beer and setting up DevilBoy's new computer (which I am using to post this). Fun toy. When I get some money I may have to spend some on making my computer faster, better, more cool, etc. Yes, I am a computer geek.

SoutherKitten is back in Lexington. Her flight again landed with a complete lack of flaming death.

I'll post something longer later on.

Random Pants

2004-08-19T19:04:00.000-04:00

I took my second and last exam of the second half of summer this morning at the unreasonable time of 8:30 this morning. (see I used to hate people like me) It went fine and I was only slightly late. Fortunately for me, it was another multiple guess test (I knew it would be) which is something I do well, so time wasn't even remotely an issue.

With school out until Labour day I'm going to be roaming about the province for a bit. So, I filled the rest of the day with a combination of napping (yes, students suck) and generally tidying the house in preparation for an extended absence and possible guests when I am here. I collected dishes that had been left in random places around the house, I did laundry, I mowed the lawn.

While mowing the backyard, I made a bit of an unusual discovery. Pants. I found a rather dishelved pair of what looked like athletic pants whose owner I thought had likely been a teenaged girl. Now, I'm pretty sure that had there been a murder or assault of some nature in my neighbourhood I'd know about it. This is Canada, these things are big news.

Now, my standard of dress has dropped considerably over my year spent as a student. While a was working I didn't often wear a t-shirt without a button up shirt over top, and always tucked in. I shaved almost every day and wore shoes and socks. Things have changed a bit over the past year. My normal attire is jeans and a t-shirt (not tucked in), I almost never wear socks (this will likely change when summer ends...) and have grown a beard.

There are a few things that haven't changed though, and one of them is pants. Occasionally they may be shorts, but once I'm dressed for the day, pants of some kind are included. And I can't think of a time when I might have misplaced my pants during the day.

I know there's likely some benign and boring reason as to why there were pants in my yard, but what fun would that be to write about?

As I mentioned, I'm going to be out of town and traveling for the next few weeks. I'll be going as far north as Orillia and as far south as Kentucky. I don't know just yet what this is going to do to my update schedule. Possibly nothing, or on the other extreme, you may not hear from me until September. Time will tell...

Unwelcome guest

2004-08-18T18:21:00.000-04:00

Last night I stayed up a lot later that I really ought to have. I was fiddling with my blog template and working on the "Straight From the Bottle" logo you can now see near the bottom right hand side of my page (yes, I have the artistic ability of a very talented 7 year old). Eventually I realized what time it was and at around two in the morning I wandered downstairs fully intending to go right to bed.

On the very front of my little house is a fully enclose porch. It's not very big, and extremely cluttered. My landlord stores some assorted stuff in there, and so do I. It's basically like a garage that my car will never fit in, even in the unlikely event it's ever all cleaned out. When I first moved here I thought that cleaning it up would be nice... I could sit there during one of the frequent thunderstorms that Windsor gets, sip a frosty beverage and watch the rain. This will never happen. Anyway, one of the things I store in there is the big trash where all the little trashes around the house are emptied into, and then collectively carted to the curb on garbage day.

So, last night, as I was getting into bed, I heard rustling coming from the porch. I figured that a squirrel or possibly a rodent of some description had gotten into the aformentioned trash. So, I got up, stumbled to the door and flicked on the outside light to see just what was so rudely disturbing me.

I could see a black furry tail clearly belonging to the mysterious interloper poking into view above the pile of garbage strewn about the porch. It looked a lot like a rather big squirrel and I contemplated opening the door and shooing it out. Then I thought I saw a little white mixed in with the black (squirrels are black here). Then my guest's head poked up. My visitor was not a squirrel. My visitor was a skunk.

Opening the door somehow no longer seemed like an attractive option. I retreated back to my room and pondered the options for getting rid of a skunk. More importantly, the options for getting rid of it without getting either myself or my house sprayed. My best idea was going downstairs and knocking on the door. Not to startle or scare the skunk, but just to let him know I was there, and possibly suggest he may wish to move on to somewhere else now. I knocked. The skunk ignored me. I knocked a little harder. The skunk looked up with a "What do you want? Can I help you? Can't you see I'm in the middle of something?" look on its face. Clearly this skunk knew that I wasn't about to open the door and that a polite knock was pretty much the most powerful weapon in my arsenal. I retreated back to my room.

Online, mary, who being in the Pacific time zone was still up, had read yesterday's entry, and helpfully suggested that I should not alarm the skunk. Thanks... I further pondered my options and came up blank. Clearly this animal had me outgunned and knew it.

I sat and continued to ponder for a while, but before I came up with any more bright ideas, like maybe a little sign saying "please go away", the skunk decided he'd had enough of pawing though my refuse and quietly wandered off into the night.

I'm still not sure what else I could have done. Clearly I'm going to have to invest in better securing my porch, and possibly a skunk proof garbage container... And maybe even a little sign...

Acts intended to Alarm Her Majesty

2004-08-17T17:02:00.000-04:00

Back in November of last year, a couple of months before we started dating, I emailed SouthernKitten the following link under the subject "Kentucky in the Canadian News" Bathe yearly, or else. She didn't think it was as funny as I did for some reason. Well, today I'm bringing to your attention something that's possibly more silly in the Canadian Criminal Code: Criminal Code, [R.S., c. C-46] 49. Acts intended to alarm Her Majesty or break public peace. It's short, and that link is mostly to assure you that I am not making this up. It reads as follows:

"Every one who wilfully, in the presence of Her Majesty, (a) does an act with intent to alarm Her Majesty or to break the public peace, or (b) does an act that is intended or is likely to cause bodily harm to Her Majesty, is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding fourteen years."

Ok, (b) is completely reasonable. Causing bodily harm to Her Majesty just isn't a nice thing to do, and frankly, if fourteen years is all you get, you should consider yourself lucky. (You will also likely be roughed up by a guy in a big furry hat, which bears a certain ignomy all its own...)

But section (a) seems a little harsh. What constitutes "Alarming" Her Majesty is a bit vague. Would sneaking up behind Her Majesty and saying "BOO!" land you fourteen years in the clink? What about a particularly well brought up belch at the dinner table? Those offences really strike me as simply rude, or perhaps even a social faux pas. I'm also a little concerned that someday I might walk up behind Her Majesty a bit too quietly and accidently startle Her. I do that to people sometimes.

Anyway, if by some fluke of cyberspace Her Majesty happens to stumble upon this humble blog...

BOO!

Tests,Talking emails and SouthernKitten is in Vegas

2004-08-16T20:46:00.000-04:00

SouthernKitten left on a business trip to Las Vegas at a little before three today. After several hours of flying and a stopover in Atlanta she has now arrived in Arkansas. Well, 35,000 feet over Arkansas. She should be on the ground in Vegas in a couple hours.

I've been telling SouthernKitten that her flight will be uneventful, and even fun. She, however, is convinced that the plane will plunge flaming into the desert and she will die a hideous death. Seems Southern Kitten just doesn't like flying that much. I promised her that her plane would arrive just fine. She did not find that promise to be at all comforting, as if it turns out I'd lied she would be unable to hit or bite me. Personally, I think that should be counted as a plus.

I also wrote the first of my exams today. 55 multiple guess questions. No big deal. With any luck the second will also be this easy.

I also discovered Talking email today. If you're in Canada you've likely seen the TV commercial it's based on. It's such fun. I encourage you to check it out and send amusing emails to your friends and family. I have personally already sent four of them. Fun fun fun.

(Edit - SouthernKitten has informed me that she has successfully landed in LV. No flames involved.)

Slow week

2004-08-13T17:23:00.000-04:00

I finished my classes for summer semester yesterday and have exams on Monday afternoon and Thursday morning. Neither of these courses have been all that demanding and I don't really anticipate needing to do much in the way of studying.

After briefly flirting with the idea of trekking north for the weekend, SouthernKitten has decided that it would be a better idea for her to stay in Lexington and prepare for her business trip to Vegas next week.

What all this adds up to is a slow week for me. I can't really afford to do much until next year's funding is worked out, and I don't really have time to leave town anyway. Which is funny, because I have nothing but time, except for about an hour on those two days. But they're important hours, so I can't just blow them off.

So, I guess I'll do some housework and whatnot. Maybe mow the lawn, perhaps check out some of the stuff going on in Windsor this week.

A little background

2004-08-12T14:02:00.000-04:00

Living in Windsor, I'm not exactly at the epicenter of coldness in Canada. In fact, Windsor is just about as far south as Canada goes. So, while due to the vageries of currents and winds and other things I don't fully understand, Windsor is not the warmest city in Canada, it also certainly is far from the coldest.

It does snow here and it does get a litte cold, especially when compared to, say, Lexington Kentucky, as SouthernKitten can attest. But it's nothing like where I'm from, or other even more northern localles.

The expression "Cold Cold Canada" comes from my girlfriend, the aformentioned SouthernKitten, who finds Canada a mite chilly even in almost temporate Windsor.

I just hope no one from Timmins reads ever reads my blog.

I used to hate people like me

2004-08-11T11:08:00.000-04:00

I was late for class this morning. It was the last class of the course and while I enjoyed the content, I did not enjoy the timeslot. I don’t think I actually ever made it to that class on time. 8:30 in the morning just seems ungodly early at this juncture. Which is my point, really. Before August of last year I was a responsible adult. I went to work, consistently got up before nine in the morning and put in at least 7.5 hours of work every day. Occasionally, in talking to a (usually younger) friend or relative who was still in school, the person in question would lament evil pre nine AM classes and absurdly long four and a half hour days. I would usually quietly grate my teeth, glare and then remind them that every day I got up earlier and worked longer.

Now I am that person. (and more often than not SouthernKitten is the one doing the glaring)

Greetings from Cold Cold Canada

2004-08-10T19:33:00.000-04:00

Hey, how's it going, eh? This is my blog, welcome to it.

I guess I should really start with who I am.

I am CanadaDave. Former IT guy. Current university student. Political hack. Airplane enthusiast. Computer geek. Dater of SouthernKitten.

I am a member of the Liberal Party of Canada, and have slightly left of center views on most things.

I was born and grew up in Orillia, Ontario, now live in Windsor, but spent some time in between in Toronto and miss it. I spend just an awful lot of time in Lexington, Kentucky.

That’s it for now. We’ll see how the whole blog thing works in the coming days.