September 2004

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C2 - not New Coke

September 29, 2004 in Cultural Criticism and Health by matt | No comments

Well Phil was kind enough to visit the grocery store and bring in some drinks (the soft variety) to work. We’ve been lacking in this department since mid-summer. One of the things he got was a 12 8-pack of C2, the carbohydrate/calorie-reduced version of Coke. Being the curious gentleman that I am, I decided to “give it a go” and taste it.

It’s not quite as disgusting as I had expected and it’s nowhere near as bad as Diet Coke but not as good as Original Coke.

Interesting, on the site there’s a question “What does C2 mean?”. The answer?

It is short-hand for our basic promise: 1/2 the carbs (C2), 1/2 the cals (C2) and all the great Coca-Cola taste (C2). Ultimately it is a reflection of Coke C2’s sense of modernity and optimism together with the authenticity and realness of Coca-Cola.

Right, that makes sense to me. When I think of Coca-Cola, “realness” is what springs to mind immediately. And since when can a drink infuse a “sense of modernity and optimism”? Does the drink think that a better future is available to all who drink it? That’s an interesting concept.

At least Coke has had better success with C2 than with New Coke.

Edit: I should note that the opening at the top of the can is slightly smaller than the regular pop cans. I’m not sure if this to make the drinker think that they’re consuming less liquid or what. It’s definitely noticeable to me though.

Edit 2: Actually now that I look at two cans side-by-side, it’s not so much that the opening is smaller. The circumference of the top is different in the C2 can. Again, very subtle but definitely noticeable.

Laziness

September 29, 2004 in Life, Moving and Work by matt | No comments

I’ve been lazy this week, mainly because I’ve been sick and otherwise because I’ve felt rushed at work and at home to get everything arranged for Friday/Saturday.

I need a hair cut.
I need to shave.
I need to trim my nails.
I forgot to bring my wallet today.

I will get these things accomplished (and more!) by Friday.

Elevator door - fixed!

September 28, 2004 in Moving and The Apartment by matt | No comments

The building manager finally had a chance to fix the horrible sound that the #3 elevator makes whenever it opens on our floor. Often when an elevator is idle, it will rest on our floor and open its doors. The elevator in question would rub its door along the track (that sounds dirty) and would have a grating noise that I could hear in my sleep. That wasn’t very fun. I can only hope and pray that the elevators in the new building will be a) more reliable and b) quicker.

It’s coming!

September 28, 2004 in Movies, Politics and Television by matt | No comments

I just saw an ad for the release of Fahrenheit 9/11 on DVD and video. That might be something that I’d watch again, possibly even purchase. I wonder if Michael Moore will get the film on tv before the election. That would be quite the feat.

Previous posts about this movie: one and two.

The car that thinks

September 28, 2004 in Cars, Toronto and Travel by matt | No comments

Darren mentions the Smart Car coming to Canada.

This reminded me that Marcy and I saw one of these cars while driving to Whitby on Sunday night. I’ve seen these cars before, most recently when I was in England last year:

Smart Car

They certainly are tiny cars. Anyway the one we saw on the 401 was very peppy – it was travelling quite rapidly. I was quite impressed. I still think it’s too small for our needs but it’s nice to see cars on the road that have great fuel economy (85/65 mpg highway/city).

Addendum

September 28, 2004 in Blog Discussions and Moving by matt | No comments

A short postscript on my previous post: what this means implicitly is that this server will be offline until we get Internet access again. I hope it won’t be more than 10 days. I’ll post in the meantime on my other blog. I got an email from Livejournal this morning saying that my paid account was expiring soon. I’ll have to renew.

Internet access

September 28, 2004 in Going Extreme and Moving by matt | No comments

So as an update to yesterday’s post about moving utilities to our new location, I present with you the next installment.

I went home at lunch again and I called back our building manager. She said that yes it’s true that they don’t offer high-speed in the building but that it is planned for the future. She can’t put a timeframe on the process and she mentioned that a lot of people in the building have Bell Sympatico (DSL). I’ve had that service before and it was pretty good, the highest-speed is comparable to Rogers Extreme.

I tried calling the Sympatico number and spent a good 20 minutes lost in their voicemail system. My problem was that the number I wanted to get the service on isn’t activated yet and the menu items depend strongly on what number you enter. I finally abandoned the automated service and got a hold of a “customer representative”. I explained the situation and she told me that I can’t get Internet until the phone number has been activated. This means that I’ll have to call them back on Saturday evening or Sunday to schedule a delivery of the modem. That’s kind of frustrating but there’s not much I can do about it.

I wish Rogers had digital cable available in the building. Perhaps they’ll have it soon.

Don stomach knotts

September 28, 2004 in Health, Movies and Moving by matt | No comments

Well as I predicted, I’m feeling sick today. I had a fever overnight and my stomach is clenched. I’m drinking plenty of fluids and last night I didn’t do all that much except sleep. I did catch a movie but I’d rather forget that I ever saw it. At least it was better than the movie I saw on Sunday. This month’s movie list has seen a wide variety of quality.

Tonight I need to get some more packing done. I’ve had to cancel going to Hamilton because I really don’t think I’m up for the drive. Hopefully Kevin won’t be too angry.

Blog news

September 27, 2004 in Blog Discussions by matt | No comments

Well seeing as I’m not sure if this server will be online after the weekend, I should update on the status of this blog.

September has been a fantastic month for traffic. I’ve had more than 3700 unique visitors, up from 300 in August. Most of the traffic is because of the Ken Jennings-related posts that I made earlier this month linking to Jason’s site.

I recently had a shout-out on Dana Blankenhorn’s blog because I have him on my links list on the side of this page. He talked about my Last Casino post. I should let him know that I am indeed planning on pitching my reality show idea to the networks and look for me next fall!

My Map24 post from last week made it to Scoble’s linkblog on Friday though I’m not sure how many people saw it due to the volume of links that are on that site. It was still neat to be seen on there.

I’ve also seen a decent amount of traffic from pinging a couple of Accordion Guy’s posts. His recent PSA is probably more true than I’d like to admit.

Finally, James kindly linked to my post about First Daughter, concurring with me that Mr. Cranky does give some scathing reviews. He continues to talk about Total Recall which I must admit I enjoy from time-to-time despite its implausibility. There are some definitive Arnold lines in there and it’s too good to pass up on a rainy Saturday afternoon.

Notice

September 27, 2004 in Career and Humour by matt | No comments

Via Ian this afternoon I present you with this humourous webcomic.

Note: I’m not saying that’s what I went through when I decided to give notice a couple of weeks ago. I do know that the last three bubbles accurately represent me as well as most tech workers I would imagine. We like to know that we’re still important to the places we leave.

Head cold

September 27, 2004 in Health by matt | No comments

I can feel it taking root. Right now there’s a bit of pressure in my head and a little scratchiness in my throat. This could make the next couple of days kind of interesting if it does blossom as I expect. That’s the price you pay for hanging out with people who have the cold virus. It’s all worth it in the end though. I’m going to get lots of sleep tonight in preparation.

Destination services

September 27, 2004 in Going Extreme, It Happened To Me and Moving by matt | No comments

I had two of our utilities changed today at lunch – telephone and cable (tv and Internet). I had tried to use both companies’ online moving tools but one didn’t give me a success/failure answer at the end (blank screen in the browser) and the other sent me an email saying they couldn’t migrate my service and to call them (that was the cable company).

I called them at lunch. I first had the phone service transferred and that took a while because they had trouble finding my building in their system. I’ve now seen the building listed under Toronto, North York and York (this is where the phone company found us). Complying with utility policy, there is a $55 charge for moving my service like this. It should be working Saturday morning at 10. Our number is XXX-XXX-XXXX so give us a call after Saturday!

The frustrating episode with the cable company came next. I said that I wanted to move my digital television and Internet services. She took my address and suggested that I get “digital television” and “cable Internet” with them to have a cheaper overall rate (by being a V.I.P. member). I said to her that I already had Internet service through them, in fact I paid to buy their modem to get faster speeds. She realized her mistake and put me on hold. She came back and told me that the building that I’m moving into does not have an agreement with the cable company to provide digital television and cable Internet service. Now that definitely is not a good thing because that means I’m going to have to look for an alternative solution if this is in fact true (I left a message with the building manager).

In preparation for the inevitable “this is true” response from the building manager, I took a quick look at satellite service this afternoon. I can get a comparable package for a bit cheaper for month but I need to purchase the dish. The other thing that might cause complications is that we don’t face southwest as is required when you live east of Manitoba. We face due East though we can certainly point something southeast. Southwest though? That seems out of the question. I can get my Internet access through the phone company so that’s definitely a potential though I’m sure I can find cheaper/better service with a local ISP. That requires a bit more work however.

So right now things aren’t looking very good for us to continue our enjoyment that is digital cable, high-speed Internet service. I’m hoping to get this resolved this week either way.

The weekend plans

September 24, 2004 in Career, Moving and The Apartment by matt | No comments

Well in about 45 minutes I’ll be at home getting ready to pick Marcy up at the Aldershot GO Station. Naturally it’ll be great to see her again and even though I saw her early yesterday morning, I still miss her a lot. At least this will be our last week of being apart – next Saturday we move. That’s a looming ball of wax and we’re hoping to get through a lot of the packing this weekend. My list of moving tasks is still rather large. I’m definitely feeling a little stressed about the whole thing but I’m sure we’ll manage to get everything arranged and moved in time. Maybe I’m also a bit nervous about comes after we move – a change in career. That still seems quite a ways away but I know once we move I’ll only have one more week here in Kitchener.

Ed stayed at my place last night and he helped me move some heavy boxes into my storage unit. The storage unit is far too big for our needs but it’s the smallest they had and besides it’s not terribly expensive. The goal is to get a lot of the boxes into storage after this weekend so that we have more room in our apartment to finish off the rest of the packing. The next week is going to be very intense but fortunately we’ve had a lot of people volunteer/politely asked to help us out. Hopefully everything goes smoothly.

Golden Age of Life

September 24, 2004 in Music by matt | No comments

Moving from one good album to another I bring you “Two Pages” by 4 Hero. I picked this album up back in 1999 and it’s still one of my favourites and I listen to it often. I once again turn to the AllMusic review of this album:

It’s nearly impossible to listen to 4 Hero’s Two Pages without thinking about the incredible success enjoyed by the jungle movement (and Roni Size’s New Forms LP in particular) during the four-year gap which separated Dego and Mark Mac’s second album from their third. With LTJ Bukem, the duo were one of the first jungle acts to desert hardcore for the astral drift of jazz-fusion atmospheres, and Two Pages is about as fusion-soaked as it gets.
The first of the two discs includes the more downtempo R&B, almost orchestral side of 4 Hero, quite indebted to jazz luminaries like Pharoah Sanders, Lonnie Liston Smith and Roy Ayers. Many of the instruments are live contributions, while vocalists as wide-ranging as poet Ursula Rucker and Digable Planets rapper Butterfly make appearances. The second disc is the dancefloor (read: tighter) half of the album, skirting through dense soundscapes of paranoid breakbeats. As could be expected, more than two hours of music is way too much for listeners to work their way through, and a heavy editing job would have made this a stellar album instead of the flawed and somewhat bloated album it turned out to be. For drum’n’bass fans, the real highlights come with second-disc tracks like “We Who Are Not as Others” and “In the Shadows” — as it is, they’re so terrific as to nearly justify purchase by themselves.

I like that term fusion-soaked. I kind of agree with their complaint that this album is a lot of music to listen to. Often I find that I listen to a few key songs and then switch to something else. Most of those songs are in the first half of the album like “Loveless”, “Golden Age of Life” (love that choir), “Escape That” and “Universal Love”. They’re great tracks!

Now it’s onto The Cinematic Orchestra’s “Everyday” album.

First Daughter

September 24, 2004 in Humour and Movies by matt | No comments

Mr. Cranky gives a scathing review of First Daughter:

You know that impending terrorist attack they’ve been warning us about? I think this movie may be it. If I were the real U.S. President and saw this movie, I would immediately surround Hollywood with an invasion force and stop at nothing until director Forest Whitaker had been tracked down and dug out of his spider hole.
“First Daughter” is so bad, it may actually one day become a cult favorite, a centerpiece of midnight showings where drunken, rowdy homosexuals gather to dress up like the characters, recite the lines in unison, and throw condoms at the screen whenever first daughter Samantha (Katie Holmes) and love interest James (Marc Blucas) come together to exchange strained romantic platitudes. After this movie is over, you’ll know what muscles you use to cringe, because they’ll be sore by the time the final credits roll. Though she’s the daughter of the U.S. President (Michael Keaton), Samantha just wants to go to college and be a “normal girl.” You know how to wrap up these “princess just wants to be normal” movies in about 30 seconds? Put princess in a Wal-Mart uniform on the graveyard shift and take away her health care benefits. Since this is Hollywood, however, and not heaven, that doesn’t happen here. Samantha’s journey of self-discovery entails a mind-numbing procession of staged “spontaneous” collegiate moments. One example: At James’s urging, she eats popcorn and chocolate candies — TOGETHER! “It’s disgusting; I like it!” she enthuses as the audience, of course, cringes.

Ouch. Marcy mentioned the other night that she wishes that Katie Holmes would play a different kind of character than the one she’s been playing all her life. She does have a bad habit of playing a near clone of her character on Dawson’s Creek. It must be frustrating to always act the same way. Either that or she’s too lazy to find new roles.

Stone Chilled Groove

September 24, 2004 in Music by matt | No comments

One of my all-time favourite albums begins this way:

Closing of places of entertainment.
All cinemas, theatres and other places of entertainment are to be closed immediately until further notice. Sports gatherings and all gatherings for purposes of entertainment and amusement, whether outdoor or indoor which involve large numbers congregating together are prohibited until further notice. This refers especially to gatherings for purposes of entertainment. But people are earnestly requested not to crowd together unnecessarily in any circumstances.

That narrative is spoken overtop of the absolutely fantastic Fila Brazillia song, “A Zed & Two L’s”. The mix is by Coldcut, founders of the legendary Ninjatune label. I haven’t really been following Ninjatune’s path for a while but their old-time music (circa 1994-2001) still tickles my fancy every now and again.

This mix album is very solid from start to finish. It includes tracks by Fila Brazillia, Global Communication, DJ Food and the Asian Dub Foundation. That said, it’s very difficult to find any information about this album. I’ve never seen it in stores and it’s not mentioned on many of the discography sites that I visit. I’m glad I found it all those years ago.

Couch colours

September 23, 2004 in It Happened To Me, Lessons and The Apartment by matt | 1 comment

I’ve learned an important lesson – don’t buy furniture in cream or white.

You know that crazy story where you spill something or leave something on the furniture and it leaves a stain? Then you go to clean it up using a cleaner and the cleaned spot ends up becoming more noticeable so then you continue an ever-expanding circle of cleaning until the furniture looks like Poppie sat on it. Note: Poppie didn’t sit on my couch nor did a similar action occur on my couch.

We’re going to have to get a new slip cover for our couch. I put my desk drawer on the couch and it had left a rust stain on the fabric so I tried cleaning it but that only made it worse. It’s not a big deal but I’ve learned that it’s not a good idea to have a cream piece of furniture as your primary place to sit.

The commute

September 23, 2004 in Movies, Technology, Television and Travel by matt | No comments

So last night I drove to Whitby (as I mentioned) and then back again this morning. I’m tired but it’s worth it to see Marcy for the evening. I had a couple of errands to run before I left town, namely try to find a copy of The Crucible for Marcy to show her Grade 11 class. I haven’t seen the movie or read the book but we have the movie until next Wednesday so perhaps I’ll watch it before then.

Traffic wasn’t too bad seeing as I left a bit later than last Friday. Leaving a little past the main rush home made a huge difference and I barely had any slowdown at all going through Toronto. I left earlier this morning than I have in the past (before 7) and it didn’t make a huge difference in the time it took me to get back here. The only advantage really is that I get to work earlier and seeing as the deadline looms once again I suppose that isn’t such a bad thing. Traffic was slow in “the usual spots” (more on that term at a later date) but generally ok. One thing that really doesn’t agree with me eyes is when a pickup truck has something sticking off the back like a ladder or something. For some reason it seems like it’s going to hit my eye. I can’t really explain it and it doesn’t make much sense but there you go.

When I got to Marcy’s house it seemed like no one was home. I tried ringing the doorbell a couple of times but all of the lights were off inside so I figured that I’d just wait until someone showed up. Marcy was home; she had just fallen asleep. She’s been feeling sick this week and I think she might have a throat infection or something. I had some homemade pizza and chili for dinner (tasted great!) and watched tv for a little bit.

We watched the series premiere of CSI: NY. For a first episode, I’d give it a passing grade but I wasn’t overwhelmed by the episode. The story seemed to fall apart near the end. We did see a new magical technology introduced however – the triangulation modelling application. Now the principles behind this are sound (for once) but I highly doubt that it’s that easy to match up landmarks in a photo using software. Perhaps I’m just ignorant of the software that crime labs have available to them but I suspect the process would be more involved than what they show there. Anyway, the new show is most likely something that I’ll keep watching though I notice that it’s on against Law & Order, another favourite. I’ll have to see how they integrate the new character into that show seeing as Lennie is now gone.

Map24

September 22, 2004 in Kitchener-Waterloo and Technology by matt | No comments

I’ve been meaning to write about this since I read about it yesterday on Scoble’s blog.

See, in my quest for a great map I started with Mapquest. Many of you might even use Mapquest. It was among the first sites where you could stick in an address and get a map. Or, stick in two addresses and get directions.
It was the coolest thing. And everytime someone shows up to a party, invariably they have a printout from Mapquest. But, something was missing. The maps were small and weren’t really nice. I was looking for something, um, more glorious. One day a coworker said “visit Mappoint.” Oh, these are nicer, larger, more colorful, easier to read maps! And life was good. My quest for a better map was satisfied. At least until I saw Jamie’s post tonight. He pointed me to a new map: Map24. Now, this is a Java deal. But, whew, zooming maps? Oh, Jamie, why did you need to shake my perfect map world up?

So I tried out Map24. I was hesitant to change from Mappoint because it does what I need it to do so well – give me a general idea of where a location and is and occasionally give me directions on how to get there. I don’t need more than that most times.

I tried it out by typing in my address. Now as you know, I live in Kitchener overlooking Victoria Park. I give this preamble because when I typed in my address, Map24 indicated that there is an airport in Victoria Park. Now I know that I can miss details when looking around for something but I think I would notice an airport in my local park. I think I’ll be staying with Mappoint though the ideas behind Map24 is rather neat.

I really shouldn’t be very surprised at this though – most web services don’t provide much relevant content for Canada. Google just announced the creation of Google Local Canada. I tried searching for “coffee shops” near “Kitchener” and it gave me a list with places that are as much as an hour away. Ah ok, now I see that by default it searches for spots 75 km away but even when I narrow it down to 2 km it doesn’t find nearly as many as I would expect. Perhaps they mean “coffee shops” in the other sense. Maybe that would explain why the example search is “coffee shops” near “Vancouver”. Oh those crazy people who live in British Columbia – all they do is smoke marijuana right? That’s the impression a lot of people have I’m sure though it seems some residents like to heckle the Governor General when she comes to town.

Insect bites

September 22, 2004 in Cats, Health and Travel by matt | No comments

I think I was bitten last night by a spider or some other insect right on my jawbone. It’s quite itchy and has a little bump though nothing too serious. When I was in the car coming back from the animal hospital there was some kind of flying thing in the car and it was at that point that I felt The Itch. It’s not too bad right now though occasionally it does flare up in itchiness.

Pumpkin is doing fine by the way, in case you were worried. I picked her up around 6 last night and when I brought her home she slept for most of the night though she did come onto the bed at one point. She’s eaten some food and was walking around some more when I went home at lunch. She even crawled onto my lap to be petted for a little while. She’ll be back to her old tricks soon enough. I think Elle doesn’t know what to do with herself right now because she’s wanting constant attention when I’m around since Pumpkin isn’t up to playing. It’s cute. I hope they don’t have any troubles when I go to Whitby tonight. I’ll make sure to give them lots of food as usual.

Squarier

September 22, 2004 in Movies and Television by matt | 1 comment

I’m not ashamed to admit that I’m looking forward to seeing this movie. My interest is at an insane level. I just finished watching the trailer as a refresher. I saw it in theatres when Marcy and I went to see The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement back in August. It’s a funny trailer though the story is a little unclear from the trailer alone. Fortunately there’s a link to the story.

I’ve talked about the movie before and recently there hasn’t been much news to post. Now that we’re in the home stretch before the premiere, I’d expect the media coverage to increase. I can only hope that the Reformed Church of Spongebob (a radical branch from the now-defunct Church of Spongebob) gets more converts. I like their sacraments, specifically the Simple Pleasures Sacrament:

Lean forward on your right foot, with your left leg bent and sticking out slightly behind you.

Spin around, STOP!

Double take 3 times, counting out loud, one, two, three.

Pelvic thrust Wooo! and back again, Wooo!

Stop on your right foot, don’t forget it!

Bring it around the town.

Bounce on your bum twice.

Make a circle with your body;

A zig-zag,

A triangle,

A donut around your body.

Flatten yourself on the floor.

Bounce up with only one eye.

Then, stand on your left foot and blow a bubble (or pretend to).

Bringing it around town is one of the most important steps. I’m going to bring it around town tonight.

People are idiots

September 22, 2004 in Kitchener-Waterloo and Life by matt | No comments

I probably don’t need to give much evidence to prove my post title but I just read an interesting story:

Waterloo Regional police eliminated a few unsafe vehicles from the roads as part of their Project Erase program. In a joint project with area police agencies 194 charges were laid. Regional police say many of the vehicles were modified illegally, which made the vehicle unsafe. The car junkies retro-fitted the lighting on their car, worked on suspension and cut the brake lines to the drive wheels so it was easier to spin their car. In their check, which ran from May 28 until September 18th 60 unsafe vehicles were taken off the roadways.

So people seem to think that it’s cool/a good idea to cut the brakes to your wheels. I really don’t know what to say to that – I’m flabbergasted. In what kind of world is it better to have good spin control over braking? I can only assume that these cars aren’t driven on the street but given what I know of the modified cars in this area (see my previous posts) I wouldn’t count on that being true.

A dream camera

September 21, 2004 in Cameras and Technology by matt | No comments

I saw mention of Canon’s new professional digital camera, the EOS-1DS Mark II this morning on the Digital Photography Review site. You can see 4 sample images. They are extremely large files mainly because the camera is capable of taking 16.7 million pixels with each shot. That’s more than 3 times my camera’s 5 Megapixel count. That’s an incredible amount of detail and looking at the sample images, the results are absolutely incredible.

Of course at an estimated street price of $8000 USD, I think it’s far far far outside of my price range. I can dream though.

Those pesky robots

September 21, 2004 in Pictures and Technology by matt | No comments

I was watching the real-time web log statistics for my web server a little while ago and noticed that the MSNBot was requesting pictures that it wasn’t supposed to have access to in my gallery (I won’t say which ones). Concerned, I investigated and found that the album permissions were correct but the individual item permissions were not. That wasn’t good at all but I quickly remedied the situation. Thankfully Gallery 2 is powerful enough to do that. This has taught me to be more diligent in setting permissions on things like pictures.

Ivan’s Impact

September 21, 2004 in Pictures and Weather by matt | No comments

Found on Metafiler:

U.S. Geological Survey before and after photos of gulf coast barrier islands in Alabama and Florida showing the impact of Hurricane Ivan.

Some pretty amazing pictures though as you find out when reading the abstract that the original photos were taken 3 years ago. Still, hurricanes aren’t something that people can brush off lightly. I think this picture is one of the most stunning of the set apart from the first one.

People think of the strangest ideas to get rid of hurricanes. My favourite is and always will be the suggestion that we use nuclear weapons against the storms. The National Hurricane Center in the US even has a Frequently Asked Question addressing this possibility:

Why don’t we try to destroy tropical cyclones by nuking them?

During each hurricane season, there always appear suggestions that one should simply use nuclear weapons to try and destroy the storms. Apart from the fact that this might not even alter the storm, this approach neglects the problem that the released radioactive fallout would fairly quickly move with the tradewinds to affect land areas and cause devastating environmental problems. Needless to say, this is not a good idea.

This is not a good idea. I’d like to meet someone who thinks that it would be a good idea and discuss with them some other issues.

Curiously, this year’s hurricane storm name list includes my name and my sister’s name. So if Hurricane Matthew devastates your area, I had nothing to do with it.

Aside: I still think this picture (or more accurately, the picture in that linked post) has a passing similarity to a hurricane though I’m not sure there was a hurricane passing through the area at the time.

Operation Day

September 21, 2004 in Cats by matt | No comments

This morning I dropped Pumpkin off at the animal hospital to get spayed. Bob Barker would be so proud – we’ve had both cats spayed now.

This means one thing though – our days as cat breeders are over. Some might say they never really began but despite fervent protests to the contrary, it’s best for us that we go through with this operation.

That said, I was still kind of worried this morning when I took her to the hospital. She knew something was happening because I put together the carrier and only brought her with me. Elle could tell that something was happening because I never only take one of them without taking the other. Pumpkin wanted to touch my hand while we drove which was quite touching. I mentioned to the nurse that Elle had chewed her stitches very easily when we had her operation done in June and she said they’d use a glue instead of outer stitches on Pumpkin. I also requested a cone to put around her head just in case. It might be necessary but I’d rather have one than not.

I wonder if Elle will realize that Pumpkin won’t want to play. When Elle had her operation, Pumpkin would keep jumping all over Elle and Pumpkin couldn’t figure out why Elle didn’t want to play. Perhaps having gone through the operation now Pumpkin will be smarter. Maybe that’s just asking too much.

I’m going to pick Pumpkin up around 6. She’ll probably be pretty groggy from the anaesthetic and will most likely sleep for most of the day. I’ll go home tomorrow at lunch to visit her. Marcy was home when Elle had her operation so I don’t want her to feel like she’s by herself.

The things we do for our pets eh? Ah well, they make it worth it. We love our pets.

Appeasing Phil

September 21, 2004 in Pictures and The Apartment by matt | No comments

While in an effort to make Phil (and more specifically his comment) happy I’m going to post some photos of the Nissan Altima that I mentioned in yesterday’s post about Anonymous Anger.

Altima 1

Altima 2

Altima 3

Altima 4

Altima 5

The car certainly isn’t one of the worst modified cars in Kitchener (there’s a car that I’ve seen that has a spoiler made out of wood nailed onto the trunk) but I just don’t think the modifications are well suited to this car.

I actually saw the owner of this car last night after doing some shopping. The owner is a lady in her mid-30s and has a son about 5 years old. That definitely wasn’t the person that I was expecting to drive a car like that. I suppose the stereotypical (male, mid-20’s) didn’t fit in this case.

The Avalanches

September 21, 2004 in Life, Music and Weather by matt | No comments

Oh my word I had forgotten how absolutely phenomenal The Avalanches disc, Since I Left You, is. I’ll leave you to the AllMusic review to give you an idea of what this album is about:

Endless summers for many youths don’t consist of beaches and surfboards. Instead, they’re spent on blacktops and jungle gyms. More gritty and halfway between the curb and the hoop than anything celestial, the Avalanches remind you of a point in your life when you could blissfully hang upside down from monkey bars and just dangle.
Like recklessly riding your BMX or skipping rope after downing a sugar-laced pitcher of lemonade, the un-mawkish Since I Left You thrives on making you feel youthful and mighty. Its Utopian grove stand bric-a-brac of grooves, beats, flutters, whistles, oohs-and-yeahs, and sundry animal noises can alternately sound familiar and fresh. Some origins can be immediately placed, and those that can’t trigger an impulse that you’ve heard it somewhere before. You’re at least familiar with the tone as it relates to a long-lost feeling of childhood bliss — whether it’s staring at a clear blue sky from a fresh-cut lawn or the first time you heard “Rock the Bells.” If you want stifling touchstones, they’re there. Dunk the Beastie Boys of Paul’s Boutique and Basement Jaxx into the fountain of youth; Sylvester meets Tweety; Mercury Rev links hands with the Bomb Squad for laps around the roller rink. It’s no cloyed nostalgia trip, pieced together humbly by Aussies who are probably telling you the truth when they say they listen “to a little bit of everything.” The unflinching mix offers plenty of tempo variety, knowing just when to change the pitch before hitting overkill. The second half features a subtle lull that builds up in time for “Live at Dominoes,” possibly the strongest cut. There’s little doubt to Since I Left You’s status as one of the most intimate and emotional dance records that isn’t vocal-based. Working on a mystical level, don’t be too surprised if a future dig through the wallet unearths a membership card to the Summer Break Funk Association.

That captures the feeling perfectly for me. Boards of Canada reminds me of my childhood too but that’s a haunting, mournful reminder. The Avalanches are all about having fun during those “endless summer nights”.

I’m not sure what made me want to put this album on this morning but perhaps with the summer weather that we’ve been enjoying this week it’s an appropriate choice.

Watch the steps
Get a drink, have a good time now
Welcome to paradise, paradise, paradise…

Since I left you
I found the world so new

And it all makes sense!

September 21, 2004 in Links by matt | No comments

I’ve been curious before about why chess pieces move the way they do but never really had so much interest that I’d want to discover their history. Hugh (love those cartoons) has done me a favour and posted what seems like a plausible history of the chess pieces. Another mystery potentially solved. I like these two:

4. Bishops. Chess predates Christianity in Europe. The original bishop pieces were actually sailing ships. Sailing ships never go straight, but tack to the left or right i.e. diagonal. The sail of the ship resembles the bishop’s crown. The bishops’s crown was stylistically adopted in Europe during the Dark Ages, as Chistianity spread and naval warfare went into decline after the fall of the Roman Empire.
5. The Queen. The Queen’s entourage was always a small, highly trained bodyguard. The imperative to protect the women was very strong. If trouble was afoot it needed to get the hell out of Dodge very quickly. Ergo the bodyguard was very mobile and very deadly. It needed to be.

For some reason this knowledge makes chess more interesting all of a sudden. I haven’t played in quite a while and my last big interest was work-related (creating this community). I did play last summer against Marcy but I wasn’t too good at explaining all of the rules ahead of time. That’s probably why she won’t play with me again.

Headphone snacks

September 20, 2004 in Cats by matt | No comments

I just found out that one of the cats had been snacking on the one of the ear covers of my nice Koss headphones. I wonder what the covering tastes like. I don’t think that’s something I want to have firsthand knowledge about.

Pinched nerve

September 20, 2004 in Health and Life by matt | No comments

Pinched nerves aren’t very fun. I’m sure my shoulder/neck will feel better tomorrow.

The naming of children

September 20, 2004 in Cultural Criticism and Life by matt | No comments

Darren has a nice set of guidelines when it comes to naming your children.

I am, in any number of ways, a relatively-conservative curmudgeon. One of those ways is the naming of children. I have no children, and have never meaningfully contributed to the naming of another child. Nonetheless, I have devised a few simple rules for safely naming your kids:
1. Do not draw on an ethnic tradition that is not your own. This to me smacks of cultural imperialism and a kind of yearning for deeper roots. As a Canadian of many generations, I can sympathize with your lame, vanilla, Anglo-Saxon background. Tough luck. 2. Do not devise a creative spelling for your child’s otherwise-ordinary name. All you’re doing is making yourself look flaky and cursing the kid with a lifetime of saying, “uh, no, with two i’s”. 3. As a kind of corollary to #2, don’t use a normal-looking name but insist on an abnormal pronounciation. Unfortuntaly, the kid may do this on their own when they get to college. 4. Do not manufacture a name. People have been naming children for thousands of years. All of human history has done a better job inventing names than you will. Buy a baby name book and pick one you like.

I agree with those rules though certainly people will and do break them. I may even break them when I eventually have children. I constantly suggest to Marcy that we name our children “Quasar” or “Jukebox” (so far no luck in persuading but I’ll keep on trying).

I think most parents are sensible when it comes to names (I’m sure we’ll be included) but there are some people out there who want to differentiate themselves and it’s their children who are forced to deal with the consequences of this attempt at being a “cut above the rest”. When it comes to it, rule #4 is probably our best bet.

Traffic distribution

September 20, 2004 in Career, Cats, Kitchener-Waterloo, Life, Moving and Toronto by matt | No comments

Somewhat related to my previous post about anonymous anger would be this one about the traffic between here and Toronto Friday night.

I was driving to Whitby to pick up Marcy so we could go to Belleville for Marcy’s mom’s birthday. I left around 5 with both cats in the car. I drove down Charles Street – the secret way to get to Highway 8 – and when I was in sight of the highway I noticed that there were a lot of brake lights visible. I looked on the flyover and the trucks were basically stopped. I decided to take the secret way (there are a lot of secret ways here in Kitchener) around near Fairview Mall and picked up the highway there but it was no better. It was insanely slow. We were travelling no more than 10 kph and even then there were absolute idiots who didn’t seem to comprehend (or maybe they did too well) the idea that you don’t use the shoulder as your personal racetrack. This only slows down the rest of us.

We finally got to the 401 (according to Andrew, Marcy’s brother, the “mainstream of Canada”) and I was looking for the accident or reason for this incredible slowdown. I couldn’t find any. It was just volume. Now I’ve seen traffic in the area fairly bad before but rarely do I see it bad going out of the city. Kitchener-Waterloo is about 300,000 people and most people commute out of the city. At least that’s my impression. I could have the commuting profile absolutely wrong. It felt like the entire city was leaving for the weekend.

Anyway so the traffic didn’t really clear up as the 401 progressed towards Toronto. As soon as I got on the highway I knew that I’d want to take the 407 because the radio said that there was a slowdown near the airport and the 407 would (presumably) bypass that trouble. Naturally it took me quite a while to even get to the 407. Traffic in the left lane was dreadfully slow and people were constantly braking.

Aside: why is it that people seem to think that the only way they can control their speed is by braking or accelerating? You know if you just take your foot off of the gas pedal your car will slow down as well. It’s quite miraculous how physics works that way. Brake lights make people panic and if you’re constantly braking/accelerating then you’re bound to just slow down traffic behind you.

While I was slowly making my way towards Toronto the radio announced that there was an accident going west (the opposite direction that I was going) on the 407 near Highway 27. I figured it wouldn’t cause much of a problem since I was going the other way. Oh how wrong I was. I got on the 407 and almost immediately the traffic slowed. Now I may remind you that the 407 is a toll (electronic) highway. I have an instinctive feeling that if I’m paying for something then I should get better service. I know this isn’t necessarily true and I’m a firm believer in open-source and I’m not paying anything (monetarily) to get that software but when it comes to roads I just have that impression. I know that the Ohio Turnpike is a magnificent road and it’s because of the tolls that it’s so smooth. The 407 is smooth too (except where there’s contruction), it just wasn’t very fast on Friday. People were slowing down for – what else? – to look at the accident on the other side. Yet another thing that frustrates me. Don’t people have anything better to do than slow down their car and gawk at something horrific?

I eventually got to Whitby in 2.5 hours. That’s longer than the longest amount of time it’s taken me since Marcy moved there. To top it all off I had the cats in the car and Pumpkin is not a good cat for car rides or rather she’s not very good if she can’t sit in your lap during the car ride. Marcy usually has Pumpkin sit in her lap and she’s ok when she’s there but she’s a real yowler in the carrier if she can’t come out. She was honestly driving me crazy and I got so mad at her which probably didn’t help the situation.

The saving grace of this whole trip is that I got to see Marcy at the end of it. I ran up the stairs to her house. That’s how I excited I was to see her. Eleven more days and we’ll be at our new place. Three weeks I’ll be at my new job. I can’t wait.

Photo sites

September 20, 2004 in Pictures and Technology by matt | No comments

I’ve discovered a couple of really neat photo sites this morning.

The first one is called “I Found Some Of Your Life“. I saw it in Photo Matt’s feed and even if it is fictional, it’s still a neat idea for a weblog. Mark calls it “a Mark Approved use for a blog”. It would be fun to invent a storyline for a series of pictures. I wonder what such a storyline would look like for my photos.

The other site is called “Goodbye Romania“. The catch here is that each time someone visits the site, a pixel is taken from each photo so eventually the site will be destroyed by the actions of the visitors. I don’t have enough time to make up something like that.

A theme already!

September 20, 2004 in Blog Discussions by matt | No comments

Remember how on Friday I mused about the possibility of having Kubrick as a theme for Wordpress? Well it’s been done. I installed it last night and have it working with the latest Wordpress code. I haven’t had a chance to integrate the threaded comments yet. Hopefully I’ll find some time for that tonight.

Anonymous anger

September 20, 2004 in Cars, It Happened To Me and The Apartment by matt | No comments

A couple of weeks ago I was going shopping. It was a Saturday and when I got to my car in the garage I found a hand-scrawled note under the windshield wiper. It was a receipt from the TD Bank (without any financial information) and it said:

CAN YOU PLEASE PARK YOUR CAR STRIGHT

Yes, I was being asked to park it stright. Instead I decided to park it straight. Personally I think he was more concerned about me not crowding his parking space as opposed to how parallel to the lines I was parking.

What amused me about this note is the fact that I know if the driver of the car (a horribly ugly, modified Nissan Altima) saw me park everyday, there’s no way they would be so angry at me and my parking. The issue here is anonymous anger. You don’t see the person directly, you can’t look them in the eyes and tell them something and that makes your anger increase dramatically. This is the root of road rage. You just see their car and the driver’s actions and that makes you incensed beyond belief. I know I’ve been guilty of having anonymous anger before and it can happen in any part of your life. Somebody doesn’t clean out the lint trap in the shared dryer. Somebody doesn’t push their garbage down the chute (how hard is that?). Somebody doesn’t park their car straight.

It’s this kind of thing that makes society fun.

Numbering tabs

September 17, 2004 in Firefox by matt | No comments

I saw a neat tip about Firefox this afternoon – your open tabs are accessible by cycling through CTRL and 0-9. I didn’t know that. I did know that you can use CTRL + TAB to move through your tab list sequentially (SHIFT + TAB for the opposite direction).

Any way I can reduce the amount of mouse usage is of benefit to me. I still need to discuss Firefox 0.10 at some point.

Is Judo Better Than Karate?

September 17, 2004 in Cats and Firefox by matt | No comments

Well if you were to act out the question above using cats then this video might help solve it for you. Joey hypothesizes that you could use the video as a metaphor for the dominance of Internet Explorer and how the browser wars were originally won back in the late ’90s. I think that’s a pretty fair assessment though with any luck browsers like Firefox will bring back the Internet as platform idea.

I’ve seen our cats act like those in the video very often though the weight disparity between Pumpkin and Elle is not nearly as big as with those two cats.

Upgrading again

September 17, 2004 in Blog Discussions by matt | No comments

I just upgraded to the latest nightly build of Wordpress (though they’re not really “builds” so much as they’re a packaging of the PHP source files). I hadn’t updated in a while (since this day) and there were a few changes that I could see. The main problem right now is that when I upgrade I need to backup my current setup, move the new files and then replace certain files so that the site looks and behaves similarly. That can be challenging but I think I have all of the kinks worked out. One of the neat things that I see is the “Presentation” manager which lets you have different themes for your installation. I’m hoping that eventually Kubrick (which I love) will be a theme (or even the default theme).

The Last Casino

September 17, 2004 in Movies and Travel by matt | No comments

Yesterday I watched a tv movie called The Last Casino. It’s a Canadian tv movie so it’s highly unlikely you’ve heard of it. It’s about a professor of mathematics who trains a team of 3 university students to win at blackjack by counting cards. I thought it was a fairly well-done film. I liked the pace, the character development and most of the plot. The “investor” didn’t warm me over at all.

Looking at the credits I notice that the person who played George was also in Bulletproof Monk which I discussed in an earlier posting this week. George is a computer engineering student at the university and he plays a painfully stereotypical character. He doesn’t dress all that well, he’s a virgin and when he starts winning money he spends it on an XBox. When told to have some fun he eats alone in his hotel room. I guess I take more offense at this portrayal because I’ve had to deal with this perception of engineers and computer engineers in particular often socially. I remember when I lived in Mississauga back in the summer of 2001 and my roommate was absolutely shocked that I went out socially with other people. She was an engineer too! I suppose it comes with the territory.

Anyway, back to the film. I really liked the scenes in the casino and the training sessions. It reminded me a lot of the time I went to Las Vegas 2 years ago (pictures here). Mat, Sandy, Steve and I sat up quite late discussing different ways to win at blackjack (we played a lot of blackjack that weekend). We had a very good strategy that didn’t include counting and ended up winning quite a lot from one table. Man that was a fun trip. Marcy and I are thinking of going to Las Vegas during March Break next year. That would be a lot of fun too. I’m looking forward to taking trips with her.

CAFKA 2004

September 16, 2004 in Kitchener-Waterloo and Pictures by matt | No comments

I walked over to the bank this afternoon to deposit my pay cheque and I walked through the City Hall square. I noticed some fenced-off sections and some people looking very earnest and determined. I walked inside the building and found more similar people.

Then I remembered what time of year this is. It’s almost time for the Contemporary Art Forum | Kitchener and Area (shortened to CAFKA). These were artists setting up their projects for this year’s installment, entitled “Peace of Mind”. You might remember I posted about last year’s offering here and here. I also have pictures available in this album. I’m going to have to remember to bring my camera to work next week so I can photograph this year’s exhibition.

About A Boy

September 16, 2004 in CBC, Movies and Music by matt | No comments

I’m no stranger to Badly Drawn Boy. I wrote quite extensively about his new album a few months back. I really enjoy his music.

And while I may never see About A Boy (Tagline summary), I will never tire of listening to its soundtrack. Badly Drawn Boy does an excellent job setting the mood with his music.

I’m listening to this album today because I was listening to CBC Radio yesterday afternoon (driving through some horrendous traffic) and there was a commercial for the show Wire Tap. It’s an interesting show and from what I’ve heard of it (I listened a couple of weeks ago), the host has a fine taste in music. It’s on at a slightly awkward time however (6:30 on Saturdays) so I’m not sure that I’ll be able to catch it too often. I can endeavour to try though.

Comment spam

September 16, 2004 in Comment spam by matt | No comments

I’ve talked about comment spam before and about once a week I get a bunch of comments that need moderating. It’s a trivial task and so far I haven’t had any false positives or false negatives. The moderation capabilities of Wordpress are truly great. I have to laugh at this comment spam though:

I have always looked for a possibility to find information as quick as I can. Now there is the internet. And I really appreciate people like you who take their chance in such an excellent way to give an impression on certain topics. Thanks for having me here.
[Link to some random casino site]

It makes me feel good that the spammers find me such a great resource “on certain topics”.

Bulletproof Funk

September 15, 2004 in Movies by matt | 1 comment

Last night I watched Bulletproof Monk on TMNOD (The Movie Network On-Demand). I actually started watching it Tuesday night but I was so tired that I only made it through 30 minutes. I watched the rest last night before the hockey game started.

Let me say this – I will never get those 104 minutes back. The Metacritic score for this film is a balmy 39. Basically if you look at all of the better Hong Kong action movies over the last few years – Hero, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and the like and then you compare it with this film you don’t have much to compare it to. I’m not really sure why Chow Yun-Fat would want to make this movie but I just hope that they paid him handsomely for it.

One bright point – at least now I won’t have to wonder if this is a good film.

Amon Tobin

September 15, 2004 in Music by matt | No comments

I’ve had an odd musical relationship with Amon Tobin. I’ve seen him live in concert twice (described in some detail here). I’v