Yesterday I posted to the Twitter about how I could now use GMail for all of my email since Hotmail allows POP3 access. My Hotmail account has essentially been dormant for a few years now but I use it to sign up for online services since I don’t want companies using my main GMail account for spam.

Anyway the end result is that I’ve had about 2000 Hotmail messages come through to my GMail account since yesterday. I’ve been whittling that list down getting locked out a couple of times in process by Google but one old email from January 2004 really struck me. It was an email my brother sent:

First of all, I’d like to say how deeply sorry I am for doing this to you. I am fully aware of how hurtful this is to you, but this is the only thing I can think of to atone for what I’ve done. I suppose you deserve a better explanation. Suffice it to say, everything you know about me is a lie. It always has been. I’ve wanted people to like me so bad that I’ve fabricated this false life, not thinking of the consequences and who I may hurt along the way. I’ve done so many hateful things, just to gain favour. On top of it all, there’s far worse things that I had planned, but never had the guts to go through with them. Now that I’ve achieved that goal of having people like me, I realize how empty it is, because they don’t like me for who I really am. I’ve realized that I can’t really control myself at times; it’s very hard to explain, but I feel that I have two distinct selves trapped in one body. I believe the one that you’ve come to know and, consequently, love is the fraudulent one. Furthermore, I strongly believe in the statement, “with the good comes the bad”. The vice versa also applies. Therefore, I must balance the bad I’ve comitted with good. However, to accomplish this, I must keep myself out of relationships in general. As long as that happens, I can still do good. I’m finding it very hard to explain this without sounding over the top, or hard to believe, so…I’ll just end it here. Again, I know how much this hurts. Believe me, I do. But I have to make up for the sins I’ve comitted. I’m sorry. In any case, I probably won’t be here much longer…I honestly can’t stand it here. So I would’ve been out of touch for a while, anyway. Again, I’m so very sorry.

Ian

This all relates to another post on the Twitter where I announced that we were looking for Ian and created a Facebook group to help with that effort. The email I quoted above though could have easily been written after Ian took off in 2006. The language used is eerily similar.

I wish I knew where he was.

Bookmarks for February 9th through February 11th

February 11, 2009 in Asides and Uncategorized by matt | No comments

These are my links for February 9th through February 11th:

Tags: access, amish, baby, buy, culture, email, energy, finances, gmail, hacking, hdtv, hometheater, hometheatre, hotmail, interesting, mounts, pop, sleeping, snoring, society, speakers, theater

Bookmarks for February 4th through February 9th

February 9, 2009 in Asides and Uncategorized by matt | No comments

These are my links for February 4th through February 9th:

Tags: australia, bolivia, budget, canada, culture, disaster, dvd, dvdripper, Economy, fire, free, humor, nature, photography, Politics, ripper, software, utilities, vista, windows

Bookmarks for February 3rd from 11:05 to 16:36

February 3, 2009 in Asides and Uncategorized by matt | No comments

These are my links for February 3rd from 11:05 to 16:36:

Tags: aral, battery, Books, canada, climate, Economy, football, interactive, laptop, Movies, Politics, sea, superbowl, tools, twitter, water, windows

Bookmarks for January 29th through February 2nd

February 3, 2009 in Asides and Uncategorized by matt | No comments

These are my links for January 29th through February 2nd:

Tags: 2009, archive, banjo, budget, canada, children, coupons, design, Economy, funny, history, interface, iptv, leningrad, live, magnolia, martin, microblogging, Music, outage, photography, photos, Politics, russia, search, security, taxes, Television, tv, tvu, twitter, veteran, video, webservice, wwii, youtube

Bookmarks for January 27th through January 29th

January 29, 2009 in Asides and Uncategorized by matt | No comments

These are my links for January 27th through January 29th:

Bookmarks for January 26th through January 27th

January 27, 2009 in Asides and Uncategorized by matt | No comments

These are my links for January 26th through January 27th:

Bookmarks for January 22nd through January 26th

January 26, 2009 in Asides and Uncategorized by matt | No comments

These are my links for January 22nd through January 26th:

Bookmarks for January 21st through January 22nd

January 22, 2009 in Asides and Uncategorized by matt | No comments

These are my links for January 21st through January 22nd:

Bookmarks for January 19th through January 21st

January 21, 2009 in Asides and Uncategorized by matt | No comments

These are my links for January 19th through January 21st:

Bookmarks for January 19th from 12:00 to 17:36

January 19, 2009 in Asides and Uncategorized by matt | No comments

These are my links for January 19th from 12:00 to 17:36:

Bookmarks for January 16th through January 19th

January 19, 2009 in Asides and Uncategorized by matt | No comments

These are my links for January 16th through January 19th:

Bookmarks for January 14th through January 15th

January 16, 2009 in Asides and Uncategorized by matt | No comments

These are my links for January 14th through January 15th:

Bookmarks for January 13th through January 14th

January 14, 2009 in Asides and Uncategorized by matt | No comments

These are my links for January 13th through January 14th:

Bookmarks for January 13th from 12:28 to 15:16

January 13, 2009 in Asides and Uncategorized by matt | No comments

These are my links for January 13th from 12:28 to 15:16:

Bookmarks for January 12th from 12:37 to 16:52

January 12, 2009 in Asides and Uncategorized by matt | No comments

These are my links for January 12th from 12:37 to 16:52:

Bookmarks for January 9th through January 12th

January 12, 2009 in Asides and Uncategorized by matt | No comments

These are my links for January 9th through January 12th:

Bookmarks for January 8th through January 9th

January 9, 2009 in Asides and Uncategorized by matt | No comments

These are my links for January 8th through January 9th:

Bookmarks for January 7th through January 8th

January 8, 2009 in Asides and Uncategorized by matt | No comments

These are my links for January 7th through January 8th:

Bookmarks for January 6th through January 7th

January 7, 2009 in Asides and Uncategorized by matt | No comments

These are my links for January 6th through January 7th:

Bookmarks for January 6th from 11:23 to 16:49

January 6, 2009 in Asides and Uncategorized by matt | No comments

These are my links for January 6th from 11:23 to 16:49:

Bookmarks for December 19th through January 6th

January 6, 2009 in Asides and Uncategorized by matt | No comments

These are my links for December 19th through January 6th:

Bookmarks for December 17th through December 18th

December 19, 2008 in Asides and Uncategorized by matt | No comments

These are my links for December 17th through December 18th:

Bookmarks for December 15th from 15:26 to 15:54

December 17, 2008 in Asides and Uncategorized by matt | No comments

These are my links for December 15th from 15:26 to 15:54:

Bookmarks for December 15th from 11:36 to 11:36

December 15, 2008 in Asides and Uncategorized by matt | No comments

These are my links for December 15th from 11:36 to 11:36:

Video: KickYouTubes Lets You Download Videos Without Extra Software or Hassle -

Bookmarks for November 10th through December 5th

December 12, 2008 in Asides and Uncategorized by matt | No comments

These are my links for November 10th through December 5th:

I hate traffic

September 22, 2008 in Uncategorized by matt | No comments

Days like today on the roads make me hate traffic. Fortunately I was listening to Episode 361 of This American Life specifically Mike Birbiglia’s story about sleepwalking. That put me in a better mood. I hope the drive home is not so bad. We are potentially making an offer on a house tonight which is both scary and exciting. Keep your fingers crossed!

Recent Twitter updates

April 17, 2008 in Uncategorized by matt | No comments

As I noted before (really? back in September?) I post on Twitter my status updates throughout the day. I like the convenience of it. I have the Twitter user in my GMail chat which allows me to post through the web interface or on my Blackberry (through Google Talk on there).

Anyway I thought I’d include some of my most recent status updates on Twitter:

Exciting I know.

Tags: twitter

MTO rant

April 3, 2008 in Commuting by matt | No comments

Since I drive quite a distance to work now (approximately 40 km) I have to take the highway at least part of the way in. On the 401 there are handy signs that are supposed to alert drivers to the conditions ahead both in the collector and express lanes. It’s useful because it can give you a sense of what you’re facing up ahead and whether it’s better to be in one or the other or get off the highway altogether.

Lately though they’ve stopped actually using the signs to indicate traffic conditions. On many drives in it only says what the upcoming exits are. They do this even when the traffic is at a standstill. I’m not too happy with this change. Perhaps they’re on a work-to-rule campaign? You can view the current sign status messages online and the ones with N/A are the ones that I’m talking about.

The traffic has been particularly bad in the mornings that my new routine is going into the collector lanes early and getting off at Markham Road and taking Eglinton the rest of the way. It takes about the same amount of time.

Tags: Commuting, mto, Toronto, traffic

California Apricots

April 3, 2008 in Life by matt | No comments

I’ve been eating a lot of dried fruit recently (a health kick) and this week we bought a bag of dried mixed fruit. In there we have Mediterranean apricots, California apricots, prunes, apples and pears. I have to say that I really prefer the taste of California apricots over their European cousins. It has a sweeter yet tarter taste.

I wish they all could be California apricots…

Tags: apricots, Food, Life

Hoping for clear skies

July 4, 2007 in Uncategorized by matt | No comments

My umbrella broke a few months ago and with Marcy on maternity leave I’ve had access to the car more often than not so I haven’t bothered to replace it. That might come out as a bad decision tonight as I’m taking the bus home and it’s scheduled to rain this evening. I’m just hoping that the (crossing fingers) few minutes I’ll need to be outside on the way home will have clear skies and not the torrential downpour that Murphy has in store.

Sad state of reality tv

July 4, 2007 in Uncategorized by matt | No comments

Yeah it’s from 2003 but in light of today’s crushing defeat of Tsunami Kobayashi a coworker found this video of Kobayashi’s eating competition against a bear. Yes, a bear. Stephen Colbert would have even more reason to put bears on his number 1 threat in the Threat-Down after seeing this. It’s proof that they’re “godless killing machines”. Enjoy.
<object width=”425″ height=”350″><param name=”movie” value=”http://www.youtube.com/v/CLzWJgMxQWA”></param><param name=”wmode” value=”transparent”></param><embed src=”http://www.youtube.com/v/CLzWJgMxQWA” type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” wmode=”transparent” width=”425″ height=”350″></embed></object>

Enthused

July 4, 2007 in Uncategorized by matt | No comments

I’m feeling a little enthused about this blog of late. For the last few months it’s been mainly a collection of links but maybe it might return to being more than that.

I have no particular reason to feel so enthused though life is pretty great right now overall. I love being a father; it brings me so much joy to go home and see Jack smile and coo and in general be a very happy baby. We’ve been so fortunate so far that things have gone well with him. Naturally Marcy is amazing and I’m so blessed to be living with my life with her. Work is going ok: could be better, could be worse.

I’ve been playing around with Twitter a little bit. You can see me here or you can follow me through the badge to the right. I haven’t been into it as keenly as the rest of the Internet (seemingly) so we’ll see if the updates continue at their frenetic pace. Frenetic for those of you counting is 2 updates so far today. 5 updates since I signed up in April. Wow! I’d better slow down.

I also have a bunch of photos on backlog to upload to my Flickr page. These are mostly of Jack (naturally) but it’ll let people see just how much he’s grown in < 3 months. When they’re this small even the tiniest change can be seen. I picked up one of his hats yesterday and couldn’t believe that his head once fit in there. Now it’s more appropriate for his fist than his head.

Happy birthday!

June 29, 2007 in Uncategorized by matt | No comments

Happy birthday to Marcy! I hope your day is as wonderful as you are!

A restless rest

June 25, 2007 in Uncategorized by matt | No comments

So the combination of infectious Raffi songs being stuck in my head an ill-advised consumption of an iced latte in the middle of the afternoon translated into no sleep until about 4 this morning. It wasn’t one of my smarter moments.

Does this count as a parental rite of passage if I get Raffi songs stuck on repeat in my mind? Even now I’m singing “Jiggedy Jill fell up the hill…”.

If one penny is lucky

June 21, 2007 in It Happened To Me by matt | No comments

If finding one penny is supposed to bring you good luck then how much luck would I deserve if I found 8 on the ground? That’s what happened this morning so either I’ll have 8x the good luck today or…

I feel wrong looking at this

February 28, 2007 in Cats by matt | 1 comment

There’s something about this picture that I can’t resist looking at:

I feel there’s a racy story behind that shot. Perhaps A Current Affair should look into it. [via]

Another beatboxer

February 23, 2007 in Uncategorized by matt | No comments

Yet another beatboxer, this time with a flute involved!

Can I ride the bandwagon?

February 19, 2007 in Music and Technology by matt | No comments

Bandwagon

There’s a new service debuting this week called bandwagon that provides music storage via Amazon’s S3 service for a flat fee. By posting this link I should be able to get a free year of service.

Tags: amazon, bandwagon, Music, s3, storage

Classic Colbert/Carell

February 5, 2007 in Television by matt | No comments

Waiters Who Are Nauseated By Food [via] The Dana Carvey show had a lot of later-big name comedic names.

Tags: dana-carvey, stephen-colbert, steve-carell

An amazing beatboxer

January 31, 2007 in Music by matt | 1 comment

This video is well worth the watch. With no editing he creates a complete song on his own. At 3:18 he even slows the whole thing down into slo-mo. [via- now with permalinks!]

Luckiest man in the world apparently

January 29, 2007 in Family, Humour and Marriage by matt | No comments

I win not one but two UK lotteries!

UK NATIONAL LOTTERY HEADQUARTERS:
28 TAN FIELD ROAD,
CROYDON, LONDON.
CUSTOMER SERVICE
(24hours)
Ref: UK/9420X2/68
Batch: 074/05/ZY36

WINNING NOTIFICATION

We happily announce to you the draw (#1019) of the UK NATIONAL LOTTERY,online Sweepstakes International program held on the 27th January,2007, Your e-mail address was attached to ticket number:56475600545 188 with Serial number 5368/02 drew the lucky numbers :21-32-41-42-43-46, and a bonus number of (17) which subsequently won you the lottery in the 2nd category.You have therefore been approved to claim a total sum of £251,420 (two hundred and fifty-one thousand,four hundred and twenty pounds) in cash credited to file KTU/9023118308/03. This is from a total cash prize of £1,005,680 shared amongst the (4) lucky winners in this category that is Match 5 plus bonus.

All participants for the online version were selected randomly from World Wide Web sites through computer draw system and extracted from over 100,000 unions,associations, and corporate bodies that are listed
online.

Please note that your lucky number falls within our European booklet representative office in Europe as indicated in your playcoupon. In view of this, your £251,420 (two hundred and fifty-one thousand, four hundred and twenty pounds ) would be released to you by any of our payment offices in Europe.

fiduciary Agent: MR: MICHAEL MARTINS
Email address: claimsagent0607@sify.com

(Form HLP)
REFERENCE NUMBER: UK/9420X2/68
FULL NAME……………………..

…………………
FULL ADDRESS:…………………………………….
SEX:……………………………
AGE……………………………..
OCCUPATION………………………..
TEL…………………..FAX…………….. (If any)
COUNTRY…………………………..
E-MAIL…………………………….
WINNING NUMBER………………….Congratulations once more from all members and staffs of this program.

Yours Truly,
Richard K Lloyd.

Well I do consider myself lucky but that’s because of Marcy and the baby. I don’t need fake lottery wins to feel special.

Tags: lottery, Marriage, spam

No need for work

January 26, 2007 in Humour by matt | 1 comment

I got this email this morning so I figured the rest of my life is set:

UK NATIONAL LOTTERY HEADQUARTERS:
P O Box 1010 Liverpool, L70 1NL UNITED KINGDOM
FROM: UK NATIONAL LOTTERY:
WINNING NOTICE(CATEGORY “A”)
Dear Winner
This is to inform you that you have been selected for a cash prize of
£250,000.00 ( Pounds) held on the 16th of January 2007 in London
Uk. The selection process was carried out through random selection in
our computerized email selection system(ess) from a database of over
250,000 email addresses drawn from which you were selected.
processing of your prize you are to contact our fiduciary claims
more infomation as regards the procedures to claim your prize.
fudiciary agent:
Mr Jim Wat
Email:agentjanwhite@yahoo.co.uk
Mrs Jan White
(Zonal Coordinator)

I can’t wait to claim my prize. It’s my way to beat the system(ess).

Tags: lottery, spam

Make me uneasy

January 19, 2007 in Commuting and Weather by matt | No comments

Watching this video [via] made my stomach turn. I can’t imagine what it must be like to have no control over your car. I also can’t really imagine why you’d try and drive in those conditions either.

Tags: Cars, driving, ice, portland, Weather, winter

That’s some freestyle!

January 18, 2007 in Entertainment by matt | No comments

Via jkottke this video for Uniqlo. Watch it with sound if possible. It’s an amazing job.

Tags: dance, freestyle, uniqlo, video

The powers of myspace

January 18, 2007 in Music and Television by matt | No comments

Via Waxy I found this page that has hunted down the myspace profiles of some of the contestants that have been on American Idol so far this season. Some of the contestants have already edited their profiles and such to remove incriminating and potentially disqualifying evidence. I have to say that this season has been quite boring so far. I’ve actually gotten up and left the room because it just felt like they were rehashing the same tricks and poor performances that we’ve seen countless times before.

Update: Round #2!

Tags: american-idol, myspace

A brilliant idea

January 11, 2007 in Commuting by matt | 1 comment

It’s about time someone came up with something like this (for Canada). [via]

Tags: Commuting, complaints, driving

The Star

December 20, 2006 in Toronto by matt | No comments

I really like the new design at the Toronto Star’s website. It seems that this was the year for newspapers to redesign their sites. Good on them.

Tags: design, newspaper, Toronto, toronto-star, website

A lucky wake up

December 18, 2006 in It Happened To Me by matt | No comments

Yesterday incorporated much driving: Toronto to Peterborough to Belleville to Toronto. Much visiting was had and we didn’t get home until around 11:30 PM. On weekends I try not to wake up as early as I do during the week (6:20 AM) so yesterday I had the alarm set for 8:20 AM to give us a little more sleep. Before I went to bed last night I set the alarm back to 6:20 AM but apparently I forgot to actually turn on the alarm.

I slept rather soundly though too briefly. Fortunately Marcy got up for a couple of minutes around 6:25 which was enough to wake me up to look at the clock. “Hmm,” I thought. “It’s after 6:20 and the alarm hasn’t gone off.” I then realized that perhaps I hadn’t set the alarm to actually go off. If Marcy hadn’t gotten up then I might be still sleeping.

Tags: alarm, sleep

Breakfast Peanut Butter

December 14, 2006 in Uncategorized by matt | No comments

My breakfast everyday during the week consists of an English muffin with natural peanut butter on top. It has to be natural peanut butter to taste good to me. Marcy doesn’t like natural peanut butter so I get the jar all to myself. I bought Kraft natural peanut butter last time and it’s been satisfactory. In my opinion it’s not as good as the peanut butter you can get from the big containers at the Bulk Barn for example but it does the trick for now. I think the next time I’ll buy the non-Kraft natural peanut butter.

The only problem with my breakfast, since I don’t eat it at home, is that I tend to eat later than I should. I get to work and almost immediately start working (making myself a coffee most of the time first) and then before I know it it’s after 9 o’clock and I still haven’t eaten anything. That’s the situation today. I’m going to eat it now.

One period of stress is over

November 22, 2006 in Career by matt | No comments

It’ll be nice to get back to being a little more productive now that this has transpired.

Tags: Career, Work

I have this problem every year

November 9, 2006 in It Happened To Me by matt | No comments

How do you keep your poppy safe?

This is a problem I face each and every year around this time; I donate for a poppy and then a few days or in some cases the same day the poppy disappears somehow even when I put tape on the end of the pin.

Update: The Toronto Star discusses the same issue. I sense a meme.

Tags: poppy, remembrance-day

In case you want it saved

November 1, 2006 in Television by matt | No comments

The rumour is that Studio 60 (previously mentioned here) will soon be cancelled. Someone has already created an online petition to have it saved, a la Arrested Development [via]. Darren Barefoot hypothesized a couple of weeks ago that the show may be cancelled. Having half the ratings of CSI: Miami definitely doesn’t bode well.

Tags: ratings, studio-60, Television

Seen at McDonald’s

November 1, 2006 in Humour by matt | No comments

I saw this sign near the McDonald’s near work today advertising their Monopoly contest:

Want to win some cash*?

*Payable by cheque.

I found that to be quite humourous.

Tags: mcdonalds, monopoly, signs

Surprisingly still intact

November 1, 2006 in Life by matt | No comments

This Hallowe’en we only purchased 4 pumpkins for decoration outside. I say “only” because last year we had 10. That was partly because we had a Hallowe’en/housewarming party last year and we wanted the house to look festive.

Anyway so when I left the house this morning to catch the bus I was quite surprised that all 4 of our pumpkins were still intact. Not one was destroyed or smashed or taken away during the night by roving hooligans. Contrast this to last year when, if I recall correctly, at least one of our pumpkins was destroyed.

The trick-or-treaters that came to our house this year were far more numerous than last year. Last year we had people walk right by our house even when we were standing outside on the porch with the light on beside a jack-o-lantern. It was quite discouraging. This year we had all ages come to the door. I tried to keep the cats from escaping out the front door and Marcy, Andrew and Scott handed out candy. The one odd incident was when I had to pull Pumpkin to the door and Marcy got up to hand out candy to a bunch of teenagers. It looked like they were about to open the door and then they were rough-housing on the porch. Marcy managed to calm them down using her teacher voice (it’s quite scary) but it was an anxious moment to be sure.

Now it’s November and there are only 2 months left in the year. This year has seemed interminable and lightning-quick at various times. The next few months will prove to be very interesting both professionally and personally. All will be revealed in time though.

Tags: halloween, Life

Forty-five minutes

September 12, 2006 in Commuting and Toronto by matt | No comments

The rest of the week I have to take the bus into work as my ride has vacation time. Taking the bus to work in the morning is usually not a pleasant chore and now that school is back in session the potential for a truly awful ride is pretty high. Backpacks and the sheer number of kids wanting to take the bus combined with the newer buses that have room for fewer people means that personal space is at a premium.

This morning I think I got to work in the shortest amount of time possible. That is 45 minutes. Only about 30 minutes are spent on the bus, the rest is walking from the house to the bus stop and the bus stop to the office. The only way I was able to achieve that 45 minutes was to catch all of the buses right as they were leaving my stop and the fact that none of them were extraordinarily full. I try not to let it depress me too much. I figure I can listen to most of one album per trip so that makes me happier.

Tags: Commuting, Toronto, ttc

The return of allergies?

August 25, 2006 in Health by matt | No comments

It seems that my allergies have returned which is odd because traditionally they are done by July. However for the past couple of mornings I’ve woken up with a strong desire to sneeze and sneeze and sneeze. Also last night I had a big sneeze attack in the middle of the night (which was irritating because I needed the sleep). Perhaps I should purchase some allergy pills if this continues tomorrow. It makes for a more uncomfortable existence otherwise.

Tags: allergies

Calling out Jon Stewart

August 16, 2006 in Humour and Television by matt | 1 comment

Stephen Colbert decided to put Jon Stewart On Notice. Here’s the video from Monday’s Colbert Report about the aftermath of that statement. Very funny.

Tags: colbert-report, jon-stewart, on-notice, stephen-colbert, video

Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip

August 3, 2006 in Television by matt | No comments

Via Waxy for this particular link I’ve been watching the pilot episode for Aaron Sorkin’s new show Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip (more Wikiality information can be found here). He’s the creator of The West Wing (I posted about it here). I’m not sure how long the video will stay online and there’s even a rumour that it’s been intentionally leaked on YouTube to garner attention and buzz leading up to the fall season (YouTube and NBC have a joint agreement). It looks to be a show worth watching if the pilot is any indication. It has quite the cast – Timothy Busfield, Matthew Perry, Judd Hirsch, Amanda Peet, Bradley Whitford. Mondays at 10 it’s scheduled to air. That would conflict with CSI: Miami here but it’s rare that I’ll watch that show unless I’m playing the drinking game. Also from the Wikipedia article it says that it will cost $2.5 to $3 million per episode to make. That’s probably close to what it cost to create The West Wing.

Anyway, check out the video if you have the chance. I’ll be looking forward to Mondays at 10 starting in September.

Tags: aaron-sorkin, amanda-peet, bradley-whitford, csi-miami, judd-hirsch, matthew-perry, nbc, studio-60-on-the-sunset-strip, Television, the-west-wing, timothy-busfield, youtube

9/11 – The NORAD tapes

August 2, 2006 in Asides by matt | No comments

Via BoingBoing I discovered this Vanity Fair article about the 30 hours of NORAD tapes that they had access to on and after 9/11. It’s on my toread list.

Tags: 9/11, norad, september-11th, toread, vanity-fair

Fast Food Nation

August 2, 2006 in Books, Food, Marriage and Movies by matt | 2 comments

I think I mentioned somewhere before that they’re making a movie version of Fast Food Nation, the book written by Eric Schlosser. Perhaps not. In any case it’s a fantastic book that I read a couple of years ago. The movie version is directed by Richard Linklater and comes out this October (the 6th to be precise). I just watched the trailer for the film and it looks pretty interesting. I would have never thought that the book could be made into a movie and particularly not a fictional one but from the trailer it looks like they may have pulled it off. We’ll see for sure once October rolls around and it’ll be interesting to see what the fast food companies do in terms of a reaction to the film because it’s pretty damning of their practices and offerings. They won’t be getting much positive praise in the media come October that’s for sure.

During my university days fast food made up an unhealthy amount of our diet. However since graduation and particularly after getting married the amount of fast food that I eat is down near the zero range. That’s definitely thanks to Marcy; she keeps me alive in more ways than one and if I didn’t have her I’m sure my diet would consist of little “good” food. That’s not to say that I wouldn’t eat healthily but I’m more healthy because Marcy is with me. I can thank my stars for that.
The link to the trailer comes courtesy of the fantastic The Movie Blog. I started reading John’s site a few months back and it brings me my movie-related news each and everyday. It rarely disappoints.

Tags: eric-schlosser, fast-food-nation, Food, greg-kinnear, Movies, richard-linklater

Wikiality

August 2, 2006 in Cultural Criticism, Humour, Technology and Television by matt | No comments

Stephen Colbert did a very amusing “The Word” segment on Tuesday about Wikipedia. You can see it here on YouTube while it’s still online. He discusses how with Wikipedia you can build truth and reality through consensus as opposed to facts. He edited his own page and encouraged people to edit the page on elephants saying how the population has tripled in Africa over the last six months. It was a very humourous discussion which prompted quite a few pages to be locked down and protected because the SysOps on Wikipedia didn’t want vandalism. I believe the pages are still protected because if there’s one thing that The Nation can do it’s follow their leader.

Anil had a great article on Wikipedia entitled “Antipedia” the other day and it provided some excellent reference links for further reading on what the future of Wikipedia could be and a discussion on what it has become. I’ve bookmarked them for later reading when I get some free time (should happen any day now right?).

I think Wikipedia is a great community achievement. Considering how frequently I link to it from here I use it quite frequently but I would not use it as a definitive reference. I’ve had this discussion with Marcy too because a lot of her students tend to use Wikipedia in their research, usually as the sole source for their research. That’s not a good practice; high school students need to know how to do proper research – visiting an actual library, reading the books, taking notes. Using Google alone to do your research is not really researching. There’s a lot of skill involved in researching and I hope that that is a skill that doesn’t get lost in the coming years.

Tags: colbert-nation, colbert-report, elephants, research, stephen-colbert, wikiality, wikipedia

It’s a heat wave

August 2, 2006 in Career, Toronto, Travel and Weather by matt | 1 comment

Well as I alluded to yesterday we are in the midst of a heat wave this week here in Toronto. Today or tonight it should break with some welcome relief via thunderstorms. I have my new umbrella with me in case it starts to rain when I’m heading home.

As of Friday I’m on vacation until the 14th. It’s a well-deserved vacation and I’m looking forward to spending some time during the day with Marcy. We’re going to Ohio this weekend to visit my parents and then next weekend we’re planning on going up to Thomas and Christal’s cottage for a couple of days and then the last weekend the plan is to go to Ottawa. I’ve never been and I think I should probably see our capital at some point.

After the vacation is done it will be time for some internal searching to determine my next path. Don’t worry, I’ll let you know what I decide and it’ll most likely be in cryptic sentences.

Tags: cottage, ohio, ottawa, Toronto, Travel, vacation, Weather

30 at 8:30

August 1, 2006 in Toronto and Weather by matt | No comments

The temperature this morning was 30 degrees at 8:30. My glasses fogged up when I went outside. I’m going to try and stay inside as much as possible today because I’m sure the heat and haze and humidity will be quite oppressive today. It’s looking like the temperature will break on Thursday with a nice cool front. Until then we suffer in silence.

Tags: heat, Toronto, Weather

Enchantment under the sea

July 28, 2006 in Asides by matt | No comments

Someone edited the films Back to the Future Part I and Part II to show the common scenes from both films side-by-side. It’s quite extraordinary [via].

Tags: 1955, back-to-the-future, enchantment-under-the-sea, films, hill-valley, Movies, video

Be an expert on everything

July 26, 2006 in Asides by matt | No comments

A series of tips from the expert himself [via].

Tags: expert, stephen-colbert, tips, wired

Count Chocula

July 19, 2006 in Food and Humour by matt | No comments

Did you ever wonder about the history of Count Chocula the man? If you’re like me you’ve probably wasted many sleepless nights figuring this and other things out. Well wonder no more! Some kind soul added the Count’s biography to his Wikipedia page. Well actually it was there but someone decided that it was fictional and thus not worthy of inclusion. Someone else tried to lobby for its reinclusion (”It is my opinion that the previous “fanfic” is an important contribution to the lore of Chocula, and as well to the emotional and psychological contexts persons have come to associate with the brand.”) but alas the powers that be did not approve. I’ll include what the biography below:

Ernst Choukula was born the third child to Estonian landowers in the late autumn of 1873. His parents, Ivan and Brushken Choukula, were well-established traders of Baltic grain who– by the early twentieth century–had established a monopolistic hold on the export markets of Lithuania, Latvia and southern Finland. A clever child, Ernst advanced quickly through secondary schooling and, at the age of nineteen, was managing one of six Talinn-area farms, along with his father, and older brother, Grinsh. By twenty-four, he appeared in his first “barrelled cereal” endorsement, as the Choukula family debuted “Ernst Choukula’s Golden Wheat Muesli”, a packaged mix that was intended for horses, mules, and the hospital ridden. Belarussian immigrant silo-tenders started cutting the product with vodka, creating a crude mush-paste they called “gruhll” or “gruell,” and would eat the concoction each morning before work. The trend unwittingly spread, with alcohol being replaced by sheep–and then cow’s–milk, and the demand for the Choukula’s “cereal” reached as far south as Poland and as far west as the northern Jutland province of Denmark. It wasn’t long before the unmistakable image (the original packaging, a three gallon wooden vat which featured a burnt etching of a jubilant, overalled Ernst holding a large dog and grinning broadly) made a pop-cultural splash throughout the entirety of Europe and northern Africa. In fact, Tunisia’s “Carthagian Sand Crunch” was seen as the first imitation of the Choukula form; the aforementioned product was presented in broad leathern bags with the woven insignia of a nude tribesman holding a sword and a bunched stalk of oats. Sadly, this would neither be the first nor the tamest appropriation of Ernst’s iconic visage. Meanwhile, in the “textile paradise”-region of Schenectady / Elmira New York, General Peter Mills–a celebrated turret gunner in McKinley’s navy–was first beginning to mine America’s seemingly insatiable desire to consume food before high noon. The trend, initially known in the United States as “brekkfest” had first appeared in 1903, with Dominic Eggo’s invention of “wassled” or “waffled” bread, and really picked up steam throughout the teens and twenties, when eating in the morning was no longer deemed a sin by the Anglo-Catholic church. News of Choukula’s economic domination across the Atlantic fascinated and troubled Mills, who was eager for similar success. In 1927, while vacationing the Iberian peninsula, he first encountered three discarded barrels of “Duke Choukula’s Animal Supplement” (the name and design of the product had undergone several makeovers throughout the previous seven years, the most recent of which featured Ernst dressed in a cape and tiara, reflecting his family’s oft-disputed ties to Eurasian royalty). Immediately intrigued, Mills brought one with him on his boat ride back to the States, and spent the twenty-three day trip obsessively studying the packaging. In the spring of 1929, General Mills’ “Prince Chocula’s Morning Digestive” was picked up for distribution in three dozen pharmacies, grocery stands and agrarian carts throughout New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and northern Maryland. The public response was confused and angered at the recipe’s savory, clove-like sting; apparently a confusion over the name led many to believe the breakfast was made from chocolate, and by 1931 the formula had been updated to reflect the nation’s collective sweet tooth. In 1932, boxes were labeled simply “Count Chocula’s Chocolate Food” and Peter Mills was named Life Magazine’s “Humanitarian of the Year, 1933″. Ernst Chocula died in a Ukrainian cabin, penniless and alone, having descended into a type of brain-madness.

This information provided [via].

Tags: count-chocula, ernst-chocula, wikipedia

Beyond sad

July 18, 2006 in Cultural Criticism and Toronto by matt | No comments

This story depresses me. A teenage boy is beaten to death. I knew about this yesterday when my landlord mentioned it on the ride in. I thought it was at night or that no one was around to see it.

Nope. People witnessed the beating and didn’t call the police. They thought it was the old “boys will be boys” routine. Sure this neighbourhood isn’t the greatest or the safest (really) but there’s a difference between play fighting and someone getting a serious beating (serious enough to die).

At times I’m disappointed with people. This is one of those times. I can’t really say more than that.

Tags: beating, crime, death, flemingdon-park, Toronto, witness

Seen in the washroom

July 18, 2006 in The Office by matt | 3 comments

I just saw this hand-written note in the washroom:

Hi: Please

be considerate the cleaners and others by leaving nasty the toilet seat.

Thank you.

It’s advice worth taking I think.

Tags: bathroom, The Office

Taking a risk

July 14, 2006 in Health and Weather by matt | 1 comment

I took a very large risk this morning.

Recall that I need to take allergy pills almost everyday during the summer. Bad things can happen if I don’t.

This morning when I looked in the medicine cabinet, I found that there were no more allergy pills for me to take. That’s not exactly true; there was a box of Allegra but I looked at the expiration date and it was March 2006. My choices were:

Take the expired medicine and accept the consequences. I might end up passed out in a ditch somewhere or I might be fine.
Don’t take any medicine and hope that the pollen count in the air today isn’t too high. If it is too high then I could be sneezing all day.

I choose the second option. So far it’s working out alright but I know that at any moment I could spin out of control into a sneeze attack. It looks like we’re due for a heat wave over the next few days which tends to make everything quite dusty so in all likelihood, I’ll have to purchase some more allergy pills soon.

Tags: allegra, allergies, expired, heat, medication, Weather

For the grammar addicts

July 13, 2006 in Asides by matt | No comments

A list of non-errors: things people tell you are incorrect grammatically but are a part of standard English [via].

Tags: english, grammar, non-error

A little toasted

July 12, 2006 in It Happened To Me, Sports, Toronto and Weather by matt | No comments

I came. I saw. I golfed. It wasn’t nearly as bad as I was fearing. I had some help learning the swing and managed to hit some balls a fair distance before we started (fair being greater than 10 yards in this case). We were the very last group of the company which meant that we had to wait a lot for the people in front of us to finish. It rained quite heavily on Monday so the course was quite damp and so they woudln’t allow carts on the course. This meant that we had to walk the whole day. In the sun with the humidity of the wet grass, it made for quite the trek. Fortunately the designers of the golf course realized how much of a relief it would be to make the 18th hole a long, uphill hole. That was very kind of them. Remind me to thank them for that bit of design work.

The golfing was pretty fun. We played scramble where you play the best ball of the 4 on each shot. Collectively we shot 1 or 2 over on each hole which wasn’t bad for a group that included 2 people who had never golfed before. I hit a couple of really good shots but most of mine didn’t go very far at all. When I was asked on Monday which hand of clubs I wanted (left or right), I chose left but then when I got them yesterday at the golf club, I realized that left would work but I would really prefer right.

Even though I am left handed (and proud of it), I hit from the right. When I used to play baseball it was the same way – catch and throw like a southpaw but hit from the right. So essentially the clubs that I got were useless and had to lug them around all day while borrowing clubs from the other people on my team.

I applied sunscreen liberally throughout the day but since it was so hot and humid I ended up sweating a fair amount. I think it may have washed away some of the sunscreen because a fair burn on my face. I stupidly did not apply any sunscreen at all to the backs of my legs and since I was wearing shorts they got quite toasted. I had a lot of trouble sleeping last night because my joints were quite sore on top of the sunburn that I got. On top of that, this morning was a 6:30 (more like 6:45) pickup for work so I had to get up even earlier. I’m not feeling terribly tired yet but that will probably come later on this afternoon.

I get to golf next weekend for a bachelor party so this opportunity to practice yesterday will likely lead me to dominate the game when I play next. The ~~Tiger~~ ~~Shark~~ Something will be on the prowl.

Tags: golf, It Happened To Me, Sports, sunburn

Pharrell Williams

July 5, 2006 in Life, Music and Work by matt | 1 comment

Pharrell Williams was on the Gilles Peterson show this past week. Even if you don’t know him by name, you certainly know him by the tracks he’s produced as part of the Neptunes. He’s one of the best producers in the industry and he’s made me appreciate the Justin Timberlake album. Think about that last statement for a second. Justin Timberlake.

It’s really an amazing interview with him on the Worldwide show. He spends two hours talking with Gilles about all kinds of different things and they play some really awesome music and not just music that Pharrell produced but some Roy Ayers, Minnie Riperton and Gil Scott Heron.

Listening to the show puts me in such a good mood. I was so productive yesterday at work as a result. Gilles said on the show that listening to Pharrell’s music is like meeting a girl for the first time; the butterflies and the general euphoria that you feel. Heck, I was even in a N*E*R*D* phase when I met Marcy 3 years ago. Remember? That was definitely a period in my life with a surplus of euphoria.

So I’m going to keep listening to this show while I’m at work this week. If it keeps me in a good mood, I can’t mess with that.

Tags: bbc, gil-scott-heron, gilles-peterson, minnie-riperton, Music, nerd, pharrell-williams, radio, roy-ayers, the-neptunes, Work

First an earthquake, now a tornado

July 4, 2006 in CBC and Weather by matt | No comments

It seems that Perth-Andover can’t catch a break from the weather this spring/summer. Remember a month ago they had an earthquake (minor). Now I read that there was a reported tornado there on Sunday night. Or rather a small town near Perth-Andover, Glassville, had an F1 tornado (winds up to 116 km/h). Fortunately most people were away for the long weekend so there weren’t many injuries. I wonder what will happen next – a firestorm? Mudslides? I surely hope not.

Tags: CBC, earthquake, glassville, new-brunswick, perth-andover, tornado, Weather

White hat hijacking of RSS feeds

June 30, 2006 in Blog Discussions by matt | 2 comments

I subscribe to Guy Kawasaki’s feed. Or at least I thought I did. He’s an interesting writer and I like to read what he writes about. In my feed reader this morning there was post on his feed but when you read it you realize that it’s something else entirely:

This is an incredibly small blog that’s intended to: redirect you to Guy’s new feed, show Guy (and others) the reason why they don’t want to just let their Feedburner feeds get deleted, and gently inform Feedburner, Bloglines and others of a little problem that needs to be fixed.

For those of you who are are seeing this message in your feed reader and wondering why I’m not sounding like Guy Kawasaki, here’s the deal. You are subscribed to an outdated Feedburner feed that Guy allowed to lapse. You should unsubscribe to this feed and subscribe to his current feed, which is located at this URL:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/guykawasaki/Gypm

Message to Guy… See? This is what I’m talking about. By allowing your Feedburner feed to get deleted, you’ve opened your subscribers up to having somebody else (like me) to come along, create a feed by the same name in Feedburner, and capture the eyeballs of your subscribers.

Message to Feedburner… Ahem. Perhaps you want to think about the process by which feeds are deleted? Some kind of waiting period (a month, 6 months?) before somebody else can create a feed with the same name? Perhaps some kind of permission-granting thingy?

Message to Bloglines… Ahem. The reason I can do this is because of your tendency not to clear out the cache of “subscribable” feeds very often. I pounded Guy’s blog URL into your “Add” gizmo and got a huge list of feeds, including 2 obsolete Feedburner feeds. I found the “hijackable” feeds by going to the feed URLs in turn, and finding a couple that have been deleted from Feedburner.

If I was an unscrupulous type guy, I could put up a site that: looks just like Guy’s site but spoofs his unsuspecting subscribers into clicking on things by hijacking his credibility, or direct his subscribers to his competitors or do any of the things that people do with domain names that expire…

Yep, here’s the issue — this is just like dropping domain names. ‘Cause that’s what’s happening, a feed URL is being dropped in such a way that somebody could easily write a script to, um, snap up those domains.That’s it. Remember, Guy’s real feed has moved to:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/guykawasaki/Gypm

Onward,

Mike — www.haven.com

This is the risk of letting someone else manage your RSS feed. I fall victim to the same flaw as I too use FeedBurner to manage my RSS feed. This wouldn’t happen if I managed it myself. I don’t have the readership that Guy does so it’s not really a big risk to me to use FeedBurner but Mike here has shown that it’s not that difficult to hijack a feed. He’s white hat in that he’s redirecting people to Guy’s proper feed but he could have continued to pretend he was Guy. We’ll see if Guy responds to this at all (or if he even knows).

Tags: feedburner, guy-kawasaki, hijack, rss, white-hat

I still hate Garbage Fridays

June 23, 2006 in Lessons by matt | No comments

Remember my original Garbage Fridays post? Well almost exactly what I described before happened this morning. I was very tired this morning so it took me a bit longer to get ready. It was about 6:55 when I finally got outside to lug the garbage bins to the front to be picked up. The problem was that not only was the garbage truck early, it had already passed our house. Cursing to myself I returned inside. I felt quite angry at myself for missing the pickup because we had a lot of garbage to take away, particularly in our green bin. The next garbage pickup is two weeks away which wasn’t as big a problem back in the winter since it’s cold and the garbage doesn’t smell as much but now that it’s summer time, you really don’t want to have garbage lying around for too long in the sun. I may have to make a trip to the city’s drop-off depots on Monday in order to get rid of the stuff. The raccoons have been out in full force (I had to scare away 6 the other night from our recycling containers) so I really don’t want to have that garbage around for much longer.

I think the lesson is – make sure that I always wake up on time on Fridays that are also Garbage Fridays.

Tags: garbage-fridays, Lessons, raccoons

Wikipedia Contrail

June 22, 2006 in Technology by matt | No comments

Inspired by Jason’s post about his Wikipedia Contrail I’ve decided to post my own. I’ll provide each item with a little blurb:

Andrew Kahr – one of the reasons why Americans are in so much credit card debt
Cube Route – a Piers Anthony book that I haven’t read (actually I haven’t read any Piers Anthony books)
Home Depot – you can never know enough about the world’s 3rd largest retailer
Kelley Blue Book – I’m trying to keep a more accurate appraisal of our car’s worth
List of XML and HTML character entities – I needed to know what the XML representation for the pound symbol (#) was
Tapestry (DHT) – I read an article that mentioned this so I wanted to look it up

I’m surprised the list is so short. It seems like I use Wikipedia much more often than it may seem here. In any case that’s my list for now.

Tags: contrail, meme, wikipedia

Transfer challenged

June 20, 2006 in Commuting and Toronto by matt | 2 comments

This morning when I was going on the bus to work I was challenged by the bus driver on the validity of my transfer. He seemed to think that I was not using it appropriately as there was no way I could have a transfer from the 102 Markham Road bus and be able to transfer at Warden and Eglinton onto a westbound Eglinton bus. Maybe he forgot that the bus runs both ways and it’s far more convenient for me to take the bus west to Warden station, take the Warden bus to Eglinton and transfer there than to take the Markham Road bus east and up to Markham Road and then have to face the hellish haul right through the heart of Scarborough along Eglinton which is far busier than little old St. Clair.

I’ve never had this happen before so I was taken a little offguard when he called me back to the front (though the bus was so busy that I couldn’t move very far in anyway). I explained how I got to Warden and Eglinton via the Markham Road bus though he didn’t seem to believe my story. In any case it’s the truth and if the bus driver doesn’t remember all of the combinations of routes that one could take to get to a particular spot, it’s not my fault. I know the transfer states explicitly that in the event of a fare dispute you have to pay the second fare anyway and then go to the TTC office with your complaint and fortunately that did not happen here.

We’ll see if there’s a repeat occurrence tonight when I go home though there’s much less of a chance for debate since the place that I use the transfer intersects the line that I get the transfer from. In any case it’ll be interesting.

Tags: bus-driver, Commuting, Toronto, transfer, ttc

Tempting fate

June 16, 2006 in Health by matt | No comments

I think I tempted fate this morning. I was thinking to myself that so far this allergy season hasn’t been so bad. So what do you think happened next? Naturally a full-blown allergy attack the likes of which I haven’t seen this season so far hits me. I may be tempting fate again right now just by mentioning what happened. I’ve been taking my allergy pills very regularly so I’m hoping that I’ll be safe from fate. In any case I feel much better now that the pill has kicked in.

Tags: allergies, tempting-fate

Puns are beyond me apparently

June 13, 2006 in Food and Toronto by matt | No comments

I posted a couple of weeks ago about The Beerded Chip which is a restaurant in Scarborough that we like to go to. The only problem is that I typed it the way it should be properly spelled – The Bearded Chip as in a chip that has a beard. This of course isn’t the real name of the restaurant. It’s in fact spelled The Beerded Chip as in a chip that has beer. It’s strange that I would spell it incorrectly (or correctly depending on how much of a stickler you would be) because I go by the restaurant at least twice a day and each time I look at the sign (it’s not a terribly exciting ride).

What’s even stranger is that I’ve thought about writing this post for quite a while. Is that sad? I just wanted to set the record straight. All of the people who have found this site through searching for “The Bearded Chip” (and there are surprisingly many) can also search for “The Beerded Chip”. That should lead to an exponential increase in traffic to this site. And that’s what it’s all about.

Tags: puns, restaurants, spelling, the-bearded-chip, the-beerded-chip, Toronto

The full list

June 9, 2006 in CBC by matt | No comments

From my post yesterday about the reasons to storm the building I give you the full list (again taken from this post):

Top Ten Reasons to Take Over the CBC Building

It’s easy to do. The security code for the doors is S-T-R-O-M-B-O-L.., er… S-T-R-O-B-L-O-M… . on second thought, bring guns.

Three words: Massive Muppets archive.

Hold the right people hostage, and you can enjoy months of around-the-clock Danger Bay re-runs. Can Global give you that kind of service? I didn’t think so.

Before you’re turned over to police, several CBC journalistic policy boards will meet to determine whether you should be referred to as a terrorist, militant, activist, freedom fighter, or misguided munitions philanthropist. This process will take several years. In the meantime, we’ll assign you a nice cubicle and modest benefits package.

Does CTV have a sushi bar in its lobby? Huh? Does it?!?!

We can broadcast your demands in HDTV and put them into podcasts. We can simultaneously translate them into multiple languages. And, in a pinch, we can arrange for Don Cherry to call the Prime Minister names for you.

The conference centre is across the street. (Hey, it’s not much, but sometimes Americans hang out there. Don’t you guys hate them more?)

You can re-do the daily time signal on CBC Radio One. The beginning of the long dash can now be “The beginning of the Holy Insurgency Signalling Silence, You Followers In Tyranny!” (HISSY-FIT)

Promo Girl’s office is 4G812. Just in case, you know… you need to fire off some spare rounds. Or something. I’m just sayin’.

And most importantly — you’ll get to meet Luba Goy. (You’re welcome to smack her around a bit if you like.)

So laugh if you will at the list. I found it funny.

Tags: CBC

Listen to the subway

June 8, 2006 in Commuting, Music and Toronto by matt | 1 comment

This seems like a really odd way of advertising. It might be ok if the subway car isn’t very full but if it’s jammed full of people then I don’t think many people would want to lean over the people sitting down just to listen to what Pepsi thinks is a cool song. It seems to me that Pepsi has this idealistic view where everyone takes public transit and thus a lot of people see their ad yet it’s not so busy that people can’t absorb the ad (listen to the music in this case). Sadly the reality is anything but; hopefully Pepsi realizes this in the revenue generated by this string of advertising (if that can be measured).

Tags: advertising, Commuting, pepsi, subway, Toronto, ttc

In here you’ll find a Massive Muppet Archive

June 8, 2006 in CBC, Politics and Toronto by matt | 1 comment

I really loved this list of the Top Ten Reasons to Take Over the CBC Building put out by Tod Maffin. It’s spurned because of the news on Tuesday that the CBC building downtown may have been a target of the terrorist cell arrested last week. Being a CBC kid means that I get a lot of these jokes. I especially liked #2:

Three words: Massive Muppets archive.

and #3:

Hold the right people hostage, and you can enjoy months of around-the-clock Danger Bay re-runs. Can Global give you that kind of service? I didn’t think so.

I think if Marcy were to hold it hostage she’d ask for Black Harbour re-runs instead of Danger Bay but that’s beside the point. I think it’s important to laugh at these kinds of things which is the whole reasoning behind this site (run by Warren Kinsella). I’ll have to keep tuned into the events around that site because I think the rally that they’re planning would be an interesting one to attend.

Tags: black-harbour, CBC, danger-bay, i-am-not-afraid, terrorism, Toronto, warren-kinsella

Zarqawi Zapowie

June 8, 2006 in Politics by matt | No comments

That was the comment on the ride into work this morning (not made by me) and it all relates to this big news from Iraq. This could potentially change a lot of things over there and that’s only if it’s true; it can be hard to be certain that you’ve killed someone that you have barely seen or have little physical information about. It will be interesting to see how this plays out over the next few days. I know the Americans will be hyping this up quite a bit and to a certain extent they should because it is a huge blow for Al Qaeda but at the same time it’s not the traditional hierarchical structure that they’re dealing with; there will be a replacement and my bet is that many of the cells in Iraq are pretty autonomous anyway. There’s probably not much direction from the top as you might think. Naturally this is all speculation; I have little-to-no intelligence resources related to the war in Iraq so take everything I said in this post with a huge grain of salt.

Tags: al-zarqawi, iraq, war

A freshening wakeup

June 8, 2006 in Health, Life and Work by matt | No comments

About a month or so ago I decided to buy a toothbrush and toothpaste for work. I got a little travel toothbrush but unfortunately I haven’t really used it at all until now. Last night before I went home I was really tired and my mouth felt a little disgusting so I decided to brush my teeth before heading home. I felt a lot more awake after that.

A similar thing happened this morning. I woke up at my time this week (5:45) and was pretty tired (naturally). I got ready for work and packed my lunch and then once I got to work (at 6:45) instead of just sitting down and having a coffee I decided to brush my teeth again. Well I did and again I feel a lot more awake plus my teeth feel much cleaner so I think it’s a win all-around. My goal today is to leave at an earlier time than I have been and if necessary take a nap when I get home. If I continue along this path I will burnout or get quite sick and that’s definitely not what I want to face. I need to recover from the weekend and without proper rest that won’t happen.

Tags: exhaustion, Health, Lessons, toothbrush, Work

Fake news competition

June 7, 2006 in Asides by matt | No comments

I saw this ad (which is a real one appearing in a newspaper in California) and realized that The Daily Show can win any fake news competition around. Katie Couric doesn’t stand a chance.

Tags: advertising, katie-couric, the-daily-show

But I like the cookie

June 5, 2006 in Humour and Movies by matt | 1 comment

Last night we went to see Over The Hedge. What a fantastic film! The fact that it’s so short (87 minutes) is the one negative strike I have against it but then again the plot ended itself within that time and considering how it’s targeted at kids it makes sense to not have it to be too long. It was like a Canadian voice actor’s bonzanza with William Shatner, Avril Lavigne, Eugene Levy and Catherine O’Hara all providing voices for some of the main characters. I think the funniest character is definitely Hammy the Squirrel, voiced by Steve Carell. Almost all of his lines were absolutely hilarious including the subject of this post. It’s definitely going to be a movie to get on DVD.

Tags: actors, avril-lavigne, canada, catherine-o'hara, eugene-levy, hammy-the-squirrel, i-like-the-cookie, over-the-hedge, steve-carell, william-shatner

You’re on the list

June 5, 2006 in Food and It Happened To Me by matt | No comments

I like hamburgers and I ~~like~~ love blue cheese but the new President’s Choice Blue Cheese Hamburgers are going on my list of banned foods. We prepared two of them on the bbq last night and I could not even finish one of them and overnight I was quite ill so from now on they will not be on the menu. I even filled out the product survey at the President’s Choice site for this food and hopefully they contact me because I was very disappointed in the burgers.

Tags: banned-foods, blue-cheese-hamburgers, Food, ill, presidents-choice

Only The Only

June 4, 2006 in Food and Toronto by matt | No comments

Marcy and I went out for brunch this morning and boy were we disappointed. We went to The Only Cafe (972 Danforth Avenue). We’d been there before about a month and a half ago and had a fantastic breakfast. I had the waffles and fruit which comes with a lot of fruit (grapes, berries, melon, etc.). This time though was a completely different experience. First of all the service was horrendous; there was one other table filled in the restaurant and we still had to get our own menus and wait for long periods of time for the waitress to check up on us.

Then there’s the food. I ordered the “cowboy breakfast” which is homefries, sausage, eggs and toast (standard breakfast fare). I ordered the eggs to be over-hard and they were anything but. Over-easy is more like it. The toast was pretty dry even with the butter on it. The homefries had far too many herbs on them. Marcy’s breakfast also wasn’t very good. It was baked french toast with chevre and walnuts but then they loaded it with fruit on top. “It’s like eating garlic bread with strawberry jam” is how she put it. It definitely was not what we were hoping for and considering how much we enjoyed the food the first time we were there it’s especially disappointing.

I suppose that that is the true hallmark of a good restaurant for us. A very small few restaurants are worthy of a second visit from us because a lot of them aren’t that great: either they have poor food, poor service or poor value. For those that do pass the first visit test it’s really the second visit that will determine if we will continue to go back there. I think The Only is one of those that passed the first visit but failed on the second visit. The Tulip on Queen @ Coxwell is another example; we went there a couple of weeks ago for lunch and were profoundly disappointed with the service. The food was still pretty good but we couldn’t believe how poorly the wait staff were attending to their tables.

It’s for this reason that there are not many restaurants that we go to regularly because so few pass the second visit test. Fortunately though the ones that we do visit regularly are amazing places and we enjoy going there each and every time.

Tags: critics, Food, restaurants, the-only-cafe, the-tulip, Toronto

Get pumped!

June 4, 2006 in Toronto by matt | No comments

Today is the Heart and Stroke Foundation’s “Get Pumped in the Heart of the City” event. People are currently cyucling up and down the DVP though it seems that far fewer people want to brave the trip north considering the number of hills that there are from the bottom to the top. It’s kind of strange to see only cyclists on the highway and no cars; it’s such a busy highway that anytime it looks empty you have to wonder what happened. According to the maps provided on the site the people I see near my window are the ones doing the 50km and 75km distances. That’s a long distance and they’ve been going since 6:45 this morning. Good for them! Hopefully everyone has a good time; so far the weather has held out though it looks like some serious rain might be coming our way shortly.

Tags: bicycle, cycling, dvp, get-pumped, heart-and-stroke-foundation, heart-of-the-city, Toronto

CBC.ca changes again

June 3, 2006 in CBC by matt | 1 comment

I frequently visit the CBC News website though I also read the headlines through my feedreader. When I got into work this morning I checked the site but coming back from lunch right now I saw an article in my reader that intrigued me (this one and I’m sure this will develop into quite the big story over the next few days). I clicked on the link and found that the layout was very different and much softer-looking (rounder edges, different font, etc.) than this morning. This seems to only apply to the main site; the regional site (in my case Toronto) is still the older layout. There is no “Welcome to our new changes” page yet but I’m sure that will come before the end of the day.

Update (4:45 PM) – David mentions below in the comments that the letter to the audience is now up. Thanks for pointing that out!

Tags: CBC, cbc.ca, feedreader, google-reader, rss, syndication, Toronto, upgrade, web-design

She plays a mean Adon

June 3, 2006 in Music by matt | No comments

This is a pretty funny video [via] though I would like to know more about what happened here. I can’t see Bjork flipping out like that unless there was a good reason. The video is funny because the sound effects related to Street Fighter are bang-on.

There’s a (long) previous post about Bjork here.

Tags: adon, bjork, street-fighter, temper, video

I feel responsible

June 3, 2006 in Commuting, Life, Toronto and Weather by matt | No comments

One of my team members that wanted to come into work today called a little while ago and said that due to the bad weather he was involved in a minor accident. I feel kind of responsible because I’m the one who asked him to come in but really things like this happen all of the time so there’s no reason that I should be feeling guilty. Hopefully it really is just a minor accident and there wasn’t too much damage to his car.

Tags: accident, Commuting, guilt, responsibility, Toronto, Weather

The Office marathon

June 3, 2006 in Humour, Television and The Office by matt | No comments

On Thursday night we had a special treat; NBC was showing The Office in marathon format. Four back-to-back-to-back-to-back episodes. Boy that show is funny. There are so many parallels to real-life office environments (though they extend it into the satirical stratosphere) that you laugh because you’ve experienced something similar to what they’re showing.

I still haven’t watched the original BBC series and I’ve heard that it’s even funnier than the American version. I should rent that on DVD sometime.

Dwight (from the American show) has his own blog though unfortunately there is no RSS feed. Boo to that. I don’t understand why big companies can’t “get it” that allowing people to read the content through feedreaders will lead to a larger audience and better brand loyalty.

Tags: bbc, blogs, dwight, Humour, nbc, The Office

Everybody’s working for the weekend

June 3, 2006 in Work by matt | No comments

Well at least I’m working for the weekend as is most of my team. We have a hard deadline of Wednesday to meet so we’re having a good old-fashioned crunch mode weekend. Hooray! Of course most deadlines we face are artificial but we are really trying to meet this one. Fortunately we’re all pretty dedicated (perhaps too much) to the cause.

Tags: crunch-mode, deadline, weekend, Work

A guide for summer movies

June 2, 2006 in Movies by matt | No comments

This listing of ways of how to spot a bad summer movie rings quite true. I especially like #10:

10. Its main…rave…review has a…lot of…dots…in it.

You often see that and you just know that the movie ad is taking the review completely out of context.

Tags: guides, Movies, reviews, rules, summer-movies

Earthquake hits Perth-Andover

June 1, 2006 in Asides by matt | 1 comment

News story. It’s a moderate one, about 3.6 on the Richter scale.

Tags: earthquake, new-brunswick, perth-andover

I can see the subway cars now

June 1, 2006 in Commuting and Toronto by matt | 1 comment

Remember this post about a fantastical TTC subway map? There’s a new one going around which can be found here [via]. It’s a pretty amazing-looking map and it’s even broken down into 24 separate phases as if to show how a system like that could be built. It would be pretty incredible if we had such a system but the cost of building it as a subway system would be truly astronomical. After having read Steve Munro’s site for a few months now I’m starting to think that LRT (Light Rail Transit) is the way to go; it’s far less expensive than subways and can be built in a fraction of the time. It can’t carry the same load that subway cars can carry but they can carry more than the bus system. Cities across North America are building such systems very quickly and of course these types of systems are very popular in European cities (keeping Bombardier in business). I’m encouraged that the TTC is looking at introducing LRT lines in and around the city, particularly in the East End where the transit system is terribly inadequate to handle the load. I’m optimistic about the way things are progressing but it’s going to take years to see any new lines in place.

Tags: Commuting, lrt, maps, steve-munro, subway, Toronto, ttc

Politically-charged atmospheres

May 31, 2006 in It Happened To Me and Lessons by matt | No comments

In a politically-charged atmosphere you have to be really careful what you say because you never know what might be overheard. This extremely important lesson was played out today for me because of something I said offhand yesterday afternoon. Fortunately I was able to diffuse the situation (as best as I can tell) but I’m going to have to be very careful from now on particularly in an open room.

Tags: It Happened To Me, Lessons, Politics

The first rule of commuting by bus in the summer

May 31, 2006 in Commuting, Lessons, Toronto and Weather by matt | 1 comment

I’ve decided to come up with a few rules for commuting in the summertime. The rules may not make much sense at times but the fact is that rules based on reality rarely make any sense. That’s what makes life so much fun.

Anyway on the ride home yesterday I came up with rule #1:

Given the choice between an air conditioned bus that may take you a little further away from your destination and a non-air conditioned bus, take the air conditioned bus.

This may seem like an obvious rule. Yesterday I had this choice presented to me – I could take the Bellamy bus (with a/c) and walk a little further once I got off the bus or I could take the Markham Road bus (definitely without a/c) and have to walk a little less. Seeing as the Markham Road bus is most often a very busy bus with people standing the whole way until I get off the bus (and not for lack of choice of seats either). The TTC gives the oldest buses to the Markham Road route for whatever reason and these have the manual air conditioning option – fan yourself or open the window and hope for a breeze. By following this first rule I was able to have a much more comfortable ride home.

Tags: air-conditioning, Commuting, heat, Lessons, rules, Toronto, ttc

Need heat relief

May 30, 2006 in Commuting, Toronto and Weather by matt | No comments

The incredible heat has given me quite the headache this afternoon. I’ve had to dip into my supply of Advil Liquigel Migraine Relief. I haven’t had to do that in a while (fortunately). The bus ride home is going to be very uncomfortable but at least I have the coolness of air conditioning waiting for me at home.

Tags: air-conditioning, Commuting, headache, heat, Toronto, ttc, Weather

Aren’t they nocturnal?

May 30, 2006 in The Apartment by matt | 4 comments

I think I’ve mentioned before how we have a stable of raccoons in our backyard. Since we have an enormous willow tree I suppose that’s equivalent to a Holiday Inn sign for raccoons because we have at least 2 who live in there and crawl down the trunk each and every night to wreak havoc on the garbage cans in the neighbourhood. Trust me, lock up your cans!

Anyway, the larger raccoon (and he is quite large) seems to be not as nocturnal as you’d expect with a raccoon. He’ll be wandering around the neighbour’s yard at around 6 or 7 PM just minding his own business. Then this morning when I woke up at 6:15 I walked into the dining room (to turn the air conditioning down a little) and noticed that the raccoon was out on the deck enjoying some leftover dip that we had thrown out. He seemed oblivious to the time of morning and even after my shower and just before I left home (around 7 AM) he was still out there chomping away. Naturally the cats were going crazy trying to get at him but he didn’t seem to care; he was having breakfast/supper.

They are weird creatures those raccoons; at least for now I have a way to keep them out of our garbage. The secret is elevation a la bear strategy. By hanging the bins out of reach it prevents them from being spilled all over the ground. It may seem like an extreme step but so far it has proven to be quite effective.

Tags: garbage, nocturnal, raccoons, Toronto

Remember when?

May 29, 2006 in Life and Technology by matt | No comments

Via Joey I read this very funny (and true) comic about life before the Internet. It’s amazing how much of our lives have changed since the Internet became so widespread. Kids these days have grown up in a world that has always had Internet access and the next generation will have grown up in a world where there was always broadband access. It will be a different world in another ten years. We’re still in the middle of a revolution.

Tags: comic, Internet, Life, Technology

The pudding and cookies are communal

May 29, 2006 in Food, It Happened To Me and The Office by matt | 4 comments

Remember my post about stealing in the office? Well it seems it is still rampant as I just discovered that my lemon pudding and cookies that I had left on my desk last week are now gone. I’m not really sure why someone would have the need to take my lemon pudding especially since we had a table full of snacks; they would have to walk by said snacks to go to my desk to steal my pudding. People certainly do behave strangely in an office.

Tags: cookies, Food, It Happened To Me, pudding, stealing, The Office

By last stand we don’t really mean last

May 29, 2006 in Movies by matt | No comments

Fox has confirmed that there will be a fourth X-Men movie with more to come after that. I guess seeing as the current one did so well at the box office despite being mediocre in my mind means that they’ve realized that they have a license to print money with the franchise.

Tags: fox, Movies, sequels, x-men

Wildcat indeed

May 29, 2006 in Commuting and Toronto by matt | No comments

You may have heard that the TTC union has pulled a wildcat strike this morning. I’m very fortunate that I get a ride in the morning because looking at the traffic right now (and we’re not into the worst part of rush hour yet) it would take me a long time to get to work otherwise. I’ve had to coordinate with the people on the team whose only way to get in to work is to take public transit. Fortunately ours is a job where it’s possible to work from home because otherwise they might be forced to take a sick day or vacation day despite the fact that it’s not their fault they have no way to get to work. They’ve already given the union a cease and desist order which can lead to fines and/or jail time if enforced so we’ll see if this will lead to the strike ending today or for it to drag on for a longer period of time. We already have a smog alert today and the huge influx of cars that will be on the roads today will make for an especially bad breathing day.

Update (9:15 AM) – The worst part of rush hour has come and the roads are definitely straining to keep up. The traffic lights can’t maintain enough distance between cars which leads to an ever-degrading cycle. The DVP going southbound is almost not moving though northbound is moving fairly briskly. I’m definitely glad that I got picked up when I did because if it were an hour later then it would taken a lot longer to get into work.

Update (10:45 AM) – It looks like we might be able to get the system restarted for the afternoon rush at least according to this article. Seeing as it takes 3 hours to get everything up and running again I remain doubtful that we’ll see anything today but fortunately I should be able to notice buses on the road from my window here. Traffic has calmed down considerably and the highway and Eglinton are moving quite well now. If things don’t get restarted this afternoon though the drive home is going to be very ugly.

Update (1:30 PM) – So apparently my prediction of a non-PM restart seems to be coming true. The union officials didn’t get to the Labour Relations Board until after noon (whether that was on purpose or not is up for debate) so it’s looking extremely unlikely that we’ll have any public transit this afternoon. I’m very lucky in that I have a ride home tonight and a ride into work tomorrow because it’s tough to say if this thing will be resolved today at all; it might drag on to tomorrow. I like the caption on the linked article’s photo – a “congo-line” of commuters. I’m sure they felt the same way walking up Bay Street – “Hey it’s a party, let’s conga to work!”.

Update (3:45 PM) – Now they’re saying that “most TTC service” will resume by 5 PM today. We’ll have “many TTC buses” on the road by then and the Bloor/Danforth subway line should be up and running. I’ll believe it when I see the buses on the road. Even if we do have a lot of buses by then the commuting chaos will have already started. On the DVP it started around noon. I’m leaving in the next 10 minutes or so which should make the roads a little less busy than at 5 but it’s still going to be a slow drive home. Fortunately I don’t have to deal directly with the traffic; this time I’m just a passenger. I just saw a bus driving down Eglinton! I guess the people on those 3 routes (I saw 3) will be fortunate enough to have a ride home.

Update (9:15 PM) – Well getting home wasn’t as bad as I feared though it was incredibly hot outside and the van didn’t have any air conditioning. Fortunately though our house now has central air (more on this later) which I promptly turned on. It’s great having a shaded house because it kept the inside temperature to around 25 degrees but without any wind blowing the air around the humidity really builds so I turned it on. It makes for a much more comfortable evening and sleep. Tomorrow I expect to take the bus home again so we’ll see what the mood is from the public.

Tags: Cars, Commuting, pollution, smog, strike, Toronto, ttc, union, wildcat

Etta

May 26, 2006 in Music and Toronto by matt | 1 comment

I just bought tickets for Marcy and I to go see Etta James on the 27th of June at the Hummingbird Centre. It should make for a great concert and an early birthday/end of school year present for Marcy. I’m looking forward to it though the “convenience fees” from Ticketmaster aren’t really appreciated. At least I don’t have to win an auction to get my tickets.

Tags: concerts, etta-james, hummingbird-centre, Toronto

Short pants

May 26, 2006 in Entertainment, Life and Toronto by matt | No comments

I think my dress pants have shrunk length-wise. I say this because when I walk today it feels like I’m wearing flood-pants but I know it’s not that extreme. I guess I’ve learned my lesson not to put dress pants such as these in the dryer for too long because it just doesn’t feel right when I’m wearing these pants.

The reason I’m wearing nice pants on a Friday is that once again I am going to be a chaperone (as good as I can be) for Marcy’s school’s prom. This year it is down at the Liberty Grand which looks to be a pretty amazing place. Since the kids spend so much time and money getting dressed up I should at least make an effort to look nice as well. It’ll be interesting to see how much questionable “dancing” will take place this year; last year there were some testing of the limits so to speak. It should be fun tonight though in any case. The other teachers always have a good time plus I get to dance with Marcy though I admit that I don’t dance very well. I’m looking forward to it.

Tags: clothes, drying, flood, high-school, liberty-grand, pants, prom, shrink

The importance of being on-time

May 26, 2006 in Commuting and Toronto by matt | No comments

The last three days of this week I must make my own way to work and today I discovered how important it is to have little-to-no waiting time in between the three buses that I take to work (and back again). On Wednesday morning I had some delay between all three of the connections and it took me just over an hour for the door-to-door trip.

Yesterday however was one of those ideal rides to work; at least as ideal as riding on public transit can be. The first bus was right there when I got to the bus stop and it was an especially aggressive driver so we got to the subway station quite quickly. There my second bus was already waiting and as soon as I got on we left the station. Once we got to Eglinton the light was in my favour which is the key I use to determine in the morning whether I can stop for a coffee or not. My last bus was waiting for me at the other side of the light and that bus is early enough so that there aren’t many Leaside High School kids on the bus so we sailed to work. Door-to-door this time was only 40 minutes.

This morning it was more like Wednesday than yesterday. I had to wait at each connection point and the worst was with the Eglinton bus. I just missed the previous bus (probably the same one I took yesterday) and I had to wait. Busy routes like Eglinton tend to not be able to follow their schedule as posted so you could have a bus on time and then the next bus is so far behind that the bus after that one is right behind it. Then you have a choice – take the first bus which is probably full and will have to make a lot of stops or do you take the second which might be forced to pick up more people since it’s emptier. I think the right answer is it doesn’t matter because there’s a chance that the first bus will empty and then blow through the rest of the stops (until yours) because it’s so late or the second bus might pass the first bus because each and every stop there is someone on the first bus to get off.

These are the things I think about while I commute to and from work.

Tags: bus, Commuting, eglinton, strategy, Toronto, ttc

Found again

May 17, 2006 in Cats and Health by matt | No comments

Well remember how my glasses were last a couple of months ago? I found them and it was almost exactly two months to the day that they reappeared in my life. I have my suspicions on where they’ve been because I’m almost positive that the place I found them was a place that I so obviously checked many times before. My guess is that the cats have been toying with me. Perhaps they saw how tired I was looking and decided that the fun was over. I was wearing my contacts in the intervening time and my eyes felt really tired and I think that 2 months of wearing nothing but contacts was slowly wearing me down. Now that I’ve worn my glasses for a couple of days I feel much better though I know that I should be getting more sleep. That’ll have to wait. For now I’m just glad that I have an alternative to wearing contacts.

Tags: Cats, contact-lenses, contacts, glasses, Health, sleep

Anniversary day!

May 8, 2006 in Marriage by matt | 1 comment

Today is our second wedding anniversary! Happy anniversary to us. It’s hard to believe that it’s already been that long. Time sure flies. In any case it’s been the happiest times of my life and each and everyday I feel grateful and comforted by the fact that Marcy is there with me. We make a great team (as I’ve said before). I can’t wait for the next two, ten and fifty years because I know that they will be full of excitement, challenges and lasting memories. I love you.

Tags: anniversary, love, Marriage, years

They really do mean sunny

April 26, 2006 in Career, The Office and Weather by matt | No comments

When the weather said sunny today boy did they ever mean it. What a difference a day makes. It’s still quite cool at the moment but it is supposed to warm up considerably which should make for a rather pleasant day. It’s unfortunate that I still need to spend it inside at my desk but at least I have this fantastic window from which I can look outside when I want to take a break.

Today is the first anniversary of what proved to be a truly awful week here at work. April has certainly been challening this year but nowhere near as challenging as the last week of April 2005.

Tags: 2005, anniversary, april, Career, sun, Weather, Work

My life, my card

April 25, 2006 in Asides by matt | 1 comment

This is a pretty neat American Express commercial done by Wes Anderson, director of many fine films [via].

Tags: american-express, commercial, my-card, my-life, wes-anderson

What a miserable day

April 25, 2006 in Weather by matt | No comments

You’d hardly think it was spring outside the way today is shaping up. It’s going to be near-freezing tonight too so those people who have planted their new flowers might be in for a surprise tomorrow morning when the frost sets in. Hopefully tomorrow brings some better weather.

Tags: frost, plants, rain, sun, Weather

Defend Marriage?

April 20, 2006 in Cultural Criticism by matt | 1 comment

I saw a bus today from this group. I guess they feel that the fight isn’t over. I should tell them that they don’t need to defend marriage on my behalf.

Tags: defend-marriage, Marriage

Not a good idea

April 13, 2006 in Food and It Happened To Me by matt | No comments

I realized this morning when I opened my backpack to get my breakfast that I had made a serious error in judgment. We have some crumpets at home (boy how I love crumpets). I put some marmalade on two of them and wrapped them in paper towels so that I could toast them once I got to work. That was my mistake. Crumpets are rather porous and marmalade isn’t exactly the most sticky substance (like say peanut butter). It tends to slide around so when I opened my backpack the maramalade had oozed through the crumpets into the paper towels themselves and had potentially spread to other parts of my backpack. It was fun to clean up and after that my fingers were quite sticky. At least the crumpets were tasty once I finally had the chance to toast them and eat them.

Moral of the story? Crumpets are there to be loved.

Tags: crumpets, Food, It Happened To Me, Lessons, marmalade

Stealing

April 13, 2006 in It Happened To Me and The Office by matt | 2 comments

I find it amusing that someone in the office here deems it appropriate to steal things from my desk. I know for a fact that a pack of gum was taken. Who knows what else has gone missing. Hopefully none of my CDs. That would be just so very wrong.

Tags: gum, It Happened To Me, stealing, The Office

Didn’t realize it had been so long

April 12, 2006 in Career, Life and Weather by matt | No comments

April seems to be the month when I post the least. April is also by far the worst month for my technology team. Last year was particularly bad near the end of the month so I’m hoping that that doesn’t repeat itself this year. At least the weather has been nice this week. The cold weather was getting more depressing each day. I even managed to get a cold on Monday but that could be more to do with the lack of sleep than anything else weather-related. The plan is to get a bike this week so that I can go bike-riding with Marcy (she got a new bike a few weeks ago – it’s a cool retro one). Our neighbourhood is very bike-friendly so I think it’s going to be fun. Plus some exercise can’t hurt me either. I’m looking forward to summer.

Tags: april, bicycle, bike, nightmare-month, summer, Weather, Work

At the point of exhaustion

April 12, 2006 in Health and Life by matt | No comments

I can’t remember the last time I felt this tired. I wake up in the morning and it’s like I didn’t sleep at all. I know that I did sleep some because there are gaps of time during the night when I’m not awake. There has been some stressful goings-on at work so that is playing heavily on my mind these days. Today is one of the days when I wish that I could find my glasses because I know that I look tired. I slept in until 10 minutes before my ride comes to pick me up so I had to have a rushed shower, hurriedly get dressed and then out the door before breakfast. Having three days off this weekend will be nice because that gives me a little chance to pick up on some sleep. I wish I could take 2 weeks of vacation right now.

Tags: exhaustion, sleep, tired, vacation

If I could turn forward time

March 31, 2006 in It Happened To Me by matt | No comments

In fact it seems that I can play with time at my leisure these days. I use two alarm clocks both of which are pretty old but the one I use for the buzzing alarm (my failsafe alarm) seems to be having difficult keeping time. I’ve noticed over the past few days that it was a few minutes ahead of the other one but until yesterday it wasn’t that big of a deal. In the morning it was about 10 minutes faster and by the time I got home last night it was 30 minutes ahead. I set it back to be synchronized with the other alarm clock but within a couple of hours it was 40 minutes ahead again. So I set it again to be in synch. This morning it went off 30 minutes ahead of schedule and by the time I left home it was up to 40 minutes. It sounds to me that it would be wise to get a new alarm clock because if this continues I’m going to be waking up to the alarm several hours early and that probably won’t be good for the psyche.

Tags: alarm-clocks, It Happened To Me, time

Finally some spring

March 29, 2006 in Cats, Toronto and Weather by matt | No comments

It’s wonderful that the spring weather has arrived. I think we were all getting a little sick of winter. It’s especially nice that when I wake up it’s already light outside. I guess that little by little incremental change that I was talking about earlier really does pay off after a few weeks. After Saturday though it’ll be dark again early in the morning but at least the sun will go down later and eventually it’ll be light again when I wake up.

We bought a few gardening things on the weekend including some seeds and some greenhouse-like trays to start growing them in. Hopefully the cats don’t sniff around too much but I think we’re safe for now since it’s just peat. On Monday we took Eve and Pumpkin outside. There was a scary moment involving a raccoon but fortunately no harm was done. I was afraid that Pumpkin might bolt either up a tree or through a fence but I don’t think she even saw the raccoon.

This coming weekend we’ll be cleaning up the backyard to remove all of the brush and such that has accumulated over the winter. That willow tree certainly does like to shed.

There was a girl shot in the leg by her boyfriend right near where I work on Tuesday night. Also there were two people killed near where we used to live. It seems that the spate of shootings continues in this city.

Tags: Cats, daylight-savings-time, raccoons, shootings, spring, spring-cleaning, Toronto

Yesterday’s lesson

March 24, 2006 in Commuting, Food, It Happened To Me and Toronto by matt | 1 comment

When you wake up at nearly the exact moment your ride arrives to take you to work, you won’t be catching that ride. I think it’s good to remind myself what it’s like to take the bus to work in the morning (I had to do it again today since Leo has the day off). At least it lets me succumb to my temptation. Perhaps I can possibly win with Coffee Time since at Tim Horton’s it’s always “Roll up the rim to lose” for me.

Tags: coffee-time, Commuting, lesson, temptation, tim-hortons

Feeling really weary

March 22, 2006 in Health by matt | No comments

I’m not sure why but I feel really exhausted today. I recall sleeping ok last night but perhaps I didn’t sleep as soundly as I may think I did. I’m sure I look tired.

Tags: exhaustion, sleep, tired

Stating the obvious

March 21, 2006 in Life by matt | No comments

I desperately need a haircut. Perhaps I’ll try and do that on the way home tonight.

Tags: desperate, haircut

Ginger marmalade

March 20, 2006 in Food by matt | No comments

I absolutely love ginger marmalade. I picked some up last week and I had it on my toast this morning for breakfast. The soothing properties of the ginger combined with the jelly properties of traditional marmalade makes for a very good eat. I used to eat it a lot in the 2000-2001 period but really haven’t eaten it since then. You really have to like strong ginger to eat this stuff; since I was raised on crystalized ginger back in that same period I’m ok with eating large amounts of ginger.

Tags: Food, ginger, ginger-marmalade, marmalade

New shoes

March 20, 2006 in It Happened To Me by matt | No comments

I bought a new pair of shoes last week on Thursday. My old shoes were really starting to fall apart which is to be expected when you wear pretty much the same shoes everyday for a year and a half. I decided to buy a pair of Rockports since Marcy swears by them. They’re a little more expensive than regular shoes but they are extremely comfortable so so far I’d say it’s worth the expense. Anyway yesterday at the grocery store I bought some leather protectant for my new shoes so that they’ll last a maximal amount of time. I sprayed them in the hallway and then realizing that the scent was rather strong I placed them on the front stoop. You’re supposed to reapply the product a couple of times but I completely forgot about my shoes being outside until this morning when I was about to leave. I feared that they may have been stolen or destroyed by some animal (we have some pretty vicious raccoons). Fortunately neither happened but there was one unintended consequence – since it hasn’t been overly warm recently the shoes were rather cold when I put them on my feet. They’re still pretty cool and I’ve had them on for over an hour. Hopefully they get more comfortable soon.

Tags: cold, protection, rockport, shoes

CBC ads

March 17, 2006 in CBC by matt | 1 comment

I really don’t like the advertising on the CBC News site that they’ve introduced this week. They’re really obtrusive. I want my news to be clean and crisp to read. What they’ve given me is a competition for my eyeballs.

Tags: advertising, CBC, cbc-news, website

The thieves!

March 15, 2006 in Cats and It Happened To Me by matt | No comments

I think the cats stole my glasses last night. I say this because I couldn’t find them anywhere in the house. I’m wearing my contacts instead because I need some kind of optical assistance in order to function without a headache. Hopefully I can find where my glasses are; I don’t really remember taking them off last night before bed but when I do take them off they’re in either 2 places and neither of those places had my glasses this morning. If I can’t find them, well it’s about time for me to visit the optometrist anyway so this might be a good opportunity to do just that.

Tags: Cats, glasses, It Happened To Me, missing

Blech

March 15, 2006 in Food by matt | No comments

I’ve never had such awful croissants. No wonder they were on the discount rack. Wow. I’m going to have to get something else for breakfast now.

Tags: breakfast, croissants, Food

Dreading Friday

March 14, 2006 in Career by matt | No comments

I’m not looking forward to Friday at work.

Tags: Career, friday, Work

They sort of get it

March 10, 2006 in Television by matt | No comments

It seems that NBC has finally clued into how potentially lucrative it can be to have your videos online being watched and shared by fans. Remember the Natalie Portman gangsta rap? Well the original YouTube link that I had was pulled due to copyright violations. Now via A VC I discover that NBC has a set of pages to view these videos that have been so popular. The description at the top is interesting:

Now, instead of searching the web for “borrowed” NBC highlights, you can go to the source! We’ve taken your viral favorites and gathered them into one convenient location. Watch. React. Tell a friend.

I like their use of the term “borrowed NBC highlights”. This is a step in the right direction but they’re not going to stop the flood. You can’t really share the video; you can only point your friends to the same page. In this day and age that just won’t cut it sharing-wise.

Here’s the “official” video for the Natalie Portman gangsta rap. I too prefer the YouTube controls.

Tags: gangsta-rap, natalie-portman, nbc, youtube

An exhausting week

March 10, 2006 in Career by matt | No comments

It’s been a very exhausting week here at work. My boss is leaving the company today so there are a lot of loose ends to tie up before he’s gone. It means that I’m responsible for all of the software for development too which is an extra set of tasks. Also we had to finish a major migration effort with our production systems. Now that we’re running Java 1.5 in there we should be able to do some more advanced things with our code. I’m thinking of taking a day off next week sometime to be with Marcy since it’s March Break around here. I think I need a break myself.

Tags: Career, java, march-break, Work

Speaking of the vortex

March 9, 2006 in Weather by matt | No comments

I forgot to mention that there’s a new twist to the polar vortex story. Apparently that vortex recently shifted back to this side of the globe and they’re saying that we won’t have an early spring. That certainly was the case the past couple of weeks; it was really cold and windy around here. I wish that wind pattern would make up its mind and either stay where it’s supposed to be all winter or stay away all winter. I don’t like these wild changes in temperatures. They’re not good for my head.

Tags: polar-vortex, spring, Weather, winter

As warm as… January

March 9, 2006 in Cats, Toronto and Weather by matt | No comments

The weather has turned warm again. It’s almost as warm as it was back in January during those blissful “hard winter” weeks. Today it’s raining and tomorrow it’s going to be raining. Saturday? Cloudy and then rain for another two days. That’s the fun of March. The snow gets pelted with rain and disappears and we’re left with a muddy messy swamp-like landscape to trudge through. Usually it’s not even that warm either. The only solace that I can get is that spring is right around the corner and soon the flowers will start blooming (we’re going to Canada Blooms this weekend) and the birds will start meowing and our cats will start chirping to go outside. That is, chirp even more to go outside. Yes I wrote that part about the birds intentionally. I’m definitely looking forward to spring.

Tags: canada-blooms, gardening, rain, Weather

Become the Liberal leader!

March 8, 2006 in CBC, Humour, Politics and Uncategorized by matt | 4 comments

Via Jordon Cooper I came across this intriguing eBay auction:

Looking for a new challenge? Why not become leader of the Liberal Party? It is possible with the Rick Mercer Report Liberal leadership kit.

Kit includes:

Fifteen minute consultation/conference call with the RMR writing staff to craft your campaign message. (Staff includes three high school dropouts and a U of T commerce major. Photo not to scale.)

The use of our colour printer for photos and such. Ink cartridge is running low on magenta.

The current price is about $4800. Seems like a reasonable price to pay for something that could win you a landslide victory at next year’s leadership convention. If I had a little extra coin lying around I’d consider placing a bid.

Sweet freedom

March 7, 2006 in Stamp Saga by matt | No comments

The ordeal is finally over. I mailed off the envelopes early this morning when I got to work. Last night I had to trek back to work since I forgot my wallet here (only one saga at a time please) and I stopped off at the post office on the way home to pick up a package of 1-cent stamps (10 stamps = 11 cents). I then took the envelopes, placed two 50-cent stamps on them and then placed a 1-cent stamp on each. I was finally abiding by the postage rules and could successfully mail out these things. I wrote down our return address on both envelopes in case anything else were to happen but I’m crossing my fingers that they will arrive at their destination safely. I guess I’ll know once they deposit my check.

Fin.

Tags: It Happened To Me, mail, Stamp Saga, stamps

All this from a Harvard graduate

March 6, 2006 in Asides by matt | 2 comments

I bet you never knew that Natalie Portman is a pretty deft gangsta rapper. It’s a pretty catchy tune and fly guy at the end is a nice touch [via]. P is for Portman.

Edit: Here’s a link that works. It seems that NBC pulled the YouTube video.

Tags: gangsta-rap, natalie-portman, saturday-night-live, snl, videos

Man what a story

March 6, 2006 in It Happened To Me by matt | No comments

I’ll give you an update from Friday because I’m sure you all were waiting on the edge of your seats to know what happened to my pieces of mail.

I went to pick up dinner on Friday night and I brought the mail with me and I also brought the stamps we have at home. I was so determined to mail them out this time. I took one of the envelopes and lifted a stamp off of its backing but beofre I placed it onto the mail I realized that I didn’t really know what the cost of stamps were these days. I was pretty sure that stamp prices had gone up recently but I didn’t know if the ones I had in my hand were the old price or the new price (or possibly some other price). So instead of mailing them out I was stuck with the realization that the stamp I was placing on the envelope might not be enough to get it to its destination.

Instead of taking the risk I decided to hold off until I could verify what the price was once I got home. It’s a good thing I did because the stamps we have are the old price (it’s now 51 cents instead of 50 cents). I’m going to have to find some time this week to visit the post office near us so that I can get some 1 cent stamps to mail these items off. Then this long, arduous struggle of mine will finally be over.

Tags: It Happened To Me, mail, stamps

Jeff Ltd.

March 3, 2006 in Television by matt | 3 comments

CTV carries a lot of the shows that we watch on television each week. Every so often they put commercials on advertising one of their made-for-TV movies or special W5 investigation. This week they started hyping their new show Jeff Ltd. They had a “sneak preview” this Wednesday right after American Idol. I could tell from the commercials that I would instantly dislike the show but I decided to give it a try in any case.

I lasted not even 2 minutes. The opening monologue was so tired, so unfunny that I couldn’t stand to watch any longer. I couldn’t believe that CTV would try to air this kind of show.

When I first saw the commercials my first thought was “Hmm, this is almost identical to Curb Your Enthusiasm except with an uglier man.” They were obviously trying to copy the premise of that show except they made the main character even more egotistical and arrogant than Larry David can be. I guess CTV figured that the percentage of Canadians (because this is strictly a Canadian show as far as I can tell) that have seen Curb Your Enthusiasm is rather low since it’s only on DVD or The Movie Network in which case they can copy all they like.

It really seems like they’ve tried too hard in this case. They’ve filmed 13 episodes but I really hope that they don’t bother picking up the show for a full season. I don’t think I could stand to watch the commercials for it.

Tags: canadian-shows, ctv, curb-your-enthusiasm, jeff-ltd., larry-david, Television

The saga continues

March 3, 2006 in It Happened To Me by matt | 1 comment

I forgot to bring the stamps today so I’m going to have to bring the pieces of mail home so that I can mail them out this weekend.

Tags: It Happened To Me, mail, stamps

Moving a frog remotely

March 2, 2006 in Asides by matt | No comments

Garnet Hertz – Experiments in Galvanism: Frog with Implanted Webserver [via] This is pretty creepy.

Tags: frog, galvanism, webserver

A near miss

March 2, 2006 in It Happened To Me by matt | 1 comment

I brought a couple of things with me to work to mail. We have a mail drop in the building here and it’s the only mailbox that I know of in the area. Anyway once I got to work I went over to the mailbox and opened the door. I placed the mail in the slot and started to close it.

Just then I realized that I hadn’t put any stamps on these pieces of mail. Usually stamps are required to ensure proper delivery and considering how one of the envelopes didn’t have a return address and both of them had cheques in them I figured that I should probably rescue the mail before they slid down the chute and thereby becoming lost forever. I acted quickly and snagged the mail just in time. Now I’ll have to remember to bring them home and place the all-important stamps on them tonight.

Tags: excitement, It Happened To Me, mail, stamps

Seems about right

March 1, 2006 in Cultural Criticism and Humour by matt | No comments

Via Ross’ blog I find this story of evolution between men and women:

That seems pretty accurate to me. Bananas aplenty for me.

Tags: evolution, men, women

We had our shrove and ate it too

March 1, 2006 in Food, It Happened To Me, Movies and Travel by matt | No comments

As yesterday was Mardi Gras we celebrated at our house by eating some tasty sausages and pancakes. Oh and some scrambled eggs too but that was mainly because we had to eat them up. On top of the pancakes? Some maple syrup. Real maple syrup! I haven’t had real maple syrup since Sunday morning. Ok that was because we were at Deerhurst for the weekend and they had a big vat of maple syrup available for the breakfast buffet. I certainly did not spare any opportunity to make use of this plethora of syrup. Before this past weekend though I can’t think of the last time I had maple syrup. Let me tell you this – I really do love it (in case that wasn’t obvious before).

We also watched Walk the Line last night and it’s really quite a good movie. I’m a pretty big fan of Johnny Cash and I have to say that it’s quite remarkable how similar Joaquin Phoenix sounds like the Man in Black. Personally I enjoyed this movie more than Ray but both of them seemed to end abruptly. It’s weird saying that as the movie is over 2 hours long but I was waiting for more after June and John got married. I suppose I’ll have to read the autobiographies to learn more about that period in their lives. In any case I enjoyed the film.

Tags: deerhurst, joaquin-phoenix, johnny-cash, man-in-black, maple-syrup, mardi-gras, ray, shrove-tuesday, walk-the-line

The Sun is hurting

March 1, 2006 in Economy and Toronto by matt | No comments

The Toronto Sun must be feeling the pain of subscriber loss because you can now get their “paper” for a measly 50 cents during the week. It’s still $1 outside of the GTA but here in Toronto it only costs 50 cents. That’s pretty cheap for a newspaper but considering how you can still get free papers (Dose, Metro, 24 Hours) I’m not sure how effective it’ll be to stem the tide. 24 Hours in fact is owned by the same group that runs the Sun so you have to wonder if they’ve shot themselves in the foot by offering a free paper. Maybe in another 6 months it’ll be down to 25 cents to purchase the paper.

Tags: 24-hours, dose, metro, newspapers, Toronto, toronto-sun

An odd musical instrument

February 28, 2006 in Asides by matt | No comments

Even though we have enough for half a scale, I’m not sure this is a good use of our cats [via]. It seems rather cruel.

Tags: Cats, musical-instruments, piano

Eddie Griffin is dead to me

February 28, 2006 in Movies by matt | No comments

I’ve vowed never to see another Eddie Griffin movie ever again. It’s not like I’ve seen many of his movies but after seeing this one on Sunday night I think I can safely say that he is dead to me. I’ll defer to Mr. Cranky’s review:

[E]very joke under the sun comes at the audience and almost none of them stick to the wall. All one really needs to do is a microanalysis of Grant’s last name: Funkerdoder. Is it really that much funnier than “Focker”? The answer is no, but it’s precisely the type of joke this movie pummels moviegoers with until they’re beaten into a kind of obliviousness. The jokes aren’t funny. The tone never changes. “Date Movie” is like an air raid siren of bad comedy, a film best described as “deafeningly unfunny.”

There isn’t much more that I can add to that.

Tags: date-movie, eddie-griffin, Movies, mr-cranky, reviews

Expectations set

February 28, 2006 in Career by matt | No comments

Part of my new role is setting the expectations for my team over the next 6 months. I did that this morning; this new role is going to require a lot more talking on my part. Everyone seems to be satisfied with their list of expectations over the next few months. I’m instituting a few process changes to make my job and their jobs a little easier and more interesting (hopefully). We’ll see how the next few months pan out.

Tags: expectations, management

Get me a human ASAP!

February 27, 2006 in Asides by matt | No comments

How to speak to a human [via].

Tags: csr, customer-service, human, operator, telephone

Such a sad story

February 27, 2006 in Asides by matt | No comments

This is really a terrible tragedy. It happened not too far from our house on Friday night. I can’t imagine what kind of person would deliberately try and strike a mounted officer.

Tags: brigadier, horses, mounted-officers, Toronto

Strange coincidences

February 27, 2006 in Politics by matt | 3 comments

It’s strange and tragic that the officer who shot Dudley George was killed over the weekend in a car accident in Eastern Ontario. He was scheduled to testity at the inquiry in the next few weeks. Now the family won’t be able to get all of their questions answered.

Tags: dudley-george, inquiry, ipperwash

A manual for the procedure

February 27, 2006 in Health by matt | 8 comments

It’s a good thing we live in the age of information. After last week’s passing of the law banning abortion in South Dakota, a blog posted a manual for the women of South Dakota to do it themselves. It’s not quite the same procedure as described in Vera Drake because techniques and instruments have evolved in 50 years. It’s heartening to read about people having a choice and that just because legislation has been proposed doesn’t mean that they’re out of options. [via]

Tags: abortion, legislation, manual, procedure, south-dakota, vera-drake

Roll call

February 27, 2006 in Cats by matt | No comments

Each and every morning when I get up I do a roll call of our cat population in the house. I need to make sure that they’re all accounted for. I do the same thing when I come home from work and I’m the first one in. I’m probably just scared because of prior events.

Tags: Cats, gryffin, roll-call

The v-dub

February 24, 2006 in Cars and Humour by matt | No comments

These are some funny ads from Volkswagen. Deutschland represent!

Tags: advertising, Cars, commercials, deutschland, unpimp-my-ride, volkswagen

A surprising list

February 24, 2006 in Asides by matt | No comments

A gay cowboy’s top 10 movies of 2005. There are some surprises on there!

Tags: brokeback-mountain, Movies, rent

Woohoo!

February 24, 2006 in Entertainment by matt | No comments

Malcolm Gladwell now has a blog. Subscribed!

Tags: blogs, malcolm-gladwell

TTC map anagramized!

February 23, 2006 in Asides by matt | No comments

Take the TTC subway station names and create anagrams from them. You’ll get something like this [via]. Hopefully this map lasts longer than the London Underground one.

Tags: anagrams, Commuting, maps, Toronto, ttc

A long and protracted battle ahead

February 23, 2006 in Cultural Criticism and Health by matt | 2 comments

This could be the real start of a new battle on abortion. The traditional exceptions won’t apply either. If passed it’ll be outright illegal unless the woman is in perilous health. [via]

Tags: abortion, Health, roe-v.-wade, south-dakota

You ask, Yahoo! answers

February 23, 2006 in Asides by matt | No comments

How many states allow a resident to marry a cousin? From the answer:

Laws against “kissin’ cousin” marriages stem from fear that the progeny of such unions have a much higher chance of being afflicted with birth defects and/or winding up on the “Jerry Springer Show.”

At least they have a sense of humour when answering these questions.

Tags: cousins, jerry-springer, Marriage

More proud than disappointed

February 23, 2006 in Sports by matt | 1 comment

I’ll come right out and say it. Yes I’m disappointed that the men’s hockey team lost yesterday. However I’m more proud about the 4 medals we won yesterday than disappointed about the loss. We have 18 medals! That’s a record for us. All of the news reports seem to be focusing on the loss. It’s true that hockey is our national sport (or rather one of them), it’s not the end of the world that we don’t win a medal. It’s one game and there were only two outcomes. On top of that, past performances could not have dictated the result. I’m not sure why but this whole thing bothers me.

James Koole has a similar tone in his post - “Granted hockey is a big deal, but it’s not the only reason I’m watching, you know. How about showing me some speed skating or skiing live now and then?”

Tags: canada, hockey, loss, medals, olympics, win

Shinning

February 22, 2006 in Music by matt | No comments

I’d forgotten how much fun it can be to listen to The Shins. What a positive upbeat group of musicians.

Tags: Music, the-shins

Tooting my own horn

February 22, 2006 in Career by matt | 7 comments

I’ve worked very hard for this:

I am pleased to announce the promotion of Matt Clements to development manager from technical team lead effectively immediately. In his new role, Matt will be responsible for the management of the development team, the planning of application releases as well as ensuring we have in place a solid software development process. Please join me in congratulating Matt and wishing him all the best in his new position.

A year and a half working here and I’m definitely on my way. Things are looking up.

Tags: Career, development-manager, promotion

Rename it to the MacGyver Walk of Fame

February 22, 2006 in Asides and Television by matt | No comments

There’s a grassroots campaign to get Richard Dean Anderson on the Hollywood Walk of Fame [via]. I have to say though that the “official” website linked in the article there really isn’t an official one. There’s a big disclaimer at the bottom of the page saying that no one has authorized the site.

Tags: macgyver, richard-dean-anderson, walk-of-fame

What does this mean?

February 21, 2006 in Economy, It Happened To Me, Music and Television by matt | No comments

For some reason I always like to bop my head to the Fidelity Investments commercial that’s on television these days. I can’t remember exactly which fund they’re advertising which I guess means that the ad isn’t terribly effective though I will always remember that it’s an ad for Fidelity. It has some really catchy music so I can’t help but groove to it.

Tags: advertising, commercials, dancing, fidelity, Music, Television

A humourous description

February 21, 2006 in Music and Technology by matt | No comments

I was looking at my Last.fm’s RSS feed and found the description at the top to be rather humourous. You may remember my post on their service last week.

Anyway here’s what they say in the feed:

This is an RSS feed designed to be read by a computer. Which you aren’t.

What’s an RSS Feed?
RSS feeds allow you to soar above fields of data, much in the way a great eagle soars above mountain ranges, except without the endangered species designation…

It’s a nice use of XSLT.

Tags: eagle, endangered-species, last.fm, rss-feed, xslt

Caring for your introvert

February 20, 2006 in Asides by matt | No comments

The author of one of The Atlantic Monthly’s most popular articles receives a followup interview [via]. Prepare for a united front of introverts.

Tags: interviews, introverts, the-atlantic-monthly

A scanner more darkly

February 20, 2006 in Books and Movies by matt | 1 comment

Almost a year ago I posted about the release of a new movie by Richard Linklater. It’s an adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s novel A Scanner Darkly (novel info). Via Kottke’s remainder links I discovered the latest trailer for the film (Quicktime link). The movie comes out July 7th. I really want to see this.

Tags: a-scanner-darkly, quicktime, richard-linklater, trailer

A printer with a sense of decorum

February 20, 2006 in Technology and The Office by matt | No comments

Our newest printer here at the office (some Minolta model) seems to be rather polite and civilized. The paper tray ran out of paper so it’s providing a nice warning about the status and urges someone to “Replenish paper”. That sounds nice.

Send me the money

February 20, 2006 in Asides by matt | No comments

I admit, I own the winning ticket. You can send my $124.1 million lump sum at any time.

Tags: lottery, Money, powerball, winning-ticket

A little messy

February 20, 2006 in Food and The Office by matt | No comments

Eating cinammon buns with cream cheese icing for breakfast makes for a rather messy experience. I certainly can’t continue to do work while I’m eating them because the keyboard/mouse will get iced. So I have to pause my workday in order to give myself enough sustenance to last until lunchtime. Considering the alternatives it’s probably a worthwhile tradeoff.

Tags: breakfast, cinammon-buns, Food, icing, messy

I’ve got 9000 friends

February 17, 2006 in Asides by matt | No comments

My word this is funny. It’s a “Trendspotting” segment on The Daily Show focusing on MySpace and other social networking sites [via].

Update: Here’s another link to the video.

Tags: myspace, the-daily-show, trendspotting

A contentious issue

February 17, 2006 in CBC and Health by matt | 1 comment

“Presumed consent” organ donation. About a year ago there was a big special on Metro Morning about organ donation in the province and how low our donation rate is and how many people are waiting desperately for organs. It’ll be interesting to see if this private members bill makes its way into legislation.

Tags: CBC, metro-morning, organ-donation

Visualizing credit card debt

February 17, 2006 in Asides by matt | No comments

A handy tool [via].

Crazy weather

February 17, 2006 in Weather by matt | 2 comments

The past 24 hours have been really chaotic weather-wise. Yesterday morning we had snow with a freezing rain mix. Then it warmed slightly during the day turning into rain. When I left work it was back to freezing rain/sleet (very fun to walk in). Late last night we had a thunder and lightning storm and fog. That was pretty strange to see. The lightning looked like it was right outside the window. This morning it was 6 degrees on the plus side. An hour later it was -6 degrees. The wind came in from the north and created a flash freeze situation (always fun for driving into work). The wind almost prevented me from walking up the stairs to our building but fortunately I prevailed. The rest of the day is going to be very cold.

Tags: freezing-rain, lightning, rain, sleet, snow, thunder-storm, Weather, wind, winter

Trim the fat – no wait don’t!

February 16, 2006 in Asides by matt | No comments

How to pick a perfect steak [via].

Tags: groceries, shopping, steaks

A loaf of soy

February 16, 2006 in Food by matt | 1 comment

This week for our sandwiches at lunch we’re trying out a whole wheat soy loaf. It’s part of President’s Choice’s Blue Menu. Here’s the actual product. There is still whole wheat flour in the loaf but the emphasis is definitely on the fact that it’s a soy loaf. It’s pretty tasty though it seems to be denser than other breads. All in all a healthy alternative to already-healthy whole wheat bread.

Tags: blue-menu, pc, presidents-choice, soy-loaf

A minor outage

February 16, 2006 in Blog Discussions by matt | 3 comments

This site had a minor outage this morning. It seems that between 7 and 8 AM the site was completely unavailable. When I brought this site back online I switched to a hosted solution with Dreamhost. It’s laughably inexpensive per month and they provide some great utilities to manage your domain. A lot of popular server software is available as a one-click install.
Anyway this morning I noticed the site was down so I used the panel to ask for support. They were able to verify that the site was down and within 15 minutes it was up again. It’s pretty great service if you ask me (I don’t care if you do or not). This site is hardly critical but it is nice to have it online on a regular basis.

Tags: dreamhost, outages

This never happens

February 16, 2006 in UW by matt | No comments

An event transpired this morning that almost never occurs.

There was maybe one time during the 5 years that I was at the University of Waterloo where the university was closed. I was on coop term at the time so I didn’t even get to experience it first-hand.

The University of Waterloo is closed today (Thursday) following the lead of the local public school board, because of bad weather and risky driving. Classes are cancelled, and assignment deadlines postponed for a day. Students should check with their instructors about revised dates for midterm exams. Most staff members have the day off.

We were scheduled to do coop interviews today too but fortunately I was able to caution the guys doing the interviews from leaving; I told them to check with the university first. It’s a good thing I did too because otherwise they would have driven all the way to Waterloo and discovered that the university is closed.

Tags: closed, university-of-waterloo, UW, Weather, winter

Peppermint Patty

February 15, 2006 in Food by matt | No comments

No not the Peanuts character (call me Chuck). I’m a big fan of peppermint tea in the afternoons of late. It’s a refreshing taste and it’s very pleasant to drink. Plus it doesn’t contain any caffeine (at least the one I drink here at work doesn’t). I usually alternate between this kind of tea and green tea in the afternoon. It cleanses the palate.

Tags: charlie-brown, green-tea, peanuts, peppermint-patty, peppermint-tea, tea

Important news about our beer surplus

February 15, 2006 in Economy and Food by matt | No comments

I read The Daily everyday. It’s Statistics Canada’s daily press release (hence the name) about the new studies coming out of that organization. One of the items that piqued my interest was the study about our trade in beer. Yes they do track these kinds of things.

Canada’s trade surplus in beer with the United States has expanded significantly in recent years as Canadian beer producers have made inroads into the US market, according to a new report.

It’s true; you can find quite a few Canadian beers in the U.S. now. Our surplus is up to $265 million.

Here’s a surprising fact:

Beer is by far the most popular alcoholic beverage among Canadian consumers. However, beer drinkers are increasingly swinging more and more to imported brands to quench their thirst.

Sarcasm intended. We have to watch out for competitors though:

[B]eer from Mexico has been virtually gushing into Canada. In 2000, Mexico replaced the United States as Canada’s leading source of imported beer in terms of value.

You can see the beer gushing at the border. Sometimes you have to wait for quite a while until the row of beer bottles makes it way through customs.

Tags: beer, canada, Economy, mexico, statistics-canada, statscan, surplus, united-states

Cain and Abel: It’s A Hard Knock Life

February 15, 2006 in Asides by matt | No comments

At last we have the book of Genesis expressed in rap songs [via].

Tags: bible, genesis, rap-songs

Audioscrobbler and Last.fm

February 15, 2006 in Movies, Music and Technology by matt | 1 comment

Last week I spent $5 and bought myself a pair of headphones for work. They’re cheap earbuds and so far my ears are tolerant of them (usually I can’t wear them for very long). This has reintroduced a whole world that has languished recently – the world of listening to music at work. I used to listen to music all the time when I worked at Booksoft and most of my coop terms before that but since I started here the team was too small and I didn’t want to miss out on any conversations so I didn’t listen to anything. Now that the team is quite a bit bigger and we’re all focused on longer-term projects, I found the need to listen to music ever-increasing.

I started by listening to Pandora. It’s a really great service – just enter in the names of a few artists or songs and it’ll tailor a station based on the musicality of those artists/songs. It’s an impressive bit of technology and I wonder how long it took to generate the date for the associated project. There are some limitations however – my station seemed to get stuck in a string of mediocre songs and since there is a limit to the number of times you can skip in a particular hour, I had to keep reloading the player to try and teach Pandora the way out of that situation.

I then tried Last.fm. The streaming quality here at work seemed to be very variable (lots of dropped packets) so I didn’t try that out for very long. I did however resurrect my Last.fm profile (rather, I created a new one). My old one was here.

I downloaded Foobar 2000, a superior media player, and installed the Audioscrobbler plugin so that I could keep my profile up-to-date with what I’m listening to. I have no shortage of music available to me so to start I brought in a few of my CDs from home and ripped them. I’m rediscovering how much joy it brings me to listen to music. I also like not having to worry about maintaining a list of the music I listen to; I used to do that on my old Wiki site but it was a lot of work to keep up-to-date. Now I can just check my profile to see what I’m listening to the most. I’ve even included a little chart on the side of this site showing my weekly top artists.

Now my only wish is that there was a similar site for movies that I watch. I don’t want to maintain my list of watched movies; that’s a lot of work since we tend to watch quite a few per week. There has to be a site out there that does this; if not then maybe I should create my own.

Tags: audioscrobbler, foobar-2000, headphones, last.fm, Movies, Music, pandora

National Flag Day

February 15, 2006 in Life and Politics by matt | No comments

Today is Flag Day here in Canada. Make sure you fly it proudly and high. The Prime Minister is participating in the ceremony today in Ottawa. From the Wikipedia article on our Flag Day:

At the very first Flag Day ceremony in Hull, Quebec, Prime minister Jean Chretien’s speech was drowned out by a group of demonstrators upset by proposed cuts in the unemployment insurance legislation. Mr. Chretien left the stage and while walking through the crowd he encountered Bill Clennett, one of the demonstrators who was shouting, “Chretien, au chômage”. Mr. Chretien grabbed Mr. Clennett by the neck and pushed him aside. Chrétien was criticized for this incident, which came to be dubbed the “Shawinigan Handshake“.

Numerous Canadians feel that National Flag of Canada Day should be declared a national statutory holiday, as there is a long period early in the year (between New Year’s Day and Good Friday) without any holidays.

I’m one of those people who would like a holiday in February. I can do without one of course but it is a long break between New Year’s and Good Friday especially in years like this one where Easter isn’t until April. That’s a long stretch of time.

As for the Shawinigan Handshake incident? That’s just another difference between our leaders and the ones in other countries. Our leader can walk into a crowd and grab a protester by the neck. Other leaders would get someone else to do these types of things.

Tags: canada, easter, flag-day, good-friday, holidays, jean-chretien, new-years-day, shawinigan-handshake

Eclipsing myself

February 15, 2006 in Food, Technology and The Office by matt | No comments

We got our monthly supply of coffee here at work this week. One of the new flavours/roasts is called “Eclipse Blend”. It’s a dark roast which I tend to like though the darker the roast the more bitter the coffee. I figured that it was an appropriate coffee for me to drink; not because I’m a bitter man but for the geeky reason that I use Eclipse at work. What’s a better way to honour this fantastic platform than drinking its namesake coffee? I can’t think of a more suitable tribute.

Tags: coffee, eclipse, geeky

Day by day

February 15, 2006 in Life and Weather by matt | 1 comment

One of my favourite parts of February and March is the fact that each day the sun rises a little earlier and sets a little later. When I leave the house at 7 now it’s already getting lighter. Today the sun rises at 7:17 and sets at 17:47. That means that both my trips to and from work are still in daylight (nearly). In a few more weeks it’ll be totally in daylight until we move back into daylight savings time. This means only one thing – spring is on its way.

It certainly has been more winter-like over the last few weeks; the warm days of January seem a distant memory but I’m not really complaining about the weather. Since it’s already February and only now is it getting cold it’s not as bad as it could be. November through April coldness is depressing. February through April coldness is not as depressing. Sure it’s still depressing trudging through snow (not that I’ve had to do that yet) and yelling at the wind to stop (I’ve done this) but it could be worse. It’s a “glass half-full” mentality. It works for me.

Tags: spring, sunrise, sunset, Weather, winter

Saturday afternoon

February 14, 2006 in Life and Toronto by matt | No comments

On Saturday Marcy and I went downtown to meet up with Kristin, Andrew and Lonnie. We had a great (albeit short) time together. We went to Maggie’s Cafe and Catering for a sumptuous brunch. Then we took the streetcar down to the Eaton Centre. It was really nice spending time with them; we haven’t seen Andrew and Kristin since last July on our way out east and we haven’t seen Lonnie since late May of last year I think. It’s been that long. We’re going to have to try and see him more often because living in the same city there’s really no excuse except being busy. We’ll be seeing Andrew and Kristin again this weekend at Amanda’s birthday party. Maybe sometime in March or April we’ll make our way to Montreal again. It’s been too long.

The picture above was taken while we were waiting at Union Station. I took a few more and created a Flickr set.

Tags: amanda, andrew, flickr, friends, kristin, lonnie, maggies-cafe-and-catering, photos, Toronto, union-station

State of education

February 13, 2006 in Cultural Criticism by matt | No comments

I’ve bookmarked this video on YouTube which discusses the failures of the American education system over the last 30 years. It’s called “Stupid in America” and I’m definitely going to have to watch this sometime soon. I got this link via Darren. I’ve heard some interesting (I use the term loosely) ideas about education recently and it seems like the Canadian education system is about a generation behind the Americans in terms of new ideas so if we were to follow the same course then this could be us in 20 years.

Tags: canada, documentary, education, education-system, united-states, video

Forgotten phones

February 13, 2006 in It Happened To Me by matt | 3 comments

About once a month I tend to forget my cellphone at home. I’m not sure why this happens; I take it with me all of the time and it’s a pretty solid part of my routine. I guess it’s when my routine is altered slightly that I forget it. This morning I put my cellphone on the kitchen counter to pick up some change from the bedroom and I forgot it. It’s still there waiting for me and since it wasn’t in its usual place (by the telephone) it was left behind. I hope it wasn’t too lonely today.

Tags: cellphones, forgotten, routines

Teach an old cat new tricks

February 13, 2006 in Asides by matt | No comments

I think the title of this post should read: Teach a cat any tricks because it’s near-impossible to teach them anything that they don’t feel like doing themselves.

Teach your cat to give a handshake [via].

Tags: Cats, handshakes, tricks

Chock full of vegetables

February 13, 2006 in Food by matt | No comments

I’m eating some of Marcy’s fabulous homemade vegetable soup for lunch today. Let me tell you – the VSI ratio on this soup (that’s vegetables per square inch in case you didn’t know) is extremely high. It would be tough to pack any more in so at least I’ll be assured of having my vegetable servings for today. It’s so plentiful that I doubt that I’ll need to eat much else before I go home for dinner.

Tags: Food, home-cooking, lunch, vegetable-soup

We need one for the cats

February 13, 2006 in Asides by matt | No comments

This guy built a puppy monorail in his backyard [via].

Tags: Cats, monorail, puppies

It’s a mystery

February 10, 2006 in Cultural Criticism and Health by matt | 2 comments

Hmm. A user visiting my site from Gillette’s network space. I wonder which article they were looking at. Perhaps it was this one about the Gillette Fusion. I saw a new ad for this product last night and it’s even more over-the-top than the last one. It talks about combining a revolutionary technical breakthrough with what I remember to be “a great idea” to create this super-razor.

At least they’re offering both the manual and powered versions at the same time with this razor so that we don’t have to go through the “it’s a revolutionary concept in shaving” marketing material in a year or two when really the only change is that they added a small battery.

The hyperbole slays me.

Tags: advertising, fusion, gillette, hyperbole, mach-3

I need this knowledge

February 10, 2006 in Asides by matt | 2 comments

HOWTO fold a fitted sheet [via]. That’s one laundry item that I’m really not very good at folding.

Tags: fitted-sheet, folding, howto, laundry

Homebrew

February 10, 2006 in Cats, Food and The Office by matt | 2 comments

I had to bring in my own coffee this morning. The coffee maker here at work (the one that no one fills) broke down yesterday and they’re replacing it today so between yesterday at noon and today at whenever there is no coffee available in the office. People either have to bring in their own coffee or purchase one downstairs. “The horrors” I know; I’m thinking the same thing. Hopefully by later today the risks associated with a lack of coffee in an office will have abated.

Anyway so I brought my own coffee today and to make sure that it was ready by the time I had to leave the house I actually prepped it last night before going to bed and then turned it on when I got up. I’m using my new coffee mug that I got from the cats for my birthday. Yes you read that correctly. They also gave me some Cadbury Creme Eggs. I’ll have to eat those up soon and possibly get some for a certain someone that I know also likes these treats.

Update (8:40 AM): It’s too bad that the coffee that I made isn’t very good. I’ll have to look at my formula again.

Tags: cadbury-creme-egg, coffee, coffee-machine

I think of the Canadian Red Cross too

February 9, 2006 in Cultural Criticism and Entertainment by matt | No comments

I disapprove of this use of my charitable dollars. How many people really think that they’re picking up “Canadian Red Cross” health packs when they’re playing a video game? I really don’t understand how this harms their image. Does that symbol ever mean anything but health? Likely not. And yet they feel justified in suing. Litigation certainly does seem to be out of control sometimes.

Tags: canadian-red-cross, health-packs, litigation, video-games

Feline abuse

February 9, 2006 in Cats and Humour by matt | 4 comments

Darren wrote about his Hall of Technical Documentation Weirdness yesterday in reference to some of the images being in the IT Crowd show mentioned on Boing Boing among other places (which I must download and watch). I’d been to the Hall before and so I passed the link around at work and someone found this entry entitled “Feline Abuse”. I’m really not sure what they’re advocating in there. One of the frames has the person explicitly stepping on the cat’s tail in order to pour powder on them (hopefully it’s not the same can of poison in the previous frame). Also I don’t think that vacuuming a cat would work. They don’t tend to like the vacuum and holding a cat down is next-to-impossible. I guess if you happen to be able to accomplish this then your cat will be all pretty and sitting nicely at the end. That sounds pretty reasonable. Our cats would definitely put up with that kind of treatment.

Tags: Cats, feline-abuse, hall-of-technical-documentation-weirdness, it-crowd, vacuum

More chat

February 9, 2006 in Technology by matt | 1 comment

A followup.

One of the neat things about Jabber is that you can be online multiple times at the time same. I noticed on Pandion that the resource when I’m using Google Talk is “Talk.v” plus a string of characters whereas when I’m using Gmail it’s “gmail.” plus a string of characters. I can choose which instance of myself and the message will only go to that resource. Unfortunately it doesn’t show the keyboard activity in the chat windows but that’s hardly a major feature. It’s more of a incrementally useful thing to me as I can determine if the conversation is active or not.
One other neat feature is being able to go “off the record”. Basically this means that the chat history won’t be saved (which itself is a new feature in Google Talk – the history gets sent to your Gmail account). I guess if you’re talking about something that you don’t want to save for later (for whatever reason) then you can mark it as such and the other person gets a visual indication of your settings. Of course if you’re not talking with someone with a Google account (like me) then this setting won’t work; my client saves the chat histories anyway. So be forewarned that “off the record” doesn’t apply to conversations with me. I’m secretly archiving all of these personal conversations for use in my tell-all book in 2009.

Tags: chat, gmail, google-talk, jabber, off-the-record, pandion

25 vs 10

February 9, 2006 in Commuting and Toronto by matt | 1 comment

I was mistaken yesterday when I talked about the TTC fares going up by 10 cents. Well, I was only partially wrong actually. It seems that the price of tokens and tickets will go up by 10 cents but the cash fare will go up by 25 cents (Toronto Star story). Also the price of the Metropass, unaffected by last year’s hike, will be going up by 1 dollar. For me this is going to be an extra $2 per month in commuting costs assuming that I continue to get a ride in the mornings. It’s not an unreasonable amount to increase the fares by. The only condition that I make (as if I have the power to impose these conditions!) is that the service continue to improve. With sprawl continuing unabated (well almost) the last thing that I want to see is our transit system to deteriorate to the point of obsolescence. I don’t want to feel like the system is unusable and yet I have no other option but to use it. That won’t be a good situation for anyone in Toronto.

Tags: bus-tickets, Commuting, fares, metropass, ten-cents, Toronto, ttc, twenty-five-cents

Gmail chat

February 9, 2006 in Technology by matt | 3 comments

You can now chat with your Google Talk contacts through Gmail itself. You can read about the details here and this story has been all over the Internet for the last couple of days. I’m not sure how useful this will be for me especially since I recently switched to using Jabber but it looks like a neat application of Javascript and HTML. You can have the chat windows inside Gmail or you can pop them out into their own window.

People have spent the time to dig (not digg) into the Javascript source code and have some thoughts at some upcoming features that might be introduced into Gmail. If one thing holds true it’s that people are always anxious to dissect and analyze every new Google offering. It’s like trying to read tea leaves.

Evading the law

February 8, 2006 in Asides by matt | No comments

I agree with Warren. This is the letter of the year (so far). PDF link.

Tags: Cars, Humour, law, speeding, violations

Send me a pie!

February 8, 2006 in Life and Work by matt | No comments

Via Darren Barefoot I discovered the ACME Humble Pie company. They delivery pies as gifts to anyone across Canada. Not only that but they are meant to be apology pies. That’s a gift that I can get behind. If you want to apologize to me, please send me a pie. I’ll be happy to accept it. That doesn’t guarantee that I’ll that I’ll accept your apology but the pie I’m sure will be tasty.

I agree with Darren on their website though. It’s hardly the most usable place I’ve visited recently.

Tags: acme-humble-pie, apologies, gifts, pie

Cat repellents

February 8, 2006 in Asides by matt | No comments

A humourous attempt at making a homebrew, USB-compatible cat repellent.

Tags: cat-repellent, Cats, hacks, usb

A yearly event

February 8, 2006 in Commuting and Toronto by matt | 1 comment

Last year it was ten whole cents. It looks like this year will be more of the same:

The Toronto Transit Commission is expected to raise fares by 10 cents at a special budget meeting Wednesday. The fare hike would come in response to a $16.5-million shortfall as the commission grapples with rising transit costs. It would increase the cost of tokens to $2.10, while the cash fare would go up to $2.60. The price of a monthly pass, currently $98.75, is expected to remain unchanged. There had been suggestions that the TTC could raise fares by as much as 20 cents, but commission chair Howard Moscoe said that such a large increase was unlikely. The TTC has already rejected proposals to cut routes or increase crowding in order to save money.

I like the current fare prices because it’s an even amount. It’s easy to accumulate if you happen to not have a bus ticket – $2 and 2 quarters. Now I’ll need a little more when I don’t have a bus ticket. Of course I could always ensure that I have a bus ticket with me but sometimes I’m forgetful.

Edit (2:47 PM): BlogTO has a good idea for concrete, visible improvements in service in return for this fare hike.

Tags: bus-tickets, Commuting, fares, ten-cents, Toronto, ttc

My coughing friend

February 8, 2006 in Health and The Office by matt | No comments

I call him my coughing friend. In the office here there is another business that shares our floor. The walls aren’t especially thick so when someone speaks very loudly I can hear them. The person who is closest to my desk on their side coughs a lot. It’s a pretty regular cough. Sometimes he’s out of the office for a few days at a time but I know when he’s back because the coughing returns. It doesn’t bother me because most of the time I don’t even hear it.

Tags: coughing, coughing-friend, Health, The Office

Mexico City from the air

February 8, 2006 in Asides by matt | No comments

Via BoingBoing I found these stunning aerial shots of Mexico City taken by a helicopter pilot. The housing complexes are incredible.

Tags: aerial, helicopter, mexico-city, photographs, Pictures

Queen West hipsters

February 7, 2006 in Asides by matt | No comments

Via Spacing, I find this humourous video about Queen West here in Toronto. The comments are almost as funny as the video.

Tags: hipsters, queen-west, spacing, Toronto, videos

Surrealist Garfield

February 7, 2006 in Asides by matt | No comments

Via Stipe I read about an attempt to make the Garfield comic strip a surrealist one. You could argue it makes the strip a better one.

Tags: comic-strips, garfield, Humour, surrealism

Power law problems

February 7, 2006 in Asides by matt | No comments

Malcolm Gladwell’s article in the New Yorker this week deals with power law problems. Essentially it entails targeting specific solutions at the hard-core offenders in order to see huge improvements in the problem. [via]

Tags: malcolm-gladwell, new-yorker, power-law

Jabberized

February 7, 2006 in Technology by matt | No comments

I’ve decided to revisit using Jabber as my main IM. If you happen to use Jabber you can add me at matt@theinflux.com. Also if you’re using Google Talk you can add me at the same address since Google Talk now supports other Jabber servers connecting to their clients. I’ve chosen to go with Pandion as my Jabber client. It’s pretty great so far. If I find any annoyances I’ll be sure to post them here.

Tags: google-talk, jabber, pandion

Firefox 2 Alpha

February 7, 2006 in Firefox by matt | No comments

Not to be outdone by the hype surrounding IE7, it seems that the Mozilla group will be releasing the first alpha of Firefox 2 this Friday. Looking at the release plan, it seems that it’ll be ready for final release this June. I’ll likely be trying out the betas when they come out in a few weeks. Firefox will remain my browser until there is a major change in the features available in competing browsers.

Tags: alpha, beta, browsers, Firefox, internet-explorer

History of Firefox

February 7, 2006 in Asides by matt | No comments

Where did Firefox come from? [via]

Tags: Firefox, history

Fumes in the subway

February 7, 2006 in Commuting and Toronto by matt | No comments

Well to contrast with yesterday’s positive subway story, here’s one from this morning that isn’t so positive:

A section of the Yonge subway line was temporarily shut down Tuesday morning after eight TTC workers were overcome by fumes at the Eglinton station.

In place of trains, the Toronto Transit Commission began the morning rush hour with buses running in place of the subway between York Mills and Bloor. Bus service was cancelled out of the Eglinton station, which was completely closed as fire crews investigated the source of the fumes. Full service resumed shortly before 8 a.m. The workers were doing maintenance work when they fell ill. All eight were taken to hospital.

Hopefully those workers are ok. That is one hazardous job cleaning those subway tunnels; the ventilation is hardly ideal.

Also I think that having to take a shuttle bus instead of the subway would be particularly cramped. I would imagine that it would be worse than the normal bus routes but it’s only temporary.

Tags: Commuting, eglinton, fumes, subway, Toronto, ttc

More 30 Boxes

February 7, 2006 in Firefox by matt | No comments

As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, I’ve been trying out 30 Boxes. I said in that post that I couldn’t get the site to work in Firefox at home but that it worked ok here at work. Last night I tried the site again and found that I still couldn’t get it to work in Firefox. I’m not sure what is going wrong at home; I don’t have any crazy extensions installed but I do know that it doesn’t work. I haven’t seen any similar problems on their support forums so I’m not sure what I should do. I guess I could just suck it up and use IE but that’s hardly a good longterm solution for me. If I find some time maybe I’ll post on the forum to see if there’s anything that I’m doing that is causing it not to work.

Tags: 30-boxes, Firefox, ie, internet-explorer, support-forums

This is going to be ugly

February 6, 2006 in Commuting, Toronto and Weather by matt | No comments

I can’t see out of the window. It’s going to be a none-too-fun commute home. I hope Marcy got home ok.

Tags: Commuting, Toronto, ttc, Weather, winter

Archiving the government

February 6, 2006 in Asides by matt | No comments

I hadn’t considered the impact of a change in government would have on the National Archives [via].

Tags: canada, data, election, national-archives

Back with the Creative Commons!

February 6, 2006 in Blog Discussions by matt | No comments

I posted last year about a plugin for Wordpress that allowed me to integrate my Creative Commons license with the blog. Well with me upgrading to Wordpress 2.0 (and then 2.0.1) after having lost most of my entries, it was time for me to redisplay this license information on the site because I think it’s extremely important to have an open copyright system.

I decided to use this new plugin called the Creative Commons Configurator. It made it remarkably easy to integrate. I just had to choose my license, copy the RDF into the plugin’s options page and then choose where I wanted to have it displayed. I choose three places: in the header so that bots can read it when spidering this site, in my RSS feed and also on a single post page so that when you’re viewing one post you can see what the rights are.

This is the license that I choose to go with. It’s the Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Canada license. It’s great that they have regionally-targeted licenses now. The work of the Creative Commons group is one that I heartily endorse. If I didn’t then I wouldn’t be licensing my work in this way.

Tags: canada, cc, common-content, copyright, creative-commons, license, plugins, rss, wordpress

Vapourware awards

February 6, 2006 in Asides by matt | No comments

Wired releases its top vapourware winners from 2005.

Tags: 2005, awards, vapourware, wired

30 boxes

February 6, 2006 in Technology by matt | No comments

Yesterday I was able to sign up to be a beta tester for 30 boxes which is a new online calendaring site. I first read about it on Matt’s site and since then the buzz leading up to the public beta this past weekend has been deafening. Just look here and you’ll know what I mean. I tried it last night at home and found that it didn’t work quite as well with my installation of Firefox and I actually had to use IE to be able to enter new calendar items. Fortunately though when I got to work this morning I was able to use Firefox with the site without any difficulties. You can see my profile page here. I’m going to try and put the HTML/Javascript badge on the sidebar here to see how it looks. They have a lot of neat features planned like custom feeds based on tags/dates/whatever as well as an API for developers to leverage. They added iCal/ICS support over the weekend so that people can download their 30 boxes calendar into their desktop calendar applications (Outlook, Mozilla Calendar, whatever). Interoperability is key.

It’ll be interesting to see if this site becomes what Flickr has become for photos. There is a lot of competition for online calendars already.

Tags: 30-boxes, beta, calendars, Firefox, flickr, ical, ics, internet-explorer

Little things that get through your day: priceless

February 3, 2006 in Sports and Television by matt | No comments

MacGyver (praised here) is going to be in a Super Bowl ad this Sunday [via]. You can watch it here. Since we can’t watch the ads here in Canada (Global’s licensing of the feed means that they put in their own ads) our only option is to watch them online or catch them on tv when they eventually make it to massmarket which for some of the one-off ones will be never. I’ll have to look at the other ads on that site later. In the meantime go Mac!

Tags: ads, canada, commercials, football, global, macgyver, nfl, richard-dean-anderson, super-bowl, Television, tv

Axworthy-Ignatieff talk is on

February 3, 2006 in Pictures, Politics and Toronto by matt | No comments

We’re going to try and go to this (mentioned yesterday). Perhaps we’ll see you there. I brought my camera with me to work so there might even be pictures to speak of at a later date.

Update (10:25 PM) – I did something better with my time tonight. I went out for dinner with my wife and walked around downtown. That’s better than Peacebuilding anyday.

Tags: axworthy, camera, ignatieff, lloyd-axworthy, michael-ignatieff, peacebuilding, Pictures, Politics, rebel-sell, Toronto, u-of-t

Back to 2002

February 3, 2006 in Asides by matt | No comments

Raptors trade Jalen Rose: report

They’re trading him for Antonio Davis. Yes, the same guy.

Tags: 2002, antonio-davis, basketball, jalen-rose, nba, raptors, Sports, Toronto

Face of Muhammed

February 3, 2006 in Asides by matt | No comments

Yes there is now even a blog devoted to the cartoons causing the fury [via].

Tags: blogs, cartoons, islam, jyllands, muhammed

Awful

February 3, 2006 in Asides by matt | No comments

Motorist badly injured as concrete flung onto highway

Sometimes people make me feel really ill.

Tags: concrete, driving, highway, injuries

Sequels aplenty

February 3, 2006 in CBC and Movies by matt | No comments

According to this CBC News story they are producting a sequel to Harry Potter (no surprise) and The Chronicles of Narnia. For Harry Potter it will be “The Order of the Phoenix” and for Narnia it’ll be “Prince Caspian“. The principle actors for each of the series are returning which is a good thing. They’re both scheduled for release in 2007. I’m looking forward to them.

Tags: CBC, chronicles-of-narnia, harry-potter, Movies, prince-caspian, sequels, the-order-of-the-phoenix

Five minutes in and I’d be drunk

February 3, 2006 in Asides by matt | 1 comment

The David Caruso Drinking Game [via].

Tags: csi-miami, david-caruso, drinking, drinking-game

Soaking

February 3, 2006 in It Happened To Me and Weather by matt | No comments

Today is a very wet day. It looks like the next few days will be wet ones. For today it’s rain but it looks like snow for tomorrow and Sunday. I think I remember what snow looks like but we’ll find out tomorrow if I’m right or not.

In any case I really got soaked this morning taking the garbage out to the curb (yes it’s another Garbage Friday today). It was very dark because of the cloud cover and since I had to meet my 7 AM deadline not just for the garbage but for my ride to work as well I had to be hasty. At the side of the house it’s very dark and there isn’t a lot of grass around to keep the mud from sliding into the walkway. Also since it’s an older property, the walkway isn’t exactly level and so there were huge puddles filled with some mud along my path. I had to go back and forth from the backyard to the curb 3 times and each time I ended up stepping in the deepest and thus wettest/muddiest puddles. The bottoms of my pants were pretty wet by the time I was done. I was cursing the whole time and it was a tie between me and Nature as to who was to blame for my predicament. It could have been far worse though; I could have slipped and fallen in the mud.

Tags: garbage-friday, rain, snow, Weather, winter

Not first anymore

February 3, 2006 in CBC and Television by matt | 1 comment

There are a couple of shows that Global carries that we watch. They’ve been advertising the fact that their main evening news program (in Ontario at least) is moving from 5:30 to 6. The commercial shows how hard-hitting their news can be and how it’ll bring some really useful information to its viewers. The thing that I remember most about Global’s evening news is that they were so proud of how early they carried it. It used to start at 5 and bring you the news first compared to the other networks. “You’ll hear it here first” is what they used to say. Now with even their national broadcast pushed back to 6:30 in Ontario, how much of a lead are they really going to have anymore over the other networks? Also with the prevalence of news sources on cable and online, does it really matter which news program is first? If I have timeshifting I could watch the National very early in the evening from the East Coast. There is rarely any news that is that pressing that I can’t wait until later in the evening or the next morning to learn about. I just don’t understand the emphasis on being the first. I’d be more concerned about being the best newscast.

Update (Sunday February 5th @ 10:10 PM): I just read James Koole’s post about the new Global redesign and he mentions that First National will now be on at 5:30 instead of 6:30. I think my point still stands about the fact that no matter when your newscast is airing, we live in a news world that offers new information on a constant basis. You have to move beyond just being the first to bring the news in the evening to being the best newscast period.

Tags: CBC, first, global, globaltv, kevin-newman, leslie-roberts, news, Television, the-national

Mmmuffins!

February 3, 2006 in Food by matt | 1 comment

I bought a muffin this morning for breakfast from the little deli downstairs. I’ve had them before and they’re pretty great but this morning I checked to see if they were open when I got into work (7:15) and found that they were indeed open. Seizing upon this opportunity, I bought a fresh, warm muffin. It must have been just out of the oven and boy does it smell good! I can’t wait to eat it.

Aside: I remember when you used to see Mmmuffins stores in every mall. Are they still in the malls? I honestly haven’t been to a mall in quite a while and when I am I don’t usually pay attention to the food stores so I really can’t say. I always used to look at their selection of muffins but I don’t recall ever actually purchasing one.

Update: It was a delicious (not del.icio.us) muffin!

Tags: breakfast, Food, malls, mmmuffins, muffins

Fusion – try hyperbole

February 2, 2006 in Cultural Criticism and Health by matt | 1 comment

You’d think that Gillette was coming out with a cure for cancer the way they’ve been hyping their New! 5-blade! Razor! It’s called the Gillette Fusion. They say in the commercial that it’s coming out on the 5th of February (Sunday – a good day for release of a new razor in my opinion). However Marcy and I were at the Shoppers Drugmart near our house on Tuesday and they had the display already set up and you could purchase it right then if you really felt like it. I took a look at it and the blades are really quite small and it doesn’t look that much different from the Mach 3 (also a Gillette product). With the smaller blades does that translate into a smoother shave resulting in a more sexy look and feel? Marketing says yes.

I just don’t think that people really care if their razor has 3 blades or 4 or 5 or 17. I think people would make fun of the hype rather than think it’s a good use of research.

Tags: fusion, gillette, hyperbole, mach-3, shoppers-drugmart

Curious

February 2, 2006 in Politics and Toronto by matt | 3 comments

Just what is Peacebuilding?

WHAT: Public Conversation with Michael Ignatieff and Lloyd Axworthy
DATES: Friday February 3rd, 2006
LOCATION: Great Hall of Hart House, University of Toronto, St. George Campus
TIME: 7:00pm – 9:30pm

This might be something to check out. Marcy gave me Axworthy’s book for my birthday. It looks like an interesting read.

Tags: axworthy, ignatieff, lloyd-axworthy, michael-ignatieff, peacebuilding, Politics, rebel-sell, Toronto, u-of-t

Capote

February 2, 2006 in Movies by matt | No comments

On Tuesday night Marcy and I went to see Capote which as I mentioned earlier that day was the only film out of the ones nominated for Best Picture that we had yet to see. It’s a fantastic movie. I didn’t really know much about Truman Capote except for a few handfuls of facts but it was incredible how well Philip Seymour Hoffman transformed himself into his character. Capote was certainly a conflicted man. If I were a wagering man then I would bet that Hoffman will win for Best Actor and as Drew says “And many years of Oscar wrongs will be righted.” Hopefully it comes to pass.

Tags: academy-awards, capote, Movies, oscars, philip-seymour-hoffman, truman-capote

They must be stopped

February 2, 2006 in Humour and Politics by matt | No comments

We must band together and stop the terrible human-animal hybrids. I support the Bush plan of attack against these blasphemous creatures.

Tags: animal, bush, human, human-animal-hybrids, hybrids, sotu, state-of-the-union

Secret Canadian Superweapons in Development

February 2, 2006 in Humour and Links by matt | No comments

From McSweeney’s:

Titanium Mountie

Canadarm face slapper

Ballistic beavernauts

120 mm maple-syrup mortar

Peacekeeping robot that attacks you by surprise

Bioengineered crazy lumberjack choppers

I’d like to see some of those robots.

Tags: beavernauts, canada, mcsweeneys, superweapons

Maybe this is the root cause

February 1, 2006 in Health and Travel by matt | 2 comments

Via BoingBoing I found this article:

Depending on three different flight scenarios, Hocking and Foster found that airline passengers in three different scenarios were 5, 23, or 113 times more likely to catch a cold than if they had not flown at all!…

The most logical reason for infections would seem to be the limited amount of cabin air shared by the passengers. But Hocking, Foster and other scientists have found this is only one factor. The very low humidity in an airplane seems to be much more important.

…

Very dry air dries up the mucous system that captures and expels bacteria and viruses from our noses. This may be a key reason why airplane passengers catch more colds.

Now I’m by no means a frequent flyer of any aircraft, but I did go on a trip in a plane a couple of weeks ago. It was a packed plane so perhaps this was the reason behind me getting sick this past week?

Tags: airlines, boing-boing, cold, flying, Health, immune-system, sick, Travel

Remember the pie?

February 1, 2006 in Food by matt | No comments

Do you remember the turkey soup that I was talking about early last month? Well we’ve been eating one of the pies this week and it has been very tasty. Hooray for leftovers!

Tags: Food, leftovers, pie, turkey, turkey-pie

Maternity leave

February 1, 2006 in Life and The Office by matt | No comments

A member of our team returned to us today. She was off for a whole year for maternity leave. It must be scary to come back to a startup because a year in our company has meant a complete transformation; almost nothing is the same. Many of the people who were here when she was last here aren’t here anymore or have moved to completely new positions. Our client list has expanded tremendously and some of the old names are still on the wall but just aren’t around as clients anymore. Even her role will be very different because whereas before there was just her now it’s a whole team of people.

It’s like starting a new job but with a little bit of inside knowledge.

Tags: Life, maternity-leave, startup, The Office, Work

Thanks to the cache

February 1, 2006 in Blog Discussions by matt | No comments

You may (or may not) have noticed that my archives have really been flushed out over the last few weeks. We lost all of the past entries here and when I came back online here I had to start from scratch again. I was disconcerted at first but then I remembered that Google had been visiting my site (noted here) and I had set my meta robots tag to index and follow links. I did a search for my site (old blog location) and noticed that there were quite a few results (over 1300) and that many of them were cached by Google (the same cache that was recently declared legal). All I had to do then was iterate through the results, visit the cached version of each result and copy the entry into this new installation. It took a lot of work and a lot of time but I think I managed to get about 95% of the entries back again which I’m pretty impressed with. There are still quite a few broken links in those old posts because they refer to other posts in the old blog location so I’ll have to go back and update them at some point but at least the base content is there. I’m currently in the process of importing my old Livejournal entries so that I’ll have all of my blog entries in one place. With Wordpress 2.0 I can backup the blog at any time so I’m going to start doing that just in case something catastrophic goes wrong. Sometimes it’s nice to have search engines crawling what you put online. I also could have used The Wayback Machine but it doesn’t seem to have much from my site. That’s not surprising considering how insignificant this site in the grand scheme of things.

Tags: archive.org, archives, blog, boing-boing, chang8ling, google, google-cache, livejournal, wayback-machine

Shoot first

February 1, 2006 in Asides by matt | 1 comment

U.S. troops in Iraq shoot at four Canadian diplomats. Encouraging news.

Tags: canada, CBC, diplomats, iraq

Attack #12

February 1, 2006 in Cars, Cultural Criticism and Toronto by matt | No comments

Via Spacing Wire, I was alerted to this guerilla ticketing effort that will be taking place downtown on Friday.

Attack #12 is a sprint operation based on Attack #10, which took place in Montreal in September 2005 and where nearly 350 “patrollers” recruited by ATSA issued some 10,000 statements of offence. These statements target oversize vehicles and the excessive fuel consumption asociated with them, excessive engine idling, remote engine starters and poorly maintained vehicles.

Individually numbered between 10,001 and 11,200 and in triplicate, these statements of offence will be:

Handed out to all offending vehicles by our patroller citizens on Feb. 3rd between 5 and 7 p.m.

Displayed at YYZ Artist’s Outlet as an interactive exhibit between 7 and 9 p.m.

Presented to a politician responsible for the sustainable development of the Toronto community.

As an anti-fan of SUVs I like this effort but being aware of the realities of the city I don’t think the ticketed offenders will even notice or care that they have a fake ticket on their car. It’s encouraging to see projects such as these however if only to raise the public conscience a marginal amount.

Tags: atsa, attack-12, spacing-wire, suvs, Toronto

Upgrade to 2.0.1

February 1, 2006 in Blog Discussions by matt | No comments

I just finished upgrading this blog to Wordpress 2.0.1 which was released last night. 114 bugs fixed in this release! From a cursory search a few days ago, I noticed that there have been some general and specific complaints about Wordpress 2.0 so hopefully those will be resolved now. It’s nice to see such a dedicated group of developers trying to improve an already-great product.

Tags: 2.0, 2.0.1, blog, bugs, upgrade, wordpress

IE7 Beta 2

January 31, 2006 in Firefox by matt | 1 comment

I just finished installing IE7 Beta 2 (see this earlier post about IE7) which was released today. Edit: I should say that it’s not officially Beta 2 but rather a “Beta 2 Preview”. Apparently that makes a difference. It’s very similar to Firefox in many respects but differs in others. The menu items no longer exist along the top but rather are graphical pulldowns on the right side of the browser. It has an integrated phishing filter, supports IDN and has numerous fixes and improvements to IE6 and below. There’s also an integrated RSS feed reader that seems pretty nice (at least the styling of the feed looks nice) but I’m going to stick with my current feed reader for now. I’ll keep IE7 running to test it out with work-related sites but Firefox still remains my browser of choice.

Tags: feed-readers, Firefox, idn, ie6, ie7, internet-explorer, phishing, rss

Guilty!

January 31, 2006 in Television by matt | 2 comments

I saw these Law & Order: SVU valentines via Boing Boing just now. They’re pretty funny and if they shipped to Canada I might consider purchasing some. They’re $10 plus $5 shipping.

The “I ‘Huang’ to be with you” one is kind of lame-sounding but I like the “Guilty! of being my valentine” and “In the criminal justice system, you’re especially gorgeous.” It’s too bad they use Stephanie March instead of Diane Neal for that last one.

Tags: boing-boing, diane-neal, law-and-order, stephanie-march, svu, svutines, valentines-day

I’ve been splogged

January 31, 2006 in Blog Discussions by matt | No comments

I noticed on Technorati that I’ve been splogged today. This site (my first use of nofollow!) seems to have reproduced my entry from last night about having wireless Internet along with cordless phone use. Stupid sploggers.

Tags: 802.11, cordless-phone, nofollow, spam, splogs, technorati, wifi

Medicine wearing off

January 31, 2006 in Health by matt | No comments

I can feel the point where the medicine I took this morning has worn off. The headache and general weariness returns with a vengeance. Today I’m taking Advil Cold & Sinus. I need to take some right now to get through the rest of the workday.

Tags: advil, advil-cold-and-sinus, cold, headache, Health, medicine, sick

Not too many surprises

January 31, 2006 in Movies by matt | No comments

So they’ve announced the Academy Awards nominees:

Best Picture: “Brokeback Mountain”, “Capote”, “Crash”, “Good Night, and Good Luck” and “Munich”
Best Actor: Philip Seymour Hoffmann, Heath Ledger, Joaquin Phoenix, David Straithairn and Terrence Howard
Best Actress: Felicity Huffmann, Reese Witherspoon, Charlize Theron, Judi Dench, Keira Knightley
Best Supporting Actor: Paul Giamatti, George Clooney, Matt Dillon, Jake Gyllenhaal, William Hurt
Best Supporting Actress: Rachel Weisz, Amy Adams, Catherine Keener, Frances McDormand, Michelle Williams
Best Director: Paul Haggis, Ang Lee, Bennett Miller, George Clooney, Steven Spielberg
Best Original Screenplay: “Crash”, “Good Night, and Good Luck”, “Match Point”, “The Squid And The Whale”, “Syriana”
Best Adapted Screenplay: “Brokeback Mountain”, “Capote”, “The Constant Gardener”, “A History of Violence”, “Munich”

You can see the full list of nominees here. With Jon Stewart hosting it should make for an entertaining evening. It’s strange how generic the page names are on the Oscars site. host.html, list.html. That’s pretty creative. I guess it makes it easy year-to-year to change.
It’s nice to see The Constant Gardener get some nominations; that was a fantastic movie. We’re hoping to go see Capote sometime this week which would mean that we’ve seen all of the Best Picture nominations.

Tags: academy-awards, brokeback-mountain, capote, crash, good-night-and-good-luck, munich, nominations, oscar, the-constant-gardener

Slightly better

January 31, 2006 in Health by matt | No comments

I’m feeling a little better today than yesterday. I really do think that this cold is on its way out and that makes me very happy. I know that my immune system will win this round and that within a couple of days this cold will (hopefully) be a distant memory. I wonder what it feels like to know that your immune system can’t fight off a cold. That must be a depressing feeling.

Tags: cold, Health, immune-system, sick

PBH

January 31, 2006 in Food, It Happened To Me and The Office by matt | No comments

For breakfast this morning I made myself a couple of English muffins. Now I love these types of muffins and I love crumpets even more. There’s just something about them that tastes so good. In any case I made today’s muffins with peanut butter and honey. It’s a delectable combination. I didn’t toast it at home because I didn’t want the filling spreading all over my backpack so I toasted it here with our toaster oven. The one small problem though is that I was setting the timer without setting the temperature so for about 4 iterations the bell went off and the muffins were still cold. Then I realized that the temperature was set to “Off” so I was really not toasting it at all. I rectified the situation and all was good. I had a great set of toasted English muffins.

Tags: english-muffins, honey, It Happened To Me, peanut-butter, The Office, toast, toaster-oven

TTC + Google Maps

January 31, 2006 in Commuting, Technology and Toronto by matt | No comments

I saw this on the 69 Stations blog (a neat project):

Today I fiddled with the Google Maps API, and came up with this. Some fine day, I’ll merge it with this project, to the great annoyance of several people who might otherwise have found it useful.

I took a look at the page and it’s pretty neat though it shows just how small our subway system is. It doesn’t cover much of the city at all yet it carries a significant population each day to and from work/school/events. What I’m really looking forward to is getting the TTC/GO/other transit agencies involved in building a Toronto version of Google Transit.

Tags: 69-stations, Commuting, google, google-maps, google-transit, Toronto, ttc

When frustrated…

January 30, 2006 in Lessons by matt | No comments

People can easily cause frustration and it’s important (very important) to keep your cool, articulate your thoughts, and not get angry. This is true even if you want to throttle someone.

Tags: frustration, Lessons

Cats and schizophrenia?

January 30, 2006 in Cats and Health by matt | No comments

A coworker just passed me this link about a study that links schizophrenia and cats. I knew about the risk when you’re pregnant and cats but I hadn’t heard about the schizophrenia connection. It’s something to pay attention to.

Tags: Cats, pregnancy, risks, schizophrenia, science

Troublemakers

January 30, 2006 in Asides by matt | No comments

An article by Malcolm Gladwell in The New Yorker – “What pit bulls can teach us about profiling”.

Tags: bull-dogs, malcolm-gladwell, new-yorker, profiling

Filling the coffee maker

January 30, 2006 in Food and The Office by matt | 1 comment

We have a single-serving coffee maker here at work and we have several varieties of Van Houtte’s coffee available. It’s a good system though there’s one important drawback. It requires people to fill the coffee maker with water so that other people can fill their cup. There’s nothing more annoying than wanting a cup of coffee and walking over to the coffee maker only to find that there’s no water left. It takes a couple of minutes to heat up the water and so there’s not much point waiting around it while it’s doing this. Often times I’ve had to fill it up with water, gone back to my desk, gone back to get a coffee and found that the water is already gone and again no one has filled it up.

It’s just an office pet peeve of mine.

Tags: coffee, coffee-maker, office, pet-peeves, van-houtte, water

Tempted

January 30, 2006 in Health, Life and Work by matt | 3 comments

I was very temped to stay home this morning. The Nyquil didn’t help me sleep at all last night. In fact I didn’t get much sleep period. Imagine that, Nyquil having no effect. It’s supposed to be the wonder drug. Blah-blah-blah-so-you-can-sleep-better medicine. Well it certainly didn’t do that for me and on top of that even with my BreatheRight strip I was still snoring and kept Marcy up. Stupid cold, why can’t you go away? In any case I almost convinced myself to stay home because I was feeling that crummy.

Sidebar: crummy is such a great word. It presents to me such a vivid image. I imagine graham crackers crumbling away when I think of the word crummy.

In any case I did come to work because I thought that I can’t really afford to stay home twice in a release cycle because as we’re getting to the end of this one there might be a greater need for me to be involved in solving problems so I should be around. We’ll see if that decision is actually worthwhile. I doubt I’ll stay to the end of the day. I’m going to need to come home and take a nap at the very least and I’ll have to make sure that I get plenty of rest tonight because this cold has to go away. I’m sick of having it inside of me.

Tags: cold, crummy, Health, nyquil, sick, Work

That crazy polar vortex

January 30, 2006 in Toronto and Weather by matt | 2 comments

I read in the Globe and Mail on Saturday (the actual paper!) a story about how this winter has been so mild. It’s supposed to be above 0 Celsius all week with rain most days.

Not that many people are complaining. Given high oil prices, the weather has pleasantly surprised a lot of homeowners.

So what exactly is going on?

Laymen may be tempted to attribute the phenomenon to global warming, but if climate change was as rapid as all that, Canadians would be planting citrus groves in five years and living in deserts within a few generations. “This may be a dry run, a dress rehearsal, of what winters might be like in the future,” Mr. Phillips said. “But we can’t say that this is the beginning of the permanent change.”

In recent years, other warm spurts have been attributed to El-Nino-style weather patterns, which result from changes in ocean temperatures. “But this is not El Nino, this is neutral,” Mr. Phillips said. “The water out in the Pacific is near-normal temperatures.”

Rather, the climatologist blames “a total absence of cold air” for the relative warmth. His explanation may seem a no-brainer, but the details are elaborate.

A polar vortex that usually resides around Hudson’s Bay this time of year has decided to linger in Northern Europe instead. That’s good news for people in Canada and bad news for people in Russia, who are freezing. “It’s like a Sumo wrestler: You just can’t kick it out,” Mr. Phillips said.

Usually, the vortex lingers somewhere for a while and then moves around of its own accord, its shifts causing other fluctuations of warm and cold air masses. Yet this year, “day after day, week after week, month after month now, this cold pole is just not coming over to this part of the world,” Mr. Phillips said.

The vortex’s failure to move has allowed warmer air to come into Canada — and stay.

No one can forecast the entirety of the winter, but little is expected to change in the next few days. But “I know one thing,” Mr. Phillips said. “Next January is not going to be nearly as warm as this January.”

I like how they scoff at the “laymen” suggestion that it’s all due to global warming. I’m sure a lot of people muse that that is the reason.

In any case this polar vortex staying over Europe has produced some terrible results there. I’m also afraid of what the agricultural impact of this warm winter will be this spring when the farmers start planting their crops. They need snow to keep the ground capable of supporting crops. Sure it’s nice not to have to bundle up and trudge through the snow but winter plays an important part in our environment. I’d hate for us to face disaster because we were able to enjoy a warm winter.

Tags: agriculture, canada, farming, globe-and-mail, laymen, polar-vortex, vortex, Weather, winter

Brokeback Tipping Point

January 27, 2006 in Movies by matt | No comments

I just read this great article on how the marketing campaign for Brokeback Mountain (previously discussed here and here) has succeeded in turning it into one of most successful presumed-Oscar contenders this year. They targeted very specific neighbourhoods in New York and Los Angeles to start the momentum going and then broke out from there. They had different posters and different messages for different parts of the country. It’s a great strategy that has certainly paid off for the production companies. It reminds me of The Tipping Point. [via]

Tags: academy-awards, brokeback-mountain, los-angeles, marketing, Movies, new-york, oscar, tipping-point

He fixed us good

January 27, 2006 in Humour and Television by matt | No comments

More Colbert news. He’s claiming victory in Monday’s election. From here [via]:

TORONTO (CP) – Disheartened about the Conservative win in Monday’s election, or delighted? Either way, American comedian Stephen Colbert says he’s behind Canada’s step to the right.

“I fixed Canada!” Colbert exclaimed Wednesday night on his show, The Colbert Report (pronounced RAY-pore), which airs Monday to Thursday. Colbert noted that his show debuted in Canada on Nov. 7, and featured a message, replayed on Wednesday’s show, to Canadians: “I am Stephen Colbert. I have balls. If you’re lucky, they might just rub off on you.”

“Well, it looks like my balls rubbed all over Canada,” Colbert noted triumphantly as a photo of Prime Minister-designate Stephen Harper and a Canadian flag appeared behind him. “Because they just elected a new prime minister, Stephen Harper, an American-loving, health-care-dismantling Bush wannabe.”

“I fixed Canada in 77 days!” he exclaimed as balloons fell from above and a band played a jaunty tune.

The Colbert Report, a satire of personality-driven pundit shows like The O’Reilly Factor on Fox News, is a spinoff from the award-winning Daily Show, considered one of the hippest shows on the airwaves.

Colbert portrays a right-wing host prone to fits of utter and hilarious buffoonery on the Colbert Report.

Hilarious buffoonery. That’s one way to put it. The Onion AV Club interview is quite revealing. I’m glad we have people like him on tv. Now the problem is staying up late enough to watch the show.

Tags: canada, colbert-report, daily-show, election, news, satire, stephen-colbert, Television, tv

A consequence of change

January 27, 2006 in Lessons and The Office by matt | 2 comments

A consequence of this periodic lesson is that I now have to remember what the code to open the door is. The old code was around for so long that it was part of my hands’ natural motion to enter in the code. I would have to think about what the code is if I had to tell it to someone. Now I have to unlearn that code and teach my hands to use the new code otherwise I won’t be able to get into the office. That’s kind of an important function of being at work.

Tags: combinations, Lessons, office, Work

Finally an unlocked desk

January 27, 2006 in The Office by matt | 2 comments

We’ve had these cubicles that I’m using for well over a year now and since I moved to my current desk last March I’ve had to put up with having no unlocked drawers to use. No one had the key, they couldn’t find the key, they didn’t know how to find the key, etc. Finally last week we got a new lock for the outside door and we were able to unlock my desk. I now have 3 drawers to use as I see fit so I should probably clean up the rest of my desk since it’s a little bit messy.

Anyway I opened the top drawer and found a set of business cards from the last owner of this cubicle. I wonder if Scott Maynard who was (is?) a project manager at Grocery Gateway realizes that his business cards are floating around. He probably doesn’t and even if he did there’s hardly anything to worry about. What could I do? Pretend I was him? That’d be pointless. That’s sort of like this post.

Tags: business-cards, desk, key, office

Lunar New Year

January 27, 2006 in Entertainment and Toronto by matt | 1 comment

This weekend is the Lunar New Year which means that it’ll be the year 4704 in the Chinese calendar. There’s a big celebration (largest Lunar New Year festival in Canada apparently) at the Exhibition Centre this weekend. Tickets are $10 or $8.50 if you buy them online. It would be interesting to go.

Tags: 4704, lunar, new-year, Toronto, year-of-the-dog

My year in cities

January 26, 2006 in It Happened To Me and Travel by matt | No comments

Picking up on the meme I saw on Jason’s blog, I present my own list of cities for 2005:

Toronto, ON*
Belleville, ON*
Stow, OH*
Montreal, PQ
Pembroke, ON
Grand Falls, NB
Brackley Beach, PE
Fredericton, NB
Woodstock, NB

One or more nights spent in each place. Those cities marked with an * were visited multiple times on non-consecutive days.

Some of those aren’t what I would call “cities” but I did stay there for one or more nights so I’ll count them. The cities on the East Coast are from our trip out there this past summer.

Where did you go last year?

Tags: 2005, cities, Travel, year

Lemon curd

January 26, 2006 in Food by matt | No comments

I had a fantastic breakfast this morning. It consisted of two pieces of toast with a generous helping of lemon curd on each. It made my morning. I get to have some more of my birthday cake for lunch. That’ll be tasty too.

Tags: birthday, birthday-cake, Food, lemon-curd, toast

A periodic lesson

January 26, 2006 in Career, Lessons and The Office by matt | 1 comment

This lesson was applicable once again. Someone was fired and the code to the door has changed. These things happen in a growing company. You just hope that it doesn’t happen to you.

Tags: Career, fired, Lessons, locks, The Office, Work

It’s not their strategy

January 26, 2006 in Asides by matt | No comments

Yahoo! responds [via].

Tags: search, yahoo

What’s more tightly packed than sardines?

January 26, 2006 in Commuting and Toronto by matt | 1 comment

I just read this story and also this one (linked from the first) and I have to say that in my experience overcrowding has became a major problem and part of the reason why 15 minutes of my day (30 if I have to take the bus in the morning) are spent in utter discomfort because the 34 Eglinton bus is too crowded. If there’s a slight deviance from the schedule it exacerbates the problem tremendously. I’ve been on buses that have (or at least seem to have) far more than 52 people. We’ve had to go past several stops because there was no way anyone else could get on.

I’ve also had the feeling that the newer buses (the universal access ones) don’t seem to have as much room as the older ones. This is particularly true in the very back of the bus. If you have people standing in the “balcony section” (as I’ve heard some drivers refer to it as) then anyone wanting to get off the bus has very little room to maneuver at all since the aisle is so narrow. I guess that’s the tradeoff to allowing disabled passengers to be able to ride on the TTC and I totally support that move. The entire system should be accessible. I just know that the day-to-day realities of that system can be painful.

I really wish that there some funding magic that could be worked out that would alleviate these situations but I fear that that is probably not too realistic. Also my transit tax credit won’t do any good for the system and it’s really the system that I care about more than the cost that I have to swallow to use the system. Put money into the system and we’ll all reap the benefits. Push the money into the hands of the individual riders and the system suffers as a result. It’s too bad most politicians don’t realize this.

Edit: This CBC article says that the TTC will not be purposely allowing overcrowding. It features a humourous quotation from Howard Moscoe:

“Tell your listeners to pack away their plans to buy extra deodorant,” Moscoe said. “They don’t have to go on a diet to get on the subway system.”

At least there’s some humour here. He admits that it’s meant to send a message to the new government. Hopefully they listen.

Tags: CBC, Commuting, overcrowding, Toronto, ttc

Garlic

January 26, 2006 in Food and Health by matt | No comments

My hands still smell like garlic. Not exactly a pleasant smell when I’m trying to rub my eyes or blow my nose. When I eat garlic I tend to keep it around for quite a while. My body just really likes to absorb it I guess.

Tags: Food, garlic

Tea of Good Tidings

January 25, 2006 in Lessons and Republic of Tea by matt | No comments

Another tea-inspired piece of poetry:

At this moment, somewhere, the kettle calls.
Somehere, the pot waits.
Somewhere, a person smiles into a cup watching leaves unfurl.

– The Minister of Leaves

It warms the heart. It’s also great tea.

Tags: Lessons, poetry, Republic of Tea, tea

Argh!

January 25, 2006 in Asides by matt | No comments

The Aargh page [via]

Tags: english, google, spelling

What became of Paul Martin?

January 25, 2006 in Asides by matt | No comments

What became of Paul Martin? [via]

Tags: canada, paul-martin, Politics

Web authoring statistics

January 25, 2006 in Asides by matt | No comments

Web authoring statistics [via].

Tags: google, html, statistics

Technology in 2001

January 25, 2006 in Asides by matt | No comments

What technology will be like in 2001 (from a 1989 article) [via]

Tags: 2001, atari, magazines, predictions

Climbing cats

January 25, 2006 in Cats by matt | 2 comments

It’s amazing what cats will climb. Our cats tend to like climbing up from the refrigerator onto the little shelf we have on top of the kitchen cupboards. They can then peer down and watch from afar everything that goes on from up there. I’ve tried putting stuff in their way so they can’t get up there but they’re pretty clever and so far have been able to foil my attempts. It’s only Quentin and Eve who go up there; I think Elle and Pumpkin know better. Oftentimes I’ll see things that were knocked off of the top of the fridge and onto the floor. That’s when they know they’ve been caught and will come down when I order them to. When they’re completely silent up there though you won’t even know they’re up there. They probably laugh silently (assuming cats laugh) from up there.

Cats can be crazy.

Tags: Cats, climbing, trouble

Stuffed peppers lesson

January 25, 2006 in Food and Lessons by matt | 1 comment

I made dinner last night. It wasn’t pretty. It looked ok but many things went wrong while I was preparing it. I made stuffed peppers which is a pretty easy recipe to follow. Cut some onions, a couple of cloves of garlic, cook some hamburger, add a little tomato paste, stuff pre-cut green peppers, sprinkle some cheese and put them in the oven. Sounds pretty simple but I made a mistake on 3 of those steps. Firstly, the couple of cloves of garlic. I didn’t mince them enough nor did I cook them enough so I feel right now like I could kill a vampire. Secondly, the hamburger. I didn’t drain the fat off before I put it in the peppers. Thirdly the peppers themselves. I didn’t cook them long enough so it was like eating a green pepper salad. It was hard to digest and my stomach wasn’t happy with me afterwards. I think I’ve learned some important cooking lessons from this. So long as I’m not killing anyone with my cooking (yet) I’m bound to be making some progress and learning some skills.

Tags: cooking, Food, Lessons, stuffed-peppers

Every year

January 25, 2006 in Health, The Office and UW by matt | 1 comment

Every year around this time I get a bad cold and have to either take time off of school (when I was in University) or time from work (the present). Naturally since I’m writing this post this year is no exception. I hinted at such an event last week and it seems that The Cold took a while longer to mature than usual and today I’m off work. I seriously thought of going in and then coming home around lunchtime because there was some information that I had to pass to my team in person but I suppose it’s for the best and I can pass it to them tomorrow. I don’t want to make other people sick. I hate having a cold. Time to take some medecine and some more rest.

Tags: cold, sick

Man Kind Tea

January 24, 2006 in Lessons and Republic of Tea by matt | 2 comments

From my canister of tea:

The leaves take the water, the first sip emanating wisdom’s light, where TeaMind is polished.
It shines, pervading the universie, teaching us once again, that a true cup of tea is more than it seems.
And so are we.

– The Minister of Well-Being

There are more introspective comments on other tea canisters from this company. I’ll post some more later.

Tags: blueberry, Lessons, poetry, Republic of Tea, tea

How to get a great sleep

January 24, 2006 in Asides by matt | No comments

How to get a great sleep [via].

Tags: lifehacks

Artististic a/c

January 24, 2006 in Asides by matt | No comments

LG ART COOL air conditioning.

Tags: artistic, cooling, household

I’ve touched on this before

January 24, 2006 in Life, Music and The Office by matt | No comments

Music apathy. It’s a subject that I’ve discussed before in this space and it’s definitely something that I’ve felt for quite a while. I can’t even remember the last time that I downloaded music. I’ve gone back to actually purchasing CDs. From here.

The University of Leicster in the UK reports something that I’ve believed for some time now – music downloading creates listener apathy. It can’t be any surprise that the ease with which people can constantly access and download new music without any real effort has devalued, at least for many, music. If something doesn’t cost you anything, be it money or energy, why should you ascribe any real value to it? Combine that with the fact that we’re mainly now talking about something without any tangible, physical form and you’ve got a recipe for who gives a fuck. This isn’t to suggest that the advent of digital music has been a negative thing – no, it’s hard to argue that the great decline of the major labels is anything but a plus, but nothing comes without a price, and in this case that price is the ~~commoditization~~ commodification of music. There’s a generation of kids growing up now who have no concept of ever paying for music, and I have to wonder what it will mean when they become the primary consumer demographic. Will artists still find a way to get paid? One of The Big Takeover’s blog-columnists offers his thoughts.

I’ve rounded up a few more links of late that address some facet or consequences of the increasing insubstantiation of music. PopMatters ponders what it means to completists now that pretty much everything – rarities, demos, live shows – is essentially available to everyone, everywhere. I for one have basically stopped caring about live show recordings, unless it’s one that I was actually at. In the distant early days of the internet, I remember hunting down and treasuring every live recording, no matter how poor, as precious and rare. Now I could care less, to be honest. Though I can’t really explain why, even though every live Wilco show is seemingly available on bit torrent 24 hours after the curtains come down, I still felt compelled to buy the live album…

And more – Angry Robot wonders if the increasing popularity of downloads might somehow spark a reaction/revolution in interesting packaging to renew interest in the physical product, while Canada.com wonders the same thing, but in regards to album artwork. Sterophile eulogizes the independent record store (done in by the internet, natch), and you may recall my own personal reaction to today’s download culture – vinyl.

I’ve considered looking for new music but there just isn’t much time to devote to that. It can be a cumbersome process and right now I’d rather spend time doing other things and spending it with other people. The advantages to the digital lifestyle are numerous but it so happens that we don’t always have time to capitalize on them. I’ve just recently moved back into taking more pictures. There was a period of time when I was spending most of my day commuting and the last thing that I would want to do is take more pictures. That has changed somewhat again with my interest in Flickr. Perhaps someday (soon) my interest in digital music will come back again. Maybe I’ll buy some headphones so that I can listen to some music at work. That might move things along.

Tags: Music

Obesity vs. house size

January 24, 2006 in Asides by matt | No comments

An article comparing the rate of obesity with the average house size in the US [via].

Tags: charts, house-size, obesity, usa

I can’t believe that this is their strategy

January 24, 2006 in Asides by matt | No comments

Yahoo! gives up search dominance.

Tags: search, yahoo

Wordpress 2.0

January 24, 2006 in Blog Discussions by matt | 2 comments

I installed Wordpress 2.0 today. Boy is it ever slick! The admin interface I was kind of familiar with since I had setup an account on wordpress.com. I also installed k2 which is optimized for Wordpress 2.0. The WYSIWYG post creation screen is very nice though. Wordpress has really evolved since I first installed it almost 2 years ago. It’s becoming a mature publishing platform.

Tags: blog, k2, wordpress

Aside myself

January 24, 2006 in Asides by matt | No comments

Kobe scores 81.

Tags: basketball, kobe, lakers, los-angeles, nba, raptors, Toronto

Now I have the song in my head

January 24, 2006 in Music, Politics and Toronto by matt | 2 comments

I couldn’t help but laugh at this entry on BlogTO (Wrong Way on a One-Way Track):

I have an addiction to reading the Missed Connections on Craigslist. Some stories are actually quite touching, some creepy (to the extent of restraining order), some are awful pick-up lines and others fake and sarcastic.

This posting today made me laugh out loud:

Dundas DWA 11:30 am – m4w – 30
Reply to: pers-127816898@craigslist.org
Date: 2006-01-23, 3:56PM EST

You were the hot, but really rude TTC worker opening and closing the doors on the southbound train this morning. I was the guy wearing overalls that missed the train and ended up giving you the finger as you left the station.
I was so mad at you that I ended up voting NDP.
Lunch?

Brilliant! Completely brilliant.
(And, by the way, yes, I referenced Soul Asylum in the title)

That’s a funny posting. I’ve never looked at the Missed Connections group before and if the RSS feed for the group had more details I might consider subscribing because there are some interesting posts in there. As it does not I probably don’t have time to read it. I’ll bookmark it though.

It’s not something I’m particularly proud of but I actually own two (2!) Soul Asylum albums. These were back in my heady Columbia House days and I forgot to send back the card and wound up with these two albums: Grave Dancer’s Union and Let Your Dim Light Shine. At least I think I still have them. It’s entirely possible that I managed to “lose” them over the years. I’ll have to check when I get home tonight.

Tags: craigslist, soul-asylum, Toronto

Oh Abercrombie

January 24, 2006 in Cultural Criticism by matt | No comments

I just read a fascinating profile of the CEO of Abercrombie & Fitch. You can read it for free with a Salon DayPass and I encourage you to do so. This is one eccentric leader who has managed to turn a lagging fashion line into the hottest brand in American retail. I’m a big nonfan of the company and their past actions have been disturbing and ethically questionable. Thongs for little girls? T-shirts that read “Two Wongs Make It White”? Other t-shirts that read “Who needs a brain when you’ve got these?” and “Do I make you look fat?” and “It’s All Relative in West Virginia”? Sex-filled catalogs? I couldn’t understand what would make a company put out products like these but now that I’ve read this article it is beginning to make sense. Here’s a 61 year old man who is desperately trying to look like a 22 year old. He has an iron grip on the company and is trying to make his updated version of the 1950’s beefcake into a line of clothing that appeals to people anywhere from middle school right through age 35. This can’t help but reinforce negative ideals in the way beauty is portrayed and what is acceptable behaviour and fashion today.

“Candidly, we go after the cool kids. We go after the attractive all-American kid with a great attitude and a lot of friends.”

I often worry about the direction that society is headed in.

I’ve owned one piece of A&F clothing my whole life and I’ll admit that it was a really nice sweater. But the times that I’ve been in their stores after that I was made to feel (subtly mind you) that this wasn’t the store for me and that I should consider shopping somewhere else. That kind of exclusionary “cool kids” type of mentality isn’t for me and I refuse to support and will actively discourage companies behaving in this way.

Tags: a-and-f, abercrombie, abercrombie-and-fitch, salon

Interesting results

January 24, 2006 in Politics by matt | No comments

Apparently the polls can sometimes be predictors [via]:

Final SES Numbers
CPC 36.4%
Lib 30.1%
NDP 17.4%
BQ 10.6%

Election Night Results
CPC 36.2%
Lib 30.2%
NDP 17.5%
BQ 10.5%

Naturally there are plenty of countercases to this. It looks like the final seat total will be 124/103/51/29 (CPC/Lib/BQ/NDP). Martin stepping down as leader is a good thing. They need to clean some house over there. It’s not quite the “time in the wilderness” that people wanted for the Liberals but it gives them a chance, assuming that the government stands for longer than 6 months, to really decide what they stand for and what direction they want the party to go in. I’m not overly excited by the potential successors yet but we’ll see. The next few months will be interesting.

Tags: 2006, canada, election, paul-martin, Politics, polls, results, ses

Phew

January 23, 2006 in Politics by matt | No comments

Change seems to be abound. As of 11:14 PM EST we have 122/103/50/31 (CPC/Lib/BQ/NDP). We’ll see how this pans out in the morning. Our vote locally didn’t affect anything; our MP was re-elected again. At least I can say that I voted for change. I can live with this result. There’s change but not an overwhelming change. Sure the Liberals aren’t in power anymore but that’s what makes for a healthy democracy.

I’ve used the word “change” too much in this post. It’s off to bed soon for me. It’s been a great birthday.

Tags: 2006, canada, change, election, Politics, results

A heartening response

January 23, 2006 in Movies and Toronto by matt | No comments

BlogTO | Karla: Worst. Movie. Ever.

It heartens me to read the audience response to this film. It’s definitely not a movie that I will be seeing and I’m glad that it’s a poorly-made film that will hopefully go direct-to-video as soon as the initial hype is over with. This is one film that I hope the Long Tail is quite short. I’m looking forward to that book.

Tags: karla, Movies, reviews

We were just getting into it too

January 23, 2006 in Television by matt | 1 comment

CBC Arts: ‘West Wing’ cancelled by network

This is the last season for the West Wing. Marcy and I have been watching each week this season and we were really enjoying it. The writing seemed to be really great and it was definitely topical to current affairs. I guess we’ll have to go back to the “glory seasons” and watch them at some point to get caught up on the backstory. It’s not really a surprising move on NBC’s part. The show hasn’t done well in the ratings and traditionally a Sunday night slot is death to most shows. Exceptions are obviously Desperate Housewives, Grey’s Anatomy and The Simpsons.

Tags: nbc, Television, the-west-wing, tv

023

January 23, 2006 in Life by matt | 4 comments

The date on my transfer this morning said 023. That means it’s January 23rd. This by definition means that it’s my birthday. I’m 27 today. Usually I say that it’s no different from yesterday but this year I’m branching out and I’m going to say that it does feel different. I feel 27. I feel older, wiser and more mature. Yes I certainly do.

Happy birthday to me.

Tags: 27, birthday, january-23, Life

Election day

January 23, 2006 in Politics by matt | No comments

So today is the election. Our 39th general election. It’s been a long campaign but thankfully it’s all over. You’re not allowed to campaign on election day itself so that means that all of the advertising had to stop last night at midnight. No more posturing. No more “stumping”. No more policy speeches and mudslinging. It’s all over except for the actual process of voting and counting the results. The polling hours are the same as last time (which is difficult for those on the West Coast). This time however the results of the election can’t be publicized until all of the polls are closed across the country. In the last election this was not the case but in previous elections before that it was. There’s a court case that was overturned last year. From the CBC page linked to above:

WHAT CAN I GET BEFORE 10 P.M. EST?

CBC.ca will be offering election related news, analysis, commentary, quizzes and so on, at www.cbc.ca/canadavotes. There will be lots to read and think about, but nothing that will tell you anything about the election outcome.

CBC Radio and CBC TV live election specials will begin 30 minutes before the polls close in each broadcast area.

CBC Newsworld’s live election special will begin across the country at 9 p.m. EST. To conform to the law, a blackout will be in effect in B.C. and the Yukon from 6:30 p.m. PST until the poll close there at 7 p.m.

WHAT WILL HAPPEN ON CBC.ca AT 10 P.M. EST?

CBC.ca will start publishing complete national and riding-by-riding results at www.cbc.ca/canadavotes, including vote totals and news stories.

CBC.ca will launch a live video stream of the CBC TV election special. You’ll be able to watch the video while simultaneously reading live analysis from CBC.ca’s writers, continually updated throughout the night. The video stream and analysis will continue until the TV special ends, at about 2:30 a.m. EST, Tuesday morning.

All the live radio streaming that’s normally available on CBC.ca, for CBC Radio One and Two, will resume. This means you’ll be able to listen to special election programming in your own location or from other parts of the country.

Both the Radio and TV streams will be available at www.cbc.ca/listen.

It makes it tricky for any website to offer news about the election because they can’t break the gag law. This applies to blogs as well so it’ll be interesting to see how strictly they enforce this. It’ll also be interesting to see if Canadian blogs are aware of and obey the law in this respect. I had no plans of keeping a campaign desk liveblogging tonight so it probably won’t effect me. However I can imagine that other sites might want to post the results as they come in.

I’m voting on the way home tonight. There’s a Catholic school near our house that is a polling station. Here’s hoping that it’s a smooth election (Canadian ones always are) and that the results tonight aren’t too disheartening.

Canada is free, and freedom is its nationality. — Laurier [via]

Tags: 2006, canada, CBC, election, Politics, polling-hours

A reminder of how good I have it

January 23, 2006 in Commuting, Politics and Toronto by matt | 3 comments

As if to remind me of how lucky I am that I have a ride in the morning it seems the Fates conspired to teach me a lesson. All was going really well travel-wise; I left before 7:20 and caught the 7:29 bus (it was surprisingly on time). At Warden I ran and caught the 68 bus @ 7:44 with no time to spare. The bus was virtually empty so I got to Eglinton in a couple of minutes. I got a coffee and was at the bus stop by 7:50.

Then I had to wait. And wait. Ten minutes I waited. This is a long time on a busy route because the bus is supposed to come every ten minutes or less. Finally the bus came and it was packed. On top of that the bus driver was rather surly and demanded that everyone be behind the white line. She wouldn’t move the bus until everyone was behind there. Because the bus was late there were more people at each stop. There was a bus behind us but it was also late and was thus packed as well (it passed us at one of the stops). At Wynford things were very uncomfortable because I had to be near the doors (I get off the bus two stops later) but Wynford is a popular stop for business people and I had to contort myself to let these people off the bus. Not exactly a pleasant experience let me tell you.

The reason I didn’t get a ride this morning is because Leo is a deputy returning officer in today’s election. Tomorrow is back to normal.

Tags: Commuting, Toronto, ttc

Apparently I sell lobster

January 20, 2006 in Food by matt | No comments

I was looking at the daily stats report for this site and one of the referrers yesterday was this site. I guess my stealth campaign to see hard shell North Atlantic lobster is paying off.

Tags: lobster, search

My Tuesday commute

January 20, 2006 in Commuting, It Happened To Me and Weather by matt | 1 comment

On Tuesday night we had some freezing rain for a spell and then some real rain with a significant amount of wind. Fortunately I brought my umbrella with me to work because I had read that it would be a bit nastier weather-wise on the commute home. I was also dressed nicely so I had my dress winter coat with me. The downside to this particular coat is that it doesn’t have a hood so if it were raining when I walked to the bus stop then I had to depend on the umbrella.

I left right at 5 and when I stepped onto the steps outside the building here I slipped because there was some ice there. Realizing the situation I walked very carefully to the bus stop. I had the umbrella open and tilted against the wind so as to protect myself. There were several gusts of wind that I thought might take the whole umbrella out of my hands but I was able to hold on. Then one gust of wind blew the umbrella inside out. Great, I thought. I managed to pull it back into shape but a couple of the arms were still bent. I managed to make it to the bus stop without any more difficulty.

Naturally this was one day where the bus was late. This is not a bus route that you can afford to be late either because the number of people waiting for a ride tends to grow very quickly if there aren’t buses to flush the line out. Eventually a bus made its way to my stop and it was already packed. And I don’t mean standing room-only packed but rather “you’d better not be worried about having personal space” packed. I squeezed onto the bus and we were on our way. People at stops down the road still seemed to think that there was enough room to get on and we were even more sardine-like. I noticed as we got to Victoria Park that the bus wasn’t moving as fast as it usually does. Before we got to Pharmacy the driver seemed to be struggling with the bus. Then when we actually got to Pharmacy the driver announced that this bus wasn’t functioning correctly and that we would have to get off and wait for another bus. Groans of disapproval weaved through the bus. I got off and since the next major street is Warden and Warden is where I get off this route anyway, I decided to walk.

I did this for a couple of reasons. One the distance between the two streets really isn’t that far. On a nice day it’d make for a pleasant big box store-filled walk. The other reason is that since the original bus was so full, I would either have to push my way to the front of the line waiting for the next bus while at the same time be able to get off that second bus since my stop was so soon. Rather than have to worry about any of that, I walked. I put open the semibroken umbrella and braved the elements.

I got about 200 feet before the umbrella broke completely. It was like walking through a wind tunnel. There weren’t any garbage cans to throw the umbrella into so I had to carry it until I could find one. So here I was trying to get to Warden: a broken umbrella in one hand, rain pelting down on my head, wind blowing like the Dickens against me. I was cursing the weather. I do this (I’ve realized) when I’m alone and the weather is particularly nasty. I had to take my glasses off of my face because they were freezing to my head. I tried using the broken umbrella as some kind of shelter for my head but it was of no use – I wasn’t any dryer and I wasn’t any warmer. I can just imagine what the drivers were thinking when they saw me walking.

Eventually I got to Warden and had to wait for a while longer for that bus. I called Marcy and asked her to pick me up at the plaza near our house because I didn’t think that I could handle walking another 10+ minutes in the rain and cold after I got off of the third bus. She agreed and I was saved.

I think the lesson here is that I probably need some kind of hat to protect my head. The weather has been so strange so far this winter though that it’s unpredictable if I’ll need cold-weather clothing or not.

Tags: Commuting, rain, Toronto, ttc, umbrellas, Weather

Back in Canada

January 20, 2006 in Travel and Work by matt | No comments

I’m back in Toronto. What? You didn’t know I was gone. That saddens me. I had to go to NYC for a couple of days and got back home late last night. It was a pretty hectic trip and hopefully I’ll get a chance to write about it today. I’m pretty tired today and I can’t even leave early as I have two meetings right at the very end of the day. How typical.

Tags: business, new-york-city, nyc, Travel

Hypnotic

January 18, 2006 in Entertainment and Links by matt | No comments

This is very hypnotic (caution: may involve loud music). [via]

Tags: hypnotic, Links, paris-hilton

3.66

January 18, 2006 in Food and The Office by matt | 2 comments

$3.66 is what is costs me to get a fantastic breakfast. In the other building there’s a restaurant called Maria’s Corner Cafe. I can get a large coffee and an egg and bacon sandwich. It’s very tasty! The guy over there is extremely friendly; he knows everyone’ sname, knows the office gossip and the food is incredibly inexpensive. It’s worth the walk across the parking lot.

Tags: breakfast, Food

Historical artifact

January 17, 2006 in Politics by matt | 1 comment

I just dug up this article on my local MP. I was reading this article in The Toronto Star and had to look up what they were talking about.

There are ways to get worse publicity than Tom Wappel, the MP who wrote an 81–year–old, a veteran, legally blind and partially deaf, and told him, sneeringly, in effect to get lost– because the old man had not voted Liberal. The Toronto Star broke the story yesterday.

Here are some:

* You could nail a five–day–old kitten to the floor and use it as a doorstop.
* You could cut off the heat to an orphanage in winter, and insist the little ones dance for stale biscuits, and then not give them any.
* Or, You could take a chainsaw to the last redwood that was also the home of the last eagle and have it fall on the last panda.

Outside of these cringing options, however Mr. Tom Wappel has more or less cornered the market in the Olympics of obnoxious behaviour.

It’s important to remember the target in this affair.

Mr. Wappel wasn’t bringing the weight of his discount sarcasm against some monster corporate invader, or tossing off a snarling letter to George Bush on Star Wars, or to some foreign dictator.

Mr. Wappel, the MP, was bringing the Big Bertha of his laser–guided scorn to fire on an 81–year–old.

An 81–year–old, who actually fought in a war, to make sure that people would always be allowed to vote, so that things, like MPs, could continue to exist, and would have Parliaments to go to, and offices in which to write sour-cute nasty little letters to their constituents, and then get better pensions when the MPs retired, than the veterans who fought for them.

Mr. Wappel says he’s puzzled – puzzled that the vet would ask him, his MP for help, when Mr. Wappel knows the vet voted Alliance. Mr. Wappel is merely puzzled. The rest of the country– all of it– is suffocating in amazement, staggered almost to the point of coma, that Mr. Wappel thinks he owns the right to represent only those he knows voted for him.

As the letter reveals, he has it on record. That, Mr. Wappel, was the other reason for that silly war: the SECRET ballot. When Mr. Baxter, the veteran, was running around the coastlines of Europe dodging U-boats with the Canadian Navy essentially what he was up to was offering the chance of losing his life, for the right of all the rest of us later on to vote– in secret– and dear God as it turns out, in some cases, for you.

We are puzzled Mr. Wappel. How do you know? Why do you keep records? Democractic representation is not to be confused with a filing cabinet in some MPs office with the names of those who are loyal, and those– whether blind or deaf or old or not– who are not loyal.

Mr. Wappel has apologized. The blitzkrieg of outrage since yesterday was obviously too much for the courage of an MP to contain. But it’s only because his charmless attitude is known that he’s sorry for it; only because not even his Liberal colleagues can abide that attitude that he repents. When it was just him and the 81–year–old, as the letter proves, things were so different.

I think this is a little too deep for a forced apology. And I can only hope Mr. Jim Baxter and his wife, after this gust has blown over them, have the strength to put the apology in the same waste basket, as the letter that made it necessary.

For The National, I’m Rex Murphy.

That’s some charming stuff our MP does. Another reason not to vote for him.

Tags: canada, election, gaffes, Politics, tom-wappel, veterans

Brokeback again

January 17, 2006 in Cultural Criticism and Movies by matt | 2 comments

I’m so happy Brokeback Mountain won so many awards at the Golden Globes last night. The more I think about this movie the more I realize that I love it. The reasons for loving it are obvious I think and I agree with Ebert that it really is a universal movie even though it’s about a specific dramatic arc. However I think the aspect that really brings it all together for me is the music. That simple guitar line that threads its way throughout the movie just tugs at my heart. It’s amazingly minimalist but yet it captures the soul of the movie – the heartache, the sadness, the love and the beauty. I would really like to get the soundtrack but I’m not sure that I would be able to listen to it without falling into tears.

I’m not sure that the studios really know how to advertise this movie. None of the clips in the award show showed any of the love scenes. They showed the fighting ones instead. Also Dennis Quaid made a rather tasteless comment saying the movie was controversial and rhymed with “chick flick”. The look of awkwardness at the table for the movie made me feel uncomfortable.

Tags: brokeback-mountain, golden-globes, Movies

Economics of conservatism

January 17, 2006 in Economy and Politics by matt | 1 comment

This is a really interesting article discussing different conservative (small and big C applicable) economies/economic models around the world and hypothesizes what that might mean to our own economy in the coming years. It isn’t pretty. It’s time to start saving as quickly as possible.

Tags: canada, conservativism, economics, election, world

My mouth is numb

January 17, 2006 in Health by matt | No comments

I woke up this morning with a sore throat. It’s the same sore throat that I’ve had for a few days now. On my way out the door I put a Cepacol lozenge in my mouth (honey lemon I believe). It’s worked pretty well but now my mouth is rather numb. I guess that’s the point. I brought the spray to work in case I need a quick dose of it. Marcy’s even more sick than I am so I left her the lozenges to take to school. Perhaps The Cold has just taken longer to take hold than I had anticipated. Hopefully it doesn’t stick around for long.

Tags: cepacol, cold, lozenge, sick

Tired!

January 16, 2006 in Health and Life by matt | 2 comments

Well after a full long day I’m really tired. I may require a nap when I get home. 7:30 until 5 makes for a long time to keep focused.

Tags: hours, tired, Work

Quiche!

January 16, 2006 in Food by matt | 4 comments

Quiche is a strange word. Fortunately though it makes for a delectable dish. I had half of the leftover quiche for breakfast this morning so I should have the proper blend of food groups to start my day off right. Yum!

Tags: breakfast, Food, quiche

At work already?

January 16, 2006 in Commuting by matt | 2 comments

So I’m at work already. I left 15 minutes earlier than I usually do and somehow managed to get to the office a full hour (or thereabouts) early. How did that happen? Well our landlord’s business recently moved to the building beside ours and so he (kindly) offered to drive me to work since it’s very much on the way. He lives right around the corner from us which is a big bonus for me. That means that I don’t have to go through the frigid morning temperatures, I get to save half of my bus fare each day and I get to work sooner which means that I can leave at a more decent hour now. I’ll probably leave at 5 at the latest which should mean that I get home by 6. That’ll be a nice change. The trick will be being able to get out of the office by 5.

Tags: Commuting, early, hours, Work

Credit hog

January 13, 2006 in Uncategorized by matt | 2 comments

Colbert: AP is America’s ‘number 1 threat’ – TELEVISION – MSNBC.com

Typical Colbert. Trying to get credit for something that he actually deserves it for. He’ll just never learn.

Tags: colbert-report, stephen-colbert, Television, truthiness

Likely old but still good

January 13, 2006 in Uncategorized by matt | No comments

40 Things That Only Happen In Movies – Nostalgia Central
Some of these items are quite funny. Examples:

3. Television news bulletins usually contain a story that affects you personally at the precise moment it’s aired.
25. You will survive any battle in any war UNLESS you show someone a picture of your sweetheart back home.
30. When you turn out the light to go to bed, everything in you room will still be visible, just slightly bluish.
37. Most musical instruments (especially wind instruments and accordions) can be played without moving your fingers.

Tags: facts, Movies, rules

I see the light!

January 13, 2006 in Uncategorized by matt | No comments

Yesterday when I left the office I actually saw a little bit of light in the western horizon. That hasn’t happened for a while now; usually it’s very dark by the time I leave work to go home. Also this morning when I left home the sky was lighter than usual. Perhaps it’s because the sky was so clear this morning (though now it’s more overcast) but it gives me a more positive feeling than the gloom that is usually present this point in winter.

Tags: sky, sunset, winter

Still on time

January 12, 2006 in Uncategorized by matt | 1 comment

IMG_4037

Originally uploaded by mclements.

It’s been almost a year since Amanda’s 26th birthday party but it hasn’t been a year yet so I think I’m still timely in getting these pictures online. Check out the set here.

Tags: amanda, birthday, party

Eight Degrees!

January 12, 2006 in Uncategorized by matt | No comments

It’s eight degrees today. January 12th, 3+ weeks into winter and it’s that far above the freezing point. It’s supposed to continue tomorrow and then drop below freezing for the weekend but still we’ve had a period of quite a few days now where it’s been very warm. Like early spring warm. It’s been pleasant. Naturally this means that we’ll have a period of 3-4 weeks of bitter bitter cold that will make us all forget how warm it once was and look fleetingly on the glimmer of warmth that might appear in April.

Tags: canada, warm, winter

Warms the heart

January 12, 2006 in Uncategorized by matt | No comments

54east – the magazine that moves
It’s projects like these that make me love living in a big city like Toronto. A magazine named after the Lawrence East bus route? Genius. Even better is the fact that I now live in that general area so it’s of specific local interest to me. Scarborough does have an inordinate amount of stripmalls. The one right by work (the Golden Mile) was one of Canada’s first stripmalls and in fact it was opened by none other than The Queen herself back in 1958. Imagine that. The Queen attending the opening to a plaza (as they tended to be called in my day). Think about that for a second. Would she attend something similar today? It’s very doubtful.

I’m considering getting a subscription. This type of thing appeals to my urban planner tendencies. By that I mean my interest in urban planning since I have no formal training.

Tags: 54east, lawrence-east, stripmalls, Toronto, ttc

Strategic voting

January 12, 2006 in Uncategorized by matt | No comments

democraticSPACE.com/blog
This is a very interesting site. It discusses how best to cast your vote if you wanted to vote strategically. It gives you the option to choose your primary party and then depending on whether strategic voting even comes into play in your riding it suggests who you should vote for. Our riding is not close enough for strategic voting to come into play. It looks like our incumbent will be reelected. Also the rolling polls on the site are pretty useful.

Tags: 2006, canada, election, Politics

The biggest headline of the week

January 12, 2006 in Uncategorized by matt | No comments

I’m surprised that I haven’t seen anybody mention the biggest headline of the week. The CBC has changed its tone to indicate the half hour. It used to be a piano tune and now it’s more bell-like. The impact of this change is bound to be far-reaching and profound. This could be the turning point resulting in a revolution of magnificent proportions. Potentially I could be looking too deeply into this and it’s really a minor change that not many people even noticed. In either case I noticed it.

Tags: announcements, CBC, headlines, news

I couldn’t help but laugh

January 11, 2006 in Uncategorized by matt | 1 comment

I read Paul Wells quite frequently even though his feed isn’t full text (one of the few exceptions that I make for this).

From here:

It begins

Just now at the Subway on Bank St. I was buying my lunch and there… in line… standing in front of me… was a soldier.

In our cities.

In Canada.

A soldier.

He seemed to be ordering the six-inch ham and turkey.

With chipotle sauce.

In Canada.

We’re not making this stuff up.

The parodies of the Liberal ads may end up being more effective than the ads themselves.

Tags: 2006, advertising, canada, election, paul-wells, Politics, satire

Are you part of The Nation?

January 11, 2006 in Uncategorized by matt | 1 comment

I don’t mean this The Nation but rather The Colbert Nation. I heard about this last night on The Colbert Report (that’s repor a la rapport not report). For some reason I’ve been able to stay up a bit later over the past couple of weeks and have actually been able to watch The Daily Show (at 11) and this one (at an ungodly late 11:30). It’s quite the show. I can’t help chuckle at how over-the-top he can be until I think about the shows he is parodying and realize that he’s not that bombastic after all.

Tags: colbert-report, stephen-colbert, Television, the-nation

Brokeback

January 11, 2006 in Uncategorized by matt | 2 comments

We went to see Brokeback Mountain last night. It’s an amazing movie. “Heartbreakingly sad” as Marcy said afterwards. It’s another reinforcement why Ang Lee is such a magnificent director. Several of my favourite movies have been directed by him. It’s interesting though that no part of the movie was filmed in Wyoming. It was all in Alberta except for one scene in Mexico. Wherever it was filmed though it sure is beautiful country.

Tags: alberta, ang-lee, brokeback-mountain, Movies

MacGyver!

January 10, 2006 in Uncategorized by matt | 1 comment

CBS on Google Video

I’ll be able to buy MacGyver episodes for streaming! How great is that? My favourite show from when I was younger, it’s the ultimate low-tech engineering show. It probably helps that Richard Dean Anderson (the star) shares my birthday. He now stars in Stargate SG-1 but I can forgive him for that because of the awesome power of MacGyver. This is so exciting.

Tags: google-video, macgyver, richard-dean-anderson, stargate-sg-1

Sore

January 10, 2006 in Uncategorized by matt | No comments

My arms are quite sore this morning and I’m not sure why. Maybe I was tensing them during my sleep but the forearms in particular are very stiff. Fortunately my job doesn’t require a lot of mobility; it’s not like I’m a carpenter or anything. Hopefully the stiffness disappears soon. It’s not a comfortable feeling at all.

Tags: sore, stiffness

Poor sweater

January 9, 2006 in Uncategorized by matt | No comments

Marcy realized today that one of the arms in my sweater has worn through. I wore it to work today so I wonder if other people noticed. It’s been with me for quite a while but I suppose it’s for best to retire it from active duty and help it enjoy its time as weekend wear. It’s more time for my other components of the wardrobe – shirts and sweaters and such. It’s time to exercise each part and help them do their part. That’s what patriotism is all about.

Tags: aging, clothes, sweater

The Cold

January 9, 2006 in Uncategorized by matt | 1 comment

This morning I was rudely awakened by a slap by The Cold. He’s given me what feels like could turn into a nasty cold making my life very unpleasant symptom-wise over the next few days. I’ve stocked up on some cold medicine in the meantime and I’m drinking some orange juice and I’ll be having some tea later as well to help fight this off. I can’t really afford to take any more time off right now.

Tags: cold, sick

OnStar with an attitude

January 5, 2006 in Uncategorized by matt | No comments

McSweeney’s Internet Tendency: Advice You’ll Never Get From OnStar.

McSweeney’s does it again. My favourite is “I think that was already red.”

Tags: mcsweeneys, onstar

Almost pleasant

January 5, 2006 in Uncategorized by matt | No comments

Taking the bus this week has been almost a pleasant experience. It’s probably because there aren’t a lot of high school/college kids on the bus which leaves a lot of extra room as we don’t have to content with their unwieldy backpacks. This also has the added benefit of getting me to work quicker as fewer people on the bus means fewer potential stops. Today I got to work in just over half an hour which was quite nice. Judging by the current state of the DVP south (there was a big accident just a few minutes ago and it’s down to a crawl) my trip to work is probably a lot shorter than some of the people waiting on the highway.

Tags: Commuting, school, Toronto, ttc

Yummy turkey soup

January 4, 2006 in Uncategorized by matt | 1 comment

Most people get sick of turkey after the holidays but I’ve had turkey, turkey sandwiches and now turkey soup without getting tired of it. Perhaps once this soup is finished then I might need a break but until then I’m enjoying feasting on our turkey. It was 18 pounds of freshness and we still have two turkey pies waiting for us on a cold winter’s day which I’m sure will come soon enough.

Tags: soup, turkey

What a horrible day for these people

January 4, 2006 in Uncategorized by matt | No comments

CBC News: False info turns joy to grief with news missing miners dead

I can’t imagine what that must feel like. To go from extreme highs of emotion to extreme lows in a few hours must be incredibly difficult to deal with. It can be expected that rage and anger and confusion will dominate today and the days to come. My condolences go to their families and the town.

Late buses

January 3, 2006 in Uncategorized by matt | No comments

Here’s the thing about taking a bus later at night after the evening rush (which to the TTC is 6 PM): you end up waiting for quite a while longer for your bus. Also you get to see a plethora of buses (at least where I wait for them) rush by saying “Sorry… not in service”. That’s particularly enjoyable. I even saw a TTC bus driver talking on her cellphone while driving an out of service bus. I wonder if that’s against their rules or not.

My choices are either take the bus between 5 and 6 and be faced with a crush of people on the 34 or wait until after 6 and end up waiting for quite a while longer. Some days it’s a toss up but I try to get home to be with Marcy as soon as I can.

Tags: Commuting, Toronto, ttc

Wow what a shocking revelation

January 3, 2006 in Uncategorized by matt | No comments

CBC News: SUVs no safer than cars for kids: U.S. study

As I said a couple of years ago almost I’m no fan of SUVs. I’m encouraged that researchers are beginning to show that apart from being a huge environmental hazard these vehicles are a danger to the people inside them. That plus the horrific damage that can be caused to people hit by an SUV makes for one very unsafe vehicle.

Tags: dangers, suvs

Jokes jokes

January 3, 2006 in Uncategorized by matt | 1 comment

I have to admit that I fell for this joke.

Tags: jokes

Queen Streetcar Routes

January 2, 2006 in Uncategorized by matt | No comments

For some reason I’m enamoured with the names of the Queen St. TTC streetcar routes. Long Branch. Neville Park. Humber. Except for Humber they don’t really sound like Toronto places. They remind me more of what the routes are called in London on the Underground. I love that our city still has streetcars. They have so much more character than buses and subways though those are extremely important as well (obviously as 75% of the city isn’t covered by streetcar or subway). It makes our transit system very unique. I appreciate that a lot and I hope that during the time we live here the transit system only improves. I’d like to make my trip to work under half an hour one way.

Tags: queen-street, streetcars, Toronto, ttc

Thai House Cuisine

January 2, 2006 in Uncategorized by matt | No comments

We went out for a little drive today and found a fantastic Thai restaurant in the Beaches. It’s called Thai House Cuisine (formerly Thai House it seems) and they have a restaurant at Queen St. East near Woodbine and one on Lakeshore East in Mississauga. We went there for a late lunch and even though we’ve had some really great Thai food here since moving to Toronto in 2004 this one has to rank right up there in terms of quantity and quality of food. Marcy ordered the Chicken Coconut Soup without the chicken (tofu instead) and the depth and texture of the flavour was really impressive. She then had the Pad Thai as her main course and it was very “saucy” but in a good way. I ordered a set of Spring Rolls and the Basil Chicken Fried Rice and was very impressed with both. They offer free delivery for orders over $20 and I’m sure that we’ll be back there soon enough. In the meantime I have the rest of my fried rice to take for lunch tomorrow.

Tags: restaurants, thai, thai-house-cuisine, Toronto

Smoothly Does It

December 31, 2005 in Uncategorized by matt | No comments

I’m a huge fan of Tetley’s ale. It’s my preferred choice when I’m going to pick up beer at the LCBO. It’s fantastically smooth and doesn’t have a lot of alcohol in it (3.8%). I wish I could find it in more pubs in the area but most of the ones that we’ve been to don’t have it either on draught or in a can/bottle. In a pub my preferred brew is either Kilkenny or 80 Shilling. Both are fantastic.

Tags: 80-shilling, beer, imports, kilkenny, tetley

Ferrero not Ferrari

December 31, 2005 in Uncategorized by matt | No comments

I’m in love with Ferrero Rocher. I got two huge packs of them this Christmas and I’ve eaten almost half of one box already. They’re just so tasty that I can’t get enough of them. It probably stems from when my mom used to give us all three-packs in our stockings each Christmas. I used to try and keep those three chocolates for as long as possible before I succumbed to the temptation. The same cause is likely why I’m such a fan of Amaretto and Disaranno and other hazelnut types of treats.

Tags: chocolate, christmas, ferrero-rocher, Food

Holiday plans

December 31, 2005 in Uncategorized by matt | No comments

It’s been a good holiday so far. We had Christmas at our house and had Marcy’s family over for the Eve and Day. That’s two big holidays that Marcy has prepared a feast for and it a pretty sumptuous one at that! We had a fresh turkey 18 pounds of which has either been eaten already or is in a soup or pie ready to be consumed for a perfect coldweather dinner.

On the Eve we went to the Timothy Eaton Memorial Church (pay attention to that washroom announcement) for a Christmas pageant that featured live animals. I have a few pictures from it that I’ll post on Flickr. It was very dark and as such was hard to take unshaky pictures that weren’t fuzzy/out of focus. I do have a few good pictures though. We also put together a nice gingerbread house before we went to bed (for a long winter’s nap).

Christmas Day was spent opening presents, eating food and talking with relatives. I got lots of wonderful gifts both edible and not that I’m looking forward to enjoying this coming year. I even got some nice thermal underwear to help keep the frostbite away while I’m commuting over the next few months. The weather wasn’t ideal that night so our guests stayed until the Monday morning.

On Monday we travelled to Belleville on our way up to Pembroke. We had coffee with Steven and Stacey at Starbucks and purchased some reading material for Marcy in the car. The drive up north was uneventful thanks to the weather. Our stop at the Shell station in Kaladar revealed that the station has new owners that don’t seem to be taking good care of the place. The washrooms were rather filthy and the fridge wasn’t really keeping things cool. We got up to Pembroke around 6. We had dinner with Marcy’s father and grandmother after which I was quite stuffed. I even had some 5-cup salad which I haven’t had since I was a kid. We stayed up quite late (for us – around 3 AM) and went to bed in one of the spare rooms.

That was probably a mistake since when we got up we were rather sore from the mattress on the bed. Or rather from the lack of boxspring. All it had were springs that tended to poke and prod throughout the night. We left Pembroke around 11:30 on our way to visit my aunt and uncle near Elgin. It took about 2 hours to get there and we drove through some very small towns in eastern Ontario. We stopped in at the Forfar Dairy which produces some cheese that my parents enjoy. They have a nice 4 year old cheddar that I picked up for them. We had a nice visit with Pat and Rob; Rob is looking much better than when we saw him in July. He has pancreatic cancer and wasn’t given much hope to live but he got on an experimental treatment program and the cancer has stopped progressing with a possibility of slight shrinkage. Rob’s best friend Richard and his sister came just before we left for home. We would have stayed for dinner but we had to get back to Toronto to check on our cats. We left them alone for Monday and Tuesday and since Eve and Quentin had surgery last week we wanted to make sure they were ok and weren’t left for too long.

The drive home was uneventful; it took about 3.5 hours. The house wasn’t a disaster as we had feared but Eve had thrown up a couple of times which was concerning. She had thrown up as well on Saturday. She was due to be looked at anyway on Wednesday and we told them about the vomiting. Needless to say a lot of vomiting with a cat is not a good thing. They thought it might be a “foreign body” or something so they took some xrays and told us to monitor her until Thursday. We had been planning on going to Ohio for New Year’s and the plan was to leave on Thursday so we pushed it back to Friday morning instead. Wednesday and Thursday passed and she didn’t throw up any more but then Thursday night right before we went to bed Eve was sick again.

I took her to the vet’s yesterday morning and they gave her some barium pills, “bips” they call them, which will show up on an xray in case there is a blockage or something inside of her. It makes it really easy to tell what’s wrong with her insides. We had to take her in again today to have the xray or if she passed them on her own then we didn’t need to worry about it. I took her in this morning and needless to say we were both pretty worried for her. The last thing we wanted was to have her go through more surgery. Fortunately though the xrays were good which means that we can stop worrying. The downside is that we had to postpone our trip south (or rather southerly because I don’t think Ohio is strictly called “south”) until next weekend.

It’s Marcy and I for New Year’s this year. We’ve rented some movies and we’re going to have an easy dinner and watch some of them tonight. It’s been a nice holiday season so far and hopefully yours has been too. Happy New Year and all the best in 2006!

Tags: Cats, christmas, eve, Family, Travel

Another favourite

December 23, 2005 in Uncategorized by matt | No comments

IMG_9576

Originally uploaded by mclements.

I like this rooster picture as well. It’s one of my favourite decorations on our tree this year.

Tags: christmas-ornaments, decorations, favourite, Pictures, rooster

Christmas Ornament

December 23, 2005 in Uncategorized by matt | 1 comment

IMG_9577

Originally uploaded by mclements.

I like this picture quite a bit. You can even see me in the reflection!

Tags: christmas-ornaments, decorations, favourite, Pictures, reflection

Garbage Fridays

December 23, 2005 in Uncategorized by matt | 2 comments

If there’s a day every two weeks that I don’t like it’s Garbage Fridays. Here in Toronto they pick up garbage (i.e. non-recyclables) every two weeks. Our day for waste is Friday. They say that you should have your waste outside by 7 AM. On the Fridays that we have to put recyclables out this isn’t much of a problem because we’re not the first pass of the garbage truck. It hits the other side of the street first (usually around 7:30 AM) and then eventually goes back on our side of the street but that’s always after I’ve left for work. Garbage Fridays though have a bigger problem because it seems like we’re the first side of any street in the area that gets done. If I don’t have the garbage at the front of the house at precisely 7 AM then I’m going to miss it for the week and then we’ll have to find someway to find room for the garbage that will pile up over the next two weeks. This has happened once in the past and a couple of other times I’ve come really close; the garbage truck was a few houses up the street by the time I got all of the garbage to the front of the house. This morning I slept through the alarm or I must have shut it off after it went off at 6:15 AM and I woke up right at 7 with the World Report (the trumpets are hard to sleep through). I didn’t want to miss the garbage pickup so I put some socks on and my jacket and trudged outside and dragged the garbage to the front. I could hear and see the garbage truck just up the street when I finished. One advantage though is that I wake up pretty quickly once I’m outside!

So you might ask why I don’t take the garbage to the front the night before? Well our area seems to be particularly infested with raccoons. If I were to put it at the curb at night by the time the morning came around the garbage would be strewn all over the road and I’d have to clean it up. Since this isn’t really a viable option I guess trying to beat the clock on Friday mornings will have to do for now.

Tags: CBC, early, garbage, garbage-fridays, Toronto, world-report

Quentin

December 22, 2005 in Uncategorized by matt | 1 comment

IMG_9325

Originally uploaded by mclements.

Quentin is our other kitten and he’s the brother of Eve. He’s also having surgery today. He’s getting neutered. He’s one of the biggest suck of a cat you’ve ever seen. He’ll actually crawl onto your arm if you’re petting another cat just to get some more attention. He’s extremely affectionate and his meows are very soft considering his size. He’s a very long cat! We’re looking forward to seeing him tonight.

Tags: Cats, kittens, quentin

Eve

December 22, 2005 in Uncategorized by matt | 3 comments

IMG_9319

Originally uploaded by mclements.

This is Eve, one of our kittens. She’s having surgery today to get spayed. She’s one of the most vocal and affectionate cats I’ve ever met and it was pretty quiet last night without Eve around chirping. I’m looking forward to seeing her tonight.

Tags: Cats, eve, kittens

Governmentium

December 22, 2005 in Uncategorized by matt | No comments

Governmentium

Andy Barrie read this on Metro Morning this morning. There seem to be uquite a few sites mentioning this and it was even the joke of the day at one time. It’s essentially the kind of joke you’d expect to get when you mix chemistry buffs and political junkies.

Tags: andy-barrie, CBC, governmentium, jokes, metro-morning, Politics

Other headline: editor, spellchecker fired!

December 22, 2005 in Uncategorized by matt | No comments

A lot of people on the bus tend to read 24 Hours, the free newspaper published by the Sun Group. I noticed the headline today on the front page. It reads:

Supreme Court Rules in Vour of Sex Clubs

That’s right – Vour. Perhaps they were talking about Vor, the Norse goddess of the Aesir. They say that she is wise and alert and that she misses nothing. Is this applicable to the headline gaffe? Not really but I have to fill this space with something.

Someone will probably be severely reprimanded for this faux pas. If I had my way the whole newspaper would be fired but that’s probably too much to hope for even if it’s Christmas.

Tags: 24-hours, spellchecker, spelling, vor

Coffee Time temptation

December 21, 2005 in Uncategorized by matt | No comments

When I take the bus to work I have to transfer at Warden to the Eglinton bus. At the corner there is a Coffee Time and on occasion, probably more often than I should, I stop for a coffee. It’s not that Coffee Time has superb coffee or anything and I know that here in Toronto they have a reputation (likely deserved) of being not-so-clean establishments but if anything the coffee from Coffee Time reminds me most of when we used to live in Kitchener. I say this because I used to stop at the Coffee Time near Booksoft everyday before work and the coffee there tastes pretty much the same as the coffee here. The only dangerous part of the whole operation is that I have to carry a cup of coffee on a very crowded bus. Fortunately not one accident has occurred and hopefully that trend continues.

Tags: booksoft, coffee, coffee-time, Commuting, eglinton, kitchener, temptations, Toronto, ttc, warden

Lightsaber scary

December 21, 2005 in Uncategorized by matt | No comments

Today on the bus, and I don’t mean to scare you, there was a man who was carrying a lightsaber. On top of that it was the dual lightsaber featured in Episode I. I’m not sure what his intentions are for using this weapon of danger but it can’t be good for the city. I’ll keep checking the news to see if anything pops up about this. I should be prepared to report my findings to the police as well. Hopefully today doesn’t end in carnage.

Tags: Commuting, episode-i, lightsaber, star-wars, Toronto, ttc

Lone bus ticket

December 21, 2005 in Uncategorized by matt | 2 comments

At home right now there is a lone bus ticket. This ticket was supposed to spend the day with me but in the haste of putting on my watch and rushing out the door, I left the poor ticket behind. Now I will have to make sure that I have enough change to get home again. At least tomorrow I’ll be on schedule in terms of bus tickets again. I don’t like to run out in the middle of the day. I’d prefer to run out of tickets at the end of the day.

If the monthly pass weren’t so expensive that would be a viable alternative but alas it doesn’t make financial sense to use it.

Tags: bus-ticket, Commuting, toront, ttc

Baby it’s cold outside

December 12, 2005 in Uncategorized by matt | No comments

Wow, if anyone forgot how cold it could be in the morning when it’s winter, today will sure be a jolt of a reminder. Current air temperature? -14 degrees Celsius. With the wind chill it brings it down to -25 degrees Celsius. That’s pretty cold. There’s no cloud cover today so all of the warmth that the Earth provides gets blown up the atmosphere. Fortunately I don’t have to wait outside for too long today since I drove to work but still the car really felt it this morning when I turned it on. It seemed kind of cranky when I tried to turn it on. I’ll have to make sure that I bundle up tomorrow when I take public transit again. I’ve been spoiled for the last two business days in that I’ve been able to take a nice warm car to work.

Tags: canada, celsius, temperature, winter

Flickr

December 11, 2005 in Uncategorized by matt | No comments

I think I’m going to start uploading more photors to my Flickr account. I’ve set up Gallery on this new site but I’m thinking that I might as well use my Flickr Pro account since I’m allowed to upload quite a bit to that site and my disk space on this server is more limited. So watch that site for new pictures!

Tags: flickr, gallery, photos

Visiting with Jon

December 11, 2005 in Uncategorized by matt | No comments

Jon came up yesterday and spent some time in the afternoon visiting with us. It was really great to see him; we haven’t seen him since last July at our tea reception in Belleville. He was up for his friend’s wedding in Waterloo and dropped another friend off in Whitby so it was sort of on the way home to Hamilton for him. He’s living in New Jersey near Manhattan now so we talked quite a bit about the differences between living here in Toronto and where he lives. Some things are quite similar but many aspects of our lives are dissimilar. We showed him our house and drove him around the neighbourhood we’re thinking of buying into when we can afford it and then took him to one of our favourite pubs, Tara Inn in Cliffside.

Now if there’s one consistent thing about this place is that the service is very inconsistent. The first time we went we had fairly decent service but every other time the service has been dreadful; it’s like they purposely don’t hire enough waitstaff or hire waitstaff that are not attentive enough the result of which is that you end up getting your drinks fairly quickly and then waiting for a dreadfully long time for the food to appear. This was the case yesterday. We arrived at just after 2:30 for lunch and didn’t finish our lunch until almost 4:30. It’s not like we took our time eating either; it just happened that our food took an extremely long time to arrive. Fortunately though the one good aspect of this restaurant and the real reason that we keep going back is that the food is very good.

All in all a quite enjoyable afternoon spent with Jon. Hopefully we’ll be able to see him again soon.

Tags: cliffside, friends, hamilton, jon, tara-inn, Toronto, visiting, waterloo

Migraine-licious

December 11, 2005 in Uncategorized by matt | 2 comments

For the past few weeks I have been getting the occasional migraine when I come home from work. It was always when I came home; never when I went to work would I have such a serious headache. I would come home and need to lie down in the dark for a few moments to recover from the blinding pain and nausea. I’ve had migraines in the past but they were really spread out in terms of the period of time in between and it wasn’t making much sense why I would be getting them so consistently.

I think I may have figured out what was happening though. When I come home I have to take 3 buses and the amount of time that I need to wait outside in the cold (since it is now December) varies greatly from day to day. It is cold and dark when I leave work and the buses all have their heaters blowing at a fierce rate to keep the passengers warm. So my head has to go from warm (office) to cold to warm (Eglinton bus) to cold to warm (Warden bus) to cold to warm (Warden station) to warm (Markham Road bus) to cold again in a relatively short period of time. This constant change in temperature must be what is triggering these migraines. I’ve procured some Advil migraine-strength pills to help me cope. I think the reason that this doesn’t happen in the morning is that I know when the bus will be at the bus stop and it’s very consistent in its on-time behaviour. Also the connections with the other buses are almost instantaneous so I don’t have to wait outside for very long at all.

Tags: cold, Commuting, eglinton, headaches, hot, markham-road, migraines, transit, ttc, warden, winter

Reincarnate

December 11, 2005 in Uncategorized by matt | No comments

If I were to come back after I die and I wanted to be as heartless as possible then I would definitely choose to come back as a bus driver on the 68 – Warden bus route. These bus drivers are consistently late and so to keep themselves on schedule because they get in trouble if they are too late, they don’t stop at certain stops to let people on. I’ve been on this bus numerous times where we blow by a big group of people waiting at a bus stop merely because we need to stay on schedule and it just happens that no one wanted to get off the bus at that point. I’m fortunate in that where I get on this bus is a major intersection and the bus almost always has to stop there so I can get on but I can see on the bus drivers’ faces that given the option they would choose not to stop.

Tags: 68, Commuting, Toronto, ttc, warden

It’s working?

December 8, 2005 in Uncategorized by matt | No comments

Well I said that I would check the attendance of last night’s Raptors game and it seems that there were ~4000 more fans last night for the game against the Lakers than the previous home game against Memphis. It’s tough to say how much of that was due to the increased advertising for the game or just because it was the Lakers.

Tags: attendance, basketball, lakers, los-angeles, memphis, nba, raptors, Toronto

Important answers below!

December 8, 2005 in Uncategorized by matt | No comments

Inspired by Kristin’s post I’ll be answering her questions below the fold.
Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: answers, kristin, kristonium, meme, q-and-a, questions

Getting desperate

December 7, 2005 in Uncategorized by matt | No comments

The Raptors (Canada’s team) are getting desperate it seems. On the front page of today’s 24 Hours (a truly tabloid free newspaper) they’re advertising 10% off of all of the tickets to tonight’s game against the Lakers. That’s 10%! That means that you could save $50 on a courtside seat. Keep in mind that the Raptors are currently 3-16 and the Lakers, though playing in a tougher conference, are still only 8-9. That’s hardly a blockbuster game no matter how you spin it or however big a Kobe fan you may be. I’ll have to remember to look at the attendance for this game to see if their campaign worked or not.

Tags: 24-hours, attendance, basketball, lakers, los-angeles, nba, raptors, Toronto

Craziness

December 1, 2005 in Uncategorized by matt | No comments

I just saw an older man try to turn onto the exit ramp (offramp) from the Don Valley Parkway from Eglinton. I think he would have actually made the turn too if there hadn’t been two cars on the offramp waiting to turn left. Who knows what that would have led to.

Tags: Commuting, don-valley-parkway, dvp, eglinton, Toronto

Protected: Password protect me

November 30, 2005 in Uncategorized by matt | Enter your password to view comments

Tags: security, test

Questionable security

November 30, 2005 in Uncategorized by matt | No comments

There is an ATM in our building that I use when I’m short of cash and need to buy a lunch. It’s run by the little deli and it costs an extra $1.50 for each transaction. The closest bank is a hefty walk away so when it’s rainy or cold outside it makes more sense to just use this machine. The other day a coworker noted to me that there’s a sign over top of the ATM now. Yesterday I looked at the sign. It read:

This ATM is no longer secure. Please do not use it.

That lifted my spirits to lofty heights. An insecure ATM? My banking information potentially compromised? Hooray! Fortunately I haven’t had to use the machine in a number of weeks but still it would be nice to know how and for how long the machine has been compromised. I guess the walk to the bank will have to be in order now because there’s no way that I can trust the machine downstairs anymore.

Tags: atm, banking, security

Cablevision

November 29, 2005 in Uncategorized by matt | 2 comments

We lost our cable today. The wire that we use to connect our cable to the television doesn’t have a proper connector and it’s been pure luck that it has worked at all up until this point. Tonight however the exposed wire was too fatigued and broke off. I tried stripping some of the remaining wire in the hopes that it would work but I couldn’t get it to reliably show a steady picture without static. My guess is that we’re going to have to feed a new wire (with proper connectors) down to the basement where the cable connection is. I’m hoping that it won’t be too much trouble and that the existing hole is big enough to fit a connector-filled wire. We’ll find out tomorrow!

Tags: cable, Television, tv, wires

Electioneering

November 29, 2005 in Uncategorized by matt | 1 comment

We’re in election mode as of last night here in Canada. The campaigns will kick off today in what will prove to be a very long battle. The election probably won’t be until January 23rd also known as the Day of Champions around here. Naturally that’s because it’s my birthday so here’s hoping that the Natural Law Party will finally break through and take over the House of Commons with their “good vibes/positive energy/karma” platform.

I think we’ll probably see a more laidback campaign until after the Christmas holidays and then it’ll be a sprint for the last 3 weeks to get all of the negative ads and stump speeches in around the country. One positive thing that I heard last night was that they’re considering doing two sets of leaders’ debates. That’ll be interesting to watch if it does indeed take place.

My one main concern is that I don’t think I can vote for our current MP. He voted against the Civil Marriage Act which is entirely his right if he feels that those were the wishes of his constituency but I need to let him know that he doesn’t speak for me with his views. These are his comments:

I wish to make my position on this issue as clear as possible for my constituents. In June, 2000, Parliament, BY STATUTE, reaffirmed the definition of marriage as the union of one man and one woman, to the exclusion of all others. For me, there can be no other definition of this term. This has been my consistent public position since I entered public life in 1988, four elections ago. Since 1994, I have crisscrossed the country, trying to raise awareness amongst Canadians that the institution of marriage was under attack by the activist homosexual agenda. For the most part, my warning alarms fell on deaf ears, until now, by which time it is almost too late for those who share my definition of the term.

For me, marriage is not a “human right”, but rather a privilege extended by society, on certain conditions. For example, two persons today DO NOT HAVE AN ABSOLUTE RIGHT TO MARRY. They must comply with societal rules, such as proper age, mental capacity, non-close relative and of course, for millennia, they must be of the opposite sex.

My position is firm and unalterable. I will do all I can, as an individual, to try to preserve and promote the only definition of marriage I know. I realize there are those who disagree and, in a democracy, that is one of our fundamental rights, to agree or disagree on public policy issues. On this issue, for those who hold an opposite view, let us respectfully agree to disagree, without rancour or pejorative name-calling.

I don’t know who the other candidates will be in our riding but I’m going to have to look long and hard at each of their qualifications in turn and then decide who would be best to serve our community. It’s going to be an interesting few weeks that we’ll be experiencing. Let’s hope that it stays relatively clean.

Tags: canada, civil-marriage-act, election, january-23, natural-law-party, Politics, tom-wappel

Weird weather

November 28, 2005 in Uncategorized by matt | No comments

So far this fall has produced some really strange weather. From incredibly warm temperatures (relative to the normal fall temperatures) to snow storms and back again, each and every day can produce its own set of surprises. Today it is supposed to go up to 13 degrees and stay around that level for a couple of days and then it will fall back to “normal” temperatures on Wednesday. This cyclic action will probably trigger a few illnesses. I can already feel a quasi-cold coming on. Hopefully it doesn’t translate into the need to take more time off.

Tags: cold, hot, Toronto, Weather, weird

I’m back

November 25, 2005 in Uncategorized by matt | 1 comment

I’m back online. More later.

Tags: back, blog, online

Two things to miss

September 21, 2005 in Moving by matt | No comments

I’ve been thinking about this for a while and I’ve decided that there are two things that I might miss about living in an apartment:

Not having to clear snow/frost/leaves/etc. off of the car in the morning and needing to make sure that the car is warmed up before driving.
Having a garbage chute.

That’s it. Everything else about apartments and this apartment in particular I won’t be missing. Nine more days and we’ll have a house to live in. I can’t wait.

Tags: apartment, Cars, chute, frost, garbage, garbage-chute, leaves, Moving, snow

More piratish

September 19, 2005 in Uncategorized by matt | No comments

Turning on this text filter makes all of my posts look like they’ve been written by a pirate. Hooray! They have a “Kraut filter” so maybe I’ll turn that on next month when Oktoberfest comes along. We’re trying to decide if we’re going to go to any of the events there. It would be nice to go back to Kitchener and Kitchener becomes Berlin in Oktoberfest. Plus I miss Onkle Hans. He and I go way back.

Piratish

September 19, 2005 in Humour by matt | No comments

Today is International Talk Like A Pirate Day. I’m not sure that I’ll be able to talk like a pirate here in the office but I’m going to try and write like a pirate. That’s nearly as good. Here’s my one and only pirate joke (stolen from Ed):

A pirate walks into a bar:

Bartender: You have a steering wheel down your pants!
Pirate: Arr, it be driving me nuts.

Yuk yuk yuk.

Tags: ed, jokes, talk-like-a-pirate-day

Back to boring

September 18, 2005 in Moving and The Apartment by matt | No comments

Well we did some paintin’ today. We chose “soft off-white” as our colour and got th’ majority o’ th’ paintin’ we needed t’ get done, done. I’m not really sure if “hard off-white” exists but soft off-white matches pretty closely t’ what they had originally (judgin’ by th’ trim). It’s likely a higher quality paint than they’re usin’ (t’ maximize their profits on th’ $700 they say it would cost). Shiver me timbers! In any case we got a lot done today. The apartment looks airier and emptier and not as invitin’ as before, pass the grog! Aarrr! I’m also more sore and tired than before (we painted). I’m likely goin’ t’ be pretty stiff in th’ mornin’. Perhaps some IcyHot would be beneficial t’ me achin’ muscles. IcyHot is like th’ commodity o’ choice aroun’ here. Can’t have enough o’ it! Ahoy!

Tags: apartment, icyhot, Moving, painting, soft-off-white

Two can play at that game

September 17, 2005 in It Happened To Me and The Apartment by matt | No comments

The other day we asked our rental admiral t’ book an elevator fer us on th’ 1st, I’ll warrant ye. We’re movin’ out then and have booked our movers but we still would like t’ have an elevator on service t’ make th’ whole process as quick as possible.

First they told us that we wouldn’t be able t’ move out on th’ 1st and that since our lease ends on th’ 30th, we have t’ be out by th’ 30th, ye scurvey dog. Our lease made no mention o’ this so Marcy went t’ speak with them and got everythin’ straightened out. We had t’ submit t’ an inspection before we left on th’ 1st and handed back our keys and we had t’ paint th’ dinin’ room back t’ an off-white colour, on a dead man’s chest, ye scurvey dog! That were bein’ Wednesday.

Thursday there were bein’ a notice sayin’ that we had t’ submit t’ a premove inspection t’ assess any damage we may have done t’ th’ apartment. And swab the deck, avast! If we didn’t fix what they deemed t’ be malfunctional/damaged then our claim would be passed t’ a collections agency and we’d have t’ pay even more. This inspection would happen sometime on Friday when we weren’t at home. Marcy spoke with them again and they said it were bein’ just a formality but still we said that we have cats and t’ be careful when they opened th’ door because they like t’ escape into th’ hallway. They assured us that they would be careful.

Even still before I left fer work yesterday I took pictures o’ th’ whole apartment and wrote th’ followin’ note:

Dear inspector(s),

Please watch out fer cats when ye open th’ door, avast! They like t’ escape into th’ hallway. Oho, by Davy Jones’ locker! Also please note that th’ wallpaper border in th’ master bedroom were bein’ there when we moved in (we took pictures).

Enter time ____________
Exit time _____________

Thanks,
Matt and Marcy

I wasn’t sure if they would actually fill it out but they did, I’ll warrant ye. They were in here fer 10 minutes.

However they sent an invoice t’ th’ effect that if we didn’t repaint th’ livin’ room, dinin’ room and hallway back t’ off-white we would be responsible fer a $700 bill. Ahoy! Shiver me timbers! $500 fer th’ livin’ room/dinin’ room and $200 fer th’ hallway. Those are some expensive painters they have there! I have t’ get on that contract.

It’s really nice that they care so much about th’ scallywags leavin’ th’ buildin’ and not so much about th’ scallywags still livin’ here. I seriously can’t wait t’ move and when we meet scallywags in th’ elevator and we’re carryin’ boxes or th’ like their reaction is either “ye’re lucky” or “that’s a good notion”. I feel sorry fer th’ scallywags who can’t move out fer whatever reason. Aarrr! Fetch me spyglass! I’d hate t’ see this neighbourhood in about 3-5 years. I’ll tell ye right now it won’t be gettin’ any better.

Tags: apartment, extortion, inspections, Moving

Max 5

September 16, 2005 in Food by matt | 1 comment

I bought a Bounty (I love them) and a new Max 5 chocolate bar. It has pretzels, caramel, peanuts, peanut butter and milk chocolate all wrapped into a solid bar format, by Blackbeard’s sword. The commercials are all kind o’ strange and I’m not sure combinin’ those particular 5 ingredients is a good notion. I’ll try it out and let ye know. Prepare to be boarded, on a dead man’s chest! Stay tuned!

Edit: The conclusion? Meh. Too many flavours at once. That and it’s not even a bar but rather two small bars. I’m underwhelmed, avast.

Tags: bounty, chocolate-bars, max-5, reviews

Followup

September 15, 2005 in Work by matt | No comments

Durin’ our meetin’ with th’ champagne (a.k.a. “sparklin’ wine”) th’ CEO said that we all deserved t’ celebrate, and a bucket o’ chum. This were bein’ a big accomplishment.

So what did th’ tech team do immediately after th’ meetin’, we’ll keel-haul ye! We went back t’ codin’.

Typically technical. This place is great. Yaaarrrrr!

Tags: accomplishments, business, celebrations, developers, The Office, Work

Champagne

September 15, 2005 in Work by matt | No comments

There’s somethin’ nice about drinkin’ champagne durin’ th’ day. We reached a major milestone here at work and there were bein’ good reason t’ celebrate. It shocks me how much has changed here since I started last year, I’ll warrant ye. It only goes up from here, on a dead man’s chest!

Tags: accomplishments, business-celebrations, The Office, Work

New look (again)

September 14, 2005 in Blog Discussions by matt | No comments

Well in th’ evolution o’ this site it seems that there is inevitably some wafflin’ back and forth with various layours. I’m now tryin’ out K2 which is th’ sequel t’ Kubrick which ye may recall were bein’ one o’ th’ layouts I tried out last year (or maybe this year – I don’t remember now). And hoist the mainsail! The sharks will eat well tonight! I like th’ support fer various plugins that come with th’ layout so I’m goin’ t’ stick with this fer th’ time bein’. And swab the deck! Aarrr! The top header is a little bland but I’m goin’ t’ look into changin’ that. Keep watchin’ th’ evolution o’ th’ influx.

Tags: blog, k2, kubrick, themes, wordpress

Rules

September 12, 2005 in Lessons by matt | No comments

Here’s a simple rule – when ye’re drinkin’ from a coffee cup with a screw-on lid make sure that th’ lid is firmly tightened otherwise ye might end up spillin’ coffee all o’er yourself like I just did. Fortunately I’m wearin’ darker clothes today so hopefully there won’t be too much o’ a noticeable stain. Fire the cannons! Aarrr!

Tags: coffee, drinking, Lessons, rules

I love ‘em

September 12, 2005 in Food by matt | No comments

I have t’ say that I absolutely adore th’ taste o’ Montreal-style bagels. They’re so tasty I could eat a dozen at once. Well maybe that’s a slight exaggeration but I could eat at least a couple each mornin’. I’m lookin’ forward t’ tomorrow mornin’’s breakfast! The sharks will eat well tonight!

Tags: bagels, Food, montreal, montreal-style-bagels

Incredible

September 10, 2005 in Pictures by matt | No comments

This is an incredible set of photos. It’s one man’s encounter with Katrina over 5 days.

Tags: hurricane, hurricane-katrina, katrina, new-orleans, photos

Comments

September 9, 2005 in Blog Discussions by matt | No comments

Here I was thinking that no one was commenting and in fact I had some comments in the moderation queue. Hooray for comments and readers!

Tags: blog, comments, popularity

Noticed

September 8, 2005 in Food and Life by matt | No comments

Wagon wheels are much smaller than they used to be. Maybe I’m just bigger than I used to be. In any case they seem smaller.

Tags: nostalgia, size, snacks, wagon-wheels

An obsession

September 7, 2005 in Life by matt | No comments

I seem to be obsessed with locked doors. I can never be sure that it’s actually locked even if it’s me who did the locking. I have to go back and verify physically that the lock has been enabled. It’s really crazy sometimes because even when I do that verification something in my brain questions whether the verification did actually work. I’ve checked doors multiple times before leaving and then I’m still not sure what to believe.

I can be strange at times.

Tags: locked-doors, obsessions

Odd man

September 6, 2005 in It Happened To Me, The Apartment and Toronto by matt | No comments

I had a rather odd encounter with a man in the elevator on Sunday night. We had just come back from shopping in Buffalo (good deals!) and we got in on the bottom floor. On the next floor an older couple came into the elevator. The man comes right beside me and pinches my stomach.

“It’s growing,” he says.

Confused, I ask him to repeat himself. He does and pats his own stomach (which is by no means small). “It’s growing,” he says.

“You’re eating too much food,” he continues. I just smiled and hoped that the elevator ride wouldn’t be too long. This guy is weirding me out.

Two police officers get on the elevator at the lobby. You might think this would be a rare occurrence but I assure you that in our neighbourhood the cops are quite common as unfortunate as that may be. These police officers are quite large. At least 6′4″ and well-built.

The old man tries to puff up behind them and says “I’m the same size as them!” The cops said nothing.

I’m not sure what his wife thought of all of this. Perhaps she’s just as strange but only privately.

It was one of the strangest elevator rides I’ve taken.

Tags: apartment, elevator, It Happened To Me, odd-man

Ten cents per day

September 2, 2005 in Cars and Toronto by matt | No comments

Gas prices today?

134.9 cents/Litre

I guess an increase of ten cents per day becomes less and less significant as the current prices increase. I mean ten cents on 125 isn’t as big a deal as ten cents on 80. I saw on the Toronto gas price site that the highest price around the city was in the Jane and Finch area. Coincidentally that’s probably one of the areas that can least afford the high prices. It’s interesting how that happens.

Tags: Cars, gas, gas-prices, Toronto

Reposted

September 1, 2005 in Life by matt | No comments

I’ve been following the blog on the New Orleans Times-Picayune site all day and this column really struck me. I’m reposting it here.

Years ago, a young South African scholar told me about his trip to America, to Boston, specifically.

I don’t know who was in charge of his trip, but either they failed to give him his script or he failed to memorize his lines.

He was supposed to tell me about how wonderful our country is. He was supposed to have been impressed with the vast wealth of this place and with the quality and quantity of the latest technology here.

He was supposed to envy our First World status.

He didn’t.

What he remembered from his trip was not our wealth, but our poverty. He was shocked by the slums of Boston.

He wondered about American aid to poor countries. How can you send aid to these places, he asked, when you need such aid in your own poor communities?

What we are watching in New Orleans now is an indictment of our nation.

I can understand why we see refugees in Liberia walking miles in the hope of finding sustenance or safety; often there is little of either in that country. But why are we seeing these same images here?

Do we lack the trains, planes and automobiles to move our people to safety?

I can understand why it takes so much time to get aid halfway across the world, but why does it take so long to get aid to our own Gulf states?

I can understand why lawlessness rules the streets of many poor countries in crisis, but we have a huge standing army. Do we lack the soldiers to police American streets?

I am used to seeing images of desperate people hindering the very relief efforts aimed at saving them. I have seen news reports of refugees looting food shipments. I’ve even heard of warlords in some countries looting the shipments and then trying to sell food to those so desperate and poor as to be scarcely able to afford it.

But why are we seeing these images and hearing these reports of wanton looting — by at least one police officer, no less —in an American city?

I make no excuses for the looters.

What may have started out as a legitimate attempt to secure the most basic of necessities has quickly turned into a nightmarish free-for-all.

But we shouldn’t be surprised that the criminal element that terrorizes New Orleans and just about every other major American city, declined to alter its behavior in the midst of this crisis.

I am surprised, however, that our leaders have failed to provide a more adequate and timely response to all of this.

I am surprised that, in light of the current crisis in New Orleans, that the United States of America can be seen to have so much in common with the poorest and most wretched places on earth.

I agree with Dave. This kind of disaster demands a better response than what we’re seeing on tv. I’ve read some truly horrible stories today and it really turns my stomach to think of the state of affairs down south. I guess it proves that even agencies designed to deal with emergencies of this magnitude can have uncountable problems once the disaster takes place. I can only imagine what things would be like here if something equally bad were to happen.

Tags: dave-winer, hurricane, hurricane-katrina, katrina, new-orleans, times-picayune

Give

September 1, 2005 in Life by matt | No comments

I decided to donate to the Canadian Red Cross to help the people affected by the hurricane. Give whatever you can afford because cash can go a long way in these kinds of circumstances. The situation is looking increasingly desperate.

Tags: hurricane, hurricane-katrina, katrina, new-orleans, red-cross

Survival of New Orleans

September 1, 2005 in Life and Weather by matt | No comments

[via] This guy is liveblogging New Orleans. I’m watching his webcam feed right now but there isn’t much activity on the streets near where he is. He has some pretty frightening stories posted on there. I never knew we would be able to witness civilization collapsing in a city. I think that is what scares me the most.

Tags: hurricane, hurricane-katrina, interdictor, katrina, liveblogging, new-orleans

And up…

September 1, 2005 in Cars, Money and Toronto by matt | No comments

Gas prices this morning?

125.8 cents/Litre

Last night when we came home from the movie theatre (seeing this fantastic movie) it was under a dollar. Jumping almost 30 cents overnight to gouge morning commuters seems most unfair. This article talks about profiteering. The thing is that each time they bring up the issue of collusion or profiteering or gouging they can never prove that the companies work together. I can’t imagine what the price of gas is going to be tomorrow ahead of the long weekend.

Tags: Cars, gas, gas-prices, profiteering, the-constant-gardener, Toronto

Gas!

August 31, 2005 in Cars, Money and Toronto by matt | No comments

What were the gas prices this morning on our way to work?

119.4 cents/Litre

We can all thank Katrina for this as well as the non-gouging, non-colluding oil companies.

I can’t imagine what the prices are like elsewhere in the country. Toronto is usually one of the cheaper Eastern cities in Canada.

Tags: Cars, gas, gas-prices, hurricane, hurricane-katrina, katrina, Toronto

Google Talk

August 24, 2005 in Technology by matt | 1 comment

I am Google Talk-enabled. Hit me up at matt.clements.

Tags: google, google-talk

I concur

August 23, 2005 in Movies and Toronto by matt | No comments

Following Joey’s lead, I heartily endorse this movie.

Let me tell you a funny story about how we saw the movie on Friday. Friday was the day of the big storm (more later) and we wanted to go see a movie. We first tried the Colossus up at Highway 7 and the 400 but when we got there the lights were out and the employees were ushering the cars away. Strangely enough it was the only part of the plaza that seemed to have lost its power. We went to Yorkdale instead.

It was the late show (10:20) which we rarely seem to be able to stay up for. It was about 9:50 and there were few seats left for the showing. We figured that with the lines around us that we wouldn’t be able to get tickets and even if we did then we would be sitting up at the very front and we’ve had enough of those viewing this summer to last us for quite a while. We bought tickets to Red Eye instead.

We went into the theatre and picked our seats and then I went out and got us a drink. When I came back into the “restricted” area I looked at the theatre designations and noticed that we weren’t seated in the theatre for Red Eye but instead we were in the theatre showing The 40-year-old Virgin. We snuck into the movie without anyone being the wiser. How crafty and sneaky of us! Actually it was completely unintended but it was well worth the risk.

Now I’ve seen funny movies before and I’ve even seen some funny ones this summer (bingo). But after seeing this movie I’d have to say that there’s no funnier movie right now than this one. I can’t remember the last time I laughed that hard or for that long. I’m still laughing at it. I’d gladly see this movie again which is a rare statement for me to make in this day and age. There are too many good jokes to mention here and every scene has something worthwhile in it. I’ve always liked Steve Carell from his Daily Show days and now he has a real chance to shine in a starring role. It’s been interesting watching Jon Stewart’s take on the whole thing because he seems as happy as a father who’s seeing his son succeed in life. Truly heartwarming.

In short you should see this movie if only for the David Caruso references.

Tags: david-caruso, Movies, red-eye, reviews, steve-carell, the-40-year-old-virgin, the-daily-show, Toronto, yorkdale

Lease day

August 23, 2005 in Moving and Toronto by matt | No comments

Today we sign our lease! Marcy and I found an absolutely wonderful house for rent in the very south end of Scarborough near the Bluffs. Three bedrooms, newly-done kitchen and bathroom, a huge living room and dining room and more backyard space than I think I’ve ever had and you’ve got yourself an amazing deal. The landlord (though he doesn’t like to be called that) lives around the corner and is more concerned that we’re good people than generating revenue. We turned on all of our charm when we met with him last week because when we first arrived at the house it was open but the guy (Leo) wasn’t there. I poked my head in and told Marcy that she had to see this place because it was really incredible. It even has a red door which has been one of Marcy’s wishes for some time. After looking around the house we knew that if it was offered at a reasonable price then we would be willing to take it. Fortunately a reasonable price it definitely is and we have our place to live in past October. Hooray! I’m pretty excited about this because we’ll both be a lot closer to work (I estimate 30 minutes by transit for me) living in a house (that’ll be so great) in a nice neighbourhood.

From now until then though we have a whole lot of packing to do. This time around we’re getting professional movers for the furniture because we’ve accumulated several more pieces and it’s the furniture that’ll wear you out. Boxes of books and such I can handle but bookcases and the like are no longer my domain in the moving sphere.

I’m going to take my camera with me tonight so that we can post some pictures of our new home.

Tags: house, lease, Moving, Toronto

Back, back, back again

August 22, 2005 in Blog Discussions by matt | 1 comment

We you may have noticed that this space was dark for the last little while. I had to reinstall this machine which meant that I lost most of the entries that I had accumulated since last May. I have everything since February 17th of this year so all is not lost. It’s just going to be a long road to recovery.

Things have been really great in the last little while. I’ll post some more in a bit.

Tags: blog

Welcome to crazy town

July 29, 2005 in Cats by matt | No comments

We adopted two kittens last night. Quentin and Ivana. We’re picking them up when we come back from our vacation which starts today. We’re going to the East Coast! It’ll be fun.

Tags: Cats, east-coast, eve, ivana, kittens, quentin, vacation

Seen on the bus today

July 25, 2005 in Career and It Happened To Me by matt | No comments

At a Philthy McNasty’s restaurant I saw this text advertising a job in the kitchen:

If your hot in the kitchen then apply!

That’s a classic spelling their.

Office Lesson

July 22, 2005 in Career, Lessons and The Office by matt | 1 comment

When the code to open the door has been changed you know that someone has been fired.

Tags: Career, fired, lesson, The Office, Work

Gryffin

July 20, 2005 in Cats by matt | 2 comments

This was our third cat Gryffin. We came by him very accidentally. We had decided in the early spring that it was time for another cat in our house so we were looking at the various websites and shelters around the city. We went to the Scarborough Animal Shelter on May 27th and found a nice female kitten that seemed shy but could be affectionate. We decided that we would take her the next day.

We came back that Saturday, the 28th of May, intending on picking up this new kitten. Instead when we entered the shelter we found this adorable little tricolour (white/black/grey) kitten in a separate cage. I picked him up and he was most affectionate. Purring and licking and nuzzling. We instantly fell in love with him. We had seen Madagascar the night before and he looked almost identical to one of the lemurs. He was so cute that we had to have him. Someone said that there was someone else interested in that cat so we hurriedly filled out the required forms and waited in line to process them. Fortunately for us the person who wanted him wasn’t there and they called while we were finalizing our purchase. He was ours!

On the way home he just laid on Marcy’s lap in the car. The other cats had been similar; Pumpkin had slept on Marcy’s lap while she drove back to Kitchener from London when we got her. He seemed very content. Of course we were a bit apprehensive about how he would get along with Pumpkin and Elle but I think we were better prepared this time having gone through the process of introducing a new cat into the house before with Pumpkin. We stopped at Canadian Tire to pick up some supplies: a litter box, kitten food and some toys. He was happy to stay in the car and slept while we were gone.

We arrived home and the cats hissed (expectedly) when they saw the new cat. We took him into our bedroom and let him run around there for a while. Elle seemed more receptive than Pumpkin to Gryffin. In fact Gryffin wasn’t even his first name. We originally liked the name Bran (pronounced like brawn) but decided to change it to Gryffin (an easier name to pronounce properly). That night we took Gryffin out to the living room and he was very happy to pounce around and play with his mouse. The other cats kept their distance.

Over the next few days we grew accustomed to having a third cat in the house. Elle and Pumpkin slowly accepted the fact that he wasn’t leaving. Gryffin became more bold around the other cats and liked to pick on Pumpkin. It was hard to tell if she was annoyed or just having fun because she would hiss a lot but at the same time she’d wag her tail provocatively wanting him to attack her again.

We did have some issues with Gryffin’s bladder. Early morning and late at night he had a bad habit of peeing where he shouldn’t but after the first couple of weeks that problem seemed to disappear.

He was the only cat that liked to lounge on our furniture in the living room. One of his favourite places was to sleep on top of the couch while we were watching tv. He loved to be held and have his belly rubbed. Sometimes he’d fart when you picked him up and he’d have this cute grin after that happened. He was very affectionate and would frequently wake us up in the middle of the night to get rubbed or lick our faces. He’d purr (the loveliest purr) if you’d even look at him. He was our baby and we loved him.

One of his favourite times of the day was breakfast time. I always gave him his food first because he had a tendency to eat the other cats’ food as well. It didn’t seem to really matter however because after I put his food down he’d wolf down some of it and then as soon as I put down the other cats’ food he’d start snacking on that. From the time we got him to last Friday he had gained 1 kg. He was still very sleek and slim however.

He had this really great sidewinder hop that he would do if he wanted to play with you and he also used it on Pumpkin and Elle when he was trying to appear bigger than he was. He liked to chase his identical twin in the tv stand glass. He was terribly happy lying on the computer desk when we were using the computer. He loved his mice (he ripped them apart to create mini-mice) and he had an affinity for playing with Marcy’s shoes. He loved the onion bag so much that last Monday he managed to get one out and he chased it all over the house. It was a very funny sight.

He absolutely adored both of us and I think he really loved the other cats too. He was one of the most affectionate, loving animals I’d ever known.

Gryffin died on Monday during the time when Marcy was at school and I was at work. We’re not entirely sure what happened but we believe that Elle and Gryffin were playing on the cat climber and it was tipping over and Gryffin tried to run but lost his balance and hit the tile floor headfirst. He died almost instantly. Marcy found him in our entryway and 20 long minutes later I was home thanks to Ky. I don’t remember what Ky talked about on the way home. My legs were extremely weak when I was climbing the stairs. That afternoon was extremely difficult as the reality of what had happened sunk in. We both took it very hard and cried a lot. I went to Canadian Tire and got a nice bamboo box to put him to rest. Since we didn’t have any land to bury him we had to take him to the veterinarian’s office for cremation. We lifted his poor crushed body into the box and wrapped him with some pillowcases. We placed an onion and his mouse in there to keep him company because he loved them so much. We told him that we were so sorry this had happened to him and that we loved him very much. When he went to the vet’s office last Friday Marcy found that he really liked listening to JazzFM. Who knew a cat liked jazz? In his honour we played that station while we drove. We listened to one last song before we brought him in. We then went to the vet’s office and said goodbye to our little boy. It was one of the most difficult things I’ve ever had to do.

The rest of the evening was spent split between distraction and reminiscing about him and how much we missed him. We kept thinking that he would pop out and hop onto our laps or that we could hear his little squeaks. It didn’t seem fair that he had to die in this way at such a young age. We’d barely become acquainted and we were looking forward to having these three cats with us when we started a family.

We both took yesterday off to cope. We cleaned the house in the morning and every room reminded us of him. He absolutely loved the spare bedroom and when I was vacuuming I’d keep finding things of his: cough drops that he loved to chase, parts of his mouse, etc. It was very hard to keep going. We found the papers we filled out when we bought him in May and his vaccination record. The vet has a picture of your pet on the receipt so we would see a picture of Gryffin on each of these papers. I clipped one out and put it on the fridge. That is one thing that I feel very guilty about: I didn’t take nearly enough pictures of him. Maybe it’s the “third child” syndrome where the first two kids (pets in our case) have a lot of pictures taken and then not as many for the youngest. The few that we have of him though we’ll treasure because it’s how he lived that we will keep with us and not how he died.

Today is a little better but we’re still pretty hurt and lonely. Not as raw as Monday and not as numb as yesterday but still sad. The house is so quiet without him scampering around. Elle and Pumpkin seem to miss him too; Pumpkin kept sniffing for him on Monday and yesterday. Monda