TheCalgaryFolks

Blog movement

2008-06-24T17:52:00.004-06:00

The blog hasn't been seeing a lot of action lately, mostly because I simply don't have the time. Work has been crazy for the last couple of months, seriously crazy, and I don't have the free time to write. I'm two months behind on the newsletter to my kid simply because, as far up in the priority list as it is, I never got to it!

On that list is a blog move. This blog has been running out of my basement for about three years now and it's time to change that. The move is then to Blogger. I've looked at other options, but Blogger was the only one that allows enough customization to get the look I already had, has everything for free and doesn't have me register with yet another site (Blogger is owned by Google now, and I have a GMail account).

The pictures have made a similar move to Flickr. I gave a quick try to Picasa, the equivalent offering from Google, but that quickly changed. A day later the layout images of the site stopped showing, so I ran to Flickr. After signing up I learned that I can't host images like that on their site (probably can't on Picasa either, but they didn't tell me), so those images moved to ImageShack and I kept Flickr for the rest. It looks a whole lot better than Picasa anyway.

On the priority list is to move the DNS entry to this site, which, if you are reading this, is now done, and moving the archive. Unfortunately I have to copy each entry one at a time because Blogger doesn't have an import feature and I don't want to write one myself, but that's ok it'll just take a while. No biggie. The only issue is that I can't move comments. Ah well.

Comments are generally open on all posts, you can go ahead and share your thoughts. Anonymous comments are allowed, so you don't have to register with Blogger.

Hopefully this move will allow both of us to post more easily and, well, it'll save us a bunch of cash every month as I get a faster, and cheaper, cable modem to replace the ADSL. Eh.

Christmas with or without snow, you choose

2005-12-27T22:47:00.002-07:00

Evidently, the weather we had for Christmas is not normal, but having never experienced anything different I fail to believe what people tell me.

In any case, it was perfect.

On December 25th, Calgary was blessed with a cloudless day, the sun shinning as hard as it could. Around mid-day, it was +15 degrees outside. I kid you not! We took a walk around the neighborhood and we very nearly did it in t-shirts. If it wasn't that the motorcycle is parked in a corner of the garage, under its tarp and without a battery -- so that taking it out and putting it back in would require at least a couple of hours -- we would have taken it out for a ride. Over the weekend, we saw about half a dozen bikes on the roads and we really wanted to be one of them.

Needless to say that Calgary has no snow now. The forecast calls for another week of above-zero temperature. It's great!

Vero was a little disappointed that we had a snow-less Christmas, even with the incredible weather. So on the 26th we drove down to Lake Louise.

Lake Louise does have snow. Enough for the ski hill to be open; enough for the lake to be frozen and a skating rink to be open; enough to warrant us putting all our snow gear on to hike up to the lake Agnes teahouse.

So out here we have the choice: Christmas with or without snow? Stay in Calgary for warm, sunny and a snow-less experience; drive to the mountains to ski, skate and play around in the snow.

* * * * *

The 26th was also a different experience for us. I had been meaning to get a new TV for my office (to replace the really old one that now has the side effect of emitting more sound out the back than the front), so I figured we could brave the craziness of Boxing Day and drop by Best Buy to get one. After checking their website I learned that they opened at 6AM on the 26th. "We can do that," I thought: let's get there at 6AM and beat the crowd. Who else but us gets up so early anyway?

We got up a little after 5AM and got ready to go out into that gentle night (man it's dark at that time) down to the Best Buy, a 15 minute drive. We got there at 6:10AM.

Driving in, I saw a couple of people outside the doors, but it didn't have the coherence of a line. So I thought they were just hanging out there, for some reason. The fact that we had to HUNT for a parking space worried me a little, though. Anyways, since it wasn't a mad lineup, and we did get up for it, we walked to the door.

The "security guard" at the door (who wasn't much of a security guy) was all bright and cheery and chatted up a storm with us folks outside. How can these people be happy at 6AM on Boxing Day? They live in Calgary, that's how.

We had to wait about five minutes before they let us in. Inside: complete mayhem. The place was PACKED with people running all over the place. Craziness.

We found a TV I liked, not too expensive, and grabbed the box. A 24" TV is pretty heavy, we learned... Off we go, dashing through the isles to reach the cash, only to see a lineup there. Actually, we saw the BEGINNING of a line; the end was nowhere in sight.

At the head of the line, a bright and cheery employee (yet another one... crazy, I tell ya!) was directing people to the cashes and to the end of the line. Seeing us with our huge box and no cart, he told us to leave the box there and aim for the floating balloon that indicates the end of the line... on the other side of the store! We rushed there -- and a good thing we did because within five minutes the line had grown almost double!

Surprisingly, the wait was pretty short. It took only 20 minutes to reach the cash, where the still bright and cheery employee recognized us, showed surprise at how quickly we got there and pointed us to an available cashier.

Out the door we go with our big-ass box. At the door, the same (and still bright and cheery) security guard suggested we leave the box there, go get the car and this other employee will help us to load it. Which we did, and which he did (happy to see us pull up in a hatch-back).

We were out of the parking lot before 7AM. In and out within 50 minutes, a good ten of which were spent looking at the TVs and picking one.

And everybody, short of a couple of grumpy customers, was happy and helpful. Crazy, I keep saying.

So here's "Matt's tip to shopping for electronics on Boxing Day": avoid it if you can, otherwise bring a friend to wait in line while you pick up your gear!

Merry Christmas to all!

2005-12-23T22:46:00.000-07:00

This will be my last entry before Christmas, so I wish all of you the merriest one, filled with great parties, friends and families and, mostly, relaxation!

May the presence of your loved ones outshine any gift you get.

Back on Tuesday the 27th.

House hunting with a difference

2005-12-22T22:45:00.000-07:00

When we bought our house, we used the services of Glen Weikle of Royal Lepage. He's a great guy, a really good agent, and I recommend him to anyone looking for property in the Calgary region.

When we started looking for houses, in September of last year, we came across Glen. We told him what we were looking for and he spent the next three months helping us to find this house. He then helped us find a mortgage broker and a lawyer and generally make the whole process easier for a couple who knew nothing of the subtleties of house buying in Calgary.

Yesterday, Glen gave me a call. He was in the neighborhood and wanted to drop by. I hadn't seen him since December of last year when we made the last offer on the house. Since then, we redecorated a whole lot so I was happy to show him the new look!

What I did not expect, however, was to get a Christmas gift! As if Glen and Jeanie knew me so well, they got us a really cool set of 4 BBQ tools and 4 skewers. The really manly stuff, too: huge pieces, wood handles, pretty heavy... I can't wait to try them out! (Which will be as soon as we buy some meat since we're living in balmy +10 degrees of late!)

That was the last thing I expected. A really nice thing indeed.

Beer with a message

2005-12-21T22:44:00.000-07:00

The Wasatch Brew Pub is a microbrewery in Utah that decided to appeal to the slightly less religious people around. If you didn't know it, Utah is known to host many a Mormon. Though I don't know much about that religion, I know they are on the bandwagon against schools teaching the theory of evolution to kids.

Wasatch took it that one hilarious step further. Check out their Beers page. First on the list is the Wasatch Evolution Amber Ale, clearly a direct hit against that whole school thing. Third down is the Polygamy Porter with the catchy slogan Why Have Just One!.

Unfortunately, you'll have to go down to Utah to get some as they don't ship them anywhere.

But it makes a man want to start drinking beer!

Barenaked for the holidays!

2005-12-20T22:41:00.002-07:00

Yesterday, we saw the Barenaked Ladies in concert. This is the third time I see them on stage (once in Montreal and early this year at the tsunami relief concert) and they proved, yet again, why I'm right to call them "my favorite band". The show was, simply put, AWESOME!

I started off a little disappointed because, using the button-mashing technique I've used before to buy tickets (which consists in clicking on the "get tickets" button on the Ticketmaster site until it stops saying "not on sale yet"), I wasn't able to get anything closer than the tenth row. I tried the tenth row at the Montreal concert and, as 5'2" Marianne can attest, the view isn't all that good. Today, I learned that they reserve the first rows to the fan club (what rock have I been hiding under to not realize there's a fan club and they get the good tickets?!?) so I'll be signing up right after I write this entry.

Armed with our first balcony seats, which are actually pretty good, we made our way to a packed Jubilee. I just HAD to stop by the merchandise table because Yanik (father of Edgar) told me they were selling USB memory sticks with BNL material on it. Of course, I got one: it's BNL and geekiness all wrapped up in a slick silver package!

With that in my pocket, up we went to the first balcony. I found it odd that a security guard was causing traffic in the small isle... until I saw why he was there: Tyler Stewart was standing there, signing anything you put in his hand in one swift motion. How cool is that? Really cool, it is. I told him so and he said "thank you". Then I moved on so the mob behind me could move forward.

That was very classy of him. Makes the tickets a whole lot better!

And so the show started (with an opening act of Kurt Swinghammer). It was a holiday concert, so we got a bunch of those songs (unfortunately, no Elf's Lament), but what surprised me was that they played a very large variety of songs from every album -- from Be My Yoko Ono to Upside Down, through many hit songs like One Week and the necessary If I Had $100000. And through it all, the jokes and banter that define BNL as a must see show.

The show opened with a group of kids from a local choir (sorry kids, I forget your name!) singing some Christmas songs, then BNL got on and sang a couple more with them. Really well done. Toward the end, they poked fun at Kevin's squeeze box and poof! enters kids from the local accordion association (whose name I forget too) to play $100000.

Next thing you know, over two hours have gone by and they are coming back for a second encore.

I can name only three things that weren't AWESOME:

The crowd didn't sound like it was really into the songs like that first show in Montreal. Maybe it was being on the balcony that made it so I couldn't hear everyone singing, at least I hope it was. I'm pretty sure they couldn't hear me, but I sang every word along with them!
A couple of ladies around us had very loud laughs, so we missed a couple of lines after jokes. Oddly enough, asking them to repeat that last line did nothing. Maybe I should have asked one of those ladies to scream the demand...
After the show, I can't hug them and squeeze them and pat them and pet them and rub them and caress them and name them George and bring them home with us. Though I'm thinking they might object to the rubbing.

In the end, we drove back home really happy to have been there, with the car radio off so as to not chase the sounds of the concert from our minds (to some country songs Vero likes so much).

If, by some luck the Gods grant me, the band or anyone connected to them happens to read this, THANKS FOR THE GREAT SHOW AND COME BACK ANYTIME!!! (I don't know why I'm screaming that part, as if they could hear it better...) I'm thinking Calgary isn't the prime audience for a show like this, but I promise that anytime BNL shows up here they will sell at least two tickets. Every. Single. Time. And if the venue causes problems, I got plenty of room in my basement!

If you, gentle reader, have never seen their show, remedy that ASAP. You will not regret it!

And to Marianne who is moving here next month: gna gna gna, you should've moved earlier, you missed a great show, IN YOUR FACE! :)

Dungeons and Dragons: Wrath of the Dragon God

2005-12-16T22:39:00.000-07:00

On a cold and sunny day yesterday, we rented Dungeons and Dragons: Wrath of the Dragon God (yet another crappy website).

This is the "sequel" to the first Dungeon and Dragons movie. I say "sequel", in quotes, because that's what the folks at Wizards of the Coast call it, but it has nothing to do with the first one. Which is good.

I saw the box on the night I rented Dukes of Hazzard but I left it there thinking that Vero would want to see it too. When we browsed the store yesterday, I pointed to the single copy of the movie they have, she checked it out and agreed.

She actually enjoyed it. I see the "geekiness" growing in her every day!

It was, surprisingly, not bad. Not great, but for a lower budget movie that requires a lot of CGI, they did pretty good.

The whole thing is rushed -- they do fit an epic quest in a 1h45 movie -- but the writers did pretty good at making believable characters. It seems a lot of the creative team knew about DnD (but not from playing it) and they used the complete DnD literature to provide the background and mechanics of what is happening. It was nice to see, in the "making of" feature, the cast and crew flipping through the pages of the player manual between takes.

They dropped the ball on a couple of things, unfortunately, most notably in having a diversity of races and classes. The main character, it seems, doesn't have a class (at least, nothing we could figure out); they made one of the evil sidekick a half-orc, but I only know that because they explain it in the special features. They did a pretty good job on a couple of things, too, like in what the rogue does and how he does it. Quite neat.

To the DnD fan out there, I will stop here (so as to not give too much away) and recommend you go and rent this movie. To everybody else, you need not worry that you are missing out on a great movie by not renting it.

Movie: The Dukes of Hazzard

2005-12-16T22:38:00.000-07:00

Yes, I saw the movie for the first time yesterday. Vero had another one of those "I'm doing something after work so I'll be home late" where, taking advantage of it, I rent a movie she doesn't want to see.

There was nothing else in the store that I hadn't seen...

I got the unrated version of The Dukes of Hazzard (at the time of this writing, this site SUCKS).

From what I can tell, "unrated" means they added three or four scenes with half-naked women. Like when Bo and Luke go to find Katie at the Atlanta university, they look for her by barging into three bedrooms, each of which containing a number of good looking young women wearing nothing but bikini bottoms and doing, what I can only guess to be, normal sorority girl stuff -- like playfully boxing with each other.

That left me sitting there, stunned, thinking: "WTF?!?"

So one of two things: either I completely missed what university is like (and I really should go), or they decided that the target audience for this movie is 14 year old boys. Which, as I realized yesterday, I no longer am.

For long portions of the movie I really wondered if I really was the target audience -- I mean, I'm a guy who likes movies with pretty girls and fast cars, but last I checked I had more than two brain cells that aren't driven entirely by hormones.

The best part of the movie, therefore, ended up being the stunt driving. They got the reining drifting champion to drive the car around, and it shows through a lot of really good looking slides. "Drifting", if you don't know, is this thing whereby a driver enters a turn by sliding the back of the car and goes through that turn with the car at an angle, the back wheels sliding the whole time. And this guy can really do it: in one of the special feature you can see him drive the car TWICE around this circle, through traffic no less, in a slide the entire time. Quite impressive.

Like the director said in an interview in the special features, the movie is mostly about the car. The car isn't that great, but the driving is pretty cool and the drifting is very, very well done.

And the girls? They do have a lot of pretty young things in the movie, but after the couple of scenes you quickly realize they have no actual personality (other than to arouse 14 year old boys) and it's pretty much a turn-off. And Jessica Simpson shows that, no matter how much practice you have, it is basically impossible to move without wobbling in six inch heels.

So it was a night of stunned consternation and nice slides. But not a movie I recommend... if you're not a 14 year old boy.

Thursday. Nothing to report.

2005-12-15T22:36:00.001-07:00

So I send you to have a short laugh with some French-chalenged American kids.

Possibly the cutest thing EVER

2005-12-14T22:34:00.000-07:00

Last weekend we went to the mall and has a brief contact with what could possibly be the CUTEST THING EVER.

As we walked into the mall, a young family (mom, dad and daughter) were walking out. I got to the door first, so I opened it for them (like any good Calgarian would). In truth, I was opening the door for my lady, but they were there so I figured I would hit two stones with one dead bird. Or the other way around. Whatever.

Mom and dad thanked me, like any good Calgarian would, and tried to guide their daughter out the open door. She couldn't have been more than five years old, walking around kinda oddly because she was completely concentrated on (what I can only assume were) her new shoes. And I agree with her: not only were they white and pristine but they had lights that would come on every time she stepped down.

So she takes a couple of steps outside, lost in the magic that was her new shoes. Then she abruptly stops, turns around, raises her head to look me square in the eyes and says in a very articulate and clear voice: "thank you". With the cutest little happy inflection that only young girls can pull off.

TO. DIE. FOR.

So she's now in the top of the cutest-thing-ever list. I imagine she'll stay there until I get a kid of my own...

Meet the new toy

2005-12-13T22:31:00.002-07:00

Last night I bought myself a Canon EOS Digital Rebel XT (a.k.a. a big-ass digital camera). This, my friends, is one serious piece of technology. Very impressive. This review is much more comprehensive than I could ever be...

Of course, I took a bunch of pictures to try it out!

Here is a picture of our house, as of this morning, in the highest resolution this baby can do. This is 8 megapixels, so 3456x2304 resolution. This file was tranfered to jpeg from the original RAW format after tweaking with the white balance a little. Canon provides the software to do that, of course. Honestly, the software isn't half bad.

The coolest piece of software included (in my personal opinion) is the picture merging utility. You give it a bunch of pictures, tell it you took the pictures from the same spot by simply turning the camera around and it "stitches" them together into one panoramic view. Super easy, works very well. I'm rather impressed with that one. To view the image correctly, since my site forces a picture size, click on the small picture here (it will display the picture in larger format) then click on the larger format picture to view the original picture (with the correct aspect-ratio).

The next step is to figure out how well these pictures will actually print. I found a place in Calgary, called Vistek, that will print them to, apparently, 20x30 inches with no noticeable loss of quality. I'm not entirely convinced, though very hopeful, and we'll be doing some test runs to see how it comes out. I'll let y'all know.

Grotto Canyon in winter

2005-12-12T22:30:00.000-07:00

This weekend we made a quick stop by Grotto Canyon, a spot near Canmore where you get to hike along a small river at the bottom of a gorge. The canyon is said to have many native pictographs, though we still haven't seen any of them.

This was the second time we hiked through Grotto Canyon -- a short couple of hours round trip with virtually no elevation gain. For the second time I completely failed to bring the camera. So still no pictures.

When you walk through the canyon in summer, you have to cross the river a couple of times, hopping from rock to rock. It's a lot of fun. When you walk through in winter, the river is frozen (almost completely) solid. Now that we did not expect! So you walk up to the end of the canyon (where we find multiple ice falls which climbers go up on!) walking, for the most part, directly on the river's ice. Quite the interesting experience. But do remember to pack your Yaktrax otherwise you'll just hurt yourself slipping all over the place!

So now Grotto Canyon has gone up on our list of things to hike around here: it's an easy hike that looks really nice in summer and that offers a unique experience in winter!

Overheard on the couch

2005-12-10T22:29:00.000-07:00

During a Leapster commercial:

"They tried that on The Shopping Bags."

"And?"

"Little girls love it. Little boys would rather have a Playboy."

"A what?"

"A... no, a Gameboy."

"Not exactly the same, wouldn't you say?"

Free music, for real

2005-12-09T22:28:00.000-07:00

A band called Steadman, ex-Brits turned Americans, have been making music professionally for a little while and have had trouble with labels. Long story. The end result: they decided that, since they don't make money off selling CDs anyway, they are offering their music for free on their website. No restrictions, no small print, just free professionally recorded music.

They classify as "rock". Paul McCartney actually hand-wrote a message saying he "likes this band". And he's a knight! Are you gonna argue with a knight?

Check 'em out.

Crap is a natural thing

2005-12-08T22:26:00.000-07:00

You have to admit it, not all bathroom tissue is the same.

We now have two kinds in our house (as we had to refresh our stock last weekend) and it's just... well, not the same. They both get the job done, but one makes me feel better about it than the other.

We've all seen the new Charmin commercial where mama bear uses what can be best described as a car wash to... you know. Every time I see the commercial, I pause and wonder at the idiocy of today's marketing firms. Who the hell thought this image would be a good idea for a commercial, and who is the bigger idiot that agreed it was a good idea and fronted good money for it?

Still, I feel a bit of a connection with that "car wash" bear. Not that anything I do in life did or ever will feel like THAT, but I have to admit that not all bathroom tissue is made alike.

And so, whenever I have a choice in the matter, I go for the good stuff.

Which, evidently, was not the case last weekend.

Damn the stickiness!

2005-12-07T22:25:00.001-07:00

I reach in the bag full of yummy, squishy, sugary goodness that are gummy bears. The very first to inch toward his delicious death, a green one, sticks to my finger and, instead of landing comfortably inside my mouth, jumps and falls the 37 inches down to the floor.

Cruel, cruel world.

Damn the sticky gummies!

Early Christmas

2005-12-06T22:21:00.001-07:00

This weekend we had the chance of hanging out with my in-laws who flew in for four days. This wasn't the first time, but it was the first time they actually saw the Rockies! Not very clearly and not for very long, mind you, but the mountains were right there, undeniable.

We saw them from the house for about an hour, early Sunday morning. The rest of the time: nothing. (Well, there was plenty of snowing and cloud cover and biting cold, but nothing as far as view went.) We spent Sunday in Canmore and Kananaskis Country (on the Troll Falls trail) and, luckily, the day was clear and sunny (though rather cold) and we had a wonderful view of what being in the Rockies is all about.

So (finally, after three tries!) Marc and Magda can go back home and say with confidence that they saw the Rockies!

And we remain here, again grateful for their visit, with fond memories of our wonderful week-end.

Oh, and to explain the title: since we won't be seeing them before Christmas, we celebrated it early on Saturday with a feast and some gifts. Christmas came early to our house and it was great! Thank you again!

The Cadillac of temperature control

2005-12-02T22:24:00.001-07:00

If you haven't seen it, the heating system in our house is a gas furnace. We have the one furnace heating up the whole house. So we only have the one thermostat to control the temperature of the whole house.

I haven't been really happy with it, for two reasons: first, it is not precise at all, often needing us to "play" with it just to get to a comfortable temperature but more often than not going from just a little too cold to just a little too warm; second, the first reason coupled with a bad location means we never change the settings, even during the night. I had been meaning to get some sort of programmable thermostat so I could set it and forget it, knowing it would save us some energy by keeping the temperature lower during the night.

So early this week I bought a 7-day programmable touchscreen thermostat from Honeywell. This, my friends, is the Cadillac of thermostats. It's more expensive than the other ones, at about 150$, but since we only have the one (as opposed to having one per room) I thought it was worth the expense.

Vero agreed so I would shut up about it.

I installed it yesterday. This thing is worth every penny and then some. Wow.

First of all, it has a seven-day programming. That means you can have a different program for each day of the week. Plus, it has four settings per day (called "wake", "leave", "return" and "sleep"). For each of them, you can set a time and a temperature and the thing will adjust it for you. You can program every weekday the same and every weekend the same (like we did), or each day individually, or any grouping of day... in other words, it will match your schedule.

Then it goes one step further with their "intelligent" "adaptive" whatchamacallit, which is this thing where the computer (heck, we can't call this a "thermostat" anymore...) "learns" how your heating system behaves every day and uses that information to determine how much time it needs to adjust the temperature. For example, I want the house to be at 22 degrees at 5AM. Typically, that would require me to set the "wake" program at 22 for 4:30AM or something, so the house is warm by 5. But not with this thing! It learns how long it takes to warm up the house and adjust itself for the next day, so all I have to say is "22 degrees at 5AM" and it will kick in the heat at 4:32, 4:46 or 4:50 or whatever is right.

It also controls cooling, so if you have a furnace and an air conditioning unit, which we don't, you can set the "heat" and "cool" degrees and the computer will start the furnace or air conditioning depending on the temperature of the house.

Then you get into the smart programming stuff...

At any time, you can change the temperature of the house by hitting a button. Doing that, you tell it to "hold" the currently scheduled temperature -- the schedule says 22 degrees, you just asked for 25. It will hold the current schedule until a certain time, a time which you can set; by default, it holds until the next schedule. So if it's a little cold one night, you raise the temperature a bit and it will hold it until your "sleep" schedule, at which point it will resume the regular scheduling and the temperature will drop back down. No need to worry (or even remember) to re-adjust the temperature, it does it itself!

And for the sugar on top, it has a "vacation hold". That means "set the temperature at this level and hold it like that for X days", ignoring your schedules. So if you leave for a couple of days, no need to completely re-program the schedules (and set them back after)!

Plus, it's touchscreen, backlit and completely digital (precise to half a degree Celsius). What more could you want?

This thing makes me feel like somebody out there sat down and thought about how a thermostat could make my life easier. Shows there's analysts and programmers out there actually thinking!

Now, this is a pretty expensive piece of equipment. I wouldn't really recommend it for the East coast, where electric heating is controlled independently in every room. Way too expensive. Although if you have the money, go for it. But houses out there with one or two central control points, like ours, would really benefit from this thing (specially if you have a crappy little mercury-based thermostat). It might be psychological, but it absolutely feels like the temperature is more constant now. I'll see at the end of the month if it really reduces energy costs...

An actual chat conversation

2005-12-01T22:30:00.000-07:00

One of my managers, a really good guy, asked me to do some technical thing real quick to help him out. Our chat conversation ended like this:

Manager: do u have the bandwidth?
Me: sure
Manager: ok, ty
Me: for you, but not for anybody else ;)
Manager: :D
Me: ... unless she's cute, that is
Manager: LOL... right... the request is coming from Pamela Anderson
Me: LOL
Manager: she's really into this stuff

It's December. Sainte Vache.

2005-12-01T22:17:00.000-07:00

It's been creeping up on me for the last week or so and now it hits me square in the jaw: today is December 1st.

Sainte vache.

(For the French impaired, "sainte vache" is a translation of "holy cow". Don't use it around French people, though, as it's not an actual expression. But it's my expression now, and I like it.)

Today makes eight months of writing this blog; nine months since we bought this house; 19 months since we moved to Calgary. Yet, it still feels like yesterday we lived in Vaudreuil. I guess it's true what they say: time flies when you're having fun!

Rent. It.

2005-11-30T22:16:00.000-07:00

Last weekend Vero and Sandra convinced me to go see the movie Rent with them. Damn my weakness for movie popcorn!

It didn't seem that bad a movie, though I felt it was more of a rental. But with promises of popcorn and a good time, I folded like a nervous twenty-something showing a pair of twos. Experience teaches us both to listen to our instincts more closely.

So Rent is a Broadway musical moved to film. I'm a little curious to see the musical, wondering if it perhaps conveys the message better than the movie. I mean, there I saw a movie whose point completely eluded me well past the credits. Ok, it's cute and they sing and they dance and what am I supposed to understand from this?

I guess it's a problem with me: I expect something so all-encompassing as putting a musical play together to be such the undertaking that only the very best actually make it. I think I'm learning that such a complicated effort as getting a play ready for audiences thins out the options so much that anything that can actually be completed is showed, regardless of how good it is, simply because there isn't enough choice. Maybe I missed the point. And truthfully I ask you: who cares?

What was the point? Oh: Rent. You would think the title alone would be enough to tell you what to do with this movie, but in case it didn't here's what I say: rent it. If you're into Broadway musicals turned movies, that is. If you saw Chicago and loved the movie, don't get your hopes up -- it's nowhere near as good. If you like musicals because they sing and dance and everybody seems to take it as normal behavior, then Rent is an option (although I recommend the Buffy episode Once More with Feeling instead). Rent is cute and kinda fun, though it did seem to go on for ever...

Windows bug or feature?

2005-11-25T22:14:00.000-07:00

For those of y'all that run Windows, here's an interesting test you can quickly go through.

Create a folder on your desktop called "notepad" (no quotes, obviously). Start Internet Explorer. Right-click in it and select "View Source". Be amazed.

It seems to work for whatever page you're on (I tested a couple of different ones). It also works if you use the "View" menu and "Source" option.

Is that a bug or an undocumented feature? Only time will tell. If it cares, that is.

I have no idea how you could do it, but that could be a way to "protect" your site's source... Hum...

That does it

2005-11-22T22:13:00.000-07:00

It's a clear blue sky day, the sun is shining and we just hit 20 degrees. That does it: I'm going outside and taking a walk. Maybe even take the bike out.

Hello World; hello friends and neighbors

2005-11-21T22:12:00.000-07:00

Today is the 33rd annual World Hello Day, a day where everyone should greet ten people during the day as a means to open communications and express concern for world peace.

The web site is pretty basic, but then again so is the idea. Check them out at http://www.worldhelloday.org. This is a neat idea, even if it only means that people will talk more (and not actually bring about world peace but, as they say, you'll never know if you don't try).

The coder in me can't help but think these guys registered to the "introduction to programming" class in university...

So I say onto all of you, on this most special of days: hello!

(Note: for them in y'all that didn't get the programming joke, the most basic piece of code that serves as the typical example usually is one that displays "Hello World!", known in the coding circles as the "hello world" example.)

TGIF

2005-11-18T22:11:00.001-07:00

It's Friday. Ah, Friday. The Day of the Fri. The day of the Friar? Nah. The day of the Fry? Hum... fries...

You think your maintenance is a nightmare? (techno-babble)

2005-11-17T22:10:00.000-07:00

For those of you who have to deal with other people's code, you must make The Daily WTF a routine stop.

If you don't deal with any code at all, you can safely ignore this link and bask in the ignorant bliss of the programming-illiterate. I almost envy you.

The Daily WTF is this site where this guy posts, daily, code pieces sent to him by people around the world. It contains the ugliest, scariest, most complicated code you can think of, code that people have to deal with every day. It's great!

You think your project is overly complex? You haven't seen anything until you read these stories...

Welcome. To the real world.

2005-11-16T22:09:00.000-07:00

So I had Monday off. I got up late, sat in front of my computer for a little while then thought better of it and walked away. It was a cold day outside and I didn't feel brave enough to test it, so I pulled out a movie.

Actually, I pulled out three. I watched the Matrix trilogy. Seven and a half hours of Keanu Reeves. This was the first time I watched all three movies in such a short period.

I can't say it's any better as one big story. It's not bad, I like it a lot, but you still have those "huh?" moments where the story gets a little weaker. Being told the whole story in one shot doesn't make things any clearer.

Still, I had a blast. Started at 11AM, ended at 6:30PM, stereo blasting and eating too much junk. It was a lot of fun and I recommend it to anyone that owns the movies.

The only thing I didn't watch is the Animatrix pieces that bridge the gap between the first two movies. There's a pretty big gap there, but you just roll with it and it's quickly forgotten.

Must buys and great gifts

2005-11-15T22:07:00.000-07:00

Last week was a great week to get stuff! I got a bunch, all of which were extremely cool and all of which I tried over the weekend.

First, Vero got us some Yaktrax thingnies, an ingenious little device you strap under your boots to provide traction on hard snow and ice. I wasn't convinced when I saw it -- how can little rings help that much, shouldn't we have spikes? -- but after trying it in a frozen Johnston Canyon I can confidently say: GET SOME OF THOSE! Holy cow. We walked on ICE as if it wasn't there. We climbed hills past people in running shoes that were barely standing up. Everybody looked at us with that jealous look of "now THAT's not fair". It was great!

I also received about three year's worth of birthday and Christmas gifts from Marianne, in a neat little ThinkGeek package. This stuff is the coolest. First off, all geeks MUST get the LED Binary Clock. I can't keep my eyes off it, I'm always looking for a pattern. Great fun.

For the more mobile geeks in us, I got a bunch of t-shirts too. Binary people, there's no place like home, you are here, generic humanoid carbon unit and Joss Whedon is my master now. Vero has that face of "God save me, I'm gonna marry a geek" when I put one on. They're great! If you're looking for a birthday gift for Vero, I suggest this one.

So it's with a geek shirt and an eye on a binary clock that I (sadly) return to work after a great long weekend.

Some time off work, always helps

2005-11-10T22:06:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow is Remembrance Day, a statutory holiday throughout all of Canada except Ontario and Québec. And since I'm not in Québec anymore...

So tomorrow we are off to the mountains, do some hiking. No plans yet. But the time off work will help everyone.

While I'm at it, I have some overtime accumulated and, with my company's "time off in lieu" policy, I decided to take Monday off as well. Yay for the long weekend!

I'm not sure if I'll be updating the site during that time. I might just find something to do that completely prevents me from even looking at a computer screen. That might be good.

DVD: Unleashed

2005-11-09T22:05:00.000-07:00

I watched Jet Li's Unleashed last night. It's another one of those movies that Vero didn't want to see, so as she went to get a hair cut I watched AN ENTIRE MOVIE, INCLUDING SPECIAL FEATURES! I even had time to spare. I tell ya, it's complicated being a woman...

To be fair to Vero's hair adventure, the special features sucked and her hair color looks good. Special features are one behind the scene and a couple of attitude-blaring music videos. Bah.

The movie has a weird feel. Jet Li is very good at playing this confused guy with the mental and social skills of a kid, but some parts of the story just feel odd. It's like the characters have a vibe that's completely off, like they don't belong together. Then again, that's part of the story too, that they don't really belong together. It's hard to put into words, but it was a weird feeling.

The action is quite rough. Vero didn't want to see the movie because she thought it was too tough for her delicate sensibilities, and heck she was right. Not a whole lot of blood or deaths or body parts ripped off, yet a very nasty look to all fights.

I was surprised when I saw Luc Besson's name come up as the writer, at the beginning of the movie. I didn't expect that. But it didn't have that spectacular humph I've come to expect from him. I guess the idea was to make a very nasty and violent movie and, well, they did.

It's definitely not a movie I recommend your kids watch, but if you're a fan of Jet Li and action movies this one is worth seeing once. It's a different kind of action movie and it's entertaining in it's own, different way.

Parallel universes, or why nothing happens like you think it will

2005-11-08T22:03:00.000-07:00

So I have this theory. It's not much, doesn't really stand up to any kind of arguments, but it's fun, simple and kinda makes sense. And heck, you can always use it as an excuse to stop fantasizing and just get on with it already.

Let's start with the basic multiple-universes-by-decision tree. I just made up that name, I have no idea what it's called. The idea -- and I make it very basic here because I'm no expert on the subject and we have better things to do than research this stuff -- I like to explain this way:

Think of your life as a line. From birth to death, a straight line. On that line, your life happens. Here you have a birthday, there you buy a house, somewhere else you live happily ever after. Now consider this: every moment of our lives we are confronted with choices and we make decisions. The decisions we make are what creates this line. But in parallel universes, you pick different options. So each decision point on your line is a point where a number of different "life lines" emerge, giving it the look of branches on a tree. On each line come multiple decision points that each branch off with their own option. Soon, you have a pretty large tree; one "branch" of that tree is your life, the other branches are parallel universes. In most universes life is the same, you just have a silver car instead of a black one. In some universes, wars rage because something you did (or didn't do) had that kind of "butterfly effect". You get the picture.

So the idea, to summarize it, is that every decision you make spawns a parallel universe in which things happens just a little differently. And here's where I make the big jump: the chain of events is such that only specific events can happen from a decision, whereas all other events are constrained to other universes. Does that even make sense? Ok, here's a completely fictional example that I never thought of before: you drive down the street in your silver car right by a woman that completely fails to notice you. In a parallel universe, the one in which you got the black car, you drive down the same street and your car catches her eye, you meet, talk, fall in love, get married, have kids and live happily ever after. Having a silver car means there is no way you can meet her (at least, not at that point in time).

Oy, am I getting deep in there. I'm trying to explain it in a way that makes some sense. Hope it's working. And keep remembering: this is just for fun, so stop trying to prove that it's completely impossible...

Now for the fun part.

Consider, just consider, that all this stuff is true: making a decision influences what will happen (duh) and what has the possibility of happening. Now consider this: what if your imagination is an integral part of the universe and thinking about making a decision is just as valid as actually making it?

It would mean that every time you imagine a situation, and imagine the decision you would make, you create a point on your life line from which all other decisions depend. Since a decision point affects what has the possibility of happening, a bunch of possible outcomes have just been moved from your universe into some parallel ones, just outside of your reach.

In other words, when you sit there and think of that cute guy you like and picture yourself walking up to him, engaging in conversation and saying exactly the right thing (and, of course, I'm talking about someone else... I would never walk up to a cute guy, obviously) what ends up happening is that his answers and the conversation that follows get split off into a parallel universe, just because of your thinking about it, and makes the whole thing impossible to actually happen.

Which is why, after having thought of walking up to the cute guy and having a thousand different perfect conversations, you walk up to him and say the absolute stupidest thing. You have no choice! That is the only option left in your universe, all the good lines have been "moved" to parallel ones!

So there. That's my theory on why you should just stop day dreaming about stuff and go and do them already. Because the more you think about how it could happen, the less likely it is to happen that way.

That, or start day dreaming about the thousand different ways you could look completely stupid. Maybe all that will be left will be the perfect conversation, who knows. I personally never tried it, so let me know of your experiences...

Movie: Batman Begins

2005-11-07T22:02:00.000-07:00

Yes, I finally saw Batman Begins this weekend. Vero absolutely did not want to see it, and before I realized it was out of theaters, so when she left me by my lonesome on Saturday to go hang out with the girls, I took the opportunity to rent the movie.

I have to go along with the majority on that one: it was much better than I expected, much better than the previous films. The story had that darkness we expect from the Dark Knight, yet has humour and a very nice storyline. I think I missed a lot from not seeing it on the big screen 'cause Scarecrow wasn't that scary. And every time I saw Katie Holmes I couldn't help wondering if Tom Cruise was behind the camera keeping an evil eye on Bale. All and all, it was a fun time and I was quite entertained.

So my rating for the movie: I won't buy the DVD, but I do recommend you rent it. And after seeing it, I think Vero wouldn't have had a problem watching the movie.

If I, indeed, had a million dollars

2005-11-04T23:00:00.000-07:00

I try not to post twice in a day, but this is too good. Steve, of Barenaked Ladies, posted this link on the band's blog: http://www.vgmerchandise.com/misc.html.

Read it, be scared, be amazed, wonder how you can make that kind of cash the same way too.

Have you read it yet? No? Go read it 'cause I want to talk about it now.

Done? Good.

I can't say I know who Vincent Gallo is. Maybe I'm too young, am not enough American or English or have enough general culture, I don't know. For all I know, this guy's a nobody or a has-been. Regardless of who you are, it takes some serious cohonas to post something like that (though, according to the text, the man does have the balls for it). And there's this "bloody accident on the highway" part of my curiosity that wonders if it will actually work.

My favorite part, I have to admit, is this:

If the purchaser [...] chooses the option of natural insemination, there is an additional charge[...]. However, if after being presented detailed photographs of the purchaser, Mr. Gallo may be willing to waive the natural insemination fee [...].

Now there is a precedent for socially inept men: buy at a cheap price, but if you're good looking I might just do it for free. Kinda like prostitution, except backwards.

Blog link search

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

I came up on this site yesterday while checking out some podcasts: Technorati Search. It's a search engine for blogs. No big deal, but what's really cool (for blog writers, at least) is that you can search for blogs that refer to a link. In the "website URL search" section, type in the URL of your blog and bam! you get a list of everyone that refered to you. Pretty neat.

They already index the major blog sites, like MSN Spaces and Blogger, but you can also have them "ping" your site to get it indexed. All you have to do, it seems, is add a couple of tags in your page. Since I'm hosting my blog (instead of using a service), I'm not automatically indexed and I haven't tried adding their tags, but it seems simple enough.

If you have a blog, that site is worth checking out. If only for the fun factor of the first ten minutes.

You know it's blues when...

2005-11-03T21:59:00.000-07:00

Now that is some serious blues. And you know it's serious blues when the second verse starts with:

"She's 3 times 7, that makes 21"

Oh yeah. Just don't ask me what that means, I'm too busy grooving.

(I'm listening to the Roadhouse podcast, "the best blues you've never heard".)

It's begining to look a lot like Christmas!

2005-11-02T21:55:00.003-07:00

We had our first overnight snow today. It started snowing late last night and this morning we had a solid inch everywhere!

I know I said I wouldn't talk of the weather as much, but when you walk out of the basement and come face to face with the biggest, cutest bunny you ever saw... how can you just resist that, huh? I swear that thing was bigger than Mr. Electrifying's purse dogs...

As the sun was rising, the small valey down from our house created this dense fog that covered everything... Even the electrical poles were lost in it! But we can still see the mountains, and that's what it's all about.

In this picture, we get an even better idea of how much snow there was. And with the sun rising, it makes for this great scene.

The sun has been out all morning now. It's a little past 1PM and already the streets are clear, as well as most of the roof facing south. I think the snow will be completely gone by the end of the day. This morning was just a quick preview of what is to come in the next months.

BNL and blogs

2005-11-01T21:54:00.000-07:00

The Barenaked Ladies are touring between now and the end of the year, coming to Calgary on December 19th. We will be there, in the first balcony, row J. Got the tickets as soon as they came on sale.

Today, I checked to make sure BNL didn't release a new album I hadn't heard about. They didn't. But I did come across the group's blog where they mention that they are currently recording a ton of songs for the next album, which we can only hope will be out early next year. The blog is quite the interesting read; I'll see how often it is maintained and just might make it a part of my daily reading...

And so I've been listening to a random of all BNL songs I own since the weekend. It kinda scares Vero that I can sing every single word...

New option on base model

2005-10-31T21:53:00.000-07:00

I realized that a lot of my entries talk about the weather. So I finally decided to get it out of the way: I added a little module from The Weather Network that displays the current weather in Calgary! Well, as current as they have it, at least, which is updated pretty regularly.

The module is located in the right sidebar, under the links section (so you might have to scroll down a bit to see it).

Enjoy!

The one liner

2005-10-28T21:50:00.001-06:00

Air, it's a good thing.

That beef I still got

2005-10-27T21:49:00.000-06:00

You might have gathered from yesterday's post (and a bunch of previous ones) that I watch Space a lot. When working from home, having human voices in the room really helps. They have good shows, Space, much better than watching the soaps of "daytime television" -- although usually not as completely out there.

Up until a couple of weeks ago, my afternoons started with a good doze of Buffy. It played every day, and so I watched it. And life was good.

Now they are playing Dark Angel. Yuk. I wished they, at least, had played Buffy until the last episode instead of not showing the last season at all. Then they could have replaced it with Angel or something. I mean, the old Battlestar Galactica in place of Relic Hunter is fine by me. But Dark Angel? Come on.

With that, my constant watching of Firefly and the Serenity movie that will be added to my collection as soon as it comes out, I really should buy me a t-shirt...

The Hero of Canton!

2005-10-26T21:47:00.000-06:00

This morning, on Space, was the weekly episode of Firefly, which happened to be Jaynestown, one of my favorite. That episode makes me laugh out loud every time. Heck, I was reading through the script and laughing.

The reason I read the script is to find the lyrics to the song, that "Ballad of Jayne". And as you would expect, but still be surprised to learn, someone tabbed it.

That song is now in my repertoire!

(Ok, my repertoire at the moment is that song and that other from Clapton which I can't quite remember the lyrics for. But as soon as I get back to actively playing my repertoire will include this song!)

It's Headless Chicken Day!

2005-10-25T21:47:00.000-06:00

Today is one of those days where I feel like a chicken that just got his head cut off. Running around like an idiot, doing a ton of stuff completely unrelated to each other, trying to get things done only to realize that it's quitting time and my to-do list is just as full as it was when the whole mess started.

Even this entry. I started it about 30 minutes ago and just now got the chance to get back on it. And I'll submit it with this feeling of "it's not quite complete", but thinking it's better than waiting until tomorrow...

Man I can't wait to get some time off.

The (explicit) power of communication

2005-10-24T21:45:00.000-06:00

Warning: this entry contains explicit material not suited for younger readers. If your kid reads this and starts repeating the bad words, it's your damn fault, k?

Language is a powerful thing. I mean, nuclear bombs ain't got nothing on this stuff. To think that two sounds put together, say "you" and "suck", can actually convey images and emotions is mind-boggling. I can't wait for us to find the babel fish, 'cause from where I'm standing the fact that we managed to create so many different coherent ways of communicating is the most improbable thing ever. Forget sliced bread and the wheel, this is the shitnitz.

I won't go into that l33t sp34k kids are throwing around these days. First I don't understand most of it, and second it'll make me want to grab one by the neck and squeeze until he admits that "ZOMG" doesn't make any sense. Grr.

What I mean is: wow, check out that language stuff doesn't that blow your mind? I can communicate in French and English somewhat fluently (although my spelling sucks just about as bad as them l33t punk ass kids) (man, them kids, I just wanna... grr!) and it occurred to me a couple of times in my life that I would like to learn to communicate in other languages too. I took a Japanese class in CEGEP, though that was a complete failure on my part. I learned a couple of words in Spanish from Vero, but I always forget them. But there's this one language that interests me above others: sign language.

I know, I have no reason to learn to sign -- I don't have any mute relatives or friends -- but it's still the coolest thing to me. Past the fact that you can put sounds together to actually express something, to me at least, is this ability to put movements together to express something. Wow. That's really impressive and so darn attractive to me that it makes me wanna sign up for a class.

I can see myself at the supermarket, standing in front of the canned goods while Vero is getting some milk and asking her "do we need soup?" without having to scream. Wouldn't that be the coolest thing? I think it would. If you don't, you're wrong and you suck.

Vero had a sign class in university and she knows a good deal of them. She started teaching me a bunch and, whadayaknow, I remember them. I can even make a sentence! So I know the signs for "water", "boy", "girl", "chocolate", "want" and how to spell my name. But more importantly, I know the signs for "throw up", "shit" and "sex". I'm still trying to figure out if "fuck" is the opposite of "shit", a variation of "sex" or something else. So I can now make sentences, like "I want sex", "you want to shit?" and, the always fun, "chocolate, chocolate, chocolate, throw up".

Ah! good times.

Of course, I'm just using these signs to have fun with Vero, but it leaves me wanting for more. So it's a discussion I started with Vero: should we sign up for an ASL (American Sign Language) class?

To be continued...

On the fall weather

2005-10-21T21:41:00.003-06:00

Yet some more talk of the Calgary weather. I'm still getting used to the whole thing, so every time something weird happens it blows my mind. Give it a couple of years and this stuff will become normal...

Until then, this is really freaky.

This is the weather we got yesterday:

The view from behind our house at 12:26PM. Yes, it was snowing. Big time. It melted to water when it hit the roads and sidewalks, but covered the rooftops and grass (and, obviously, barbecues) about a centimeter deep.

The same view, at 6:15PM. That's right, less than six hours later. And the reason it's six hours is because I didn't think of taking a picture earlier, because by 4PM the snow was gone. It's a bit difficult to see with the sun, but look at the large version and you can see it: no snow anywhere.

Freaky, I tell you. I love it!

When it rained, it poured

2005-10-20T21:39:00.001-06:00

If you remember from previous entries, the month of June this year was wet. Very wet. We had two weeks of non-stop rain, rivers overflowing, all kinds of nasties. Well, it wasn't really nasty, more like inconvenient.

This week we received the Waterways news letter, a monthly little piece of paper distributed by the city to keep us up to date on what's going on with the city's water. In it is a section about the floods of June, "by the number" as they say.

Average rainfall for June (years 1971-2000): 79.8 mm
Average rainfall for June 2005: 376.5 mm

Wow. People told me the constant rain was not typical of the region. I really believe them now.

You can't beat this sky

2005-10-19T21:36:00.003-06:00

When I first visited Calgary, a local I talked to told me that the best part of the city was the sunset. I didn't get a chance to experience it then, but I do now every day and, lemme tell you, they ain't lying.

That local just forgot to mention the sunrise.

The sun setting over the mountains, which we have a view of from our living room, is amazing. The sun rising, which I have a view of from my office, is just as spectacular. It needs the right conditions: just the right amount of clouds in just the right spot so the sun can shine on their undersides. Lucky for us, that happens very often.

The sun does not rise over the mountains, obviously, but shines in their direction, making them look more orange and red than usual. It's tough to make out the mountains from the picture, but very easy when you're standing there. The best part is the color of the clouds, such a contrast to the ones on the other side of the house, the next picture. Both pictures were taken within four minutes of each other.

You can't really see much of my desk because of the different light levels inside and outside of the house, but you can clearly see the view I have: a sky that seems to be on fire.

I took a similar picture a little while ago, which I put in my daily picture. It's in the same direction as my office's view, except it doesn't have the neighboring houses in the way.

Alberta is known for it's impossibly beautiful skies, and I can confirm that. Some of our visitors were never lucky enough to see it, but quite often we have sunrises and sunsets that seem to set the sky on fire, and quite often we have the deepest blue skies you have ever seen. Combined with the mountains, it makes for a really great outdoor experience, and we try to take advantage of it as much as possible.

Popcorn: good and bad

2005-10-18T21:31:00.001-06:00

There's two types of popcorn in this house: the kind that comes in a Kernels bag and the kind that is stuck on the ceiling.

That first one is the good kind.

A guy just came to "fix" a small area of our ceiling above the dining table. It got damaged one night when some rainwater leaked through the roof. That was a month ago, and since then the roof vent has been changed and the "damaged" ceiling fixed. Good points back to the builder.

I say "damaged" and "fixed" in quotes because, honestly, it wasn't very necessary. I didn't even notice it myself. Just a slight discoloration where water touched during that one night. No biggie.

As the guy is fixing the ceiling, I figured I would ask him what is the best way to remove that popcorn, the bad kind.

I don't like the popcorn ceiling, but now I understand why builders do it. I'd like to get rid of it, but I'm not sure when we'll have the time, the energy and the money to do it...

Here's how it goes:

Cover everything. And I mean everything. This is going to be nasty...
Get some form of spraying gizmo and moisturize the ceiling. Not dripping wet, of course, but definitely moist. The stuff comes off much easier that way, apparently.
Scrape the popcorn. No trick there, just elbow grease.
Tape and plaster the joints, everywhere.
Prime.
Paint.

Step 4 is the tough one. Builders like the popcorn because it saves them that step: the texture hides all imperfections so well that they don't even bother with the plaster. Saves them a lot of effort and drying time for a good enough look. Problem is that when you want to fix it you'll have to take on that work yourself. No simple task.

So the plans to remove the popcorn have been shelved for a little while...

Book 15: done.

2005-10-14T21:30:00.000-06:00

How much can I read on a plane trip Calgary -> Toronto -> Montreal -> New York -> Toronto -> Calgary? A little more than the 367 pages of R.A. Salvatore's The Thousand Orcs, book 1 of The Hunter's Blade Trilogy, the latest series in the Drizzt books.

Therefore, I'm up to the 16th book about the adventures of Drizzt and friends. Vero is up to the 11th -- The Silent Blade -- and catching up.

NY, me and Ting

2005-10-12T21:28:00.000-06:00

I came back from New York last night. I should say this morning, actually, as it was 1AM when I got home. I don't much like traveling for business...

I thus spent two days in New York, in meetings. (There is no "Ting" person, that's just me making a funny.) I showed up at the office at 9AM, sat in a conference room, had lunch in it and finally left the room to leave the building completely. Two days in a row. Yesterday, I had to run out basically mid-sentence from that meeting to catch the already waiting cab that took me to the airport.

So a very busy couple of days.

And now I am back, happy to be home again.

If I said it once I said it a thousand times: the humidity!

2005-10-07T21:27:00.000-06:00

I'm back in Montreal! I just happened to show up in a humid spell, lucky me. For the first time in over a year, I woke up this morning with a thin film of sweat covering my body. I forgot how much I hate that...

I say it every time I'm in town, but every time I forget what it really means. The humidity here is a big shock for a little Calgary guy like myself; it's not that bad, in the end but, compared to the dry climate I now live in, this place hits you pretty hard.

But it's all good in the end. I have a chance to go out with good friends and eat good food and see a good (and not so good) movies. So I can't complain, really, because I'm having a great time.

Other than complain about the humidity. Because I'm human, after all, and complaining is my birthright!

Upcoming movie: Doom!

2005-10-05T21:26:00.000-06:00

Believe it or not, they are releasing a movie based on the Doom game. I think it's actually based on the first game, not the second or third.

I have mixed feelings about the previews. I mean, how good can a movie about that game be? Plus you have the Rock as Sarge. Oy. On the other hand, they seem to have some first person perspective (all you see on screen is the hallway and a gun bobbing around), they actually use the chainsaw and it's just possible that they are taking this with a grain of salt the size of Mars. So I'm on the fence: I don't know if they'll just try to scare us with stuff jumping from around every corner or actually try to entertain us by bringing back the excitement we enjoyed playing the game.

It's coming out October 21st. I think I'll check some user reviews and decide whether I spend the money to see it in theatre or just wait for the DVD...

Cars and movies

2005-10-04T21:25:00.000-06:00

And like a flash it came to me: that's what I wanted to write about!

A little while ago we went with a friend to "the beach". The beach is this rather large lake about an hour and a half away from the city. It's basically the only one around and man was it ever packed. We had to squeeze ourselves into a small patch of sand, after having spent a good half hour looking for a parking spot. Quite the experience.

But that's not what I wanted to write about.

Our friend borrowed his sister's minivan and her two kids. Two really nice kids, a little under 10 years old both, nice to each other, smart and respectful of uncle's authority. I don't know the parents, but they did good.

That's also not what I wanted to write about.

Here is what I do want to write about. The minivan had a video entertainment system; a DVD player in the dashboard and a TV in the roof just behind the front seats. Once we got on the highway, we put on a movie for the kids which they listened to using cordless headsets.

I'm one of the people that have been dissing DVDs in cars. What is that all about, I've been asking? Why would you ever want something like that, which you can't even use while driving? My car is not so comfortable that I will rent movies to watch in there.

But I don't have kids. And now that I've experienced kids on a road trip my views have changed.

As soon as the movie started, silence took over the van. The kids weren't loud or annoying and didn't need any kind of discipline whatsoever to begin with -- like I said before, really nice kids -- but they were still kids and needed attention. As soon as the movie started, silence. Not a sound, other than the occasional muted laugh.

If you have kids, start thinking about getting a vehicle with a DVD system. If you ever wish to make road trips, it will save you from madness.

But do seriously consider the cordless headset. Without them, the sound comes out of the car radio. Not that it's a big problem, but what the headset gives you, that the car radio can't, is isolation. By putting headsets on your kids, you isolate them from each other. It practically eliminates all interaction with each other (the same way the movie practically eliminates all interaction with you), thus drastically reducing the likelihood of confrontation. Without headsets there is a chance they will start fighting with each other; with headsets, they basically forget each other exists.

Don't get me wrong, though: I'm not suggesting you isolate your kids from yourself and each other just so you don't have to deal with the noise. What I am suggesting is that during a road trip, when everyone is stuck in the same little confined space with no hope of moving around, isolating and distracting your kids is not such a bad idea. Lets face it: a car is not a fun place for a kid to spend hours and hours. But a DVD system does make it a lot more fun.

And that is why I will consider having a DVD in a future vehicle, when we have kids old enough to understand what the pretty moving images are.

Discovery Channel: Canada's Worst Driver

2005-10-03T21:21:00.000-06:00

Last night was the premiere of Canada's Worst Driver, a new "reality" show on the Discovery Channel.

The premise is simple(-ish): they took eight people from across Canada that were nominated by friends or loved ones as "the worst". These eight people, along with their nominators, will spend some time in a "driving rehabilitation center" where they will be evaluated and taught driving skills in an effort to make them better drivers.

I like the idea of the show. They have a good sample of different "bad" drivers, from a couple of speed demons to some very infrequent drivers, basically covering the range of the bad drivers we share the road with every day. In theory, the show is not just about singling one as THE worst, but doing so by making everybody improve their skills through coaching and practice -- that's a good idea to me. In application, the show is quite over-dramatic with the host going on long rants to blast these poor skill-less souls. I could live without that part, but short of that the show is quite a positive one.

Watching the show, now that is scary.

First of all, they introduce the drivers by mentioning their "rap sheet". You have people with more than 30 reported accidents (which excludes minor dents that nobody else saw). One has gone through 10 cars in the last 20 years. One has a paralyzing fear of left turns -- I'm not even kidding. Quite... mind boggling. All these people have their driver's license and most of them drive every day.

In the show, they set up some driving challenges, little obstacle courses they have to drive through, where the goal is, quite basically, to not trash the car. Luckily they are driving old cars used only for the show, because after the drivers go through the course the cars need some serious body work. The host, a regular actor and nothing particularly special behind the wheel, goes through the course first to set the bar. Every time he, and the car, comes out unscathed. Then the "contestants" go at it and side mirrors start flying off, cardboard pedestrians get run over and the sweet sound of metal-on-metal makes you cringe.

For most of the challenges, the host sets the bar at a decent height -- say 2 minutes here, 5 minutes there or 45 seconds to parallel park -- then you see the other drivers take 10, 15, 20 minutes -- one actually took an hour! -- and try to parallel park 17 times in 20 minutes...

They also had one where they showed the drivers five actual road signs and only one guy got all of them right. And they weren't particularly difficult, like two cars side by side with a red circle around and a bar across, which means "no passing". I mean, most of them couldn't answer that! And you should hear what they do answer!

The first two episodes were last night, with the other episodes scheduled, I believe, for every night this week. I think it's worth watching out of curiosity just like an accident on the highway is intriguing, though with this show you're not causing traffic by stopping to watch. Plus, it's quite likely that the highway accident was caused by, or involved, one of these drivers...

Check out the show's website, particularly the "drivers" section where they have a short description of each. Quite the interesting read...

None of my friends had better see Serenity this weekend!

2005-09-30T21:19:00.000-06:00

I couldn't really say anything before because it wasn't official. But it's official now, so here goes:

Nobody go to the movies this weekend!

Here's the long story. My new manager wants his new team to meet to kick off the new project. There's me in Calgary, a guy in Montreal and another in New York. The manager had already a trip to Montreal planned for next week, October 6th and 7th, so he figured we could all meet there. Great, I thought, a free trip to Montreal!

So I started looking into how possible it is. Before I could get a final answer, the manager came back and said that the New York guy can't make it so we now all have to go to New York on October 10th and 11th. That sucked.

As I was checking the flights from Calgary to New York, I noticed that all of them stop either in Toronto or Montreal. So I figured "what's the difference between a one hour layover in Montreal and a couple of days layover in Montreal?" The answer: 192$ cheaper to spend four days there.

So I decided to combine the two: I now have a flight from Calgary to Montreal on October 5th and another from Montreal to New York on October 9th.

I will be in Montreal next weekend!

So everybody must now wait for me so we can see the movie together!

I will be working both weekdays in the Compuware offices (downtown Montreal), but I do have those nights available. Plus Saturday and Sunday until noon-ish. I don't think I'll have the time to drive over to Sainte-Agathe to see the folks, but there is an Electrifying Baby I'd love to meet!

The little things that make it so much better

2005-09-29T21:17:00.000-06:00

Last night was the night Véro and I agreed to make "house cleaning night". We need to clean the house and we just hate doing it over the weekend when we could be outside doing something more fun. So we agreed to make Wednesday night the night when you reluctantly force yourself to just get it done.

Last night, then, Véro got home early after a full day of parent meetings, walked up to my office, gave me a kiss and said "screw the cleaning, let's go out to dinner and see a movie".

So we didn't clean the house, instead going out to get a burger. There wasn't any good movies playing at the nearest theatre so we came back home and watched TV. That turned an expected pain-in-the-ass night into a really nice one.

The perfect topic for a blog

2005-09-28T21:16:00.000-06:00

As I sat down to begin my work day I thought of the perfect topic for an entry. I almost wrote it down just to make sure I remember, but I figured 30 minutes is not long enough to forget.

I was wrong.

So I'll fill this up with my "backup" topic, from an evening of watching my Family Guy DVD.

In the episode Road to Rhode Island, Brian (the dog) finds himself at the ranch where he was born -- where he was taken away from his mother at a very young age. The owner tells him that his mother passed a year before, but they loved her so much they had her stuffed and placed in their living room (to serve as a table). Somewhat outraged, Brian "kidnaps" his mother's body to burry in the park.

Then Brian and Stewie (the baby) have a quick dialog.

Brian: "Say something."

Stewie: "What?"

"Just say something, please!"

"Oh for God's sake. Hum. Ye and God said to Abraham, you will kill your son Isaac. And Abraham said, I can't hear you, you'll have to speak into the microphone. And God said, oh I'm sorry is this better? Check check, check, Jerry pull the high end out I'm still getting some hiss back here."

"Say something about my mother!"

"Oh yes, hum, sorry. Hum. I never knew Biscuit as a dog, but I did know her as a table. She was sturdy, all four legs the same length..."

"Thanks, thanks, that's enough."

Christmas out West

2005-09-26T21:14:00.000-06:00

We can't remember who we informed. And rather than go over it once more individually, and to help me remember things, we figured it would be best to post it here.

After all, that's the point: reach everyone in one quick shot and have proof that Véro can use against me for when I forget.

We will not be traveling to Montreal this Christmas.

It was great to see everyone last year, but we came back home the day before going back to work basically more tired than when we left. This year, we considered going for one week instead of two, but in the end our need to rest and monetary constraints (with the new house and all) voted in favor is staying. We don't feel too bad considering that we saw everyone during the year and everyone will be over for our wedding next summer, so it works out.

This will therefore be our first Christmas out West. I promise a picture of a red cowboy hat with Christmas lights around it!

Podcasts

2005-09-23T21:13:00.000-06:00

I feel like I'm the last guy on the planet that learned of this. But in case I'm not and the rock I've been hiding under is large enough to cover a couple of y'all, here's something I learned of this week.

Podcasts.

From what I understand, podcasts are audio (and now video, in some cases) broadcasts over RSS feeds. As un-specific as that. It's generally one or more people in their basements recording an MP3 and making it available on whatever server they can find.

Whether any of that made sense to you is irrelevant. The important part comes.

Up to a little while ago, finding podcasts was a pain. There was no single repository you could search to find them. Actually, there was but it wasn't known or promoted to the general public.

With iTunes 5.0, Apple has introduced podcasts to a much broader audience. iTunes now has a podcast search function (through their music store) which allows you to search for, find and subscribe to podcasts. Subscribing is free and unauthenticated (you don't need to register or provide any information) and tells iTunes to check for updates to that podcast every minute / hour / day / week / whatever. Podcasters now have a means of reaching a much larger audience, including the less technologically savvy.

That audience now includes me.

Before Mr. Electrifying Daddy told me about podcasts, I didn't have a clue what they were. Even after he explained I didn't really get it. Until I tried it for myself.

Once you filter out all the crap, of course, this thing is pretty freaking cool. What amazes me the most is how, by having iTunes do the work, your podcasts are integrated with your iPod.

So picture this, what I think is the target goal of these technologies:

In your automated house (where a computer runs most of the electronic devices), you have a computer running 24 hours a day. Apple figures you're gonna use iTunes as your "jukebox" application, the thing that will serve music to your house, so that too will run all the times. You subscribe to the news podcast from CNN or CBS or whathaveyou so that iTunes will download it every night or morning, whenever it is updated. When you come home from work, you put your iPod in its cradle to be sync-ed and recharged. So when iTunes downloads the latest news podcast, it's automatically transferred to your iPod. When you leave for work in the morning, you grab the iPod. Sitting in the train you can now listen to the news instead of fumbling around with a large newspaper.

Now that I find really cool.

It absolutely does not apply to me because I could hardly care less about the news. And I work from home anyway. But I did find podcasts worthy of mention:

For the technology geeks out there: This Week in TECH (a.k.a. TWiT) and Diggnation. The weekly podcasts last between 30 minutes and one hour, more or less, of two or more guys talking about the tech stuff that made the news over the last week. They also give you a bunch of links to cool stuff you probably didn't see.

For the blues fan: The Roadhouse. A weekly one hour show of the best blues you never heard. All about independent artist creating some of the best blues you would never hear otherwise.

So far those are the only ones I found. I haven't had a chance to search for stuff in more depth, but I'll try and share the cool ones I come across.

Movie: Ong Bak - The Thai Warrior

2005-09-22T21:11:00.000-06:00

Last night I rented Ong Bak - The Thai Warrior. I think everyone saw the previews to that, claiming Tony Jaa as the next Jet Li and Jackie Chan combined.

Jaa plays a fighter trained by monks in a small village of Thailand. So his character is the strong, quiet type. I listened to the movie in English then went back to hear his Thai voice and I had to do a lot of skipping to find a moment when he said more than two words. That's not a criticism, it worked fine for the movie, but it gives you an idea.

The fighting style, which really is the whole point of the movie, is interesting. Very direct and to the point, but with lots of acrobatics that seem to serve as a distraction to get your point across (or your fist). Lots of elbows to the head, too. All in all, makes me not want to fight Jaa, even if it is all staged.

Other than fights, the movie is acceptable. A cute little story about country boy in the city. The plot holds itself together and is believable -- he doesn't just start fighting out of the blue, you can see how he gets there. Of course, the "bad guys" are really out there, but that's part of the fun of it, isn't it?

Although I won't be buying that DVD, I recommend everyone who hasn't seen it to rent it. And it's ok for the wife, too (even if mine hasn't seen it): not a whole lot of blood or overly dramatic fights, so it won't end with your wife looking at you with them you-are-such-a-dork-for-loving-stuff-like-this eyes.

Builder, part deux

2005-09-21T21:09:00.000-06:00

The lady from the builder's office called back on Monday and scheduled a visit from the warantee manager for today. He showed up 30 minutes late, but at least he showed up.

It took 15 minutes, as I expected. Which is another thing that pisses me off about last week: not only did they not show up or call, but they ignored us simply to save 15 minutes of their day.

At least this guy took a good look around and offered something constructive. He will have a bunch of people come in to check / change a bunch of stuff, including some very minor cosmetic touch ups that, frankly, I don't really mind to begin with.

And, of course, the time line. They are overworked and undermanned (aren't we all?) so he can't promise when these guys can come in to work on it. Eh. I expect them before the next century.

I don't really care, honestly, because this is a very minor thing and fixing it is just a question of prevention. The important part is that it is now their problem would it happen again and something gets damaged.

Routine bordering on military

2005-09-19T21:08:00.000-06:00

I have a routine in the morning. For weekdays, at least. I like my routine because it allows me to be on time for work and get most of it done while sleeping.

But if I look at my routine, considering I've been doing it exactly the same way for over a year now, and some adaptation of it for over five years, you'd think I was in one of Vero's classes...

(Vero works with special needs kids and the best way to have a working classroom is to have a very, very strict routine and stick to it as if death was waiting for you to slip.)

The alarm clock sounds at 6am. I get up between 6:00 and 6:10, depending on how much sleep I'm catching up with...

Then jump in the shower, get dressed and get some breakfast. Depending on when I got up, it's now between 6:20 and 6:30. I sit in front of the TV to eat breakfast because the noise of human beings already awake helps me to get ready to talk to people -- which is coming up soon. At 6:47, exactly, I walk back upstairs, stop by the office to turn the (very slow to boot) laptop, walk to the bathroom to put on my contact lenses and brush my teeth, walk back to the office to log in the laptop and connect to the office. I am logged in, ready to work, at 6:59. (Note: I work with people two time zones ahead of me, so it's 8:59 for them.)

Most days, I just do that while half asleep. Days like today, I realize what I'm doing and how I'm doing it exactly the same every single weekday and I'm thinking that, on some level, there isn't much difference between me and some of the kids in Vero's class...

Builder is losing points

2005-09-16T21:06:00.000-06:00

Our house was built by Homes by Avi. It's a spec house, which means they decided to build it and sell it after, as is (as opposed to the other houses where you buy the lot and the house and they start building then). So far, the house is of great quality and their service has been outstanding.

Until last Sunday.

We woke up last Sunday thinking we would go take a quick hike in the Rockies. When we got to the dining room (officiall known as the "breakfast nook"), we found water. It was dropping down from the light fixture onto the table, then off the table onto the hardwood floors. The floor shows signs of tiny buckling at some joints.

It had been raining hard that night, with lots of wind. No doubt it's a simple question of rain making it's way up into the roof above (the second floor does not extend over it). Still, I opted for the safe route and called the builder's office to get emergency support. It's not exactly an emergency, but it being the weekend that was my only option. I also chose to leave the place as is, mostly making sure we don't turn on that light, so that the guys could see it undisturbed.

That was Sunday, early morning. I left a message on some pager. Not knowing what else to do, I also left a message on the voice mail of the lady in charge of all that stuff, which she would get on Monday morning.

The on-call guy called back pretty quickly. He said he has stuff to do but was in the area and would drop by around 11am (it was 9am at the time). So half of our day is shut but we still got some time.

I should mention that I have no way to reach the guy. He leaves me no phone number and call display shows "blocked call".

Thus begins the wait.

At 6pm we finally get a call from the guy who said he forgot about us. And now it's too late to do anything about it. Nice. We just wasted our whole day waiting for him, not even daring to go out in case he called. But he knows I work from home so he says he'll drop by on Monday.

Monday morning the lady calls back. I tell her I got in touch with the guy who forgot about us on Sunday but should show up today. She says she'll send him an email and follow up.

Monday goes by and no guy shows up or calls.

Tuesday goes by, idem.

Wednesday morning I call back the lady and leave her a message saying I haven't heard anything from the guy (and don't have a contact number).

Wednesday wastes away.

Thursday comes and goes. A bit before 6pm, while we're out to dinner, the lady calls back and asks to call her to setup an appointment with some other guy (seems to be the first guy's boss). She doesn't know I work from home, which is probably why she called at night.

This morning, 9:10am I called the lady back. Her message was updated today, so I know she's in, but I leave a message (again) saying to call back anytime during the day since I'm at the house.

What a great week this has been. A week of waiting for calls that never come and of staying away from our dining room just so they have a chance to see the problem. I don't mind them not coming right over, this isn't such a big deal, but I do mind the part where they say they'll be there and never show up and don't even bother to call.

So far, they are losing some points. They are still in the black, this company has a great reputation and has been good to us so far, but it's steadily going down.

I'll keep y'all posted.

An actor walks into to audition for a sci-fi TV show

2005-09-15T21:03:00.000-06:00

This is the scene I have in my head, which I'm quite sure has nothing to do with what really happened:

Actor, needs to pay for bills, needs a job, hears that Andromeda needs someone for their next episode. Some guy explains what the role is:

"You're an ambassador for this group of fanatically peaceful people. You just came back from dealing with the Magog, the most evil race in all of the Universes."

"So I'm important."

"And peaceful."

"Fanatically peaceful."

"Exactly. This is the beginning of the episode; you talk to the captain, that's your ten lines right there. Then you convulse a little, fall down, puke this green stuff here -- it tastes like ketchup -- and we'll make your belly explode and little baby Magogs come out. Because that's how they reproduce, you know."

"I'll take it! And I'm guessing my character doesn't come back in future episode, right?"

In case it wasn't obvious...

2005-09-14T21:02:00.000-06:00

I bought the Hitchhicker's Guide to the Galaxy DVD yesterday. It came with a cute little (cheap) towel with the H2G2 logo on it. Since it's so small, I'll be carrying it everywhere I go like the hoopy that I am. Because we all know I'm a frood who really knows where my towel is.

I also got a large bag of Kernels popcorn and a small bottle of Coke. Vero is working (very) late tonight, so it'll be a movie party in here and I'm invited!

This is so insane it requires admiration

2005-09-13T22:00:00.000-06:00

A friend sent me this link: http://www.cfsl.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=22455. It shows, believe it or not, how to make an X-Wing fighter using two Paris subway ticket stubs.

The first picture alone is enough to make the trip over to that site worth it.

If you don't know what an X-Wing is... well, check it out anyway, it's still amazing.

(English note: the post has an English version in it, just read down a bit.)

H2G2 and computer security

2005-09-13T20:57:00.001-06:00

Take note that the Hitchhicker's Guide to the Galaxy DVD is out TODAY! And if you buy it at a FutureShop you will get a free towel (while supplies last). I think FS is one of the worst places to buy stuff, but with that deal I just might be tempted.

On a security note, my manager sent me a Dilbert strip this morning. I think the punch line is a good representation of the escalating security techniques in businesses today (or at least what it feels like):

And starting today, all passwords
must contain letters, numbers, doodles,
sign language and squirrel noises.

-- Dilbert's boss

Serenity, the movie

2005-09-12T20:56:00.000-06:00

Serenity, the movie that continues the story of the show Firefly, is coming out September 30th. 'Nuf said.

I know I will be in line (some time soon after that).

Information you don't need

2005-09-09T20:55:00.000-06:00

I don't know what's wrong with me today, but the bathroom has been my favorite place. Nothing bad, not like I'm sick, but good God! did I ever needed to pee.

Every time I raised my head from off the desk where I was working on a hole created from my forehead -- I figure banging my head on the desk is less dangerous than jumping off a bridge, specially when you have vertigo and there's no bridge around -- the first thought that came was "man do I need to pee, badly."

What the heck? I drank, like, two glasses of water and had to pee, like, five times! Holy cow! That must be a new record. Well, at least for me. Or it might be had I been keeping track, but why the heck would I do that?

Just sharing this with y'all is good enough for me.

(Thank the Gods it's the weekend...)

Transporter to (2) Jasper

2005-09-06T20:53:00.002-06:00

This weekend we did two things: head out to Jasper and see the movie Transporter 2. The movie review is in the last four paragraphs.

This being a long weekend, we figured we would take the time to (finally!) go to Jasper, in Jasper National Park. Not to be confused with Jasper, Wyoming, like my New York co-worker did. Oddly enough, when we talk of going camping for the weekend we head out to one of Canada's many national parks, not some town in the US. But it's easy to confuse the two.

The trip from Calgary to Jasper is something like 430km. We're not entirely sure because every map gave us a different value; and I didn't think to reset the trip odometer when we left. Bottom line: it takes about 4 1/2 hours, with few stops.

Jasper National Park is the Rockies' most northerly and largest national park in Canada. It also has the distinction, in my mind, of having just the one town in it and no other settlements whatsoever. So you get to drive for a loooong time in the middle of nowhere, and just around the corner is more lack of civilization, until you reach the town at the complete end of the highway. I love that park!

But if you think Banff and Lake Louise are busy, you ain't seen nothing yet! This was the first week of September, the last weekend for the national campgrounds (they are now closed for the winter) and the place was booked solid. Places that showed vacancy when we got there were full only hours later. So here's the lesson, kids: if you want to go there, leave early! (Or do the smart thing and make a reservation.)

We only stayed for two days and we were lucky enough to get rained on the whole time. Great. So the town and trails looked kinda ordinary with no mountains around (they were all hidden in the clouds). But we did get some breaks in the clouds and got to see some really neat stuff -- not the least of which was a lake filled with little icebergs!

You can see our pictures in our Jasper National Park album.

Even though the weather wasn't cooperating, we had a great time. We will definitely go back next summer! And we do recommend the trip to anyone interested, although we don't yet have a lot of specifics on what to see and where to go. But we're working on it!

That's all for the park for today. Now for the movie bit.

Back home, on holiday Monday, we went to the theatre to see Transporter 2. Although the story holds on its own without having seen the first movie, I still recommend renting it if only because it's a really entertaining movie. I wasn't sure what to expect of the second one, as I figured Hollywood would step in with its own view of what makes a good movie...

As expected, our hero now lives in the US. They make that clear right from the beginning with the intro scene that matches the one from the first movie, except this time the license plate of the car is really obvious. But what surprised me, in a good way, is to see Luc Besson's name in the opening credits. Lucky for us, they kept him on board.

It's a very entertaining movie. Very much over-the-top, of course, but quite funny, with spectacular fight scenes and a lot of references to the first movie (but in subtle ways, like fight moves). Only two things get a bad grade from me: the way the bomb is removed from the car (I won't spoil that) and the evil chick. You see her on the first page of the web site. She's probably an attractive lady, but with the make up and silly costume it just doesn't work. I don't think "silly" is strong enough a word for her "costume". Go see the movie, you'll know what I mean...

In the end, I give this movie a good grade. Turn your brain off and enjoy the show -- and don't be afraid to laugh! So find yourself a babysitter, John, and get yer ass to a theatre. Oh! and I will buy the DVD.

They all die, including Mr. Pink, and then I think "mmm... Coke..."

2005-09-01T21:40:00.000-06:00

I don't think I need to explain my... enthusiasm... when it comes to Coke. At least not to the people that know me. Bottom line: I love the stuff and nothing else will do. So, of course, when there's a reference I catch on quick.

We've all seen the Coke with lime commercial where everybody sings

You put the lime in the Coke, you nut, and you drink 'em both up

Check out where this one is going.

Vero is coming back home late tonight, wants to finish some stuff at school while it's quiet. So I figure I watch a movie. Reservoir Dogs is sitting right there and I haven't seen it in a long while. Cool.

The movie ends, the credits start rolling and I hear a familiar rhythm, and an obviously black man start singing in a deep voice

She put de lime in de coconut, she drank 'em bot' up

I swear to God. If you own that movie, skip to the credits.

The song is called Coconut, by Harry Nilsson. You can check out the lyrics here.

Men

2005-09-01T20:39:00.000-06:00

Watching a show on TV last night, I heard one of the best description for men to date:

The one with the most toys when they die, wins.

The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension

2005-08-31T20:36:00.001-06:00

As requested, here's a review of The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension.

If you haven't seen this movie, you officially suck.

Lucky for you, that can be resolved.

I saw this movie, in French, two or three times when I was a kid. It was playing on TV. To give you a time frame, it was made in 1983. It's a science-fiction comedy, almost parody, that takes itself seriously. Kinda like Spaceballs, but with a more serious feel.

(If you don't know what Spaceballs is, you have reached a level of suckiness that can no longer be described.)

The movie starts with a short text that explains who Buckaroo Banzai is. The son of an American father and Japanese mother (or the other way around?), brilliant neuro-surgeon, got tired of saving lives so he went to Tibet (or wherever) and learned all sorts of martial arts (in which he's a master, of course), then came back and figured he'd get a PhD in nuclear physics (or somesuch). Oh, and he's about 30. And he tours the US in his custom bus because his scientist buddies, also expert marksman and stuff, are all in a hugely successful rock band and they do concerts and stuff.

That's the first five minutes. You meet Buckaroo and his band, there's a small gun fight, and you see the cool Banzai character make it just in time for his trip to the eighth dimension (in a Ford truck) -- he was late because he had to help this guy perform an extremely complex and life-threatening brain surgery.

If you're not laughing yet, this movie ain't for you. Oh! and did I mention you suck?

So that's the setup. The deal of the movie is that going into the eighth dimension has inadvertently opened, for a small period of time, a portal through which some aliens came into our dimension (and our planet) disguised as humans. Of course, they are evil (well, they aren't American, therefore they are evil, right?) and, of course, only Buckaroo Banzai can save the Universe (and, more importantly, the US) from their evil, evil plans.

All of which he does, along with his buddies, in the high-fashion of the early 80s. So white jackets with rolled up sleeves galore. We even have a merry-man named "Perfect Tommy" and a damsel named "Penny Priddy". And, most important of all, John Lithgow as the completely insane evil genius and arch-nemesis.

I ask you: what's not to love?

So stop sucking so much and get that movie!

If this blog was a book I checked out of your public library, I would owe you guys 30 cents

2005-08-30T20:32:00.001-06:00

Some may have noticed that I haven't written anything in over a week.

Yeah, I'm a bad man.

Last week was a bit of a mess. It started off with my boss realizing that I had three days off, that some work I needed to do (and quoted as two weeks effort) needed to be done this week and subtly asking me to work some overtime to get it done. So I worked three days worth in two days to get the thing basically done and wasn't in any mood to look at a computer screen after that. Then my parents got back from Vancouver and we hung out with them and hiked and did a whole lot of stuff until Sunday afternoon when they left. So we had half a day to catch up on groceries and bills and quickly get ready for Monday, Back-To-Work day (for both of us).

So the blog dropped lower in the priority list.

Now we're back at work on a somewhat normal schedule so I can sneak away for ten minutes to write this.

Like I mentioned, my parents left last Sunday. I was a really fun couple of weeks, filled with hiking and visiting and taking pictures. My dad left with a CD containing almost 300 pictures! I added some pictures of them in an album.

Since I last wrote, I also got a couple more birthday presents: three small statues of chinese wise men that bring good fortune to their owner (that's me! yay!) and a really cool quick-dry shirt (which I used in our last hike). Really, really cool stuff. Thanks so much to my folks (on both sides!) for that.

That's about all that's new right now. I hope this covers the 30 cents I owe y'all...

I love hiking!

2005-08-22T20:30:00.000-06:00

I went hiking on Thursday and Friday, it was great!!! On Thusrday, there was snow on top of the moutains, just beautiful! There was still a little snow when I got at the top of Mount Sulphur! And I forgot my camera...

On Friday, I drove to Lake Louise and I did the Big Beehive trail. It was a beatiful hike!

I just love hiking!

So this is what 29 feels like..

2005-08-21T18:54:00.000-06:00

Recap of my birthday, yesterday.

I woke up and read Vero's card (she WARNED me to only read it on that day, not the night before) which said to get the bike ready to go have breakfast in Canmore. Cool.

We left around 8:30, got there around 9:30. For some reason, which the waitress couldn't explain either, the town was dead. Nobody in the streets, restaurant completely empty. On a Saturday. I guess there was a big party the night before and we weren't invited...

After eating, we rode back home.

Then Vero told me about the next phase of the day: shopping. She had to tell me because she doesn't really know where to shop for iPod Shuffles (the 512Mb version). Woot! I've been asking for this thing for so long but couldn't really justify the expense... this is strickly a gadget, for fun, but I promise I will make good use of it!

We thus proceeded to walk around a bunch of electronic shops, checking out speakers and TVs and digital cameras and Vero did not complain once about how boring the whole process was. It IS my birthday!

If anyone out there is interested: Apple has a SRP on these things and everybody sells them for the same price, so buy it wherever it's more convenient.

I also got an armband for when I go jogging.

Then we came back home. The day was hot and the "next phase" was in a little over a couple of hours so she offered we go play mini-golf (which was the original plan) or do something else. We watched Buckaroo Banzai, in English, instead. It was cooler in the house anyway.

Then off to diner at -- where else but -- Saltlik. Man I love that restaurant.

After diner we played a round of mini-golf. Evidently I need some time to get used to this old age because Vero, who has been practicing this age for a little while, beat me. By five shots. Though to be fair, we both sucked... but it was a lot of fun and that's all that matters in the end.

Back home, around 9pm, we weren't really in the mood to sleep so we watched Ghostbusters 1, in French. Ah! I forgot how good (and bad!) that movie is.

Today, yet one day older, I get to write it with my iPod Shuffle at my arm (for no other reason than to play with the thing). I managed to fit the entire Barenaked Ladies collection, minus the duplicate songs; all 89 songs in CD quality (which is overkill to begin with).

Thank you Vero for a great day!

And a VERY BIG THANK YOU to everyone that called, most of whom I missed because we weren't in the house. I got your messages! Thank you!

Perfection in an Amazon package

2005-08-20T18:52:00.000-06:00

We checked the mail last night and I got a package with my name on it... and Amazon's. I didn't remember ordering anything, and the timing made it somewhat suspicious... What with TODAY IS MY BIRTHDAY and all.

I got me The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension! and Ghostbusters 1 & 2 (box set)!!!

And the best part, which I confirmed by playing the movies about ten seconds after I unwrapped them, is that they include the French track! (Well, except for Ghostbusters 2 that only has French subtitles, but English, Spanish and Portuguese tracks. I can't understand that.) I'm sure this makes a bunch of guys in Quebec quite jealous and rushing over to Amazon to buy them!

Ghostbusters, in French, is such a big part of my childhood. I can't wait to watch it again! And Buckaroo Banzai is this over-the-top movie I only saw a couple of times (in French, of course) while growing up and never been able to find since -- and I've been occasionally looking, too.

So I got two words this morning: Eric RULEZ!!!

Thanks man, you answered "what do you get the guy who doesn't really want anything" brilliantly. You da man!

And, of course, he's the man with a web comic: Zombies? Go read it. Now.

It's B day - 1

2005-08-19T18:51:00.000-06:00

Tomorrow is my birthday. Yay!

For the last... who knows how long, I've lost count, the wife has been asking me what I want to do and get for my birthday. Then my parents showed up and started asking the same thing.

What do you get the guy who wants nothing?

There's plenty I want, very little I really need, but most of it is out of the reach of friends and family. It's either too expensive or the kind of thing I have to pick up myself. In other words, things I will get myself, eventually. And nothing I would dare ask as a gift from anyone. Until I befriend Bill Gates, that is.

I don't need anything for my birthday, at least nothing material. A card, an email, a phone call is more than enough. Seriously.

So what to do? The old wife (this is my last chance to say that, tomorrow we'll be as old!) asked me many, many times: "What would you LOVE to do?"

Anything. Nothing. The thing is, I do what I love every day. Sure, there's the occasional cleaning and grocery shopping and paying bills -- and, well, work -- but otherwise I always do what I feel like, what I like to do. And I hope Véro does the same and I don't force her to do (too many) things she doesn't like.

So how can the day be special? Go hike a mountain, play golf, eat out, see a movie, play pool..? Thing is, that's what we do every day, every week. I guess every day IS special.

So she got tired of my can't-figure-this-out and decided to organize something and not tell me. That's probably best: it will make the day special by the surprise.

I can't wait!

The Universe balances out: luck

2005-08-15T18:50:00.000-06:00

My folks (this time, it's my dad and Manon) have been, so far, the luckiest visitors I've toured with. Friday was rainy until their arrived and sunny for the rest of the day, so our walk around downtown was quite enjoyable. Saturday, as we hiked up Sulphur mountain, we ran into a group of mountain goats, not once, but twice. A small group that included a couple of babies, at that! And Sunday, while we hiked up the Plain of Six Glaciers, so got to see THREE -- not one, not two, but THREE -- avalanches from the glaciers at the top of the mountains. The fourth one we missed, but after seeing three that was pushing it anyway.

Considering where we were, that was the luckiest sights you could get.

Oh! and add a coyote on the side of the road, too.

And now the Universe hits us back. Forecast for the next three days: rain. We were hoping to canoe on Moraine Lake, but not in the rain. Darn it.

It's ok, we need a couple of days of down time to recover from the two hikes in a row, so we'll do some indoor stuff like the dinosaur museum. It's just a shame when the weather forces your hand like that...

This would have been really good...

2005-08-11T18:48:00.000-06:00

... but I just can't write about work, can I?

When you start one of these here blogs, you really have to stop and think about what you will write. And the truth of the matter is that you can't really write down the nasty thoughts you have about your friends or relative (not that I have any, mind you), nor about how your significant other slowly grinds the life out of your ears with her (or his) snoring that isn't-really-snoring-just-loud-breathing (not that my significant other does, of course), nor anything about work.

It's the last part that bothers me now. The first two I made up, obviously (*cough*) but the last one...

I just went through a work day that made me think "I should share this with others". But I can't. At least, not in a public forum. Actually, not in a recorded public forum, 'cause, heck, you can bitch about work in a restaurant all you want, right? And last I checked, a restaurant is a public place, if not a forum. Anyways, it's not that I want to bitch about work or anything but even if I did, or even if I wanted to say how perfect something is at work, I just can't. Only my friends and relatives actually know who I work for, and I would never write it down here, but even then I can't say anything. Well, that's not quite true: I can say that I can't say anything. And we all know that something isn't nothing, by definition. I mean, the absence of anything precludes thought, for thought is something, therefore you can't think about nothing because your thought of nothing is a thought to begin with which is not nothing, as we just explained. And even more so of anything, because anything in the context of saying it means much more than a thought and, though nothingness does not care by what quantity it gets negated, it at least becomes much clearer to multiple parties of a conversation that it definitely is not nothing.

And somewhere that made sense...

It's a girl!

2005-08-05T18:46:00.001-06:00

Mr. Electrifying had the pleasure of welcoming Rylie Bateman into the world last night! (To be fair, I'm sure he didn't do much: mommy was in charge of that!)

Mother and baby are doing very well.

Congratulations to the whole Bateman family!

Motorcycle road trip to Revelstoke

2005-08-02T18:41:00.002-06:00

This weekend was a long one for me (it's always a long one for Véro!) so we decided to get out of the house and take a road trip on the bike.

We packed all our camping gear, some change of clothes and as few things as we could think of and headed out to Revelstoke, a town in the middle of the Revelstoke National Park right at the bottom of Mt Revelstoke. The guy in charge of naming was having a good day when he came up with those...

The trip from Calgary to Revelstoke, the town, is about 400 kilometers. We got there in about five and a half hours, having stopped every hour to stretch our legs and in Lake Louise to get some breakfast at the Chateau. So I say we made good time. But it taught us one thing: we're not quite ready to go any farther in one day! We were really aching when we got there.

Once in town, we found a camping lot at the KoA (never our first choice, but others were full), installed the tent and sleeping bags, took a swim in the pool, had a snack, took a nap and then finally got back on the bike to go into town. After a quick stop to get dinner, we rode up Mt Revelstoke using the very nice 26 km road to the top. Lots of switchbacks along the way, which I rode through about two times too fast; that was really fun.

At the top, we got to walk around a bit and look at the view... through the clouds of mosquitoes. We got there in the evening, before the sun went down, and the lack of tourists making noise and generally being obnoxious was made up by mosquitoes making no noise and generally being obnoxious.

Then down again through the switchbacks.

The next day, after a quick and early breakfast at Denny's, which is not something I recommend unless you don't know where else to go, we came back to Calgary like tourists, taking about eight hours whilst stopping at the Giant Cedars Boardwalk, Emerald Lake, Takakkaw Falls and Subway.

The Subway in Golden is quite the busy place, lemme tell ya.

Emerald Lake and Takakkaw Falls we had already seen, but they are really wonderful places. The lake is correctly named for it's color and the falls are the second biggest in North America. We love going there and go back whenever we can.

The Giant Cedars Boardwalk I had never seen before and Véro, who saw it in her recent trip, took me there. It's an old growth forest of cedars, like the name implies, and these are very large trees. It is an incredible sight that I recommend to every visitor who has the courage to drive that far.

We made it back home Sunday night. The trip was a wonderful experience and taught us that we need to develop some endurance and get some more tailored gear (like some form of storage for the bike) so we can go even farther next time.

Because, trust me, there will be a next time.

The long weekend's a-coming!

2005-07-29T18:40:00.000-06:00

Next Monday, August 1st, is a holiday. This is when I make faces at the folks in Quebec, the only province along with Yukon that does not "celebrate" this Civic Holiday.

(To be fair, they did the same thing on June 24th when Quebec was the only province with the day off. Not even Yukon celebrates that one.)

Hooray for the long weekend!

My wonderful vacation in the Okanagan Valley

2005-07-27T18:37:00.000-06:00

I had a great time with my friend Sandra on our road trip to Summerland. We stopped in Revelstoke for our first night and decided to go up Mount Revelstoke in the morning. It was quite the hike... but quite a beautiful view! We then went to Summerland to Sandra's parents' house. What a great family! I had a great time! We went to the beach a few times: the water was good and the scenery just beautiful! I love the beach!!!

We also went to see the town of Osooyos and on our way we saw what I call the Alien Lakes but that are called, I think, paint pots. We also treated ourselves to a massage for Sandra and her mom and a pedicure for me. I have beautiful blue toes!

After all these great moments, it was time to return to Calgary. We came back home through the Kooteneys and the scenery is incredibly beautiful!

Thanks Sandra for the great trip! Thank you Rose-Marie and Joe for everything! I really had a great time!

Lingual babbling

2005-07-22T18:28:00.000-06:00

Growing up with French and learning English later on, you get to miss out on a lot of common expressions. TGIF is one of them for me. It took me years to understand that the acronym stands for "Thank God It's Friday". That, and lyrics from songs that were popular back then only now make sense (any FFL -- French as a First Language -- out there will nod in agreement with Bon Jovi's "Shapoonahah", such an important part of my generation's culture).

TGIF is appropriate today because, gosh darn it, TGIF. Working for five days is a row is so much effort, isn't it? I need to change my life focus and find a way to get into the high levels of government so as to change the official work week to four days. No more Mondays. Well, no more working on Mondays; Mondays shall now and forever be a day of rest from your weekend. Anybody knows where the secret governments holds their weekly meetings?

Growing up with French has this side effect too: I write this blog in both languages. You can switch to the other language using the drop-down box on the right. It's right there, between the categories and the links. A little lower... no, you passed it. There, that's it. It's only two languages now but hey! that could change, right? I would have added Japanese to the list, but that would have only one entry. Title: "Kole wa nan desu ka?"; body: "Boshi". That's all I remember: "What is this?" and "hat". Don't ask.

Speaking of writing in other languages, check out today's post from Véronique (whom I often, lovingly, refer to as "the wife"). She is thoroughly enjoying her vacation, as you can tell from the amount of exclamation points, and generally making me jealous that I'm alone in my house playing video games and watching movies all day and night. I'm such a geek.

TGIF, but Friday is still a work day. I say we eliminate Mondays because, admit it, who really works on Fridays anyway? No work on Mondays, lots of slacking off on Fridays, that makes for three day weeks. I can live with that. Oh! and with the same pay, of course. Friday is why we have instant messaging systems: it's about time I told Mr. Electrifying how much he really sucks (because we all know he sucks more than I).

Peace.

Movie night: Assault on Precinct 13, Constantine

2005-07-21T18:26:00.000-06:00

Last night I rented two movies: Constantine and Assault on Precinct 13.

Not a great movie night, lemme tell ya!

Constantine isn't a very good movie. The subject matter is very interesting, but it's not very well presented and Master Keanu Reeves doesn't help. I like movies that take a different or uncommon view of heaven and hell, and this one falls in that category. It got me disserting on the philosophy of religion afterwards, which is always fun. Definitely not a movie for the whole family, but I think the rating shows that. I expected something scarier, and perhaps it was on big screen, but the only scary moments are when they surprise you with big lights and sound out of the blue and not from the demons themselves -- I hate it when they do that, it feels like a cheap attempt that fright because they couldn't convey it any other way. My biggest beef is with Reaves who decided that acting like Neo from The Matrix is where the money's at. In his defense, he can't really act but it still wasn't very good. Oh! and someone PLEASE show him what is the proper and cool way to light a zippo, darn it!

Speaking of Neo and The Matrix, did y'all know that Will Smith actually turned down that role (sixth trivia from the bottom)?

Assault on Precinct 13 was far worse, as it turned out. Heck, after Assault, Constantine seemed like a pretty decent movie. Assault is very predictable (except for the one time where the girl gets shot, that was so refreshingly unexpected that it got me laughing and cheering) and not very convincing. Before seeing it, I was under the impression that Ethan Hawke is a decently good looking guy; I don't know what he did (or didn't do) for this movie, but man was it wrong. The characters aren't very personable and the story isn't particularly well written (in the end I was left wondering that the heck was the name of the doctor, a somewhat important role in the movie... I think her name comes out only once, and she isn't credited credited as "Doctor Whatever"; thank you IMDB). I was expecting to turn my brain off and be entertained by gun fire and explosions, but that was deceiving. The action sequences are quite realistic, but we've learned that realistic action isn't the spectacular, eye-popping stuff we are now used to.

So all and all, I somewhat recommend renting Constantine, but not Assault on Precinct 13. Actually, I recommend renting both and watching Assault first so that Constantine seems that much better by comparison.

Guild Wars, rant. LONG rant.

2005-07-19T18:24:00.000-06:00

So I got a bunch of hours under the belt playing Guild Wars. I got a level 8 Ranger / Mesmer that just got post-Searing.

Warning: if any of that didn't make sense, stop reading. It just won't be worth it and it will get more and more confusing.

I got a couple of things to say about this game. First, the good stuff: the story is interesting, the graphics are very nice and man do I ever love the pricing scheme.

But having introduced this as a rant, you know some bad stuff is the meat of the text.

My problem is entirely about the GUI. Maybe it's my intensive training with World of Warcraft that got me expecting something from a MMORPG (I love writing those letters together, even though I think it's BS), maybe I'm just thick, it might even be "the forest for the trees" like Mr. Electrifying tells me. I don't know. But it leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth. No, wait, that's the unsalted nachos. The guy that decided to remove the salt from the nacho making process needs an anal probe. But the game, to stick to the subject at hand, is leaving me with a feeling of... what's the opposite of "man I can't wait to play it again"?

It's funny how little things make such a big difference...

So first off I figured I would play the game and why waste valuable trees on printing a manual anyway? That's what I always do. After a couple of hours of being thoroughly confused, I decided to RTFM before somebody tells me to do it.

It contains lots of stories written by folks that really wanted to be writers instead of programmers, but very little actual knowledge. The stories are fun, pretty well written actually, but doesn't tell you a whole lot about playing the game. In fact, most of it is set post-Searing, oddly enough. But it's a pretty quick read and I'm happy I went through it.

Then I went back to the game with basically no better understanding of what's going on. GUI-wise, that is.

Lemme go through my bad experiences, in no real order.

I found some items marked "unidentified". Oh, I think to myself, this might be good. So after reading the manual and still having no idea how to identify the thing (and I read the manual after trying to equip the item, looking around for an NPC to identify it, etc), I just happen to luckily spot an "identification kit" on a merchant. Many will argue that you will spend so much time at merchants that you are bound to notice it, but still I say: why not write that down in the manual? Isn't that what a manual is for?

I really noticed it because I read on Martin's GW blog about his adventures salvaging components and I already knew about the salvage kit.

Then I spent a lot of time, and it became worse when I started grouping, trying to figure out what the heck is that foe out there. You can mouse over stuff and see its name, in tiny little characters, underneath it. But if there's a bunch of them together, the names get piled up. So who is what? who knows. But what really gets me is that you only see the name of it, not its level or class. So I'm walking around and I see something and the only way for me to know how tough it is is to target it. The best way to target something is to click on it, but clicking means attacking it. A warrior would start running for the creature, so you can easily stop, but a ranger starts chucking arrows. So before I know what it is, I'm attacking it. Hitting the TAB key rotates through the available targets, without attacking, but getting the one in front of you turns out to be hit or miss.

That became a problem twice so far. Once, I saw a dragon hanging out there and I though "what is that?" and before I knew it, very shortly after I clicked on it, my level 3 ranger was fighting with a level 5 dragon. Next was at the "arena" thing where you transition through the searing. My teammate says "healers first" and I spent the next three minutes chucking arrows at someone, while trying to figure out who the heck was a healer anyway.

I really miss the WoW little window at the bottom-right that, when you mouse over something, shows the name, guild, level, class, pvp flag and whether he's wearing underwear.

Ah! can't forget my pet. Apparently, my pet has abilities. It has to, because my pet healing spell says that its abilities are reduced when I resurrect it. But what are those abilities, I ask you? I haven't got a clue. I couldn't find anything that listed them or explained them. So far, it's a cat and it attacks anything I attack first.

Which is my next problem with my pet: I can't tell it to attack anything without chucking an arrow at it first. So invariably, the mob runs to me. I would like a way to tell my pet to attack something while I do something else, like take in the sights. If there is a way, it's neither described in the game nor in the manual.

I'm about half way there... Don't pass out yet!

A little about buffs and debuffs now. Or buffs and hexes, as they are called. Well, hexes and whatever buffs are called. Anyway.

As a mesmer, I got a couple of neat hexes. I thought them particularly interesting since you can also find a bunch of items that have conditions based on hexes (like: "damage +10% on hexed foe"). Since the GUI comes with a quick and simple way to swap between weapon sets, I figured I would carry one of those "damage increased on hex" bow so I could swap them mid-fight or something. Ha! what a left-field idea that was.

So when your foe (or friend) gets a hex, ALL you see is a little arrow in it's health bar, pointing down. If you see one pointing up, it's a buff. But WHAT is it anyway? Your guess is as good as mine. Which is really useful when you consider the delay of hexes: I have one that lasts 2 second, another that lasts 10 seconds. Given that neat weapon from before, I could easily swap it in for my 10 second hex, but probably wouldn't have time to do it within 2 seconds. I guess it's ok when you're the one casting the hex, because you know what it is and how long it lasts, but what if someone else casts it? Heck, I don't even wanna know what monks, who I believe have skills to remove hexes, do with that information. You can see what hexes and buffs YOU have, but NOT AT ALL what ANYBODY else has. I, personally, cannot see myself typing away, in the middle of a heated fight, "I got a slow hex!" so that someone can remove it, only to see it disappear before I'm even done typing.

Speaking of skills, how about getting skills. Ah! gosh darn skills. That's where the manual writing about stuff post-Searing gets confusing. So I talk to my trainer and get my first skills. I talked to other trainers and got "temporary" skills, to try them out. I like the mesmer skills. Anyway. I read in the manual that you buy skills. I see in my "hero" window that I have X skill points. I can't find my trainer. Lots of looking around, nothing. Finally, Mr. Electrifying tells me to actually read what trainers tell me because they are sending me to the person that can give me more skills. Doh! Ok, so I find the "level 1" trainer (for lack of a better name). He gives me some skills. Yay! He then sends me to the "level 2" trainer who gives me a quest to get some skills. Yay again! Where's the next trainer? "Level 2" trainer tells me to talk to "level 1" trainer, and "level 1" trainer tells me to talk to "level 2" trainer (that's what we call an infinite loop). And WTF are skill points for anyway? Where is this imaginary skill trainer with whom I can invest my skill points? Well, Mr. Electrifying tells me, he's post-Searing. There's a tidbit of information worthy of a manual if I ever got one! But the best part: how did he know? A friend told him. How did he know? He saw it in the forums. Hooray for the manual.

So now I got skills, but it's still unclear. The trainer I know seems to have a limited amount, so I'm guessing that I'll be meeting new trainers in other towns. But that's a guess, because I didn't check the forum to confirm and the manual, surprisingly, doesn't say.

And lastly, guilds. I'm part of a guild with the other two guys I mentioned above. When I first got on at the same time as one of them, I got invited into the guild. So five minutes and a lot of chatting later (and I'm not even kidding about the delay) I finally figured out where the "accept invitation" button is. For your reference: it's in the guild screen, which was disabled until that very moment so you never saw it before.

So I'm in the guild with my friends. Where are my friends anyway? And would it be good to group with them? Well, you'd better ask them, because the guild screen doesn't tell you in what area your friends are nor what level / classes they are. It just gives you their names and whether they are "online" or "offline". That's it. I guess it promotes social interaction, but I would rather not have to go "so where are you SPECIFICALLY, anyway? and what level are you at now?" every time.

And that, my friends, is what we call a rant. You know it really is one when, after you spent TEN MINUTES reading the thing, all you want to do is write a rant about how I should SHUT UP ABOUT IT ALREADY or at least make the next one shorter...

Specially when you learn that I'm venting but I will keep playing anyway!

A whirlwind of emotions

2005-07-15T18:22:00.002-06:00

Although I am happy (and busy) with my parents here and a little sad that they will be leaving soon, happy for Sandra who can finally go back home (we love having her around, but it's so much better to live in your own stuff), jealous that Vero will go and spend a week in the Okanagan -- regarded by many to be like paradise -- and kinda sad that I will be all by myself for all of next week (and with mixed feelings about having to work... ah, work... can't live with it, can't pay the mortgage without it) I find myself ecstatic at the prospect of doing me stuff for a full week.

Ooo-kay... Let me bullet point that last sentence:

Parents in town: happy
Parents leaving soon: a little sad
Sandra has her apartment back: happy
Vero on vacation for a week in paradise: jealous
Spending a week without Vero: kinda sad
Getting a week all by myself to do only my stuff: PRICELESS!

I'm getting a whole week to play games (most notably GuildWar, for which I finally have an access key), watch the last episode of Wonderfall, rent violent, scary and bad movies, eat unhealthy amounts of Kernels popcorn, cruise town on the bike and generally miss out on way too much sleep. This is gonna be great!

Love ya 'hon, but a week of me stuff is gonna be the best ever.

Speaking of my honey, she convinced herself that writing on this here blog would be a good idea. She'll mostly write in French, rarely in English, but it's better than nothing I say!

Rejoice.

2005-07-09T18:20:00.001-06:00

I bought GuildWars.

Pearl of wisdom

2005-07-07T18:19:00.000-06:00

Leave it to Martin to have just the right pearl with just the right flavor of wisdom. His MSN Messenger message today says:

Weekend is a state of mind.

So true.

That does it. I'm turning my brain off until Monday.

So THAT's what a vacation feels like

2005-07-05T18:18:00.000-06:00

You don't really notice how much you need a vacation, stuck in the routine and all, until you finally allow yourself to sleep in.

Today is my fifth day of non-work. It seems I've been missing about a year's worth of sleep. How the heck am I gonna get up tomorrow morning?

Stay tuned for all the exciting details. I think I'll go back to sleep now...

Prosperity, remembered

2005-07-02T18:16:00.000-06:00

Don't ask me how I got there, I don't think I want to relive the train of thought. The important part is that it took me back to a time where my big mouth (and my idiocy) made for quite the funny event. I decided to write it down for prosperity and to share the memory with the bunch of folks that were there.

Flashback to some years ago. Between six and one, not sure how many; but Vero was there (less than six) and we lived in Montreal (more than one).

There was a whole bunch of people at Steve's place. We played a game of DnD that day and a bunch more people came in after. Can't remember why. Anyway, we decided to go out to St-Hubert's next to Steve's.

I was examining the menu trying to figure out what would fill me up right. I really like the chicken breast with oriental sauce, which I order just about every time, but I felt hungrier than that. Just before I resigned myself to finding something else to eat, I noticed a small section that explains: order a second chicken breast for just X$! Just what I needed. The only weird thing was the title of that section: "Augment Your Pleasure!" (translated from "Augmentez votre plaisir!") I think that translation is fitting: it has both the odd underlying connotation and the feel of "nobody talks like that".

Not one to be outdone by a mere menu, I decided to act like the proper customer and read what the menu tells me. So when the waitress came over, I ordered my chicken and told the girl, without missing a beat, that I would like to augment my pleasure.

Poor girl. She didn't know if I was hitting on her, making fun of her or just acting out my perverse nature. The whole table laughed, of course; I had pointed out the oddness of the menu before and they didn't think I would actually go through with it. I quickly pointed out the section from the menu that I was quoting, but I think the damage was already done. I'm not sure she even looked at me the rest of the night...

Ah! good times.

I wonder if that was the same day my Barbarian Dwarf got drunk playing dwarven drinking games with Bruenor Battlehammer. I lost, but not before getting really drunk and falling off my chair (all of which I acted out, of course).

Good times...

Canada day

2005-07-01T18:15:00.001-06:00

Happy Canada Day!

Just in case someone in the audience doesn't know, July first is Canada Day. A national holiday (read: I'm not working) celebrated across Canada, except in Quebec. Well, they celebrate it too, but by having everyone move at the same time. That's a whole other story.

We don't own a Canada flag, so I couldn't take a picture of that. Instead, I'm putting on a picture of my personal flag: my red t-shirt with the words "I have issues" written on the front. It's red and white and I think it's fitting.

This morning, we jumped on the bike and headed to Canmore for breakfast. We do that sometimes: take a one hour ride to the mountain, grab some food, come back. It's a nice way to get away from it all, enjoy the mountains and, well, eat. Vero says it's like a little vacation every time. Man I love this town.

So in Canmore, just like in every other town throughout Canada, they are celebrating. There's a big parade today, some time around noon. At 9AM, people already had their chairs set up on the sidewalk to watch it. Can't fault their enthusiasm, that's for sure. We made a quick getaway before the whole place went into a parade frenzy...

Back home now, writing this, trying to remember the cool thing I thought I would write about while on the bike. Ain't happening. Today's the first day of Vero's summer vacation, first day of a long weekend (5 days for me), the day before my mom arrives. The sun is shining, the bugs are everywhere (yay for rain), we have a new tree in the front yard and we're about to install baseboards. And all we want to do is sleep.

What an exciting and fascinating life we lead...

Breathless, I tell ya

2005-06-28T18:14:00.000-06:00

As promised: Matt's Incredible Adventure at the Bike Shop.

We luckily missed the rain. It started raining about 30 minutes after we left the shop. Not that riding a bike in the rain is particularly dangerous, a little more than a car but not by much and quite safe when you know what you're doing, like I apply myself to do (know what I'm doing, I mean). No, rain does not equal danger. Rather, rain equals wet. You get wet in the rain and it's not a comfortable feeling.

Sandra came with us to check out bikes. We've be talking about it for a couple of days and she's totally into it. She wants to get a bike, eventually, and wanted to have a look at what's available (and mostly the prices). So we spent a good hour in there, sitting on bikes, talking about bikes, checking out the place.

Then we drove around to find a sofa bed, found one and came back home.

Oh! the breathless part. Since the suspense isn't quite... well, present at all, breathlessness shall be induced through the use of a very long sentence. Here goes.

While at the shop I was in need of a couple of things, which I got, namely a breathgard for myself (a thingamajig that clips into the helmet just above your nose so your breath doesn't flow up into the shield and fog it all up), a tainted shield for Vero's helmet (so she doesn't have to deal with sunglasses) and a new pair of gloves for myself to replace the current, now old, pair of gloves that I've been using since last year and that are now pretty worn and getting not quite comfortable and, as I was checking the gloves -- all 30% off, which is good when they cost 200$! -- I saw a pair of "colder weather" gloves which I will have to buy eventually because when it gets cold your hands get cold and you can't really move them around much, particularly the right one, since you're holding on to the handles (and the right is squeezing the throttle) but I didn't get that pair because that's enough money for one day and hey! my birthday is coming up anyway so I got the "warmer weather" pair but they didn't have exactly the same color scheme so now I have slightly un-matching gloves to go with the rest of the outfit but whatever I'll survive (and, more importantly, I will be protected).

How many passed out from that?

Filler

2005-06-27T18:13:00.000-06:00

I have to write something. Must... keep... site... updated... *drool*

I need some excitement in our lives. Wouldn't it be cool to say "yesterday we saved the world from a nuclear holocaust"? Interesting concept: can spies have blogs? If so, what would they write? Wouldn't it just kill them to write entries about their boring "secret identity" and keeping all the "fun" stuff out?

Actually, it would probably kill them to write about the fun stuff. Literally.

Speaking of saving the world from nuclear holocaust, I must add two things. First, what's with them people saying "nucular"? I mean come on: it's a word. You see the word, you say the word. You don't say "cherry" when reading "chair", so what gives? Second, do not under any circumstances rent the movie The Manchurian Candidate. We did last night, and I'm still waiting for something to happen (in the movie). At one time we had to pause it and the still frame was about as exciting as the movie. Or at least, as entertaining.

(It's set in the aftermath of the Gulf War where some soldiers were brainwashed into taking over the government so they could shape it into what this multinational corporation wants, blah blah blah. Oh! and "USA is the best thing in the universe" galore.)

See the references? "Nuclear holocaust" to people saying "nucular" and to a movie that makes you wish it would happen so you wouldn't have to watch the movie. I think it makes sense somewhere, does it not?

So how many words was that, 254? Does that qualify as an entry? It will today. Tune in tomorrow, when I will describe in excruciating details my upcoming trip to the motorcycle shop (where I have to drop my bike for it's scheduled inspection and buy new gloves). The suspense and excitement will keep you breathless. If not, it should be short enough to read in one breath...

Extended house guesting

2005-06-23T18:12:00.000-06:00

On Tuesday night, the city of Calgary rescinded the Local State of Emergency that had kicked Sandra out of her apartment. So come Wednesday night, after work, she packed up her stuff and we went over to her place.

The lovely sight of a yellow "do not cross" tape greeted us at the front door. On the door, a sign: due to severe electrical damage caused by the flooding, tenants are not allowed back in for the next 30 days.

30 DAYS! 1 MONTH!

So we have an "extended" house guest. We don't mind at all, Sandra is a cool girl, but it really sucks for her. Out of her place, from her stuff and her routine for a month. Like my very eloquent friend Marianne said: it sucks ass. Not a fun situation to be in.

Plus there's just over a week of school left. So now is the most stressful, painful time for teachers and staff: you're extremely tired from the long year and kids just don't want to be there. So not only does she have to deal with that, she has to deal with that while kicked out of her place. Sucks ass.

It should make for a full house, too. My mom is arriving in a week, then Marianne in three weeks. So for a couples of days there, we'll have all of these people in the house at once! Woohoo! Should make for interesting morning meetings. /smile

The world is just way too small

2005-06-20T18:11:00.000-06:00

On Saturday night we went to a party thrown by a girl that works at Vero's school. She invited a bunch of people from her work and her husband invited a bunch of people from his school -- yes, he's a teacher too.

So here I am in a house full of teachers, meeting teachers that mate with other teachers (we befriended Ben and Val who, you would guess it, are both teachers).

At some point during the night I overheard a guy talking to another about the motorcycle he just bought. I didn't hear much, but the word "bike" grabs my attention like no other (perhaps second to "naked"). So when that guy ended up alone I went over and asked about it.

Turns out he bought a brand new CBR last week. So we had a long conversation on the topic of bikes.

After we finally introduced ourselves, I asked him (Chris) which of our two hosts he was teaching with.

Chris: "I'm not a teacher, my wife is. With Pierre."

Me: "So what do you do, then?"

Chris: "I'm a programmer."

...

So he's a software developer who creates web-based apps in Java. The whole "really? me too!" bit got old very quickly. The more we talked about work the more we realized we do the exact same thing.

So we befriended a software developer and a special needs teacher that are into bikes.

This world is just too darn small.

On the weather... again

2005-06-19T18:09:00.000-06:00

So I said: "The sun is back!" And it was. Then it left.

The two weeks of rain caused the two rivers in town to overflow a bit. It's pretty impressive, actually. They built a lot of houses near the rivers and the water started reaching the resident's lots, just on the edge. I think some people were told to evacuate. But then the sun came back, so all was fine.

It started raining again for the last two days. But nasty, crazy, catching-up-for-the-last-ten-years rain. And just like that, the rivers that were quickly going back to a normal level overflowed even more.

Our friend Sandra lives in an apartment building overlooking the Elbow river. Last night, people came over to her place and told her to evacuate the building: the water was getting very close to the first floor's level (she lives on the fourth floor). So we now have a visitor for a couple of days.

Let the parentally-inclined not worry: our house is built on the flanks of a hill, high atop the city, far from any body of water. If water levels ever reach our house, I do believe that 90% of Canada will be completely under water.

Today, the rain has stopped. Let's hope the rivers start behaving again.

As heard on Stargate SG-1

2005-06-15T18:08:00.001-06:00

I gotta admit I'm a big fan of the show. There was a convention in Vancouver last month and I almost convinced myself to make the twelve hour drive. Almost. But I'm more of a "watch the show everyday" fan than a "rake up the miles just to meet a bunch of geeks" fan.

Anyway, in today's show, "Demons", the team has a quick philosophical discussion on the nature of the christian God. Teal'c confirms that no Goa'uld would be "nice enough" to be represented as the Bible's God.

O'Neill: "You've read the bible, Teal'c?"

Teal'c: "I have. It is an important part of your western civilization. Have you not read the bible yourself, O'Neill?"

O'Neill: "Oh yeah, I have. Well, I'm listening to it on tape. Don't tell me how it ends."

/laugh

The sun is back!

2005-06-14T18:05:00.002-06:00

Finally! It seems we've had a never-before-seen rainy season this year. Two full weeks without any sun! In the fourth sunniest Canadian city, the city with the most sunny days year round and the fifth driest city in summer months, that's quite disconcerting (taken from Environment Canada's website). The water is needed (everything is green now!) but the lack of sun really gets you down.

But no more! The sky is clear and we can see the mountains again. Well, at least for the next couple of days. The Weather Network says it will rain again on Friday...

The Fockers meet Mr. and Mrs. Smith (at the movies)

2005-06-12T18:04:00.000-06:00

We saw a couple of movies in the last few days.

First, we rented Meet the Fockers. The movie is the sequel to Meet the Parents, a movie that came out some years ago and was generally regarded as a very funny movie. Meet the Fockers is also generally regarded as a very funny movie and I agree with the people that generally regarded the qualification of it. I mean: we thought it was pretty funny. Definitely worth the rental fee. I won't be buying it, though.

On Saturday we saw Mr. and Mrs. Smith in theatres. The story is about Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie that fell in love, got married and much later realized that their marriage is basically their secret identity when not going around doing spy and murder stuff. The characters are, I mean. Pitt and Jolie might be getting married as a way to protect their secret identities, but if so I really don't care. Anyway. Both of the characters, then, separately and without the other knowing are keeping a whole other life secret. It is quite well written and acted and if you turn your brain off and don't try to figure out every detail before it happens this movie is a lot of fun. We laughed a lot and were very well entertained. We all agreed that were it not for the 11$ a piece requirement we would go right back and see it. So we highly recommend it for all members of the family aged 13 and up (there are some sexually suggestive scenes and plenty of gun fire); it is now in our "buy it on DVD" list.