Vanilla Ice is still around, and there’s a big article about him here. The journalist seems a bit bitter that this is the outcome of all that journalist school, but it’s still a fun read. I was a bit disappointed that he’s denying everything in Ice by Ice, because ever since reading that I’ve been modelling my life after what I thought was his. You know, taking what I learn on the streets and improving on it.

Speaking of Vanilla Ice, I’ve never tasted them, but wouldn’t it be cool if the polar ice caps were flavoured? What with all the global warming and the melting caps and the rising oceans and whatnot, it’d be a decent upside if islanders at least got a delicate seasoning as their homes washed away. I figured out the solution to the rising water levels though – we just have to start digging out the oceans! We’re already drilling for oil, who knows what other good stuff we might find as we haul the sea floor out and dump it in, say, Montana. That makes more room for all the water! I can’t see a flaw to this plan, especially the part where I get a bunch of mega-polluting companies to fund my not-for-anyone-else’s-profit digging corporation so we all look good. They’ll look good for helping to undo the damage they’ve done to the environment, and I’ll look good in my gold chains.

Word to your mother.

(21:05)
Well. it’s official – air quality problems caused by oil and gas fired generators aren’t because of honest legitimate power use, it’s because of this – “some pot-growing energy thief next door is toking up all the electricity, causing brownouts and blackouts, driving up electricity prices, and sending the neighbourhood up in smoke“. Actually, the smoke part is a reference to house fires, which is the closest the article gets to addressing air pollution. It does say that Ontario is catching up to BC in pot production though, and “much of it ends up in the United States“. You’re welcome.

Speaking of drugs, I wrote my first .Net application today. I earned my paycheck today writing a front end that queries Slashdot. Yes, I could have written it in just about any other language in a third of the time (in fact I did before deciding to give .Net a try), but I now know just how slow C# is. And just think! I won’t be getting a faster PC for at least 2 years!

(13:45)
Ok, I’ve watched 2 1/2 versions of the same episode of Battle of the Planets, and I’ve got to side with the original Japanese one. G Force (apparently a version of the show put out by Turner or someone in the 80’s) scores high for keeping most of the show intact (I only watched the first bit though), but the names are a bit…questionable. BotP made some changes to the names, but they were pretty minor. G Force gave out names like “Ace Goodheart” and “Dirk Daring”. My favourite so far is “Dr. Brighthead”. Keep in mind this is a guy who calls himself Herman Thrust critiquing names. I’d watch the rest of the episode, but I’m worried I’ll change my name to “Funny Chuckleguy”.

Tonight on Fox: When art melts. And is made of blood. Human blood. 9 pints. That were frozen. But now aren’t. There was a more detailed article, but I can’t find it. It probably melted.

Finally (for now), to make amends for cheating on my Hoegaarden buddy, I bring you, via Fimoculous, a Haruki Murakami short story. Which I haven’t read yet. Let’s race!

(23:55)
Damn… I fell asleep shortly after coming home from work, and I’ve awoken into the strange and terrible year of 2002. Oh, what wonders I will see…

That means I didn’t get much time to watch my Battle of the Planets DVD. I was explaining BotP to AngelA as the Power Rangers of my Generation, but she thinks I should have called it the Voltron of my generation, because apparently Voltron was the Power Rangers of her generation. I’ve standardized everyone’s childhood on Power Rangers Central Time. Anyway, it’s pretty cool because the disc also includes the original Japanese episodes that the shows were based on so we can see just how much the producers wanted to avoid the concept of anyone getting hurt. I guess seeing someone fall 3 stories and bouncing out of the bottom of an aircraft was considered too extreme for 1970’s cartoons. Possibly because the characters weren’t cartoon animals. I’m not a big anime fan; I just like reliving my childhood. I use that same excuse with my boss when I fart in meetings.

I’m still not sure if I messed up the secret puzzle letters, so hopefully they make as much sense as anything else on this site. If I did it correctly, I think today’s is the last one for a few entries. If you’ve been tuning in just for your daily fix, you can safely take a vacation.

See y’all tomorrow.

(15:05)
All I’m going to say about last night’s show is that Dave Azzolini is clearly a man who yearns for the smell of burnt toast. Oh yeah, and that I had an awesome time.

I found this link in a Slashdot discussion, and it’s a great collection of science literature, including a ton of computer science papers. It’s a nice change to read actual theory instead of technology cookbooks that don’t cover the areas I need to get projects done. Of course, I still can’t find enough telephony info, but it’s a start…

Today’s secret puzzle letter is B.

(well past midnight)
What the hell is knawing??

(21:07)
Possibly not my last entry for the night, but the secret puzzle letter must be posted to prevent anyone from knawing their hands off.

(13:54)
Almost forgot – The Golden Dogs CD release party tonight at the Cameron House! Show starts at 10, and I have not received any confirmation on the Hoegaarden-ness of the event, so you might just want to bring some crack. For the 99% of the people reading who are not in Toronto, you’ve still got 8 hours. There may be a small cover charge, but this is entirely justified as the band has a desire to purchase high intensity lasers and comical hats.

(6:18)
I was going to post this on VP, because it involves spearfishing, but it also involves another fascination of mine, drilling a hole through your head. Ever since that Ghostbusters line (“Egon, this reminds me of the time you tried to drill a hole through your head” “That would have worked if you hadn’t stopped me”), I’ve had this idea that since we only use something like 7% of our brains, there must be a few straight lines on wasted space that could be pierced, possibly with a laser to allow for cauterization. Sure, people mocked me, but my vision persisted, and now I feel a bit vindicated, although my access to head-drilling lasers is still on the sparse side. If only I’d paid more attention during my optics class…

Today’s secret puzzle letter is O.

(If you haven’t noticed yet, there aren’t many valid connections between each day’s title and the entry content, but please feel free to invent your own.)

(23:45)
I’m in a better mood now, which is weird, because I just spent the past several hours working with Flash, which I’ve discovered is not my strong point. Anyway, there should be something new over on AngelA‘s site in a few days, and as an added bonus, it should get me out of a VP post for that day. Win Win.

I think the rant from earlier today (below) was a redirection of my irritation about some other news items, like “smart bombs” that we were told 10 years ago could go down someone’s pants, yet US officials “aren’t sure” where the “errant bomb” landed. Yeah, moving on…

It’s still really hot, but I’m proud to say I haven’t lost my “no air conditioning” contest. It’s not really a contest, since I’m the only participant, but I have this game where I see how long I can go in any given season before I invoke climate controls. For some reason people are more tolerable of the summer challenge than the winter one, and I guess this works well for me, since in the winter you have to put on more clothes, and in the summer, well…

Of course, no A/C also precludes pants on many a day, so we can make up for it with a round of musical pants.

14:17
According to this headline, I’m being asked to limit my electricity use to help reduce the strain on the system. It also mentions that I’m going to be paying about triple my usual bill this month. Despite the fact that the smog days are upon us, there’s no mention of air pollution in the article – it’s all about rising costs and the fact that the system can’t take the strain. If it would get people to stop wrecking the air, I’d be in favour of a 1000% increase in electricity costs, but just like the link between heart attacks and animal consumption, most people aren’t likely to change their ways. Instead, we’ve got a bunch of greed driving the market price up, and this strange paradox where demand causes prices to rise and the odds of being able to meet demand to fall. How exactly does the consumer win here? I can’t wait until our drinking water goes the same route.

That’s just a minor rant (in both quantity and legibility), I’ll probably post more stuff (on different topics) later tonight along with today’s secret puzzle letter. The letter will, as always, go on the bottom, and I guess further stuff will go up above. Argh, I need to revisit my Moveable Type template…

As promised, the secret puzzle letter of the day is O

Tomorrow will suck.

That’s not the weather forecast, although I’m sure meteorologist will be one of the many alternate career paths that enter my head this week. I’m referring to the fact that I never ever should take vacations because they really point out the contrast between the work and the not-work (also known as “fun”). It’s similar logic that once had me resisting most forms of social interaction – it’s easier to put up with stuff if you don’t consider alternatives. Anyway, the subject of “why don’t I just quit” can be discussed another day, but for now you can rest assured that the camping weekend was great fun. A few highlights:

On the first day, we went hiking. We were told by our fearless leader that it would be “about 45 minutes” (*cough* 3 hours *cough*) and we wouldn’t need to change our shoes. They gave us a map, but it was in French. After some experimentation I figured out that “nous vous recommandons de porter des bottes de randonnée ou des chaussures de course” means “dude, you really shouldn’t be wearing sandals” and “À certains endroits, le terrain est très accidenté et les sentiers suivent les parois des falaise. Le prudence est de rigueur” means something like “ok, you’re walking on a beach made of jagged rock, and if you stub your naked toe you’ll bleed all over the place and it will be more likely that you’ll fall face first and bruise your finger badly enough that you’ll only be able to hold one drink at a time”. If you didn’t have lunch, add “moreso” to that.

Thankfully, my many mishaps got me out of any activities the following day, and while I missed out on seeing a really uncomfortable looking thong, I finally had a chance to read “The Jungle” by Upton Sinclair. Somehow I manged to become the main character in my mind and without giving too much away, when something big happened to that guy, my mood was as if it happened to me. This was all well and good when he was wandering around sleeping in the fields, but the rest of the time it really sucked. I was kinda glad when everyone came back. Still worth reading though.

I missed out on two smog days, apparently. I was so sad… Oddly, my allergies didn’t kick in at all, which is a first, and I was breathing easier than I have in years. I wasn’t the only one who noticed the sky’s gradual transition from blue to grey as we got closer to home.

Vegan chili is much lighter, safer, faster and easier to cook than barbecued chicken breast. The ease factor shifted the following day when everyone just went to town and bought groceries, but I’m having trouble seeing how anyone can go camping as an omnivore for more than a day or two with only the contents of their pack to sustain them. Yeeha.

I didn’t get sunburned until the ride home, and similarly, I didn’t find out about how to avoid mosquitoes until the subway home when I saw a poster about West Nile virus. Helpful tip: dark colours are a bad thing.

All I know about bears is that there are black ones and brown ones, and the technique for escaping is 100% different for each type. I also know that I didn’t see any bears, so that worked out pretty well. We did see a snake eat a frog though, and it was probably for the best that it happened as we were packing up to leave. That was a big snake.

Finally, those 2 way FRS radios are great on a long trip with two cars. I pity anyone who was tuned into the same channel. Hint: my code name was “slutty”.

So yeah, great fun, and well worth the impending agony of the day job.

Today’s secret puzzle letter is B.

Argh, machine crash last night, then I get up at 5 to fix things up and something’s busted on the internet connection…Yeah great.

Thursday’s drinking session? Research. The findings? For the love of Vanilla Ice, drink a bit of water on a hot day. Other than that, my liver was able to withstand the denial of service attack, and I’m proceeding with the volume test in the wilds of Northern Ontario. See y’all Monday night.

The secret puzzle letter of the day is I.

Why do I still read Slashdot? I’m not sure what’s worse – that they posted the same story two days in a row, that only one person noticed (that I could find), or that that one person’s comment got modded out of existence. I know Slashdot was my inspiration for VP and all, but still…

About a year ago, I took the opportunity to speak to a brewmaster responsible for the Canadian arm of Hoegaarden, and I’m glad I did, because the knowledge that it was vegan comes in handy when you find it available in glasses larger than your head. Ok, we’ve never met, but the glasses were bigger than my head, and that’s pretty big. There may be an important safety warning posted tomorrow morning about drinking things bigger than your head, but I don’t want to spoil the surprise. Shh!

The sad thing is, the threat of an impending hangover makes me nostalgic for the ghost of hangovers past. Life seemed simpler then. Ok, maybe it just seems simpler in hindsight, but that means I might be thinking the same thing about today five years from now, so how complicated is my life gonna get? Sometimes it’s hard not to sell everything and move to Samoa.

On an upward note, for some reason I was searching on Google for “tennis crotch”, and I found this joke. Funny stuff, huh kids? Huh? Yeah, well… yeah.

Still reading? If you’re one of the 2 people from Toronto who read this thing, check out The Golden Dogs. If you’re reading this and there’s still a picture of two drunk people in the image on the left, you should go to the Cameron House on the 3rd of July, find the guy on the left and say “hey man, what’choo got against Magnum PI?”. The key is to not run away afterwards. Stick around for the show and possibly buy a CD along the way. It’s good fun. I’ve had an advance listen to the CD, and while I’m still working on my review blurb right now, rest assured there will be the words “David” and “Hasselhoff” invoked in one or more contexts.

The secret word of the day is E.

Well, the spectre of employment equity is making the rounds again, and it usually causes some people to grumble a bit about people getting jobs simply because of a quota that needs to be filled. I never pay much attention to this stuff, what with actual problems that matter filling my life quite nicely, but I did the math today and realized that at most companies with ee policies that I could apply to, once you subtract the other “targets”, there’s a 60 to 70 percent chance that the only reason I would get the job is because I’m a white male. Yeah, life is rough. Grumble grumble.

I don’t remember the chain of links that brought me to this, but it’s worth watching at least once…

Today’s secret puzzle letter is S.

Wanna pass a medical exam? Get a fat old doctor. I wasn’t in the best shape when I went for my physical, but compared to my doctor, I was possibly godlike. The contrast was so great he gave me an advance on next year’s test, so I don’t have to come back for 2 years. Yep, fat doctors, that’s the key to good health advice.

…Or so I thought. It turns out, the “skip next year’s physical” idea might have been more of a way to avoid work. My legs have been bugging me (I can’t seem to manage more than a few weeks of training before I blow an ankle out or something), so I finally figured I should look into some kind of orthotics. (Ok, first I was looking for “implants”, but I knew that wasn’t right, so I asked about “inserts”, and while closer, it didn’t register with anyone, so apparently it’s orthotics I’m looking for, which are also different from prosthetics). I head over to the receptionist and try to make an appointment. She tells me that I need to speak to something called a “chiropodist”, and I should go to another counter (it’s a big medical complex). Don’t I need some kind of referral? No, she assures me, it’s all good. I get the appointment with the guy whose job sounds like a kind of bug, but when I get back to work it occurs to me to check what my health plan will cover. It turns out I do in fact need to see my doctor for a referral if I want to avoid paying for the insert thingies. Back to the office I go. This time the receptionist refers me to the sports medicine doctor, because my doctor apparently doesn’t do orthotic referrals.

I didn’t have a doctor for the longest time, and when I decided to get one, it took some work to find someone who was accepting new patients. Once I had one, it was a bit anticlimactic. I thought that it would infer some kind of power or something – like having a lawyer, but not quite as snobby. Could someone please explain to me what a doctor actually does? Someday I’m going to be talking to someone and they’ll let it slip that they’re the president’s personal physician, and I’ll be all over that charlatan.

My previous doctor would at least make stuff up – I’d ask hiim about some problem I’m having, and he’d always say something along the lines of “Hmmm, it could be zerfliganitrolia, but I don’t think that’s it, because that would also cause your brain to run out of your nose, so I think it’s probably the flu”. From my limited experience with the new guy, his diagnoses go like “if there’s no rash or swelling, it’s probably perfectly normal”. I swear, one of these days I’m going to go get a tatoo of a big mean rash and watch this guy flip out.