Grazing Rites

Boxing Day is about 2 things: Media and Upgrades.

For media I picked up Mr. Deeds and a season of Sex & The City I didn’t have.

For upgrades I picked up a 1 GB SD card for $20. Thanks to this I no longer want an iPod.

My PDA used to have a 512 MB SD card, it would have periodic data corruption and my PDA had recently started taking naps without permission (see ‘Luggage’). Well the new card seems to have resolved those issues and tripled my mp3 capacity, for half of the previous card housed programs, ebooks, work stuff, etc. 750 MB of mp3s easily changed via media centre is more than enough for my humble commuting needs.

Keep in mind nearly all of my mp3s are encoded at 128 so few are more than 3.5 MB in size, that results in 200-odd songs versus the 70 or so from before.

Ostensibly I’m a medium yet recent experience shows me that I am both smaller and larger than that.

My mom got me a pea coat for Christmas, size large. The length is perfect, the shoulders are okay, the body’s a little wide but you wouldn’t really notice.

At work the bulk of the new management jackets, my pet project, had arrived but an error resulted in us receiving 13 smalls where we ordered none and 1 medium where we ordered 10. And the CEO’s a medium. With winter 2 weeks in and no firm arrival date for the mediums I decided to try a small. The new jackets have fleece lining whereas the old ones were just a shell and surprise dinner plans made a late evening with no chance to stop at home for a warmer jacket an unavoidable reality.

The jacket fit perfectly. The best part is because of the mix-up being on the supplier’s end we got to keep the smalls for next to nothing. So now I essentially have a supply of 13 jackets just for me. Well, and maybe one of my staff who could probably pull it off can have one.

So am I a small, medium, or large?

Yes.

Once upon a time, back in the land of high school, I found myself sitting next to a girl I was attracted to. Unfortunately we had nothing in common so starting a conversation with her became challenging. She was constantly writing in some notebook so I pulled out a piece of paper and decided to play along. Secretly I think I hoped she read over my shoulder and read what I was writing.

What was I writing? Well in order for this passive approach to work I’d have to be writing about liking her and not knowing what to say. So that’s exactly what I did. I didn’t even think it through, I didn’t even know who was I writing to. After an hour of her irritatingly good manners I figured I needed to make it easier on her, I needed to draw her eyes to the page. So I wrote in large letters at the top From Math Class With Love.

No luck. As I was leaving class a friend of mine asked what it was. Now the rule in high school, or elementary school or anywhere else in life for that matter, is the harder you try to conceal something, particularly once noticed, the more determined the rest of the world is to expose and mock you. That in mind I replied “a letter I wrote you” as I handed it over.

“You wrote this to me?” he asked obviously confused by the title.

“Well,” time for damage control “not you, anybody. I was just bored” He read it and passed it on. Wonderful, my angst-ridden passive-aggressive pathetic rambling would be school-wide news and cause for mocking by the end of the day.

“This is really good” said the second guy to read it.

“What?” I said, in confusion and disbelief.

“It’s really funny” said the first.

Riiiight.

“When’s the next one coming out?” asked the first.

“Uh…next math class!” I said, covering my surprise.

“Damn, I was hoping to have something to read in English“.

Eventually it caught on, people eager for the latest edition. Somewhere along the line I began writing in other classes so the title changed to Documentation, if memory serves that was Jeff’s name for it. It later evolved into being done on the computer with graphics and colour-coded text although still printed out for circulation.

One day my Mom discovered one of these and thought I might be suicidal largely because she read it out of context. She hadn’t read any previous editions, didn’t know the players involved, and was unfamiliar with my writing style. In point of fact I was probably the least suicidal person, or at least less so, because I had this outlet and forum for discussing things that mattered to me and how I felt.

For example I had a truly horrible ski trip and the only thing that kept me from loosing it completely was a helping hand from a fellow I hardly knew named James. I didn’t know how to thank him for the high school environment doesn’t exactly lend itself towards that kind of expression to your fellow man so I just laid it all out in an edition of Documentation which by then had been known as it’s new name Thoughts, Comments, Suggestions, Ramblings.

After high school there was a halfhearted attempt to continue this on my website but it never really got off the ground. Then, years later, upon return from a mini-vacation that same person who said my very first From Math Class With Love was funny began pestering me to create a blog. After a week or two of this I had a vivid dream about a vacation to Iraq of all things and I realized that the time had come up to pick up the mantle once more.

And here we are. Enjoy.

I’m about half way to work, listening to music and tapping away at my blog, looking to most of the rest of the world like a mobile office, when someone taps my knee. I look up, expecting to see a coworker or perhaps a friend, and see a middle-aged Asian woman with luggage.

I take out one ear bud as she shakes her hand at me, “yes?” I ask. I noticed her luggage was halfway down the steps, just enough to keep the doors open.

She begins to shake her hand and point at me and then her luggage.

“I’m sorry” I say “is there something you want?”

Shake point point shake.

“I don’t understand” I say.

Shake point point shake.

“Do you want help?”

Shake point point shake.

“Riiiight.” I take out the other ear bud and put my PDA in the leather case as I look around. There are several able-bodied adults and teenagers watching, some of them also Asian, none of them a tangle of wires and PDA like myself.

And none of them lifting a finger or offering to translate. Can’t really blame them on the translation thing, the woman had yet to say a word in ANY language.

I put my PDA in my pocket and walk over to the luggage. It has no handles or places to grip save a strap going around the middle. I point at the strap and ask “can I lift it from here?“.

She points at me, then at the open door.

“Okay…” I say and try to lift the luggage by the strap. It gets half a foot off the step and falls down. It seems the strap was only connected on one side. The woman responds by yelling “Ai ya!” (I do so detest that expression) and smacking me just above the waist, hard. Hard enough for me to feel it and nearly double over in unexpected pain, thus proving she is neither weak nor mute.

“Fine, move it yourself!” I say and go back to my seat. She stares at me, incredulous. The bus driver comes back and moves it for her because he can’t move until the doors are closed.

“Ungrateful <expletive deleted>” says the driver, “didn’t even say thank you”

Getting back to my PDA I discover half a blog entry missing. Then I realized when the woman hit me she hit right where my PDA was in my pocket. In the days since it has taken to turning itself off randomly.

Last time I help someone like that.

<expletive deleted> indeed.

I think my seasonal affective disorder has kicked in for the winter. How did I notice this subtle change? Well actually it was when I noticed my blog entries seemed to become more negative, it seemed every other entry was me complaining about something.

Another sure sign that SAD has struck, at least for me, is when I find myself wondering about my ex-girlfriends and how badly I may have messed up their lives. Harsh I know but that’s what SAD is all about, going depressingly negative. I found myself actually checking online to see what one ex in particular was up to, mostly out of boredom and morbid curiosity, also because she’s such a drama queen she can’t help but shout from the virtual rooftops whenever anything happens so the search is a breeze.

It turns out she wants to date gay men but they don’t like her because she has “girl parts” so she’s begun a 3 year process to become a man.

Well, that cured my curiosity.

Why would I have been thinking about her in particular? Well it seems my new neighbour across the hall is a prostitute. She used to live upstairs and before moving down without the landlord’s consent the previous crazy lady across the hall informed me that the woman upstairs had “recently turned to prostitution to make ends meet but she’s a really nice person unlike that fat skank Michelle“.

Giving the source and the context I took her comment with a grain of salt but recently I saw my new neighbour leaving her apartment dressed as a schoolgirl in a embarrassingly short skirt. Thankfully it appears she conducts her business elsewhere as I only see her in passing and the only noise she makes is when she argues with the landlord because she was late with rent.

Good thing I plan on moving in the next couple months.

In the meantime I’ve taken to drinking Rolo milkshakes, they’re high in vitamin D and are yummy.

I had a slight falling out with Pizza Hut during the recent boil water advisory. Due to the full advisory recommended against washing dishes I was relying on ordering in a bit more than usual. When I ordered Pizza Hut the cheese in the stuffed crust was horrible. It was damp and like it came out of a tube or something. it made cheese whiz look like fine dining. I was crushed, stuffed crust pizza had been one of my favorite foods since A Final Unity.

Maybe it was a one off but I don’t really want to risk having to endure that again and try as I might I can’t get my cognitive dissonance to think it was somehow the water advisory’s fault.

Flash forward to after the advisory and I’m using some cheddar cheese on something, it doesn’t taste entirely right but I don’t really think much of it.

A few days later I’m grating some more cheddar and the cheese stinks, I had only had it a couple of days but it was rank. Then when I sit down to eat it, it tastes just like the crap from the stuffed crust. I sat back on my couch in terror.

“My god, am I starting to dislike cheese?” I wondered aloud, “no, that can’t be right“. Determined, I got up and went to the fridge looking for answers and after several minutes there it was: LIGHT cheese. The word ‘light’ was in a small font made up of orange and white on an orange and white label. How could a reasonable person expect to see that? Frankly I doubt either my girlfriend or mother posses sufficient vision to even see it, at any distance.

Therefore I am getting the word out: avoid light cheese at all costs! It stinks and saying it tastes like ass would be a compliment! I don’t care if it makes me need-a-crane-to-get-out-of-bed fat I’m never having this light crap again. I would sooner die of heart problems because a world where I have to eat light cheese isn’t one I could bare to live in.

I removed a pool from the road the other day.

That sentence really is an abomination.

I was walking to the bus stop after work during a windstorm. I was waiting to cross the street when a kiddie wading pool, damaged and dirty, came flying in from my peripheral vision and landed in the middle of the street blocking 2 lanes of traffic and what was about to become my path when the light changed. The bus I was about to board and a car both just sat there, looking at the pool.

And again, minor adversity and society begins to collapse. Once the light changed I removed the obstruction and traffic resumed. How long would they have waited before doing anything I wonder? Getting on the bus the driver didn’t even say thank you. I was under no obligation to remove the pool, I could have walked around it and watched society slowly unravel.

My good deed going completely unrecognized I decided to look back at my handiwork. I had wedged the pool between two newspaper boxes to keep it from just flying back into traffic but the wind was so strong it had sufficient force to dislodge it and send it to a different part of the intersection. The drivers of the cars just sat there staring at it, presumably willing it to disappear - unfortunately it seems the force was weak with them.

This whole situation is not normal, people. Pools are not supposed to be in roads. Bits of plastic in the road should not cause your brain to explode.

As the evidence mounts that the end is nigh there’s only two questions to be asked: what kind of popcorn should I eat as I watch the rapture? What kind of wine goes with the end of days?

I was surprised when I heard on the day of the first snowfall that the white menace had claimed it’s first victim of the year. I never heard how the poor sap died, didn’t really care all that much, but it definitely got me thinking about how weak a species we must be when frozen water can take us down.

Except for that icicle of death from Die Hard 2 of course.

But once again a tiny bit of adversity and we fall apart. Or maybe it’s that someone somewhere has an army of morons that he sends out into the city whenever something falls from the heavens.

For example a trip to work that takes about 45 minutes on average took me about 2 hours, largely due to stupidity and having nothing to do with the weather.

First off I was willing to add 5 minutes to my journey to take a bus down the steep hill rather than try my hand at skiing. Half a block from my house I see an SUV across the street with at least half a foot of snow covering every inch of it save the driver side door pull out of his parking space. That’s right, the idiot was pulling into traffic without even trying to get rid of any snow! He was relying on his wipers to remove over half a foot of snow and figured the fogged up driver side door window was enough visibility to drive with. It’s a minor miracle I didn’t watch him die…or perhaps a failure of natural selection.

Another half block under my belt a speeding car covers the left side of my body with muddy slush, I was a full meter from the curb and he was doing at least 100kph.

The bus detour quickly became an extra 15 minute delay when a car decided to cut across 3 lanes of traffic to enter the exit of a 7-11. He was only hit by two cars, snow or no he got off lucky - he didn’t even need medical attention (although a case could be made for BEFORE the accident).

While his car was blocking an entire direction of travel and about 8 buses the police appeared. Two cruisers. Traffic was stopped for blocks, a couple dozen people waiting with me for the blocked buses and the cops get out, lean on the hood of the cruiser now blocking yet another lane of traffic, and chat each other up. The driver stands in the snow waiting to talk them. And nothing changes for 10 minutes so I decide to walk it.

The train is running an additional 10 minutes between trains because people keep holding the doors open. I think perhaps if you hold the door for more than, say, 5 minutes you forfeit the body part obstructing the door.

Then I spend 25 minutes waiting for a bus that should be running every 5 minutes. When a bus finally arrives the driver takes a break. Now I’m not saying drivers don’t deserve breaks but when it hits the fan at my job I’m willing to forgo the break to get through crunch time. The odd person who isn’t willing to help the team is often the object of scorn.

So the fellow takes a 15 minute break during which several more buses show up but they cannot proceed because they’re all trolley buses with only one line to operate from. The fellow eventually returns from his break and the convoy of buses departs. Now usually when two of the same bus are within a couple blocks of each other the one in front will only stop when people need to get off. This would in theory result in the buses spacing out a bit, being a bit more useful, and not looking quite so silly.

This driver stopped at every stop with several empty copies of himself right on his heels. And of course we had another 5-10 minute delay because an old Asian man couldn’t understand you had to take a step down to open the doors. Another passenger got up and demonstrated it on the other door and he STILL didn’t get it.

Then we get to the train tracks just as a train begins to cross. Mercifully it’s a short one so the gates only stay down for 5 minutes or so. But we waited for 15 minutes anyways. Why? A single train crossing light facing the opposite direction failed to go out once the train had passed. Despite dozens of cars and several trucks crossing safely we couldn’t convince him to proceed.

Finally I get to my stop to find a middle-aged Asian woman completely blocking the doors. One hand firmly gripping the poles on either side of the doors, the middle pole at her back. T&T bags are hanging from each arm so there’s no ducking under. I say “excuse me“, “can I get out please?“, “out of the way!” and “MOVE!” all to no avail. I even go so far as to hit her arm repeatedly with my umbrella but I can’t break her kung fu grip (this is not a racial joke, see Meet The Parents for the reference).

Just as the bus pulls away from my stop she FINALLY steps to one side allowing access to one of the doors. “Thanks for wasting my time!” I say. I would have left it there but some people felt the need to pipe up in her defense!

“Just get off at the next stop, jerk!” says a woman.

“What’s you’re hurry, ?!” says some guy.

“I don’t have a right to get off the bus until this idiot decides it’s okay?!” I ask of the bus at large. Then I turn back to her “what the hell is wrong with you?! Are you retarded? Have you never been on a bus before in your entire pathetic life?” she stares at me but says nothing. “Don’t you speak English? Let me guess, you think that gives you the right to do whatever the hell you want!”

The guy pipes up again, “leave her alone!”

“She forced me to stay on this bus so I’m going to spend every second of it doing whatever the hell I want since I’m here against my will and right now I feel like yelling at the idiot responsible, or don’t you believe in actions having consequences?”

He didn’t have anything to say to that.

I turn back to her “not used to consequences are you? You go through life inconveniencing others and never held to account, why should others suffer because you’re too lazy or stupid to be polite? Get in my way again and I WILL move you. Do you know unlawful confinement is a crime? I’m pretty sure I’d be justified in knocking you on your ass in…”

I would have continued but we had reached the next stop. The really sad part is not a thing I said registered, not the slightest change in her blank expression. She didn’t learn anything and I’m one step closer to a killing spree.

Almost none of those delays had anything to do with the weather.

On the way home I’m stuck waiting for a bus to take up the hill. 3 of every other kind of bus goes by, they’re supposed to be every 15 minutes whereas mine should be every 10. When the bus finally arrives someone inquires about the delay, the driver comes back with “haven’t you looked outside?”

The passenger takes a breath and replies “I was curious if there was an accident since 3 of every other bus that’s supposed to run less frequently than yours have all come and gone while we’ve been waiting but thanks for the attitude. Clearly your coworkers found their way well enough“.

The driver comes back with “well they why don’t you report me? I won’t get fired”

The passenger shuts the driver up with “I don’t want you to be fired, I want you to be retrained how to drive in a little snow and not to treat people who ask an innocent question like children”

At least there was one other non-stupid person out that day.

I wasn’t pleased with the way Legacy was running so after performing some system maintenance and tweaking things a bit I decided it was time for an upgrade. RAM is my favorite thing to upgrade, was probably the first hardware upgrade I ever performed I think. But if you know what you’re doing it’s the most stress-free upgrade you can get.

Generally you just pop it in and close up shop. The machine does the rest. Nothing to install or configure, either it works or it doesn’t and even that’s pretty idiot-proof.

My machine only had 512 MB of RAM to begin with and even as I was buying it last spring I was wondering how long before I’d need to get more. So with help from crucial.com to determine what I have and what I can handle I set out to buy me some RAM.

Vista claims to need 1 GB minimum anyways, so it’s an investment I told myself.

Cutting to the chase I figured out what I wanted and headed to my city’s answer to the soup Nazi: Atic. There’s always a line, you better know exactly what you want with at least 3 backups because if you’re a blubbering idiot who doesn’t know exactly what you want and need when you’re at the front of the line you’ll be sent to the back to think about what you’ve done.

I don’t mind it at all. If you have to know a thing or two about computers to get the lowest price in the city, well, that’s social justice in action.

But the weirdest thing happened. There was no line and the guy behind the counter was…well…nice! I didn’t know what to make of it. It was probably a trap so I figured I’d be the one to set it off, make it happen on my own terms.

“What can I get you?” he asked.

Confused by the pleasantry I responded from my confusion “uh, 1 gig of RAM pleasem, 184 pin”

“DDR” he said back to me. This was more like it! He was correcting me, this felt better already. “What brand?” he asked. This was it, I forgot to say the brand, I’d wasted his time. Banned for life, here it comes. But I looked up and he was smiling.

“Uh, Kingston please” I said hesitantly “but it doesn’t really matter..” I added trying to hedge my bets.

“Sure thing” said the happy clerk, “it really is the best value” and went into the back.

“What the hell’s going on here?” I asked my girlfriend.

“What?” she said.

“He’s being nice!” I said, clutching her arm, “something’s not right here”. Fearing ninjas would jump out at any moment to steal my soul I decided I had had enough, I was going to spring this trap whether the evil minions, who had clearly gotten more devious of late, wanted it or not.

When the clerk returned I laid myself out for the slaughter “Yea, I need to upgrade from the 512 MB of RAM I have now to play the new Star Trek game”.

Alright punk, let’s do this thing. Inferior specs AND a Star Trek game causing my amateurish purchase? I couldn’t have been asking for it more if I came in asking for tech support on a previous purchase. Or tried to pay with a credit card, they hate that.

Strike me down. Go ahead. Insult me. Have a laugh at my expense, just get it over with!

I mean, up till now my best theory on their low prices was that they fed on the tears of the stupid.

And rightly so.

“Yea, that’s usually the reason” he said agreeably.

What the hell was this? Service?! I gave the kind of bait even average people would normally take. I couldn’t fathom it.

Suspecting sabotage I went straight home and installed the RAM. It works fine, even resulted in a substantial improvement in Legacy. All very strange. I eventually warmed to the idea that maybe I hadn’t been sold substandard equipment or a well-disguised time bomb. Maybe he was just a nice guy working at Atic, nothing preventing that from being possible. Other than the laws of nature I mean.

Knowing that I had a faster machine to return home to I headed off to work emboldened. Work was a breeze. Was it a nicer crowd? The fact we won?

Or was something missing, like my fear of being punched in the face for no reason?

Why would that be?

Because upgrading my RAM made me feel like a big man.

And that’s The Wørd.

Well it seems the Canadian television audience agrees with me, at the end of it’s first season Dragon’s Den is officially the CBC’s most popular new show.

Actually the CBC in general has impressed me this past year. I try to catch The Mercer Report and The Hour as often as possible in addition to Dragon’s Den and HNIC, I even caught an episode of 22 Minutes and one of Intelligence which was mildly interesting but Max Headroom himself wasn’t enough to offset the slow pace. On the whole the CBC seems to be doing our tax dollars justice. I’m watching it almost as much as Comedy Network.

I find, when well rested and on time or early of course, you can take 2 approaches to your morning commute. You could be apart of it, be stressed, rushed, dour, and depressed like the rest of them or you could be an impartial observer. I find these things always seem worse in the winter, so be a person out of time from the summer and take another look.

Yes the idiot who can’t figure out the meaning of ’step down’ or ‘push’ could be out to slow you down by precious seconds or the guy who doesn’t know iPods come with a volume control could be out to annoy you. On the other hand they can be kinda funny. They’re like stressed ants running around. Thinking the bus is broken at the drop of a hat. And they’re oh so often proven wrong.

So you can either join them or take a minor retreat into the inner citadel and see them as the silly buggers they are.

Except for those idiots who block the train doors trying to get on before anyone can leave, they’re never funny.

I am forever done with Bostonians. Quite awhile back, when I didn’t need them, I saw some Bostonians marked down from well over $200 is about $30 a pair so I grabbed one pair of each style that had been marked down. 100% natural, all leather high end dress shoes for $30 that fit? How could I go wrong?

Enter the waterproof pair. They made me bleed for about a month before they were finally broken in. Well actually it was only about 2 weeks but that was during fair when I’d work 10-14 hour days and walk incredible distances urgently all the while. Obviously the worst time to break in new shoes but my previous pair, Rockports that I had worn for years, had recently died after a ridiculously long and distinguished tour of duty.

Once broken in they fit well enough but always required an insane amount of force to put on. Shoehorns didn’t help and even a half size larger would have flown off my feet. Other than that this pair served me faithfully for a decent amount of time however from day one whenever I would walk down stairs it would feel as if there was something rattling in my shoes. I was never able to prove it though, even after the autopsy.

Enter the formal pair. They looked nicer than the waterproof pair but took an actual month of bleeding to break in. After that I got about 3 months of wear out of them before they died. How they died was strange too, the heel fell off the right shoe as I was taking it off in the change room at work. Just fell off, nails pointing every which way. Now I still had to walk home and didn’t have another pair to change into…and it was raining.

Why didn’t I get them repaired? Well I figured having walked home in them, in the rain no less, with one heel missing might’ve made repairs problematic. Plus how much would repairs on this $30 pair of shoes cost me? And how long before the other heel decides to fall off?

Medical professionals say a pair of shoes should last about 8 months, after that they may no longer support you properly and may not be the best for your feet and back. I got half that time out of this pair, a month of which was agony.

Are my expectations just a little too high? I don’t think so. My first pair of Rockports were a dream. The first time I wore them I went dancing for 5 hours; they felt like slippers, supported like runners, gripped like boots, and looked every bit of their original $200 price tag but I got them for $50. No breaking in, no bleeding, no pain, no falling heels or things rattling around inside. And despite not being advertised as waterproof they pretty much were.

Did I luck out with that one pair? Nope because my second pair of Rockports that I bought years later for the same price were the same in every way only MORE comfortable.

So, in conclusion you don’t always get what you pay for. Higher price does not always mean better quality. And if my next pair of Rockports end up costing the full $200, I’ll live with it just fine.

I was working at the hockey game the other night when this attractive, upset woman approached me asking to use the phone. Unfortunately I was unable to help her as she needed to make a long distance call. It seems she came to the game from out of town with her husband and part way through the game he left his seat and didn’t return. She tried calling his cell phone so many times near the of and after the game that her battery had died.

Apparently he’s done this before.

They didn’t have a meeting place and she didn’t remember exactly where they parked. She had just begun to cry when her husband showed up, quite by accident. It seems he ran into an old friend of his. Now by this point the game had been over for at least half an hour. She, in tears, demanded to know where he’d been. He responded by laughing in her face and telling her to lighten up.

“The game’s been over for over half an hour” she screamed “didn’t you hear your phone?!”

“Yea, why did you keep calling?” he asked nonchalantly.

“Well if you’d answered it you’d know! Because I didn’t know where you were! You’d been gone for 2 hours! I don’t know this city…nevermind!” and then she stormed out, which in retrospect doesn’t make much sense because she didn’t know where she was going.

Her husband turned to his friend who said “Man! She’s pissed!”

He just shrugged and casually walked in the direct she’d gone, the picture of uncaring arrogant confidence.

Clearly this kind of thing happened often and he was going to be forgiven without much effort as he no doubt had for countless times before.

This struck me as a prime example of someone getting married before they were ready. She’s stuck with this jerk and they both know it. He exploits it, and she despairs.

I can imagine their life together. He has all the power, she gets no respect and complains loudly to her friends who try to give her advice but nothing ever changes. She didn’t wait long enough to get to know the real him and he didn’t realize he didn’t really love her until after they tied the knot. She stays because she believes in the institution of marriage, he stays because he’d do badly in divorce court.

So to anyone who questions my ‘date at least 2 years before even considering marriage’ rule I say: game, set, and match.

So I’m doing laundry the other day when I go to pick up a load from the dryer and I discover an Asian couple watching my clothes go round and round.

They must have been about 45.

I think perhaps I should say something but I have no idea what. Since the cycle isn’t complete yet I just stand behind them and wait. As I wait the man keeps putting his hand on the handle of the dryer.

Not opening it, just putting his hand on it for a few seconds and then removing it. After 3 of these circuits I decide I should speak up before he opens it.

“Those are mine” I say. He ignores me and continues what he’s doing.

“Is there something interesting about my clothes?” I ask. He mutters something to the woman in a different language and continues to ignore me. Still periodically reaching to grasp the handle. It’s not as if it provides any balance or anything, it’s perpendicular to the floor and any pressure would open the dryer. I shrug and share a commiserating look with another patron, at least I’m not the crazy one.

Eventually things come to a head: the drying cycle completes. His hand is now firmly on the handle.

“Excuse me” I say.

Nothing.

“Those are my clothes” I say.

Nothing.

In a slightly louder and exasperated voice, “Can I please get my clothes out so someone else can use the dryer?!”

The woman takes several steps away and looks at me as if I were from Mars. I take a step to where she was just standing so I’m in front of the dryer and beside the man. I turn to him “what’s so fascinating about my clothes?”

Nothing.

“MOVE!” I shout.

“Wei?” he says, hand still firmly on the handle. I gesture for him to move and point at the clothes “Mine!” I shout. I’m rewarded with a blank stare. “Move!” I try again, nothing.

What’s a guy to do? My clothes are wrinkling as this is going on. I use the side of my body to push him aside, kind of like a hip check but not so violent. I take my clothes out and go to leave and he’s standing in my way, blocking the exit. He stares at me and doesn’t move. Completely devoid of patience I command “out of the way! Or did you want another look at my underwear, pervert?”

The other patrons look over, the woman I shared the look with before smiles. Eventually the man stands aside and says “oh, sorry“.

Sure, now he speaks English.

I bet if I accused him of a hate crime or of improperly touching a child he would suddenly become quite eloquent.

Tactical Assault definitely provides a serious pace change from Encounters, if you go directly from one to the other you will feel as if someone slammed on the brakes. Now that doesn’t mean the game isn’t fun. In terms of graphics it’s slightly above Starfleet Academy and in terms of fun slightly below, but Starfleet Academy was a sweet game and this is portable.

It’s more true to the spirit of Star Trek as some missions have better outcomes if you choose not to fight, although don’t count on that approach getting you anywhere in the Klingon campaign. In terms of combat style the Federation campaign is like Star Trek II if you’re Khan - in other words it’s 2D and there’s no override.

The Federation plot is pretty interesting but I sometimes found myself wishing for other options, the Klingon plot on the other hand jumps around a lot, one minute you’re fighting the Gorn, the next your own people and with little in the way of a transition.

The biggest shortcoming has to be collisions. You have virtually no warning if you’re about to hit something. There’s nothing worse than finally beating a difficult level only to collide with a planet. That’s right, collide with, not crash on.

In terms of strategy I highly recommend shield recharging on the Federation campaign and the Klingon…well…go to the official forums for advice there. I got my ass handed to me on a regular basis whenever I was behind the wheel of anything that didn’t begin with USS. The Klingon campaign is difficult and frustrating, don’t even try to be honourable - find the dirtiest trick you can and stick to it. The Feds are fun and Skirmish mode is good times.

Anyone wanna WiFi?

A little adversity and people fall to pieces. Recent heavy rainfall resulted in a 12 day long boil water advisory in my fair city. I’d like to think most of us took it well. I personally stopped washing dishes (as the full advisory and not the media instructed) and took to ordering food or eating things that didn’t require water to prepare. I did fly in the face of danger and brushed my teeth with tap water.

I’m a rebel.

Actually I’m just too cheap to justify brushing my teeth with bottled water when there were no cases of contaminated water reported. It was a precautionary advisory after all.

One thing that really annoyed me during all this was one interview I saw on TV with this woman wearing designer clothes getting into her luxury car. “This is just like living in the third world” she said.

Yes I’m sure most people in Africa have to put on their DKNY coat before getting into their Escalade to drive 4 blocks to buy water. You’re exactly right.

IT’S A MINOR INCONVENIENCE! The sky is NOT falling, you’re not in need of world aid, and don’t expect Bono to be singing a song with other celebrities to raise money to pay for your gas! What would she say if she had a hangnail, “now I know what cancer patients go through“? God! I’m ashamed to live in the same city as these babies.

Now not all stories are that bad. Yes a fight broke out at a Costco but if you dig deeper it’s not quite what you think. Apparently someone was hording 2 shopping carts full of bottled water, cleaning out the last of the supply just as an elderly man was trying to get a bottle. The fight occurred when a younger man asked the hoarder if he could spare one bottle for the old man to buy.

Yes it was stupid but rather than 2 jerks fighting for no reason it was someone sticking for someone who couldn’t do so themselves. Instead of two bad guys it has a hero, a victim, and one bad guy who lost in the end.

Then came the logging debate. I admit my first thought was ‘why are we discussing this?’ but then I remembered something from Grade 8 Science: the healthy roots of trees prevent erosion. The environmental lobby came out to say logging in the watershed during the 90s made the situation worse than it would have been otherwise. The GVRD came back to say logging wasn’t a cause of the advisory.

This is a case where a careful manipulation of language allowed them to defend a position that should be indefensible. The media treated these two statements with equal weight but had they thought about it while both statements are true, the GVRD just pulled a fast one.

Well OF COURSE logging wasn’t the cause of the higher turbidity, the rainwater was the cause. And yes there hasn’t been watershed logging for a decade BUT had the watershed not been logged in the 90s the soil that slid into the reservoir would have been better held in place by the larger roots. Logging wasn’t a cause but NOT logging could have prevented it or at least limited the damage.

People aren’t used to playing the long game and thinking in those terms, that’s how we got here in the first place. And since the societal watchdogs known as the media deal in 5 second sound bytes people like Bush can get away with answering tough, pointed questions with barely relevant statements of basic fact.

Like “I believe when you kill someone, you’re a criminal” doesn’t really answer the question of civil war in Iraq (nevermind the inherent hypocrisy of saying that but supporting the death penalty, even The Daily Show dropped the ball on pointing that out). “Every time I meet with him I get to know him better” doesn’t say whether negotiations have made any progress or not.  When will people wake up and begin to question these things? Would the police accept a murder suspect answering “did you shoot her?” with “bullets are peices of metal that come out of guns“?

And by people I mean Americans. Us Canadians need to work on not falling apart and crying “woe is me” when the slightest inconvenience is tossed in our path. Yes, the water’s a little muddy but you’re not exactly a starving refugee without access to medical care as you run from warlords attempting genocide.

Actually, a lot of that sentence could describe some American war deserters or conscious objectors or whatever they’re called. Weird.

Walking to lunch the other day I saw another round of that classic match-up Squirrel vs. Crow.

Squirrel was carrying as many nuts as possible from one tree to another when Crow decide the rich-poor divide needed a little equalization payment.

Now you’d think Crow would be a lock in every time, what with the flying and the talons and the hurting. But I’ve seen Squirrel win out at UBC so, with apologies to Wesley Snipes, DON’T always bet on black.

In this case however Crow took the day, not with it’s gift of flight but rather sheer numbers. His gang harried Squirrel until a cargo dump and tactical retreat was the only safe option.

Stupid lazy Crow.

These swarmings have really gotten out of hand.

First a friend of mine reported that upgrading to Messenger Live so completely screwed up his e-mail he couldn’t even tell if he had new messages, much less read them. He even went so far as to call tech support and even they couldn’t fix it. Weeks later when he finally managed to get in all his messages had been erased.

Second I get a call from my mom claiming that a mandatory upgrade care of Automatic Update had ‘upgraded’ her to IE 7 and now her browser wouldn’t work.

Given that these two ‘improvements’ came out around the same time and Microsoft’s propensity for tying it’s programs and services together in completely useless, irritating, and processor-intense ways I was not encouraged.

Now back in the day I was the first to get a browser upgrade but latest ‘advances’ such as the highly over-rated tabbed browsing left me wondering who these changes benefited. I mean tabbed browsing is the same as opening different windows except you can’t alt+tab between them and they don’t show up on the menu bar. Same as before but with less functionality? Where do I send the fan mail?

Anyways, it turns out my mother’s issues were a result of her Yahoo! Toolbar (seriously people, who uses/needs this thing?).

If for no other reason than to bone up on it to provide future tech support I decided to upgrade to IE 7 myself. Now I’ve been through various versions of Netscape and IE over the years and I’ve always keep both around because invariably they both have different strengths and work better than the other when doing certain things.

Before installing IE 7 the status quo was that IE 6 loaded quicker and handled simple and secure pages very quickly, I used it mostly for E-mail and visiting sites I didn’t really want to go to such as work-related pages or links forced upon me by friends. For the meatier stuff like torrents and my blog Netscape was the place for me. Also if I needed to delve into the shadier parts of the net it’s pop up controls were better and easier to use.

Well IE 7 is growing on me fast. It still loads quickly but also handles blogging and message boards a little better than Netscape. In fact it’s quickly becoming the case that I only use Netscape to download stuff as it’s much more user-friendly and controllable in that regard. It doesn’t tell me what to do or take actions without my consent like arrogant programs by Microsoft like to.

So despite my lingering reluctance to even try Messenger Live I can endorse upgrading to IE 7 at least, so long as you don’t have stupid redundant toolbars I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

I still hate tabbed browsing though.

The other day I’m walking into my trailer at work when I notice a green apple at the bottom of the exit ramp. ‘Where did that come from?’ I wonder. The closest thing to a fruit-bearing tree we have on the entire site is the hazelnut tree directly behind the trailer. I shrug it off and continue with my day.

The next day I’m headed in again and I notice a second apple about a meter away from the first. I look around to see where it could possibly have come from to no avail.

On the next day there are no new apples by the exit, just the original two. There is however a third new apple by the entrance. Questioning my sanity I try to forget the whole thing.

That same day I was coming back from lunch at something other than my usual time when I noticed a group of young children playing on our site. This in itself was nothing unusual however two kids in particular caught my eye: they had green apples.

I guess Granny Smith was not to their liking.

The thing is, the playground is a good 200 meters at least from my trailer. One of these kids has a future career in sports, assuming he ever eats his fruit.

The other day there was this poor kid on the official forums for the new trek games who didn’t know he could have more than 2 drives on his computer. He wasn’t aware that you could plug more than one drive in the cables that connect to the IDE port, each one was already connected to a hard drive and while he had a DVD-ROM drive he didn’t think he could connect it. And he is literally poor so he couldn’t pay someone to look at it or upgrade and naturally he’s in the states somewhere so it wasn’t as if I could pay a house call. He thought he couldn’t play Legacy because of it (he needed keep his combined hard drive capacity in order to have enough room for the game) so I walked him through setting it up and it worked. Made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

Now he is of course indebted to me so he has to back me up in online play.

Unholy Army Of The Night: 1

The strangest thing happened to me on the way to work the other day. I was crossing at a crosswalk, the cars on the far side having already stopped and the closest car on my near side having plenty of room to stop. Stepping into the street I kept an eye on the car on the near side. It didn’t even begin to slow down. I began to run for my life as I made eye contact with the driver, she clearly saw me.

Narrowly avoiding being hit I got out of the way just in time. Looking back at the intersection I share a look with the drivers who had stopped including the car who stopped behind the woman who drove through, clearly they were not impressed with her behaviour. Then I noticed the driver of the car that was behind her and had stopped was pointing at something.

It turns out this reckless driver had parked half a block away. Livid I walked up to the car and demanded what the hell she thought she was doing. She pointed to a handicapped sign hanging from her rear-view mirror. “That doesn’t give you the right to run people down in the street!” I shouted. She shrugged.

“Do you run red lights too? Because the kid you kill or semi-truck you hit isn’t going to give a damn about that sign” I yelled. She pointed at the sign again. “Well that’s just great, I hope your little sign makes you feel better after you kill someone!” then she flipped me off! So I said the only thing that came to mind “you’re going to die behind that wheel, I just hope you don’t take anyone with you“.

This isn’t a commentary on handicapped people or even bad drivers, it’s just a story of what happened, take from it what you will.