Water Baloons

I spent Sunday afternoon outside filling up approximatly 150 water baloons in rapid sucession for 1 hour so my daughter and her buddy Xavier could chuck them at each other (and me). In the end I got smart and only filled them up a little bit so they'd bounce. This meant that they had to chuck them harder or multiple times before they'd break. Why didn't they have these things when I was a kid? Dollar store item. Way over par in price per enjoyment factor. Best 150 pennies I've ever spent.

Fake Birthday & Wonder Woman

Fake Birthday today. I turn 37 on June 7th Woohoo! Cake day was Saturday, a few days before. Mid-week birthdays just don't work for everyone(grin). I lucked out! I got the Wonder Woman Boxed set, season 1-3. I've watched a few so far. Lynda Carter and her, uhh, Amazing bubble butt! (She got me through puberty, her and Col Deering on Buck Rogers in the 21st century). Carter is like 57 and still looks great!

I forgot how bad 1970's tv writing was. Lots of Nazis and cat fights in WonderWoman. And that guy she's always saving, Captain Trevor? He sucks. The US Military should have fired his ass for being captured by the enemy more times than soap stars come down with amnesia.

Check out this site with the Cheezy midi songs! I remember her hawking contacts on late night TV, and someone told me she is in that crummy Dukes of Hazzard remake.

Fake Cement Rocks - A la Geocaching

I've tried a lot of stuff to make fake rocks to hide my geocaches. I just had one go missing after about 3 years and it was made of Bondo (and showing it's age) so the last few times I've gone with instant mix concrete.

1. First I take the container (in this case, some locking tupperware), I chuck it in a plastic bag stuffed with newspaper along the sides to take up space so it will have room to fit.
2. Then I take chicken wire and mold it into a basket, a skeleton for the concrete to grab onto and form the shape of the rock
3. Then I mix concrete, sometimes add some pigment for color, and I just slop it on as the wire cage sits on newspaper. I'll edge the sides with stuff sometimes if the concrete is runny.
4. Then I'll take a plastic bag and lay it over the wet concrete and ruffle it a bit to give it a smooth texture with some wrinkles. It also gives you air bubbles and other interesting effects.
5. Let it dry, pull the plastic off and voila, fake rock. Chuck a plastic container under it and go hide it somewhere

Sometimes the natural color of the concrete looks good, other times it's a bit too light. For this rock, I'm going to bury it in grass clippings to give it that moss-green tinge found on the rocks in the area where I'm gonna stuff it. Here is a shot of the waterfall where it's going to go.

Prepping for the Don Ross guitar Weekend

It's hard to learn a Michael Hedges tune when your toddler keeps wanting you to feed Elmo. I'm tying to learn Hedges "Layover" for next weekend. It's a beautiful but persnickity tune that reveals all sorts of issues with my PIMA technique. That's P = Thumb, I= Index, M= Middle (the &^%* Off finger) and A for.. Uhh I dunno, Ring finger? I used to know that, it's Spanish or something...

I don't know what the A means. No wonder I'm having trouble. Since I play mostly Don Ross tunes, you can't really walk into his living room and play his stuff.. If you know what I mean.. You don't play the Magic Flute for Mozart.

Fire bad. Motherboard broke..

Finally got my 'good' PC back together this week. This is my Gaming, Video/Music editing machine as well as the place my IPOD music library lives (I hadn't updated the IPOD in a month!). Last year it went Kablooey, the power supply caught fire, burned the mother board a bit, but it still worked when I put a new PS in. Then it went flaky two months ago, so I bought a new PS and that worked for a month, and then THAT went funny. I figured the slightly toasted motherboard may be the culprit, so I bought a new one, and that worked for two days, then it went kablooey again. I thought PS. I don't have a ton of spare parts for P4 boards (mine required a minimum 350Watt PS) so I took it into PCCyber, as it was under warranty(even though I slapped it together myself 2 years ago!(grin)). They checked it, said it was fine, I tried another MB, same story.. Swapped it for another, same thing. Then I tried a new PS and WAMMO! It started to work again. Those &^%$*# at the computer store lied to me! Well, not really, they just neglected to plug the 4 prong power cord that gives the processor extra juice and I'm pretty sure THAT was the wonky part. When you plug it in and give it juice the MB doesn't post, no video and it makes a sound like a drive spinning up, like a capacitor charging (even though there are no moving parts (when the fans are disabled) on an MB.

It had me going for awhile. I thought I turned stupid when it came to troubleshooting hardware probs. The techies at the computer store assume that as well, until you strip the MB down in front of them, isolate it on a static bag and then start the MB with a screwdriver across the HW Reset pins and then they start to listen to you a bit.

Morale of the story. If your Motherboard has burn marks on it, you should probably stop using it. And if you isolate your MB on a static bag then it ain't a grounding issue. I hate computers sometimes.

The Davinci Code

I saw the movie adaptation of the Davinci Code this Friday. I liked it. I read the book when it first came out (it's one of the few hardcovers I own). Some of the story exposition was a bit hamfisted, but there's a lot of info to get across. I understand why the Church is in such an uproar over it. It's a work of fiction but the premise is so much more believable than that other story everybody knows, I can see why they might think some would take it as truth. There's probably a lot of truth in there.

What's really sad is when you google the words "Davinci Code" look who paid for the top spot . Of course, you know what that site is gonna be all about..

Great book. Go read it. Don't burn it. They only do that in the US bible belt or Nazi Germany circa 1933 right? And it seems to me, when they start with the books, people soon follow on the menu.

Who' Dah Mann!!!

Followed this guy into work today. Oh no, he doesn't have an ego problem.. no way.. Maybe his other car says L8DZ MAN.

***Update****

Now I hear that I know someone who knows Dah Mann (went to his wedding or something) Now I'm going to get in trouble! hehehehehe.

My Dad's retirement

My Dad officially retired the other day, age 60 after 39 years on the Ottawa FireDepartment. He started in 1967. They had a shin-dig for him downtown where hundreds of firefighters on the off shifts showed up to drink beer and shake his hand. They gave him a nice leather jacket that he can pick out an OFD crest for as well as something else he wanted, one of those patio swing chair things. To present it to them, they got these two 7 foot (looked like) fire fighters (one of them is nicknamed Shrek) to unveil it and then they escorted my Dad into the swing chair between them(grin). I took a small video (right click and select Save Target as, 16mb, 8 min). I was going to do up a funny power point presentation but they told me that Firefighter's attention spans are not that long and they just wanted a few words and that was it. I collected a pile of photos and put them on two boards in a collage. Some pretty funny stuff, and some of the cooler ones like him and Condoleeza Rice etc.

I retire in 2024. WooHoo!

Perils of rain and a sunroof

I hardly ever drive our Honda CRV. Instead I'm self-regulated to our 1993 shitbox Honda civic whose engine is slowly outlasting it's body as it has rust growing in all the regular places I see on other shitbox 1993 civics. My wife drives the nice one because she used to pick up the kids and it was safer for the kids and the kids should be in the new one and the kids kids...hehehehe You get it.. The kids. So now we split the duty, she's morning drop-off and I'm afternoon pick up, and it's all good. I like the crappy car. At least I have nothing to worry about should I scrape something or get in a fender bender.

So on Sunday, I went somewhere, and took the new truck. WooooHoooo! Air conditioning! CD player! SUNROOF! I opened it up. And because I never drive the darn thing, I left the sunroof open over night. The next day I got up early, noticed the wet pavement (Hmm, it rained..) climbed into my shitbox car and went to work. And got a call two hours later from my wife to inform me when I leave the sunroof open like that, and it rains, the seats get all wet and any objects that touch the seat while you're driving (like your butt) gets this wet stuff transferred to it through clothing absorbsion and it's never good to go to work with a wet butt.

"You can blog that.." she said..

"Okay!" I said..


Sorry!! My BAD!

P.S. the picture of our Honda Civic is from a geocache I did one winter at midnight. When I came back some punk-ass kids had chucked their MacDonald crap all over the side of my car in the NCC parking lot like the self-absorbed spoiled punk-ass stupid little pricks in Daddy's car most kids like that are.
I was glad they were able to restrain themselves from busting my windshield though. Probably because it was like 25 below. Gee THANK YOU KIDS!

My wife uses this as an excellent reason for me not to geocache with the Honda SUV - unless I have the kids! heheheheheheh!

Gloucester Fair

Hit the Gloucester Fair on Saturday. Ahh, the twin magical smells of Sawdust and vomit!. The Carney folk who I used to be scared of as a child were of a slightly different sort. Younger and not sporting as much ink as in the past. I always found it to be a long-standing tradition that the guy with the mullet (I shouldn't talk) in a race with his 'co-worker' locking down the safety bar on your ride always had an inverse ratio of number of teeth to tatooes.
We got two 'ride till you puke' passes and spend the afternoon doing just that. We went on everything a 5 year old could ride on except that drop zone one I was pretty sure she wouln't enjoy. Although in hindsight I should have let her try it, she may have been ok. We ran into a school freind of hers who had just come off that ride and it was not a positive experience. That's the one on the right where they take you up quite a few stories and then drop you to the ground like the elevator cable just gave way.
The bumper cars were fun as well as the stock Ferris wheel. I tried to explain to my kid that instead of paying $50 to play several games and win a $5 stuffed animal, we could just go to Toys R Us and buy one next time.
The other patrons were all interesting. Man there are a lot of uhh.. Interesting folks that go to this fair. Fashion statements that should never be attempted, even by professionals. I'm on the Atkins diet this week again, doing my Project Ketosis thing for summer and man, a lot of people at this place could use a week or two (or 96) on this.

Still, a fun way to spend an afternoon. It was at the Rideau Carleton Raceway with free parking. If you were gambling, you got the good parking. If you were a fair-goer, you got to park far away and walk! Funny that...

Mission Impossible 3

I saw MI-3 tonight after doing a little geocaching. Even though Tom Cruise is a Scientologist %?*$# whose well-known devotion to the ridiculous cult has made news of late (his poor wife, but Duh! read up on what your future husband is into and don't be surprised by the silent birth crap, the ridiculous concoction they want the baby to eat, and the 24 hour a day Brainwashing culties watching your every move), despite that stuff, Damn but MI-3 is a great movie!. Non-stop action, not one good place to get up and go pee in the whole movie!

So, keep up the good movies Tom, War of the Worlds was great too! But lay off the Scientology Crap why don't ya.

Ever read about them? I was surprised to find out on A&E (it was cult week) that the Church of Scientology bought the 1-800 number for cults in the united states. They'll give you the scoop on the Moonies and the Hari Krishnas and the Johovas Witnesses and the Church of the Purple Monkey-whatever, but ask about Scientology? "Oh, that's not a cult, it's a modern religion. Would you like to hear more about it?" Holy Crap that's scary.

And read a little bit about Lisa McPherson . I've read a few of Hubbards fiction books as a kid (Battlefield Earth was my favorite, but then I didn't know the evil aliens, Psyclos were a play on the word psychologist or psychiatrist')) and some of them are great reads, but who would follow uhh, Stephen King if he started up his own religion? Like, what is he qualified to do? Would you let your baby eat crap some old fart (with no pediatric training) came up with because he thinks breastfeeding is evil?(if it was good enough for cavemen, then it's good enough for me, and it's probably better than the milk I drink every day, that was meant for baby cows. Maybe we should all be drinking breastmilk.)

They're scary people with a screwed up ideology and I've got no idea why hollywood actors flock to it like files to crap.

CS Rally downtown Ottawa

There was a CS (Computer Services) union rally in downtown Ottawa today. We haven't had a contract for almost 2 years (hello back-pay!). I'm not a big union hack but it's important to go to these things once in awhile when Treasury Board starts talking 'pay cut'. No one likes that!

I'm paid a fair wage these days, but no sense in sitting around if they tell me they're gonna cut it. It all stems from this thing we get called a 'Terminable Allowance' (or TA). It was extra money we got back in the High Tech boom, pre-Year 2000 days and was used as a bargaining chip to give us a bigger increase but only declare a smaller one officially. Apparently our union never treated it as such
because it's fully pensionable and all the rest. It sounds like a 'Call it whatever you want' thing and the word 'Terminable' doesn't seem to have any teeth because they (Treasury Board, or TB) yanked it away from us last year and a Federal Court made them put it back. TB appealed and that got shot down too (gotta love it when the government takes itself to court and loses).

Ah well. At least I have a job... No one wants to go on strike but part of me wonders what the heck would happen if we did. Computers make our government go. When I take the odd day off I hold things up by not being here, I wonder what impact 1000 of us would have.

Hope we don't find out..

PS. I didn't like my sign, so I photoshopped a new slogan..

Lost Season 2 Finale

Hands down my favorite show for the last two years (and I only caught on midway through the first season - thank god for episode bittorrents on the net!) the 2nd season Lost finale was better than the last one (and the season one cliffhanger was GREAT!). We finally know why they push the button, and that it's a darned good idea to keep on pushing it, and the whole reason their plane came down in the first place was because the previous button pusher decided not to do his job that day!
First off, what's with the huge Lord of the Rings statue of a foot with only 4 toes? They reveal some more connections the crew have with each other (Libby gave Desmond his boat (was that before or after she spent time with Hurley in the Psych ward?). They stumble upon the destination of all those containers carrying the journal entries up the pneumatic tube from the Swan hatch. A ginormous pile of them sitting in a field in the center of a solitary tube! No-one's been reading them!

The revelation that pushing the button discharges a huge natural magnetic buildup was fantastic. This explains why stuff sticks to that one wall on the inside(grin) and how the plane got all mixed up and got pulled screaming to the ground that day Desmond took the afternoon off. Actually, all the action that centered around the hatch was excellent writing. I'm reminded of the season opener where they go down the hatch and Desmond is there, listening to 70's records and mixing himself a drink.

The flashbacks with him and Rudzinski(who plays the voice of Mr Crabs on Spongebob) showing that he and his old partner started the invisible map of all the hatches as well as the revelation of a fail-safe key below were cool as well. Rudzinski also wore a bio suit up above but knew that there was no biohazzard. What's with that?

Then there's the Others who we've been seeing over this season. Or the Hostiles as Desmond's partner called them. At one point, the guy who says he's Henry Gale (dead baloonist) gets asked by Michael "Who are you?" and he goes..

"We're the good guys.."

We still don't know why they kidnap the plane crash survivors, why they are interested in children, dress in rags, wear fake beards etc..

And the coordinates they give Michael when they give him back his son and a boat, 332 degrees (or something like that) and instructions that if he takes that bearing, he'll be free of the Island but he won't be able to come back? Weird..

They blow up the hatch, there's a big hazy wave in the sky that covers everything (no idea).. Mr. Echo, Locke, Desmond, who knows if they made it out..

The best was the ending. The two Brazilian guys in the snowy monitoring station, recording some sort of seismic event, and then calling Desmond's long lost love. What's with that?

Jumpy Bouncy House Thingie

Last year we bought one of those inflates in 30 seconds! bouncy houses for the kids. We used it for my daughter's birthday and quite a few other times. We stored it inside all winter and when we took it out this year there was a huge rip in one of the seams! There was no joy in mudville! The inflatable bouncy house was no more.

Ahh! But we had the Can Tire receipt! Off to CT where they gave us out money back! (WooHoo!) and then off to another store, where we picked up........

ANOTHER BOUNCY HOUSE!

Unlike the last one, this one didn't say anywhere that it was not meant to set up indoors so...

What the heck!!

Finland's Lordi wins World Songwriting Contest

These guys are interesting. Lordi, A Finnish rock band that wears monster costumes when they play and keep their real identities secret! Holy KISS Batman.. I've heard about them before, they remind me of that other band Slipknot, or the other one that dresses up like Orcs, Gwar.

The big thing about Lordi is that Eurovision Song Contest 2006 they just won, with the highest recorded score in history of the event. They sure know how to put on a show!

It's hard to compete with pyro, blood and foam rubber. They are dedicated though, it gets hot enough on stage just wearing regular clothes. I can't even remember how the song goes, I was mesmerized by the lead singers movable wings. Very cool!

Every lead singer should wield a chainsaw..

Cucumbers

My 5 year old daugher likes to snack on cucumbers these days. At first my wife would peel them sorta and dice them up into pieces and my daughter didn't like that. The other day she asked for a cucumber, my wife put it on the table and went to get a knife to dice it up. Before she could do this my daugher snatched the cucumber off the table and ran into the other room saying:

"Leave my cucumber and me alone!"

(that is to say, she didn't want Mommy to cut it up.)

I laughed. She better not be telling me this when she gets older(grin).

Human Cadaver Fungi Identified - in my Gmail

So there's this thing called Adsense and it's in all things Google, like my Gmail account. And it goes through the contents of recent arrivals to my inbox and gives me context-sensitive advertisements in my sidebar in return for 2.7GB of free web email. Heck I don't mind. I'm not in an uproar over their privacy policy, and I don't think it's a case of Big Brother or anything. Heck, I don't have anything to hide (much). But sometimes I'll get some really weird, uhh, context sensitive links. Like this one..

I blame spam. Speaking of spam, and blogs, I learned a new word today. A splog. That is like, a spam blog where the content is fake and merely exists to promote affiliated websites. Cool!(and evil)

The Daily Dancer

Someone sent me a link to this guy's blog. He posts a video of himself dancing to a new song 3 times a week. He just hit his one year site anniversary

Scary..

I think he's pretty good though. His exuberance making up for a lot of other things(although he's way better than me!. )

Skype - Free calls from your PC to land lines in the US and Canada

Skype is a cool little program that lets you make free calls to other people running it all over the world, but more importantly, it also lets you make free calls within the US and Canada to mobiles and landlines till the end of the year.

Very cool.

Jailhouse garb - Your kid is a VCR

My kid takes the bus around the corner from our house, and there are a few other kids that take it too. One of them always has interesting things to say about their home life. Today the kid was wearing a white shirt with a black stripe and my kid said something like "You're wearing clothes like they wear in jail!" I don't know where she got that info, must have been something on TV. And the kid pipes up..

"Naw, they don't wear stripes, they wear orange smocks!"

Hmm, so the kid must watch prison break on late-night television, or caught a rerun of The Fugitive remake with Harrison Ford. My wife mistakenly asks.. "That's pretty smart, How do you know that?" and the kid says:

"My Dad wore those when he was in jail, I had to talk to him with a phone and look at him through a plastic window. I couldn't hardly hear him!"

Uhh oh.. More information than she wanted know.. But it fits in with the 3 pit bulls the guy owns and the busted oscillating fans he throws out almost every garbage night. And I was reminded of the time he had his baseball bat and was trying to hit a home run with his houseguest's head last year the same time I was headed to the 7-11 for a Slush Puppy between periods of some hockey game.

They sent 6 cop cars when I called(me and a few other people).

I think that was the first domestic we've ever had on our street. The guy's new neighbor had just moved in that weekend (hehehehehe) Welcome to the neighborhood!!

Guess who's working at Revenu Canada (CCRA)

My wife had to phone CCRA about some tax issue this week. She got in the hold queue and after a few seconds, a technical support person picked up and he said:



"Thank you for calling the CCRA helpline, this is Jesus, how may I help you?"

(giggle)..


"Can you make my Tax bill dissappear?"

(silence)

Man, thank your parents for that one..

Senators out of the playoffs again.

I hate when the Sens lose in the playoffs, but it's not so bad when it happens now because I'm so used to it. Too fancy.. Playoffs is different. Most goals are garbage. Just shoot it at the net.

For now I'm leaving the big Sens flag on my streetlight but I'm gonna bring it down to half mast..

Ugg.. Go Oilers!

VE Day May 8th 1945

We celebrated my Dad's birthday on Saturday and my Grandmother and Aunts and Uncles were over. My aunt told me a funny story from when she was a kid about my late grandmother on my mother's side on May 8th 1945, Victory in Europe day. My grandmother apparently made a big Hitler doll out of clothes and cloth, stuffed with newspaper, threw a big rope noose around it's neck, and the whole family went down to Parliament hill (what they used to call confusion square) and drove around with Hitler hanging by the neck from the rumble seat of their 1936-whatever car. The place was packed, ticker tape flying everywhere, people kissing total strangers. I don't know what the plan for the doll was (burn it?), but someone stole it off the back of the car at one point..

Man.. My grandmother made a Hitler doll.

Go figure!

INXS

Caught INXS this Friday at Scotiabank place. I watched every episode of that show they had on last year, Rockstar INXS (I like reality TV but I'm picky about it). What a great idea! Van Halen should do this next.. So it was kinda weird to see JD Fortune, slightly creepy, used to live in his car, down on his luck, ex-Elvis impersonator Canadian guy fronting the band.

No one is ever going to replace Michael Hutchence and the new guy doesn't try(he's got his own thing).. I remember reading in the paper that a great number of people in Australia were really pissed at the whole TV show thing and many thought it was a disservice to the memory of the old singer. It doesn't bother me since the old guy took it upon himself to commit suicide (and even that is in dispute, no note etc.. Some people say he had been hanged and some think that he was doing that thing where you choke yourself while masturbating.. autoerotic asphyxiation - Who knows for sure). Well.. What are ya gonna do. Instrumentalists should not be held hostage by his memory. A band is a group, it's not just the frontman. I saw a biography on Hutchence on A&E and it said there that a few months before his death he slipped and hit his head on a cobblestone road in France while pissed out of his mind and lost his sense of taste as a result of the blow. Weird..

Back to the new guy.. Good choice! He's got stage presence. The band was excellent. One thing I've always liked about them is the multi-instrumental chores handled by guitarist/saxophonist Kirk Pengilly, and the keyboard/guitar/harmonica work of Andrew Farriss. The new stuff and the old stuff went well together. For a rushed album, I'm surprised it's as good as it is..

I hope they stick together for another one.

Des Patates

Got home a bit early today and the kid from next door came over. They got a hold of the hose and got all wet. Then they rolled in the sand in the small provincial park I built out back 3 years ago. Xavier (the kid next door) said to me in french. "Je suis un Patate!" or 'I am a potatoe'. No kid.. I'm a potatoe for letting my daughter and you play with the hose!

We sprayed them down after..

Then I hung our big Senators flag up on the streetlight by my place. Gotta support the home team. Even if they're down 3 games to NONE!

The Great Race Part trois - Settled?

Finally fixed my home PC (replaced the ailing ASUS motherboard with a new FOXCONN one) and found the time to suck out the race video. Pictured to the left is a still shot of a 29fps video of the finish to the Great Race Part III.
Below is a zoom of the finish line whereby one can clearly see in pixel 342 that my toe clearly beat Bag's finger to the finish line. However, since we cannot be sure of the camera's angle the race is being officially called a draw. This can only heighted the anticipation for the Great Race IV (tentatively scheduled for May 2007).

Maybe we'll have a 'Great Race Part three and a half' in the meantime.

My first guitar

When I was 8 my Mom dragged me with her to take guitar lessons because she didn't want to go alone. I hated it and did not keep up with it after the classes ended.. Then when I was 12 I picked up one of the guitars we had lying around the house and started to plunk away lifting Beatles tunes from my tape recorder. It was kinda neat. You hear it on the tape, then figure out what notes they are, pick which ones they might be from the 6 or 7 duplicate note locations on the fretboard, work backwards from there, and the next thing you know it's coming out of your guitar! My Mom and dad both played a bit and my Dad taught me how to tune the guitar with the 5th fret trick and that was all I needed..

This was some time around grade 8 and I remember 'The Who' were on their 1982 farewell tour (the 1st one, hehehehe) and it was televised and this Pete Townsend guy seemed to be having much more fun with an electric guitar than I was having with a classical (I got to meet him once in Toronto when my freind was in the play Tommy). I had also seen Woodstock just before that, and for the first time, Jimi Hendrix and his rendition of the Star Spanged Banner. Now that was something!

This was when I realized that I wanted to play Electric guitar. One of my friends who played drums had an old 50's hollowbody electric that belonged to his Dad and that was the first electric guitar I ever touched. Cooooooooool! He had this smelly old amp to go with it and it made this dirty sort of farting sound when you plugged in and strummed the guitar through it.. The strings were like barbed wire. I was used to the nylon stringed classical guitars we had at home.

Christmas time rolled around and my Dad took me to Sangitt Bianga in Ottawa. That was sanskrit or something for 'Song Bird', which today is Song Bird music, one of the first second-hand music stores around at that time.. The guy behind the counter was named Danny and he played in a band with some firefighter friends of my fathers. Danny was an amazing guitarist and he played a pile of vintage 60's Fender Stratocasters. Together we all selected a black strat-copy Ibanez Roadstar Series II and that became the first electric guitar I ever owned.. We left the store with it in a beat-up case that a cat had obviously slept in full time. I didn't get it until dec 25th but for two weeks I'd sneak up to my parent's room where it was sitting under the bed and take it out and fret the strings.. I still remember the smell of the wood, whatever kind it was, and how thin and easy to fret the strings were. It had 3 single coil pick-ups and a 5 way switch. We had plugged it in an amp at the store and it had sounded all mean and tough and I couldn't wait to play it for real.. My Dad had also picked up a secondhand Yamaha 2-channel amp to go with it.

So that Christmas I cracked that thing open, plugged it in, and sat there hunched over playing it for about 8 hours.. A whole new world had opened up. I couldn't really play that well, going for any one note meant I was going to hit a whole pile of others by mistake and open strings would ring when they weren't supposed too, but it was really slick. The neck was amazing on this guitar. It had a tremolo (Whammy bar) but I quickly found out how badly out of tune your guitar goes with one of those things without a locking nut (unless it's an old 60's fender). This was like, the best xmas gift ever!

The only thing I wasn't totally happy with was the fact that when I plugged it in, it sounded to me like an acoustic guitar, just louder. It did not sound like Jimi Hendrix. I was finding out that without distortion or overdrive this is how an electric guitar sounded 'clean'. Interesting.. How do I make it sound like Jimi Hendrix? My Dad talked to one of his friends.. I needed this thing called a distortion pedal'

But that's another story..

The Great Race Part Trois!

The great race III took place at noon Monday May 8th! The results?

Too close to tell!!!!

Thankfully there is video evidence at the finish line. Preliminary views have been mixed. I'll post it here soon.

My video editing PC blew up last week so I can't pull the mini-DV video off my vidcam just yet, but I bought a new motherboard (it seems to be the culprit) and I'll install it this week and get it up and running.

I had a bad start and man was it close! T-Bag's been practising!

On the eve of the Great Race - Part Trois

Well, It's gonna be that time again soon. Teabag and I race each other once a year or so. The original Great Race was quite the debacle on my part. Three years ago we lined up and Medium sized Mikey is the starter. He goes..
"On your Mark!" "get set"
(pause where you would expect most human beings to yell GO!)
"G....Go!!"

On the part where you'd expect a "Go"! I hesitated. There was no GO! Teabag ran on the part where there should have been a go, so what the hey! I went too! So he had a good lead on me. I caught up or he slowed down once everyone realized that it had been a false start but...

Something was wrong.. With me... In my uhh, groinal area.. A white hot searing pain each step I took back to the start line.. Uh oh...

So Mikey gets fired for his ridiculous start and someone else does it.. On yer mark, get set, GO etc.. and Teabag takes off like a shot, and I uhh, try too.. and fail..

What seems to have have happened is that on the false start and the ensuring jolt to come out of the starting gate late and catch T-bag, I seemed to have pulled my groin and left part of it sitting on the road some where... Yeeouch! So T-bag wins, I'm a lame duck, I proceed to stay and play hockey so as to try and work things out and I had a spectacular game! I have discovered the true secret to good goaltending.

Don't move!

Because I couldn't really move, I played goalie and every shot at the net hit me. It was great! I'm gonna remember this tidbit of information.. When the game was over, everyone headed back to work and soon left me in the dust. I could only walk like 2 miles an hour, if you call it walking. It was like a shuffle that elicited the least pelvic movement possible and they thought I was joking (for 2 and a half months). From what my doctor said it was a level 3 groin pull, or some such thing, and only time will fix it. That and to actually warm up and then stretch next time I do something like that...

I walked funny for 2 and a half months. The same day I pulled my groin some idiot set fire to the transitway bus station forcing the bus guys to put a detour in place forcing me to walk an extra half a kilometer every day for those 2 and a half months. (step.. ouch.. step.. Ouch.. step.. ouch..)

My gait was kinda like someone with a medical disability. If someone with cerebral palsy was walking in front of me, they'd swear I was walking like that to make fun of them.. No way in hell! This is how I walk now!!!!

I redeemed myself in The Great Race part Deux. There's video.. I'll post it some day soon..

GPS-less for a few days - Garmin 60Cx

I'm GPS-less for a few days(sigh). I feel uhh, incapable of navigation. I better not go anywhere new this weekend or I'll get lost(grin). I sold my GPSMAP 60C and ordered it's upgrade the 60Cx from GPS Central in Calgary along with a 1GB MicroSD transflash card, cause in addition to the improved satellite reception, it takes expandable memory cards so you can fill it up with map info. Tigerdirect had these cards on for $60 and GPS Central Priced matched so that saved $30.. The old 60C had 56MB internal storage. So from 56MB to like 1024MB. Dat's a lot of maps!

I said I wasn't gonna do this, but, techno-slut that I am.. Couldn't help it... I spend hours standing still in the forest getting eaten alive by mosquitoes holding the GPS up to the sky averaging coords, pointing the thing at different angles trying to get as many birds talking at once.. If this thing saves me from doing that, then it is money well spent!

And it's not that the 60C is all that bad! It's a question of cover.. In an open area it's gonna be about the same but under snow-covered trees or in a downpour... I'll be set!!

When I was downloading my waypoints to give it to the new owner empty (I had lots of sexy geo-waypoints in there! Sleepless, One-time pad, bla bla bla..) I thought I should put some fake ones in, like DEADBODY1, VICTIM3, GRAVE17, hehehehehe. But uhh.. I didn't..

Friday Night caching -

So being GPS-less myself, Kyle led the way with his Garmin Gecko and we tried a really hard multi out in Rockland called "Cachers of the Lost Ark" We got pretty far until we hit a snag in the cache-setup which had us smack dab in the middle of somebody's backyard. Not wanting to look like we were doing B&E's we vowed to come back and finish it off another day.
At midnight on the way home we hit a night one called (oddly enough) Orleans at night which featured 'fire-tacks' those little pyramid shaped reflectors that shine back at you when you hit them with a flashlight but are very hard to see during the day. It led us to an Island (sorta, once we figured out how to get onto it) and we saw a Beaver in the creek. It bugged out when we hit it with the spotlight and as we were packing up the geocache I thought I heard it again but it turned out to be some guy taking a walk instead. He was on the other side of the water and we were on the island and we had a short talk about the whole geocaching thing from a distance and then he invited us to a fire he was gonna make out by the river on the hill. We declined (cause it was weird, but hey, he seemed nice enough, still, so did Jeffrey Dalhmer)..
We saw a deer on the way to the next cache and discovered the coolest fallen log bridge I've seen in a long time. I have to use this as a film location this year, it's just TOO cool (see pic above).

I love the Smoking Gun website - Charlie Sheen sucks

According to our freinds at the Smokin Gun website, Charlie Sheen is not a very nice guy. Check out the 17 page declaration his ex-wife Denise Richards filed.. Years after that Heidi Fliess thing he's still apparently chasing prostuitutes and addicted to gambling and porn..

Question..

If you're married to Denise Richards... Uhh.. Why do you even need to leave the house?


She rocked in Star ship Troopers! (and Wild Things)... And Charlie? Well, Platoon was great too! (Johnny Depp was in that movie. Weird eh?)

Eagle cam in British Columbia

So there's these two eagles with eggs on Hornby Island which is in the Straight of Georgia, the body of water separating the BC Mainland and Vancouver Island. Click on the picture to go to the website and watch the live feed (funny, I loooked at it from Ottawa at 11:30 and there was light but I just checked at 12:24am and it's totally dark - there's like 3 hours time difference). There's not much info on the page about what you're looking at but the forums are full of info, and so is the FAQ. From what I can gather there's 100 meters of coax cable running from a camouflaged industrial closed circuit TV into this guy's house where it is tweaked and broadcast onto the net. The eggs are supposed to hatch around the 26th of May from what I gather (although I may be wrong, keep watching)

Very cool!

Goldfish CPR.

So on Saturday my wife cleaned my five year old's fishtank.. While it's being cleaned the two fish sit in some other bowl of water. On Sunday she put it back together and filled it, put the pumping thing on top (it didn't work) and then told me to see if I could fix it while she went out to run an errand. So I look at the thing, and see that it's not getting any suction, so I fill the tank up more and fully submerge it and it just starts to work. Good stuff!
It was at this time that I noticed that one of the fish in the temporary(vacation) bowl wasn't doing so well. From what I hear, when they swim sideways towards the bottom and then float back up to the top - that's bad. It was the bigger one too (the one that eats like a pig). It's name is Ruby (I don't know if it is male or female and I respect Ruby's privacy)... SO I plunked it in the real tank, where the pump is going, oxygenating the water, etc.. and it just floats to the top again.. This is gonna be bad. The last dead fish was very traumatic and I don't have time to get a replacement!

So I gave it fish CPR. It's like this. It was not moving when I scooped it out of the other bowl but when it was out of the water, it gave a little flip and moved a bit more when I plunked him in the big tank.. Then he floated again.. SO I scooped him in the net thingie and took him out into the air again and this time he really didn't like it (or she.. we just don't know) and he started flipping some more.. Back in the bowl.. A little bit livelier.. One more time.. Now the fish was real pissed off.. So I put it back, I fed it, and it stopped the sideways swimming`floating and came back to life..

Hah! I guess it's kind of like waking someone up by sticking their head into the toilet...

GAG8 dinner, Bullwhips & Indy talk...

We had the big geocaching roundup dinner at Uncle Louis again this year. Great Pizza! And they had the hockey game on so we could watch Ottawa thump Tampa Bay. Got to meet quite a few new folks and had the chance to place some names with some faces.
Funniest conversations started when the placed cleared out near the end and we all traded bad stories of bad places you go to when you're male, young and stupid.. (grin).

About mid evening I noticed I was sitting beside a guy with an Indiana Jones fedora (it took awhile to notice, they are cool hats and kind of blend for me). He was a freind of Kirok's, who incidentally grew up watching the same cartoons and TV shows as me and gets any references that I occasionally blurt out. As I was talking to the guy with the cool hat, I noticed he was also wearing the kahki shirt from "Temple of Doom".. I Check the pants.. Man, those are Indiana Jones pants.. I'm pretty sure the boots were those ones from Alden in England (also used in the movie) but I never checked, and heck, there was a brown leather "Indy" jacket folded over the chair.
How cool is that! YEARS ago I stumbled acros the motherload of Indy fan sites, INDYGEAR.COM and I had read up on the movie costuming and props there. I own a great prop book on the Lucasarts movies, from Star Wars to Raiders and it's great to get all the gritty detail.

And since I make bullwhips (outdoor whipcracker only folks, none of the kinky bedroom stuff) and used to be a member of the Australian Plaiters guild (Kangaroo is the best thonging leather there is, I still have about 10 hides at home stinking up the closet) of course we talked about the David Morgan 12 strand bull (my how his prices have gone up!). I own a 10 footer he made in 2000 (paid about $500 US for it then). Back in the late 90's I exchanged a ton of emails with Morgan about his whip construction. He was in his late 70's back then, and he's still makin' em!

It reminded me of the time I dressed up in psuedo Indy gear for Hook's Indy-themed Geocache "Indy lost his watch" Man.. I gotta get me one of those hats.. The whole reason I wore a brown Tilley hat for years was because I liked the Indy Fedora, but didn't want something as recognizable(grin).

Can't wait for the 4th Indy movie!!

And the next GAG!