Simpsons in HD with new opening Sequence!

Who'da thunk it? They changed the opening sequence! I like it!

And Bart is right. "HD is worth every cent!"

U-Haul sucks (as does STINSON FUEL 3934 Innes Rd)

I talked to a lot of people before I moved. One common thing I heard over and over again was "The moving company gave my truck away!". Well, no way was that gonna happen to me!! I reserved one, one month in advance from:

STINSON FUEL
3934 Innes Rd,Orleans, ON K1C1E7 (613) 830-2549


This was before I found out that they were as useless as an inflatable blow up Santa doll. Their main thing is selling gas and using binoculars to spy on their mortal enemy, the ESSO station up the road and they should really just stick to that. I hit the U-haul website a month before my move, found the closest place and called them to reserve a 26 foot truck. I even called 2 days before the move to reconfirm my booking. I offered to pay over the phone with a credit card, they said no, pay when you pick it up! When I showed up at 9:00am Saturday to pick it up I saw a guy jumping into the 26 footer and thought "Wow, they're warming it up for me!". I went in the little gas bar to pay for it and looked up just in time to see my 26 foot truck rolling out of the lot.

I looked at the bundled up middle eastern gentlemen behind the desk and said in a worried tone:
"Was that the truck I reserved I just saw leaving?!"
He looked at me and said.
"No, yours broke down!"
"I haven't even told you who I am!"
"Is broken down!" he insisted
I looked in the lot and there was a 10 footer covered in snow. It looked like it could be broken down.
"No, THAT little bitty one looks like it's broken down, mine was 26 feet long and it just left. Did you give my truck to the guy that rented the smaller truck?"
He looked at me. I was (*&(^&%(*& livid.
"Show me your reservation book. My name should be in it!"
He shuffled through some scraps of paper, some of which blew outside as someone came in the gas bar. That's their reservation system. GREAT!

Then the guy LEAVES! He sells some cigarettes to the guy and then runs outside and starts pumping gas for someone while I'm standing there trying not to explode.

IDIOTS! I thought. It's probably not even the guy's fault that he's an IDIOT! He just gives the trucks away to whoever shows up first. Guess i shouldn't have detoured to Tim Horton's to get donuts for the guys eh?

#@$%@^@*^&%&*&%^&!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So he comes back in and I say "Look, if you gave away my reservation, can you call your boss because if you've screwed me I have to know in the next 2 minutes so I can get out of here and find another %$#*&^#$ truck!"
He picks up the phone. Has a heated conversation in Arabic and hangs up.
"Is broke down!" he says again.

I immediately turned and left before I said or did something nasty (or both). I screamed the F word at the top of my lungs all the way back to my car in the Walmart parking lot (apologies to the early bird shoppers). I had a pile of people showing up at my old place in 30 minutes to move my stuff and I had no truck.

I phoned 4 places, no trucks.. The 5th place, HERTZ, had a truck and saved my ASS!!!! By 10:00, only 30 minutes off schedule, I was backing it in my lane way. Thank got it was a cold Saturday in January and not the end of the month!

I have yet to go tell STINSON fuels what I thought of them that day, but I've learned my lesson. Don't rent a U-Haul, and don't rent from a gas station, and somebody at STINSON FUEL is an IDIOT!

IDIOTS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So I moved eh?

About 990 meters from my old house. My postal code changes by 2 digits. The kids schools are the same. We have a newer house that we'll actually do nice things to (Hardwood floor, ceramic, new carpet, basement offices, new kitchen, bla bla). We have no backyard neighbors!!! (except for the small furry mammal kind). We have a view!!!

It's all good!

But moving is HELL!!!!

Thanks to everyone who helped out! (notice I didn't let them touch my guitars)

The packing experience was quite interesting. I never knew I had so much weird shit in my house. Of course, I took it all with me. You just can't get weird shit like that anymore.

Indian names

You've all heard stories about native American Indian names like you see in the movies. "Dances with Wolves", "Eagle Soaring", "Two dogs %$*&ing" that kind of thing.

It was was Native American I'm convinced my Indian name would have been:

"Did you fart?"

Funny Random cat photos

I don't really like cats. I have a healthy respect for what killers they are, but I get the feeling they don't give two hoots about us humans as long as we feed them and change their poop boxes.

having said that, here's a website with really funny cat photos.

Trailer released for Trailerpark geocachers Meet Bigfoot 2

It's about time!!!!!

Movie is not far off, just some audio post and music and final cutting to go.

Here's the trailer, set to AC DC's "Thunderstruck" (go buy it!)

Snow Wovel for Slava

Check this ridiculous thing out. I think this is the logical progression from Slava's board nailed to a hockey stick (see previous post). Website's above people, get clicking! (why does this look like it was made in the 1920's?)

Mysterious sounds at the office...

Never a dull moment in our office. Last week OC Transpo bus drivers went on strike, which I'm speculating may have led to the following situation where I work.

Mysterious sounds were emanating from a corner of the office that Wednesday. Someone came out into the hall and said "What is that?"
There wasn't a consensus as to the possible origin of the sound.

"It sounds like someone writing on a whiteboard with a marker.."
"No, it sounds like a running shoe rubbing against a kick-plate.."
"Naw.. it sounds like a bird..."

BINGO!

We have little birdies in our office. It's supposed to be a secret but the constant chirping is kind of giving it away. I haven't verified this (and won't bother to - because it' a secret) but I suspect that because of the OC Transpo strike, a volunteer can't come by the place these birds usually stay and feed them the frequency they need to be fed during a normal workday, so someone had to step up and take care of these poor orphaned birdies.

CHEEP CHEEP!

Never a dull moment in this place(grin). That damned OC Transpo union. Add little orphaned birdies to the list of those they've inconvenienced.

Real Estate 101

I hope I don't come off as a big meanie writing this blog entry. It was a stressful couple of weeks and the reason for the big hiatus in entries.

One Saturday about 7 weeks ago, a real estate agent knocked on our door. My wife answered. If I had answered, I probably wouldn't have to write this post, but I was too lazy to get up and answer that day. Next thing I know, we're going to look at houses just for fun. And you know what? Damn it all, there was one out there calling for us to buy it. It had all the stuff we like(plus a pool!! and no neighbors in the back!!! Just bunnies in a forest by a field!!! AHAHAHAHA!).

As it happened, I had gone on a retirement course this summer, and it seems I have like, 16-17 years left to work or some such thing and if I'm gonna change houses, now would be a good time( you want to pay that sucker off by the time freedom 55 or 56 rolls around). Our youngest kid started school and her hefty monthly daycare payment disappeared into smoke, woohoo! Let's take that and get into more debt!!!!

Still in the oddly coincidental timing department, 6 months ago Scotiabank (who owns some of my house) sent me a letter saying my mortgage was up and to call them to renew. Well, said letter fell behind the cookie jar and by the time I found it and called them, TOO LATE! No worries! They had helpfully auto-renewed my mortgage at 6.2 % (ouch) for 6 months without me having to sign anything! Didn't matter that I could get almost a point less anywhere else, they have my (their) best interests at heart. Sure, they call me when they want to sell me stuff, like a high interest credit card with them, or mortgage insurance, or other crap like that I don't need, but call me to let me know my mortgage is up and they haven't heard back from me? Naw... Not lucrative for them. Still, it's my fault. Which means my mortgage is set to expire December 1st (you can bet I put that one on the google calendar right away).

So.. For fun, in these soon to be crappy economic times, I decided to put my house up for sale just before the snow flies, when houses move as about as fast as rocks..

Why not!!!!

And we went with Grapevine, that sell it yourself service to save ourselves the 5% commission in the neighborhood of $13,000 to $14,000 (thank you very much). Tons of people came to see our place through grapevine - it was great!. The thing that amazed me the most though, was how just as many scummy agents (yes scummy - SCUMMY!!! SCUMMY!!!!!) found us on grapevine and called and/or emailed me to get my listing. They fed me all kinds of lines about how I am not going to sell in these times without being on MLS bla bla bla, I can't possibly be bothered with paperwork closing a real estate deal, bla bla bla, we look out for your best interests bla bla bla. MSL MLS MLS (multiple listing service)!!!.

As it turned out, I had a freind that did real estate part time and he made me a deal to put my house up on that MSL thing. Still, more scummy agents called. They led off with stuff like.

"I have someone very interested in your house! Where are you moving to? Would you consider me as your buying agent if I bring them in or if it doesn't work out, your listing agent and I can put you on MLS?"

As soon as I said, "It's already on MLS "
"Oh.." click... Lying Scumbag! Potential buyer my ass.

After I got wise to that song and dance the phone conversations were short.
AGENT "Bla Bla Bla..."
ME "Excuse me, it's simple, you bring someone by with an offer sheet and we'll talk. Bye bye.."

Then we had the agents who bring people to your place and they make you sign some 12 page thing that says, if their client buys your house we'd pay the agent 2.5% for doing squat. Sure!! I signed it. The stupid cost of doing business I guess. It's funny though, they don't let their client inside your house unless you sign it and they are usually waiting right outside the door while the agent covers their ass. I never caught on to how silly this was in time to refuse to sign the paperwork just for fun, hike the door open and say "Come on in stranger, your real estate agent is being creepy, take a look around the place!!!"

I realize they have to make a living, but a fixed percentage that high is a bit ridiculous. Especially the listing-only agents who get money just because someone happens to buy a house with their sign on the front.

We also had agents who were helpful enough to show our house to clients who were not able to afford our asking price. Not even close. Of course you find this out afterwards. I hope they had a nice visit. We love cleaning the crap out of the place before a showing and shoving our kids somewhere for an hour while we give the guided tour to someone who won't be able to buy it.

Ditto for the parents shopping for houses for their kids overseas who are concerned about bus routes because his son with 5 kids living in Indonesia can't possibly afford a car. Gee. You think he'll be able to scrape up the cash to actually buy my house? I'd stay in Indonesia. Pity about the compulsory military service at age 12. I guess he should have thought about that before he moved away from Canada (it ain't so bad here).

Then there was the agent who said to me, as their client was taking a look at our place, "My client seems very interested. If we make an offer, make sure to make the period to negotiate the offer 24 hours so we can trap them in the sale..." NICE!!! Well she ain't ever gonna be my agent. These people are looking out for your best interests folks.. Remember that!

Then there's that one neighbor. There's always at least one. The neighbor who comes to an open house and feeds you the song and dance about how his brother in Toronto is moving to Ottawa and needs a place next month and this would be perfect and they are just here looking at it for them and gosh they'll have to move fast on this bla bla bla.

Why that's just what they told my other neighbors who moved away 6 months ago at his open house. They just want to snoop and see what you've done to your place. Geez. Just ask, no need to make up crap like that because maybe we'll believe it or something.

Well, lucky for us, we sold privately in two weeks, to a nice couple who came in and saw it on the first open house. All just buyer and seller talking and emails to two lawyers, no agents, no commission.

I'll never use an agent to sell my house. There is no need. MLS brought in about 6 or 7 people, Grapevine 25 or so.

And I have a new take on Real Estate agents. They are like OC Transpo bus drivers or department store Santa Clauses. Some are nice and some are really scummy.

Forever Finding the Remote Control(s)

After spending 30 minutes one day looking for the remote control for the DVD player (it's too fandangled and doesn't have buttons onboard the unit to do things other than play,pause,stop) , I instituted this ingenious solution. I will never lose another remote control again!!

Just as long as we don't misplace the couch they're tied too, and the kids don't garrote each other with them, I should be fine!

Check out this cool cat!

A very cool cat in Vanier.

Naked guy windsurfing in the woods

So I was out geocaching last month, and I turned around and thought I saw a naked guy. On a wind surfboard. In the woods.

I kinda stopped what I was doing and crouched down to hide, just in case it was really a naked guy. I don't want to run into a naked guy in the forest. The only worst thing than running into a naked guy in the woods is running into a naked guy in the woods with an axe (that's another story).

The guy was standing pretty still, like he was doing the same thing I was doing, probably afraid of running into a fully clothed guy in the forest (you know how those nudists are). But something was fishy, so I crept closer. He looked like some sort of long-haired hippie. He was oddly familiar.

Turns out it wasn't a naked guy in the woods after all.

I got a picture with him. He never did say what he was doing out there in the middle of the woods...



I also found a garage door opener! How do these things make it out there?

Butterflies

Every year my mother makes the kids these butterfly boxes. You collect the Monarch butterfly in caterpillar form, stick them in a modified shoebox with a door and clear plastic lid and feed them plenty of milkweed (I know where that stuff grows all over the city now!!). After a time, they get fat, climb up to the top and cocoon. A predetermined amount of time later, they pop out, all butter-fly-like and we let them go and they fly to Mexico!

Jazzy's Birthday!

It was Jazzy's birthday in September. My brother showed up with a huge box his patio set came in wrapped as a present and presented it to my 4 year old. It was full of balloons and other presents hidden underneath. She dove in it 6 or 7 times, coming up with new loot at each turn. I wonder how he's going to top this one.

My sister-in-law built her a cake in the shape of a castle, made out of ice-cream cones.





And Daddy has a Batman fixation, so of course, we had to get her...

BATGIRL!

Lusk caves Sept 2008

We headed up to Lusk caves in September. One hell of an adventure! I made the mistake of following my GPS at first which took me up some road the RCMP closes off because the Prime Minister's cottage is up there or some such thing (thanks Steve!!!) , but after 30 minutes of back-tracking around some lakes, we arrived at the parking lot.

I had heard that there was a 5 or 6 KM hike to the base of the hill the caves are set in so I had the bright idea to bring our bikes so we could make it easier on the kids. You point yourself at the water and head right, following the beaches and a small set of trails. It seemed like a great idea until we hit the first rock cliff (8 foot drop that comes up pretty quickly) , and after that portage there were a few other stops and starts. I have my 8 year old on a "come along" bike attached to my rear seat post and I have my 4 year old in a child seat in front of me, plus a back-pack or two and my camera bag. It was.... heavy... And hard to bike up hills.

Eventually we hit the base of the hill near the caves and we decided to eat lunch, but the you couldn't open your mouth and stuff in food faster than it took a big cloud of bugs to zoom down your pie hole. We packed up lunch and decided to eat it at the mouth of the cave 15 minutes later. Surprising in the middle of the forest, there were no bugs! We rolled up our pants, stowed some gear and headed in. You get your feet wet the whole time, because the cave is sharing real estate with a small river-type thing. Some of the water is still, some of it is gushing pretty fast. It was great fun!

When we came out of the first chambers my wife thought that was it, but I said "No, check it out! it continues!!" So we attempted to penetrate the second set. That was the one with the big torrent of rushing water, so we ended up coming back. We'll save that for another day (or I'll come back with the guys! and do that one!).

On the way out some deer walked out into the road in front of us. This is after all, Gatineau Park and these guys love to stop traffic

Cannington 2008 with Don Ross and Antoine Dufour.

I headed up to Cannington Ontario this weekend for my semi-annual fingerstyle guitar weekend at Don Ross's place. This is like my 5th event and me and this other guy, Keith, are becoming known as "the Lifers".

It's a swell time, you go up Friday night for Pizza and song circle, play guitar until 3:00am, go to sleep, get up at 9:30 for yummy breakfast, Instructional seminars from 11:00 to 12:30. More Yummy lunch food. 14:00, more lessons. 16:00pm, free time and the obligatory trip to "The Interesting Music Shoppe" (I bought a blue Mandolin! I even gave it a name. I'm going to call it, "Amanda Lynn"). 18:30 More yummy food (did I mention the food?) Then the concert from 8:00 till 11:00 or so. Then back to the pad for more guitar and drink and merriment til 3:00am, more sleep, Yummy breakfast, one last lesson, Yummy lunch, Q&A session, then on the road back to normal (awwww..)

This time around the musical guest was Antoine Dufour. He's placed at Winfield and won the Canadian guitar festival and I can see why up close for myself now. Awesome technique. he throws more technique into a bar of his stuff in such a classy way that you don't notice it until you try to reproduce it. Explosive pull-offs here, razzguato there. Every fretted and picked note carefully thought out for maximum efficiency.

I was a fan of his stuff before, now that I've seen it up close I'm an even bigger fan. And he's a funny guy too! It was neat to see how many people had come to the weekend just to see him. I always assume they come for Don and the musical guest is a plus but some of the people there were not familiar with Don's work (and they soon became fans!).

We had some international guests, a guy from Germany, the UK, a few people from the States, BC, Alberta and the rest from Ontario, mostly Toronto and Ottawa area.

I stayed at a great B&B called "The Winds of Erin"just down the road a spell from Don's. My room featured one of those beds with the posts and the drapes that close it all up. Very comfy. While it is fun to stay at Don's house, it is also fun TO SLEEP! AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! I left Don's place at close to 3:00am both nights and there was still music coming out of people. This is one of the comfiest places I've ever stayed at. The proprietors were extremely nice. They're initials are B and B and that is funny somehow.

I took zillions of pictures, trying to get a photo of everyone there, and their guitars. That was yet another cool thing. To see all the custom guitar jobbies. This was the first time I had one too! (that is it on the left being played by Don, made by Tony Karol). There were some builders I had heard of but never seen their work, and a few I'd not heard of at all. Each one was pretty much spectacular in it's own right. It's like a wine tasting gig, you get to try them all.

Don's lovely and talented wife Brooke was everywhere at once, helping out and making things run smoothly (I couldn't get her to play though!! ;-) . A few of us roadied at the show and worked the CD both as who better but a bunch of guitar geeks to answer questiosn and suggest which CD's to buy.

The concert was really great, we always get in early and snag seats in the front row like the guitar geeks we are. I once again practiced to be a Rolling Stones photog. I love that Don's been getting into effects with his Boss ME-50. The chorusing is always nice and the wha and distortion on an acoustic are a hoot!


The after concert party thing (every night's a party! Makes you want to be a finger style guitar player for real!) was fun, we sat around and played and shot the breeze some more, plus the yummy food. The food is always an interesting thing for me because at home I pretty much stick to what I know. They had this great cake-type thing, along with a little sign that said "Don't forget the walnut ice cream in the freezer!" I had to get me some of that! I cut myself a slice and man, someone had gotten some ice cream out, and put it in a pan nearby! I spooned some in, not having much experience with walnut ice-cream, took a taste and it was "YUCK!" "What the hell is THAT!".

Turns out it was humus. Which, oddly enough looks alot like un-melting walnut ice cream( I took a picture so people would believe me afterwards).

I brought my bullwhip out on Sunday and most of us had a crack at it, actually popping the thing after 5 or 6 tries! No police showed up or anything as a result of the sonic booms! Gotta love the country! I think I brought way too much stuff this time actually (like two guitars!) but it all came in handy. On the Sunday there was no power in the back of the building we were doing the seminar in and that was were the "can-ola" (bathroom) was. I handed someone a flashlight out of my camera bag and he went away mumbling:
"That guy is like R2D2, he has just the thing you need when you need it, bla bla bla.. " What a compliment! And a Star Wars one at that!

Antoine's lessons were great. They focused on elements of his technique and featured a lot of small scale passages to teach your fingers how to alternate pick in fingetsyle mode. I found myself at odds with some of the suggested right hand picking but Antoine soon explained that some of the ones that seemed strange had to do with the actual construction of the hand and how some fingers are naturally in a better position to pick the note instead of trying to alternate. I had recently been breaking down some Andy Mckee stuff and found that Andy uses his thumb a lot (it's a very talented thumb), cripes, almost for everything in fact, where-as I like to mix in the 1st finger a bit more, Antoine's exercises had the middle in there in places I would use the 1st, just to take advantage of the way the fingers come off the hand. Very illuminating. he went over some nice "harp" type scales where you arrange the notes in such a way that the last note rings into the next, using open strings when possible. I've always liked those!

He went over some songwriting stuff in great detail, like his writing of "Song for Stephen" explaining the Police type influence and we even managed to find out which Sting song the melody was kind of unconsciously plucked from. he even throws message in a bottle in that one and has a reggae break near the end.

Don went over "Loaded Leather Moonroof" and some modal explanations, as well as the reasons behind some of his tunings. He seems to construct the tuning for the song while most of us pick a tuning and write a song from there. On the last day he launched into the most concise explanation of the opening chord strums in "Michael 3x (the thing everyone gets wrong)" that I'd ever seen or heard. We can all play that perfectly now(grin).

One of the guys summed up the weekend like this:
"This is GREAT! I consume $500 worth of gourmet food and wine, and get guitar lessons, a concert and a place to stay for free!

You can see all 300 photos here.

Caving 101 in Gatineau park

Turns out there's lots of little caves in Gatineau park, and we visited this one a couple Sundays ago to do a geocache (what's a geocache?) that happened to be right in the cave (cavers hate that). It was called "GC17Q06 Caving 101" There were actually 3 or 4 geocaches on the way there and while we were searching for one at the outset Tripper pulled that thing he does when he finds it first (which is usually the case) , opens and signs it and re-hides it so he can watch us stumble around.

The trouble is, he stands right near where he found it so we don't go search there, so of course we don't find it(grin). When we spotted that SEG on his face we realized what he'd done and he plead guilty. As it happened, I was below him and he was above me on a small cliff, but his backpack was down here. Not one to waste energy, Tripper called down.
"Can you, uhh, grab my backpack?"

"Sure!" I said as GrizzlyG scooped it up. "Just a sec.. " I whispered to Grizz.
We found some good sized rocks and shoved them in the bottom of Tripper's pack to give him some more exercise on the hike. I think he found them an hour later and called us names. (we'll have to remember that one)...

So we found the cave and Me and Tripper piled in at once. It was a tight squeeze, not for the claustrophobic. We took a pile of pictures and at one point Tripper noticed the little bat hanging upside down on the wall after he almost squished it with his head.

How cool! A little cave with a little sleeping bat! He slept the whole time we were there, not interested n flying away or giving us rabies or anything like that!

There was a small chamber in the back and a little hole to get through to the other side but none of us went in there. It looked like you had to do a barrel roll to get through and I'm not exactly small and had no wish to get stuck upside-down in there in the dark.


More pictures here.

A few weeks later I went to the Lusk caves north of here. Now THOSE are some cool caves!

My New UFO!

It's a model I found online at The UFO Store. It has flashing lights run by a watch battery and it's held together by a magnet that allows you access to the light switch. I painted it up in a Humbrol metallic gun-metal grey colour and polished it.

It should look real good, much better than the two metal bowls duct taped together. See pic on left. (although I still always liked how that turned out. A two minute solution and very campy!).

Costume used in the Georgia Bigfoot Hoax

I didn't buy that did I?

Oops.

Ok I did. It's a fantastic costume! And I have big plans for it! It was a limited edition, only 100 were made! I had to get in while they still had them!

Too much hoax press can be a bad thing!

How to eat and chew bubble gum at the same time.

This is my youngest. We were sitting down to supper and I noticed that after a few bites, she seemed to be chewing an awful lot.. Recalling that she had been given a hubba Bubba Glop bubble gum two hours earlier, I asked the question..

"Do you still have your gum?

We were eating spaghetti too.

She's my kid. It's a skill....