I am way behind on my post quota this month. Yes, I have a quota, one I just made up now and have to enforce for arbitrary reasons.
Here is a cat being put to sleep (very briefly).
General
The most depressing sign I saw today
There’s a big office building that sits midway between the condo and nearby grocery store and when it opened, we got a bonus walk that acts as a shortcut to the store, saving us having to walk up and around the block. It’s a pleasant little walk, with a nice view of the river (until they finish building the new condo towers, at least), and there’s a little grass area with picnic tables and a garden. The area is a bit truncated due to encroaching construction, but what’s there is green and lovely.
And now the garden there has this sign:
This is not the kind of sign put up proactively, so it means it went up after needles were found in the area. If you stand at this sign and look to your left, you are looking directly at a daycare facility, with a playground beside it. It’s about ten steps away.
Addiction sucks, for sure, but maybe if you’re going to shoot up, don’t toss your needles out where they can prick and infect innocent little kids (or anyone else)?
Goose fight at the OK Corral golf course
Today, the last day of winter, was a weird one for local geese.
I saw a pair of geese–often referred to by their affectionate nickname, poopmonsters–in the pond outside the Langara library this morning. This is perfectly normal, except the pond is empty and I got the impression, somehow, that the geese were expecting and perhaps demanding water. Soon, geese, soon. They have to wait until overnight temperatures stay above freezing for a week or something.
Later I went for my usual walk around the golf course at lunch and saw another pair of geese (or maybe the same pair, which would be even better) out on the links. They weren’t golfing, or at least not yet. They were just milling about, pecking at the ground for food, and probably pooping. I heard the splendorous honking of another pair of geese and looked to the sky. Lo, there they were, and they came down to join their feathered friends. Except they were not friends. One of the geese, upon landing, immediately chased another. A goose fracas quickly ensured, with much honking, wing-flapping and snapping of beaks. It was either an alpha male thing (do geese have alpha males) or one of the geese was just plain loco. I’m still not sure which. If I’d had more time I would have shot some video, because it was a dazzling display of waterfowl foolery.
And this ends winter and the season of crazy geese.
Amusing cat image, March 2018 edition
The smart home, now with more fur. Or the catswitch, if you prefer.
Curious people at Disneyland (thanks to Street View)
The last time I went to Disneyland was in 1982. I was 17 years old and Trudeau was prime minister.
Today, 36 years later, I am not 17 and Trudeau is still prime minister. Okay, his son is, which is kind of weird.
Anyway, Google now offers Street View for a bunch of Disney parks (because they have a bunch now, instead of just the two they had back in 1982) as this story on The Verge points out. I immediately felt the pull of nostalgia draw me to the Disneyland map and while I’m familiar with the many changes made since I was last there, it is another thing to “walk” around and see them.
For every part that looked familiar–the Matterhorn is still the Matterhorn–there were as many that were completely new or dramatically changed. Tomorrowland is almost unrecognizable compared to its 1982 counterpart. Back then it went for a more realistic, science approach. Today it’s basically Star Wars rides with a few others sprinkled around. Space Mountain survives and still dominates the skyline with its 1970s future aesthetic–imposing and a bit sterile, clean lines that say “this is serious stuff,” which was kind of funny given that it’s a rollercoaster.
The People Mover is sort of gone–for some reason they never removed the elevated rail, which has that same 1970s future look that Space Mountain has. I’m sad that it’s gone. It was a strangely soothing experience to ride around in.
But what inspired this post were the people in these Street View shots. Google blurs the faces, but it’s not the faces I am interested in. It’s the crowds. The mapping was done in August 2017, which is prime tourist season, and the place is jammed, far more than I ever remember it. Also there seems to be about a million strollers parked all over. They either have a massive stroller service or people are bringing a massive number of very young kids to the park. Also, the general size of people has…uh…grown.
Mostly, though, I noticed these two as I was virtually strolling about.
First is “What did I step on?” kid:
Zooming in, it sort of looks like there’s something on the ground–gum, maybe? I’m not sure. He seems fully enthralled by it.
The next one is more straightforward. Here a man has found sanctuary from the sun, the crowds and the tens of thousands of strollers. At first glance he almost appears to be experiencing quiet anguish…
But then you realize he has taken his shoes off, suggesting he is merely resting his tired feet. And head. And everything else. Or perhaps the shoes are the source of his trauma and he is caught up in the existential dread of how can he leave the park without any shoes on his feet?
Anyway, the pseudo-tour of Disneyland left me feeling a mix of sadness for the quaint park that was (not to mention my youth, though not my hair) and a deepening realization on how change is constant and inevitable.
I’d still like to go back someday, though, assuming the U.S, doesn’t meltdown before I get a chance.
Bonus amusing cat image, February 2018 edition
Because I’m sick and this is kind of adorable.
Me and my life skills indicator: The Prologue
I just completed a two-day Coaching and Mentoring workshop, which I don’t recommend doing with a bad cold. If I could have made the cold optional I would have opted out.
But between the congestion, aches, and general tiredness, I got to see the results of my Life Skills Indicator (LSI), which was the compiled results of a 240 question survey that I and four co-workers had to fill out (those poor co-workers). All of the questions were about me.
On the plus side I found out I’m not a megalomaniac bent on taking over the world (or the office). On the negative, I’m allegedly too passive, conventional and satisfied with the status quo. All of which are kind of odd (I’ll cop a bit to passive, because if no one is rustling my jimmies, I tend to be content).
I will have more on this once this head cold has vacated my head and other parts of my body. For now it’s a little too aggressive (unlike me) to allow me to concentrate on expanding on the LSI results. But there is entertainment to be had here, so stay tuned, as they say.
(That darned snow) day
The not so sneaky snow returned today, starting to fall just after 9 a.m. By 11 it was looking like this outside the college library:
At 12:45 p.m. an announcement was made that the college was closed and GO HOME.
Which I did.
The SkyTrain was unsurprisingly crowded and despite being a bit slower than usual, I got downtown without issue. The Expo Line was unaffected by the snow and most places were still open, so I didn’t face any big pre-rush hour crowds. It was nice getting home hours before daylight ended.
The snow continued on and off (but mostly on) for the rest of the day and most of the night. This morning it is a veritable winter wonderland out there, though most sidewalks have been thoughtfully shoveled. The ones around the condo have not been shoveled and I have no doubt the Facebook page for Copperstone condo owners is rife with strife over the snowy sidewalks. I wore my boots.
The forecast for the week ahead promises low temperatures just below freezing, which will make the snow crisp ‘n icy, but daytime highs will be above–it’s 4ºC as I type this–so the big snow will still steadily melt until an early spring magically starts.
Yes, an early spring. You read it here first.
Not so sneaky snow
Right now at 1 p.m. it is snowing. Did I bring this on by talking about “sneaky snow” falling overnight in my previous post?
I’m going to think positive and say yes. Yes, I have mastered unknown powers of the universe.
As it turns out, the lottery ticket I bought for tonight also contains all of the winning numbers. I’ll update this post later as a multi-millionaire to confirm.
UPDATE: Somehow I am not super rich today. An oversight, obviously. I’ll keep working until it’s addressed.
It also stopped snowing and is sunny today. Hooray for sun.
UPDATE #2: The jackpot for the 6/49 draw is now up to $9 million. Nine is my favorite number (well, it was when I was a kid and it seemed important to have a favorite everything), so this obviously means I am meant to win tonight. As always, I promise to use the money wisely and carefully and not on 10,000 Klondike bars.
Sneaky snow
Saturday it snowed overnight, just as it had earlier in the week. I call this sneaky snow, coming in quietly after you’ve gone to bed, waiting to surprise and possibly delight you the next morning. Except the sun and warming temperatures usually make short work of this ninja-like snow. the next day (it’s just above freezing now, so the sun is slowly doing its thing)
I’m okay with this.
Also, in the interest of not being all complaint-like I’m going to rename the damn snow tag to that darned snow, which makes it sound kind of cute. I’m not opining on whether I think this is accurate because that could possibly violate the no-complaint thing.
It was 20 years ago today…
Sgt. Pepper taught the band to–no, no, that’s not it.
(That’s a whole other chapter of “Makes you feel old,” realizing Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was released 51 years ago. I remember when its release on CD [remember those?] was a big deal and even that was 31 years ago now.)
No, 20 years ago I got broadband. It was 1998 and Rogers was my ISP because back then there wasn’t really a choice. I got Rogers@home, their broadband service, allowing me to experience the world of high speed internet.
And disconnects. And outages (sometimes for more than a day at a time). And speeds that would go from very fast to slower than dial-up.
It was both amazing (“I don’t need to tie up a phone line to get on the internet!” “The internet is always on!”) and amazingly frustrating (see the aforementioned issues above).
It opened me to a world of online gaming, from which I think I’ve just finally cured myself, having let my WoW sub finally lapse after more than ten years with little interruption. But back in the early days, Tribes, a multiplayer-only first person shooter, simply wouldn’t have been the fantastic experience it was without broadband.
Broadband let me start exploring news online instead of having to sit down in front of the TV for the news hour and watch what the broadcaster wanted me to watch. I still get my news online. It’s so much better.
It was also an age before YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and other social media. In some ways this was better. Most ways. Nearly all ways, if you really think about it. There were forums for different games and hobbies, but with hundreds (sometimes thousands) of users rather than millions. You got to know people. There were a lot fewer funny cat pictures and even with broadband most of them were still small and horribly compressed.
The internet itself was still young and awkward. Websites had animated gifs and midi music. Sites were spartan or ugly or both. Spugly. But it was fresh and new and exciting.
Today, Blue’s News has literally the same design as it did back then. If you want a retro taste of what once was, that’s your active go-to right there. It used to be my home page back around then, too. It predates my high speed internet by two years. Zounds.
A few years after I got broadband I jumped ship to Telus and their ADSL. It was a bit slower but much more stable (well, not so much in that first year but it’s been solid since). The speeds today are a lot faster than they were in 1998, but web pages now serve so much fancypants content even before you include the singing/dancing/popping-up/sliding-in/good-chance-of-carrying-malware ads that it doesn’t necessarily feel a lot faster. And then you download a 50 mb file and wonder why it won’t start downloading only to realize it finished in a fraction of a second.
Fiber (or fibre, if you prefer, this post is being written in Canada, after all) is becoming more widespread, though not yet in my neighborhood. I wonder what that would feel like, speed-wise? Would I even notice? I actually don’t download a lot of stuff anymore. Mostly I just need the connection to be there and be reliable. Still, if it becomes an option I’ll probably go for it. Maybe ridiculous speed will open up new possibilities, the same way broadband did for me back in 1998. Or maybe it’ll just make it easier to exceed my bandwidth cap.
Either way, I’m ready.