When I finally broke down and got a cell phone last year I was aware of all the stories that suggest the devices could cause brain cancer, impotence, itchy skin and other assorted afflictions. I don’t really care about all that since living on this planet appears to be fatal no matter what.
What does annoys me, though, is it only took nine months to get my first spam message. It came from some company calling out of Quebec, peddling their unwanted wares under the guise of me ‘winning’ travel dollars or somesuch. No, I will not press 1 to claim my ‘prize’. Yeesh.
In the Star Wars universe, all telemarketers would be based out of Mos Eisley.
changed the background to a slate blue-gray kinda thing (will probably play with it some more)
made the site name match other links, color-wise
broke lots of stuff while experimenting but fixed everything back up
I will be restoring the writing exercises shortly and continue to fine-tune. To the average person this is about as exciting as watching a pie-eating contest where no pies are delivered for consumption but to me it’s like a pie-eating contest where one of those huge dump trucks from a strip mine shows up with 500 metric tonnes of pie.
added jQuery Colorbox to the photo galleries (this makes the photos pop-up all pretty-like)
removed a bunch of links from the sidebar, moved some to the Books etc. page and re-ordered others
removed the Sections, uh, section. The Sections links are now only at the top of the page. Redundancy is redundant.
killed the ‘jogging’ tag as it is now its own category
The biggest change is the complete removal of all of my writing. I’ve decided to take a different approach for now and will only be making a few selections available on the site, though all of the writing exercises will be back, since they are freely viewable on the Martian Cartel forums. I haven’t modified the theme yet but will be tweaking the colors and perhaps adding a graphic at the top of the site.
My question here is what makes Sunday, Monday and Tuesday nights safe? Note that there are also stops only several blocks away from this one that are still considered safe seven nights a week. This is near the downtown eastside (in Chinatown, to be precise, which borders the DTE), so this kind of alert isn’t surprising, per se, but the chosen nights seem a bit broad and like I said, there are other stops nearby. But maybe this has nothing to do with the people in the neighborhood. Maybe Pender & Main gets hit by lightning strikes or mudslides or something.
According to the WordPress Dashboard I have made 314 posts to which I have associated 173 tags. This is approximately 1.8 tags per post.
I know the ‘proper’ use of tags is to use them in a way to facilitate searching and not as witty commentary in and of themselves, but I can’t help it. If I want to make a tag called freakishly big celebrity heads and use it exactly once and never again (what are the odds I’ll find another perfect photo of a freakishly big celebrity head?) chances are I’m going to do it.
On that note, here are my top 11 favorite tags I’ll probably never use more than once*:
a babe in the 01110111 01101111 01101111 01100100 01110011
Big Brother is mapping you
grocery shopping made hard
manly with a shoulder strap
Mickey gets creepy
pigeons eating pizza
seasons in the schmaltz
skydiving presidents
the end of the world has a big budget
toothpaste madness
Xanadon’t
* technically, I did use #1 more than once, but go with it.
In the game Spore you start out as a single-cell creature swimming and surviving in the primordial soup. You then evolve through a number of other stages before ultimately achieving space travel. From there, if I understand correctly, you go on to conquer the universe. Who am I to argue with evolution?
These are my impressions of the first part of Spore, the Cell Phase. I will follow up with impressions on the other phases as I move through them.
***
Spore starts you out like a teenager in junior high school. You have a mouth, an overwhelming desire to eat and procreate and you’re tossed in with a bunch of others who will either flirt with you or beat you up.
The cell phase begins with you naming the organism that you will nurture and grow until its descendents can eventually conquer the universe in the far-flung future. I name my squiggly little guy Bob because I’m a fan of palindromes and Bob is a simple name for a simple guy. He’s single-celled, after all. My first big decision is whether to go herbivore or carnivore. Later you can switch-hit and become an omnivore, which seems to have all the perks of herbivore and carnivore and no drawbacks. Going omnivore is like being at an all-you-can-eat buffet and liking everything you see, even that curious-looking macaroni salad that may not actually be macaroni. Choosing carnivore seems well-suited for dealing with competing cells – just eat them! Herbivore feels like the underdog of this primordial soup. You eat the little bits of plant life you can find, assuming some pushy omnivore doesn’t get to them first – or decide that you look tastier instead. The carnivores, of course, only want to eat you.
Bob, evolved
I choose herbivore because I like rooting for the little guy. I give Bob a filter mouth suitable for eating the plant bits and a couple of flagella so he can swim around. He is ready to start evolving!
Bob quickly discovers just how harsh this cell vs. cell world is. The vegetable buds drifting through the water are scarce and there’s usually some mean-looking thing that has evolved into having Bob-crushing jaws hanging out nearby. The other herbivores also seem to have a metaphorical leg-up (actual legs come in the next phase) with little fins that let them swim faster to the food and chow down before Bob can. Bob perseveres, though, and eats enough plant matter to advance his DNA, not to mention his progress bar. He gets access to a mating call and by using it finds himself snuggling up with a doe-eyed cell.
This leads to the Cell Creator screen where the accumulated DNA can be traded in for various new body parts. I have minimal funds, so to speak, and decide that the best defense is a strong offense. Bob buys a nasty pair of spikes for the top of his “head”. If some other cell tries to give him the business, all he needs to do is hit ramming speed and they’ll be sorry!
To complement his new spikes, Bob also adds a pair of fin-like appendages that will allow him to turn faster, providing better control in the treacherous currents that he must ply.
When Bob returns to his existence of eating and hopefully not dying, he finds that life continues to be cruel. He may have spikes and fins now, but the other cells have poison, electricity and mouths the size of a city block to eat everything in sight. My brave little cell finds himself at one point sandwiched between two cell behemoths. I use the word sandwich deliberately, because that is what he became in short order.
Fortunately, in Spore death is a minor setback, as Bob simply respawns. With some nimble swimming he manages to find and eat enough buds to evolve his DNA to a level where he can grow legs. For a single- celled organism, legs are a pretty big deal. Bob is excited. He can now leave the water and start a new life on land, a life where he quietly hopes everything isn’t waiting to fry, poison or eat him.
WARNING! This post contains graphic descriptions of hair removal.
If you like hair READ NO FURTHER.
Several days ago I needed to apply topical cream to my abdomen to address a certain level of itchiness that was making me crazy. I am, as they say, hirsute when it comes to the chest and abdomen so I figured to insure proper application of said cream, I would shave the hair off first, leaving a sexy and smooth surface to work with.
I used my beard trimmer to whittle down the hair to where a twin blade disposable razor could handle the rest. I applied plenty of Foamy and carefully went to work (you don’t have to avoid nipples when shaving your face. At least I hope not). It took awhile and after I was done I observed bleeding in several spots from where I had nicked several moles. Gross. I cleaned up, dried off and applied the cream.
It is two days later and the itching has begun. I am aware of the rich irony in shaving to address itchiness, only to have more itchiness happen as a direct result. There is no question in my mind that I will let the hair grow back. It vividly brings to mind that the people who spend the time preening and plucking at their bodies to make them look ‘better’ could just accept themselves as is and spend that time doing something else that would be entertaining, rewarding or both. Or even just reading the latest trashy novel.
Hair is annoying. It grows the most where you least want it and the least where you most want it. Which reminds me, it’s time to shave my face.
Okay, I’m pushing it on the young part, but I am getting rather restless not running. It’s been over two weeks since my last run and there is no detectable pain in my left leg, no matter how I poke and prod it. The worst I can manage is a bit of a tweak when I lift the lower leg up at a 90 degree angle, holding it horizontal. It still doesn’t hurt, it just doesn’t feel the same as my right leg. But that is enough to make me hesitate. Still, I think about going down to the park for a test to see how it feels. If I just run a short distance I should be able to tell if it’s still in recovery mode without exacerbating the injury.
Or I could just bide my time for another two weeks and not risk it.
It should be an easy decision but it’s really not.
When I first started growing a beard, it was not intentional. I simply skipped shaving for a few weeks because I was in college at the time and looking a bit scruffy was not a problem. One might argue it was even to be expected. A classmate asked me if I was growing a beard. I had never given such a thing any thought because the most I had managed in the past was a weasel-like mustache. But I hated shaving, so this innocent question instantly translated itself in my mind to “You know you can grow a beard now, right, and totally skip having to shave?” I answered “Yes!” and the rest is (fur-faced) history. But for a bit of madness back in mid-December when I got curious enough to check out how I’d look clean-shaven, I have been beardy since 1993.
As I was soon to discover back then, a beard is not easy street when it comes to face care. Sure, I could just let it grow wild and woolly, but then I’d look like a skinny and crazy mountain man. And neck beards scare me. So I had to trim it regularly and shave around the neck to prevent that hair-carpeting-your-body look. This was manageable. But last year I lopped off the sides for a smaller, neater circle beard. This meant more shaving. I adapted, like the brave soul I am.
But now it seems the more I shave, the more I need to shave. It is curious how the body, as it ages, begins growing more hair where you least want it (eg. face), while shedding it from where you do want it (eg. top of head). My current theory is that the shaving cream has a hair growth agent in it, insuring that I need to re-supply regularly. I further theorize that the Foamy can is designed to splooge approximately five times as much cream into your hand than you actually need in order to empty said can five times faster than would happen otherwise, further necessitating frequent refills. Either that or I have a hair-trigger finger because I swear, all I do is tap the button and FOOM the can explodes a grapefruit-sized ball of foam into my waiting hand. I’m not that hairy. Yet.
The area I live in has been without a large grocery store for many years. Long ago there was a Safeway at the corner of Knight and Kingsway but it closed down and the building there was turned into a flea market. The kindly folks at Safeway put a covenant on the property to insure that no other pesky grocery stores could be built there, to keep people in the neighborhood loyal to the not-very-convenient Safeways 20 blocks or more away. A curious strategy, one might think, but retail is a curious business sometimes!
Fast-forward to last year when, after years of planning and construction, the shiny new King Edward Village opened up on the site. A deal was arranged whereby the covenant was lifted in favor of granting an extra floor on the main residential tower, increasing it from 16 to 17 stories. The area now has a PriceSmart Foods, which appears to be a Save-On Foods with shorter hours and the pharmacy surgically removed (by the way, I’d like to offer a hearty hello to any HR people who are using Google Alerts to flag stories on the web containing the names of the businesses they work for, such as Safeway or PriceSmart Foods). Another difference I noticed is that each of the two entrances/exits to the store only have a total of two regular checkouts. They have many more of the self-serve variety, however, a not-so-subtle hint to maybe not bother those pesky cashiers who must be paid for their work when you could be having fun bagging your own groceries.
I have conspicuously avoided using the self-serve checkouts because if some nice young person is going to bag my stuff for me, who am I to stop them? Today, though, as I stood behind a man slowly lifting a watermelon out from under the baby stroller he was pushing (which appeared to be baby-free) and then eyeing the person in front of him puttering about trying to find money or courage or something and then finally glancing at that gleaming and line-free self-serve checkout stand just a few feet away, I gave in and figured I would give it a shot.
The first thing it does is ask me to scan my Save-On card. I do so and the machine chirpily acknowledges this. I take out my cloth bag and place it on the spot where a plastic bag has been stretched out, awaiting the scanned items. I use a cloth bag because I’m environmental and all that jazz. Plus the handles on plastic bags dig into your hands if you are carrying something heavy like potatoes or a Steven Erikson novel. The machine asks me to scan my first item. I do so and it reads back the amount it costs then tells me to place it in the bag. I do so. This is easy. And faster than waiting behind watermelon guy.
It then asks me to scan the second item. I again do so but this time when I put it in the bag, it reports that there is something invalid on the scale (which is what the plastic bag is stretched over) and it asks me to remove this object, whatever it may be. You see, the scale calculates the weight of every item scanned to make sure you aren’t scanning one box of brownies and then stuffing 10 of them into your shopping bag. Keeps people honest or forces them to eat the other nine boxes of brownies while they stand there. I remove my ‘invalid’ cloth bag with the two scanned items. A girl comes over to help me and advises that I put my bag on the floor. This allows me to continue, but now I have nothing to put my items in. The cloth bag is on the floor, which is invalid and putting it on the scale is also invalid. I look over to the wall near me. They are selling cloth shopping bags for $1.38. Bags that will not work with their self-serve checkout.
I could just use a plastic bag but who knows what would happen if I place the previously scanned items back on the scale. The system might think I’m trying to steal brownies. A manager magically appears. I mean this almost literally. I have no idea where he came from, he was just there. Maybe the girl pushed an unseen button that sends a priority “Someone can’t figure the self-serve checkout” signal. The manager enables some sort of override on the system, he scans the last two items (I only had four in total) and I’m able to complete the transaction. By this time watermelon guy is long gone.
To recap, using the self-serve checkout:
1. Took longer than the regular checkout.
2. Required the help of two store personnel instead of none.
3. Got terribly confused by me ‘going green’ with a cloth bag — which the store itself sells mere feet away from the checkout.
Maybe there is a way this sleek and modern machine can be made to understand you are using a cloth bag and to take that into account but it didn’t seem like it. I can’t say I’ll be trying the self-serve checkout again anytime soon to find out, either!
I have been buying Writer’s Digest on and off for over 20 years, sometimes faithfully every month, sometimes only when a particular article caught my eye. I’m more in the latter mode now than the former. Recently the magazine underwent another design facelift and it’s frankly pretty impressive. I usually find most magazine makeovers to be a fairly mixed bag, but this new design is extremely clean, elegant and modern. They have found a really nice balance between white space, copy and overall layout.
Why am I writing about Writer’s Digest in a post titled “Technology good”? Because yesterday I bought, for the first time, a digital copy of the magazine. The current issue has their annual 101 Best Websites for Writers feature and I figured the digital edition would have clickable links to all of the various sites, which would be far more convenient for a relative butterfingers like me than having to type them in myself. And lo, the links are indeed clickable! On my 24″ monitor I can view the magazine at 100% without having to scroll all over to see the pages, which is nice. Plus I only paid the $5.99 US instead of the $8.99 CDN newsstand price. With the Canadian dollar near par, it’s a much better deal.
I approve of this magazine-as-PDF technology, even if it makes curling up in bed with the magazine a lot trickier.
And yeah, I know I’m way behind on the whole digital magazine thing. I didn’t learn to ride a bicycle until I was nine years old, either.
I have seen this image where it is used to indicate a NSFW post. To tie into that, just imagine the eloquence of the typical Canucks fan after watching Game 6 earlier this evening. I expect the language used would be very much NSFW. (The Canucks lost the series 4-2 and game six by a score of 5-1.)
