While I'm not much of a

gamer these days, I've been busy with other things. The world is catching on to Pokemon Go. Its "augmented reality." It seems media is more enamored with the hazards of playing the game then the game itself. I can't play this game because we don't have a smart phone. One of those is integral to game play. While I have a new Nintendo 3ds I haven't been able to get into it that much. I know people that have hacked into the device. I could see obtaining a video capture card as long as it doesn't violate my tos. Pokemon Go is very popular on Twitch TV.

The second part of Coast 2 Coast this morning is about the Knights Templar. These are not the same Knights Templar's as in De Molay's era. The Knights Templar's are associated with York Rite Masonry or the Royal Arch. I was initiated as a York Rite Mason in 2002. Any Master Mason York or Scottish Rite (Canadian Rite Masonry) can become a member of the Royal Arch. The Knights Templar's is part of the Royal Arch Masonry. George's guest tonight of course is trying to promote his book, and doesn't go into any of the Royal Arch as far as I could tell. Basically its laid out like this: Royal Arch Masons, Council of Royal and Select Masters (Cryptic Rite) Preceptory of Knights Templar. The Order of Knights Templar is the last degree of the Preceptory. All of this is common knowledge, so I'm not giving away any "secrets" here. I still plan on doing something with the Royal Arch probably in the fall. I'm going to enjoy the second half of the show this morning. 

I'm up out of here this afternoon to get this CPP crhc form filled out after lunch. I'll be on the road before Anne heads out for work. That's on my plate for today. Thursday the Edmonton Eskimo's are in Winnipeg, and I'm looking out for that one before management here does something with our fridge, I mean oven. I may be out of action for a day or two. Anyway I'm outa here, that's all for now. 

I had 3 nights and two days off

so I can't complain about my "long weekend", except I wish the weather would have been warmer. Temperatures are supposed to get warmer into this week to about the +24* range. Nice.

The Edmonton Oiler's are to announce Todd McLellan as their new head coach about 2pm in a press conference today. I'll be following this before I head into work. McLellan took the San Jose Sharks too the playoffs every year since 2008. He also coached Team Canada to win the gold medal over the weekend in Prague. I'm not suggesting he'll coach the Oiler's to the playoffs next year but if he can bring us within a couple points of 8th, I'll be happy with that.  

Our lodge bbq is in Late June and finally our lodge has dates for Fort Edmonton Park. That's where 2 brothers/night pair up to answer questions the public may have about Freemasonry at the Masonic lodge. We have 4 dates. Other lodges have their own dates as well. Its a replica of the original lodge here in Alberta. I think its been in Fort Edmonton park for decades. I missed going last year but our current JW and I used to go all the time. I got June 20th. I'll have lodge this summer. 

This morning morning I've got to call my Doctor's office to set up that X-ray and blood test for this week. After the Oiler press conference I'll be heading out to work for my 5.5 hour shift. Anyway that's all for now.  

With all this time off

I'm blogging more often, so 2-4 blog posts a day isn't out of the unlikely. 

"So why is he up so early," you may ask? This morning tech support from my isp is going to make a service call. They said from 11-1pm so expect them to call half an hour before they arrive, tech support said on the phone. May as well fire up the computer before they get here. Most likely they won't get here until about 1pm, but you never know. I've got nowhere to go so what the heck, although I'd rather be in bed and get up when Anne gets up.

Since I've got no immediate goals in the lodge and no real goals, the only thing I'm looking for is my ipm jewel and apron. I should get that when we go back in January. Other then that, nothing. My next step after that pardon the pun, is to explore Royal Arch. I'm looking at getting a petition for that in the Spring around May or June. The next degree is the "Mark Master" degree and I've been looking at this degree for awhile now. It expands on the original Masonic story.

After this, I'm checking my email, visit the Rogers Place arena sky cam and put a fd fantasy jockey team together for tomorrow nights games. Anne is working tonight so I have the place to myself. Anyway, that's all for now.

I tweeked this blog here

a few days ago. The big changes were mostly cosmetic. The header was changed and so were the pages. Where it read My favorite Topics, is now Topics. Gallery is now Flikr photo stream and I took out "On politics." I'm not big on politics anyway and where it read Conventions, etc is now just SFF Cons. I also put a bit of a disclaimer in my header about grammar and spelling. Hopefully its just cleaned up a little. 

The new project is very interesting and it gives me hours from 2-9 and we're braking an extra 15min early, which is nice. 

At Audrey's the other day I checked on my western novels book order. I ordered the first 5 in William Johnstone's Eagle series.
 

Apparently the whole series is available so I got the 1st out of 5 and the others are on their way. Good stuff.

I've been playing with my new gaming device I got Sunday afternoon: My new Nintendo 3ds. Since it came with a game, I have yet to buy a new game. They're about $40 each at Future shop. I want to get the latest Zelda and the Lego games. I can also get them used as well.

I'm off to attend a Masonic funeral tomorrow. I've got some speaking parts in front of strangers in a setting I'm not at all comfortable with. At least the speaking parts can be read, so that's a good thing. There's also a turkey supper latter. I might not attend this part. Anyway, that's all for today.

I'm beginning to figure out how

this YouTube Google+ comment thing works: When I open my gmail there is a bell icon in the top right hand corner of my computer screen. When it shows numbers on the bell that means that there are you tube comments. I click on this bell and a drop down box shows me icons or pictures of YouTube posters. I click on the highlighted box and up comes the comment under the video I left a comment on. It's slick

Now I really wanted to go to Lodge last night but it was hard to justify to my wife why I should be attending last night. My wife is jealous and insecure of me having a "social life" while she doesn't. She hasn't actually come out and said this but I know this is how she feels. Just attending my monthly lodge meeting is challenging enough as it is, and Anne barely tolerates me going to this. Lately she's been warming up to me visiting other lodges but that took years of her realizing that me going to my lodge is benign and not a threat to her. We're a small lodge and some of us were at the practice Sunday 2 days ago and some of us do not have supportive spouses in Masonry. Apparently nobody was represented at this memorial lodge meeting from our lodge last night. To be fair the lodge last night at Freemason Hall was out of our district. Even though the brother that got killed over the weekend was a steady visitor of our Lodge, yes someone should have been there representing our lodge last night. I received an admonishing email directed to all of us that our lodge was not even represented at last nights lodge. I don't remember what the guy looked like. If I attended last night I would not have been able to make any phone calls, conducting lodge business to get our installation invitations out. I caught bits and pieces of the Oiler hockey game but most of my time was making phone calls. I'm still not done yet. I am however going to go to lodge next Wednesday for an installation put on by another lodge. I certainly can not find fault with the contents of the admonished email I received our senior brother put fourth. The sender and the other guy from this Lodge was representing other lodges other then our own. I had other duties that were lodge business that kept me away. 

Oxford Dictionaries has released its 2013 word of the year, and, like last year, it has gone with a tech-savvy term: "selfie." It basically means people who take pictures of themselves with a camera phone. Yeesh.

Well, the Edmonton Oiler's finally won a game at Rexall but it took a struggling Columbus Blue Jacket team on the road to do it. It was a convincing 7-0 win. Lets see the Oiler's do that with a team like LA or Vancouver. Last nights win was a fluke but it was a badly needed shot in the arm for the copper and blue. Anyway, that's all for now.

Sleeping in past the usual 8 hours my body needs is something I rarely do unless I have a seeling aid of some kind

so today I slept in past noon.

Last night at our practice, at least we had enough for a quorum. It was an installation practice. Four of my officers, couldn't make it. There was a weather advisory warning saying that if at all possible stay off the roads. We worked with the "tools" we had and still pulled off a good practice. A bunch of us went over to our DDGM elect's place as we had a bit of a "mini festive board" I was home by 9pm and Anne had the Christmas tree up and I just rounded out the rest of the evening.

If I get this other job I'll try it out part time. If it's too stressful then I can always say I gave it a good shot. I still have my current job and I won't give that up. Unless the new job pans out I'm a good fit for them and they 're a good fit for me. It was my wife that told me about the job Friday night. Apparently one of her colleagues mentioned it to her. It pays almost twice as much as what I'm getting now! I think she got the job because she's a visible minority from another country. My wife says her English isn't very good as it is. When I asked about the job, all the girl on the phone just gave me the email address I sent a email with a cover letter and a 1 page resume of my skills, work history and education.

Today I'm leaving out of here at my usual time for my 4 hour shift. I like this 3-pm shift. It gives me the opportunity to catch more Oiler losses on home ice. If I hustle I can get home by 7:45pm to catch whats left of the games. Next Oiler game is on Tuesday. Anyway, that's all for now.

I woke up yesterday morning

and a blanket of fresh snow on the ground! It was cold waiting for the bus.

*An overnight update; Anne said the guy that is doing our taxes called yesterday. Maybe it's to say he wont be in today (most likely the weather) but I'll call this afternoon before she leaves to meet me later today at the office. I'm so exhausted I could call in and cancel for today, but it's on with the show.

This one is just too weird, suddenly being swallowed up by the earth on a golf course's fairway drove a wedge between Mark Mihal and a stellar round. The 43-year-old mortgage broker was counting his blessings Tuesday and nursing a dislocated shoulder sustained four days earlier when he tumbled into an 5.5 metre deep sinkhole on the 14th hole of the Annbriar Golf Club near Waterloo, Ill. Read more here:

At work this morning I need to ask the boss if I can book off half an hour early so Anne and I (she’s meeting me at my office) at 4:30pm can go to her building to see if we/I owe Revenue Canada this year or if I get a break as one of her co workers does taxes as a business. Now I won’t mind if I owe something like $50, $100 something like that. We need it paid off to get that GST check every 4 months. We might not even qualify for that. Then after that, we’re boarding the #12 bus by The Bay out to the Kingsway Ramada Inn for her birthday dinner.  She’s got some shopping to do and I’m heading back downtown catch the train home to watch what’s left of the Oiler/Wing’s game and watch Smackdown. I’m up early to get my haircut, Tim’s breakfast, Audrey’s for my book down to LM pay off Machine bill at LM catch the #2 bust to The Bay and walk down to Freemason Hall. So, I’ve got a busy next couple of days.

 Another one for my WTF files: One of Britain's most famous "madams" announced in January that she was coming out of retirement to set up a brothel exclusively catering to disabled people and the terminally ill. An ordinary brothel would be illegal in the town of Milton Keynes (45 miles from London), but Becky Adams insists that the government could not shut hers down without illegally discriminating against the disabled. [Milton Keynes Citizen, 1-11-2013] Unfortunately I don’t have a link for it but that’s why we have Google, right?

This is good local news: Yesterday the Ottawa announced $250M in LRT infrastructure money for the Millwood’s/Downtown LRT. The line will begin in 2015 and will be open for business by 2017. It’s the 2nd route over the North Saskatchewan river. This means the City of Edmonton has $1.050B, they still need about another $800M and the City hopes to get that much from the Province (despite current cutbacks) We don’t need the money now, we can get it in 2017. By that time the current Government might not be around. Anyway, that’s about all for now.

This post is basically a recap from yesterday and what's

going on for the weekend. 

Thursday was great. I did some banking, got my Warhammer 40K book. At home a bite to eat a hour and a half power nap get ready for Lodge. Part of being a Mason is visiting other Lodges. Especially in Cities it's easier as here in Edmonton we have about 30 Lodges between 3 buildings. A couple of weeks ago I paid another trip to a Saturday Lodge, where I made an announcement we were going to confer a degree. I met some great people at that Lodge and befriended an older Scottish fellow  and invited him out to our degree. I learned a few weeks latter ours was cancelled. I screwed up my lines and made an embarasment of myself near the end, which nobody seemed to mind. This is the good part, the fellow I befriended was one of a district brethren and at the festive board he introduced himself and mentioned how I invited him to Lodge (even though we were suposed to confer a degree which didn't happen) so that felt good now that the guys in my Lodge know I'm out visiting. I had a beer some sandwiches. I was home by 10pm. 

This weekend I'm going to take it easy. There's an Oiler game on at noon Saturday but I'll be sleeping until about 1pm 

Anyway I have a full day today. Lots of stuff going on. I'll elaborate later, anyway that's all for now.   
  

Yeesh. That's about all I can say for now

I can't site any details but yesterday I lost  my job. I spent 12 years and 3 months at it. I was always on time for all my shifts. I did the best that I could. It's the end of an era. The worst part of all of this is I worked with some great people that I'm going to really miss. They were like my family. There's an empty feeling in my stomach right now. I'm not going to dwell upon it here as I can't say anything. Suffice to say I'm going to be ok, no need to panic or anything.

One thing is understood: I'm canceling my website until I can obtain something steady. My website saw me post 1723 blog posts. Many of those entries were excerpts out of my diary and or  copies from Blogger. Of course I'll keep my Blog open here. Maybe I'll come back to the website this time next year, we'll see. As for my 2Gb internet tablet at $37/month, I cancelled that yesterday afternoon. I'm back to the Flex plan at $5/month for 10Mb but I have wifi and my home internet. 

This morning I'm back in the office with some papers to sign and I'm picking up my last cheque on Friday. Next week, I'm applying for my CPP. I didn't want to do this so soon but it's necessary to get on it right away. I'll probably do this Thursday and next week I'm going to register for Alberta Works and get that thing going. 

I have 2 big bills to pay off, LM and my Lodge dues and also my current bill for my tablet. Not the $5 one.

One thing, I've got some time do get some reading done, that's for sure and maybe even go to Commercial next Saturday. I'm also learning the WM opening and closing charge, which is quite substantial but with all this on my mind it's going to be tough to sleep tonight. Anyway, that's about all for now.

Despite the post below

there are a few more things I want to cover.

About 3 years ago, Anne and I had applied for housing subsidy a few months before we had to put Pledges down. I had to go several times to get the application in because it was sent back to us because of something clerical. Well, 3 years latter after we had all but wrote off our plans for housing subsidy we get a letter from CRHC asking us if we still wanted to be on the waiting list? We have up until June 20th to get the new application in. Sure, we’ll put the application in to wait what another 3 years? We’re competing with new Canadians for housing subsidies even though we’re low income, they get subsidies first and with the influx of new Canadians coming into this country, they get first crack at housing subsidies while the rest of us on low income have to be put on “a waiting list.” It’s going to be a long time before we ever get accepted and this isn’t Edmonton Housing, it‘s a subsidy program from CRHC. Another high profile housing subsidy demographic are single parents with children. But Anne and I are a couple of “dinks.” Dual income no kids. We’ll fill out the form and submit it and then forget about it.

I was right about the upcoming movie “Prometheus.” It’s a prequel to the movie franchise “Aliens,” something that I have zero interest in.

The Elder Scrolls gaming scene is all a buzz over a rumor that Bethesda is launching a MMO game of their game series but so far those are just rumors. I Haven’t heard any conformation from Bethesda.

I watched the last half of “Monday night Raw” and really enjoyed it. On a scale from 1-10, I’d give it an 8. It‘s always nice to have the show end with drama.

So if all goes well, I hope Thursday I can secure a ride from Mike or Neil to the Grand Lodge Communication (GLC). Mike sounds like my best choice especially if he can say pick me up at 7am and we can go in our street cloths to Red Deer. Hopefully grab some breakfast and head to the site and hang around if we have to and sign in and cast our vote and leave. If we can be back by 2pm, I can pop into the office and call Anne from there and put a couple of hours in. Perfect. Anyway, that’s about all I have for now.  

Finally everything since the beginning

of the week has come to a head. Yesterday, I got the dinner figured out and my parts in the lodge figured out. Too  make matters worse Anne calls me just before break and makes a change of plans for me. I hope she said she wanted me to put my check (what I give her) in my account. Otherwise I would have brought cash. Up until they began handing out checks to everybody at 8:15pm, I was wondering if I had a check at all. And if so how much was it going to be? I’ve seen them dicker me out before and others. Ok, I got my check and opened the envelope, $325 Whew, almost a full check. Instant relief. I headed up to the bank cashed my check and left the $265 like I hope Anne wanted me to do. All of it the festive board, my part in the Lodge, my check all came out ok. Thank God. I even have $100 to play with as well which means I can get my RJS book and a bite to eat after work tomorrow. The only downside to all of this today was I had only $25 on sales but it was all on card. All I can say was, what a week! I even got my iTunes card fixed up. All in all, this week turned out great. It could have been a disaster.

Music over the years has changed so much not only in genres but how music has been produced. It used to be from the beginning a collection of musicians or one person with a flute or plcucked instrument of some kind. In the "modern era" the phonograph was introduced in the late 1800's. Music was then recorded in a control room on a 4 track device and then evolved to 100 banks console to digital music on the computer making the art of producing music open to anyone. So along comes the iPad, which is becoming a serious music production tool. It's going to be a long way off before the iPad will replace a 4 piece band or anything or even someone with an iPad on stage. But with Digital Audio Workstations (DAW's) so accessible for hobby musicians IPad's/Apple's Garageband Gb isn't quiet there yet. I'm a hobby musician. The only instrument I can play (barely) is the DAW, which is an instrument in itself. Gb isn't even like the same thing of it's Mac big brother. For example, I paid $500 for Cubase 6 2 months ago. Gb comes free with every Mac computer but for the iPad it's a $5 app on a $700 device. I haven't produced any music yet but I'm about to as soon as I get over this bout of laryngitis or what ever it is. Here's what the interface of Garageband looks like: 

I gave Anne another $50 to help cover the rent last night. We we're only $50 short of rent and I did want to get that RJS book. Looks like I'm going to have to wait another week

This weekend is a short weekend. I'm paying for it now because next Saturday I want off to go to Ye Old Craft. We start Monday at 2pm, which is ok. It will still give me 37.5 hours on my check next week and more importantly give me an opportunity to visit other Lodges. Me being one of the 3 principle officers of our Lodge I should be visiting m ore and that's what I'm about to do this month. 

Today however, I've got 6 hours ahead of me and I hope J will put me onto "Harper" and not OPC. At  least I can make money on "Harper." After work I'm considering going over to Audrey's to pick up something. It wont be an RJS book but something within my price range. 

The next project for my music is going to be Melodyne editor for my voice as I'm going to need an affect on my voice. I'm  not a singer but I want to "sing" or create noise with my mouth. I want to save up $450 but the product itself is about $350. I don't want to leave myself short. So $75 over the next 6 weeks will do it. So I hope by mid June I'll have it. Anyway, that's about all for now.

  

Lately I’ve been

on a “Monkee’s kick,” way even before Davy Jones passed away a couple of weeks ago.

The only thing I have for this afternoon is to take Anne out down to Earls just over here for her birthday dinner.

Tomorrow afternoon, I’m making some phone calls before I head off to work. I’m calling the Shrine cub to see if we can book Biffs lounge for Sunday August 19th. Then I’m calling Neil to let him know the date I have to put that in the masters message for April. Then I’m calling one of my other colleagues asking him if he could print off some tickets for the BBQ. I’m sure there is a deposit on the lounge. Then I’ve got to call our secretary and find out where we can get the meet. Maybe I can make the call out at the regular meeting to see if anyone has the space to have the BBQ at their place. WM said in our chat over the phone yesterday he had it at his place at one time and it saves a lot of money. I’m sure Biff’s lounge isn’t going to be cheap even if it‘s only going to be an afternoon.

Still on Masonry, with our ranks at our regular communication dwindling, I‘m wondering when it‘s my turn to take the big chair, who am I going to get to take the JW chair? Guy is here but he has yet to take a chair beyond JD. He might be asked to do the SD. Andrew has been here for 1 month. If we can get our new MM to take a chair when I’m SW, it’s going to free up our current Tyler to maybe take the JW chair but that’s not my decision to make, I’m just thinking out loud. When you’ve been through all the chairs, you can go into any chair, you don’t need to go in any kind of order. Anyway, that’s about all for now.