Yesterday I uploaded a new video

to my Jim Shannon on Sounds channel. I have several views and several likes and comments. I'll link the video here.

Thanksgiving 2024 is here. I have much to be thankful for: My wife, my home, my lodge, my music, my job (when I have work) Life is good. The Elks are bettere than they were last year. The Oilers are meh. Other then needing to get back to work, life is good. I have no complaints. 

This week Tuesday Anne and I want to head out for a bite to eat. Something keeps getting it delayed. Wednesday, I'm at FCC and that will be my week. Happy Thanksgiving weekend everyone. Anyway, that's all for now.

I forgot to bring my

iPod Touch camera as Anne and I ventured out yesterday to check out the new Clareview rec centre. My baby back ribs were slow cooking in the oven. Our first stop along the way was to Bulk Barn. I haven't been in the store yet. I got a bunch of candy for when my blood sugar levels drop. The Clareview rec centre has been opened for about a year now but we finally got a chance to get a look inside yesterday. Its really big. Lots of concourse, there are 2 NHL size ice surfaces, an indoor track and field area, tennis courts outside and a big pool, large sauna and smaller wading pools. Then there is the library. Very nice. What caught my attention was this beautiful desk for their new iMac. The desk had coaster like wheels on it. The library for a Monday was very active. Anne got a library card and ordered a book from one of the other city libraries. There was along ramp to the outside and, then to Walmart across the street. I was looking for the Belkin Rockstar headphone spliter device but they didn't have what I wanted. We almost bought me a new office chair and was ready to pay for it at the till but we were not confident it would hold a 200 pound man like myself so we left it behind. Anne bought some things and I was craving for a McDonald's strawberry ice cream. We walked home from there. My ribs were ready and I watched Monday night Raw. Anne wanted to check Staples to see what they had for office chairs but instead came back with 4 metal wheels for my current chair. it's almost like I've got a new office chair.

After our late evening meal I attempted to fool around with my webcam. I wanted to see if I could take a video of me doing something on my laptop with Maschine but the images I'm getting are all opposite. I'm not very happy with this webcam but I'm not giving up on it just yet. I need to tinker around with it some more. My iPod takes better video then this webcam. Eventually I'm going to get a a Go pro clone. I've seen some reviews on YouTube and for about $100 on Ebay. 

About 2:30am I felt my stomach tighten and felt a bit nauseous, uh-oh. I knew what was coming. I was moaning and groaning with Oiler bucket in hand in the bedroom. I was sweating all over. Finally my stomach heaved and I just let er rip and brought up my nacho dinner. Anne found the Pepto B for me and that helped. I felt better and I had a shower, then went to bed after that. Spicy food and I do not get along. Other then the vomiting earlier this morning, I"m having a decent day. Anyway, that's all for now.  

If I didn't know any better

I'd say at this point in time, the company I'm working with is playing me. For now I'm just going to site tight and see what happens. The boss said they will be back with more regular steady shifts in September. The super said pretty much the same thing. In the meantime they are running a skeleton crew doing something and with new hires. That's why I get the impression they are playing me. This company never fires people. If they don't like certain people, they just won't give them shifts and hope that they'll move on and find something else. As for the new hires since my 1 day on the 24th of July, they might be giving new hires a shift here and there type thing just to keep them hoping they wont bail. When I was there on Friday people were asking me where I've been, "Did you quit the job for something else?" The Super said that was his 2nd shift since the 24th of last month (that was the last time I worked) as of last Thursday and Friday. Out of 18 days the Super has worked 2 days? We have 2 supervisors. Where I work they have 2 pages of employees names on the sign for your cheque sheet as there are lots of people that show up periodically. I should have taken a photo of this weeks schedule when I was there Friday. Some people work a few days and I don't see them for a month. There's always that. I have enough ei to last me until that first week in September. Apparently there is another project coming up this week or next week. I'm calling in to find out Wednesday and I hope I don't get hung up on. I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt. Until then I'm not to worried, at the moment.

Some good news on the tech front, in my search for getting rid of unwanted audio on my video, there has been success. Thanks to YouTube. In Windows movie maker I can use the edit panel, go to the volume sound icon. Click on that and a sound meter appears. Scroll the volume knob to mute, go to save video and save as computer (low resolution.) It renders the file into a Mp4 file and I can add my own voice over music from there. The upload options like Youtube don't work very well with Windows music maker. All I do when I'm at my You Tube page is upload the video from there. Slick. I uploaded the new video last night with crappy music. It was just a test anyway. Very happy. The new video is in landscape mode and you can watch the new video here.
When I get some hardware after the computer, I'll be doing more music video's. These music video's will be of my hands adjusting knobs playing with various types of hardware. Once hours at work are more or less steady, I can take out an account at LM for the new Electribe Sampler.

Later this afternoon, Anne is taking Skippy in for her needles. I'm home until further notice. So tonight I'm watching Monday night Raw trying to beet the heat suffering through this cold. The long range weather this week is calling for 29's-30's up until Friday. Uggh, too hot for me but this might be our last heat have of the year (thank God) I'm not going to worry about my job situation just yet. If they can't give me a schedule by the 21st then I'll be looking for something part time to complement this job, 3 days/week until this job has more steady hours. I can see 3 here and 3 days there type thing. What I'd like is something part time steady so when this job has slow times I can work more hours at the job that's steady. At least until pension, then as long as we have our health, I'll work a 1 week a month where I am now. If I get steady hours this fall, I'll build up enough hours for another ei claim for the future and put it on hold (pending another part time job of course.) The idea is when this job has another slow time and I have 2 months before my pension clicks in, I'll activate the ei until pension. They won't let me collect pension and ei at the same time because they are both Federal Government programs. Anyway, that's all for now.

Weather wise its much cooler

now then it was this time last night. I was breaking a sweat this time last night. Next week the forecast is calling for 25-27's that type of thing. Usually about this time of year we get a big storm like the storm that had my place of employment power shut down and sent us home half an hour early. We haven't had anything like that yet. I'm just grateful we don't have the weather complications they have in California.

Its 2am on a August Wednesday and I'm off work this week week eating left over pizza, yeesh:

 


I decided to call into the office about 1pm yesterday and I get a click/click type of a response on the other end. On and off type thing. What the? I think the boss was in a conference call and didn't want to be disturbed, which is why I didn't bother to call back later that afternoon. They'll call me if they have something. Or Friday I'll get called into the office picking up my cheque, "As of today how long have you been with us James?" Type thing. It all stems down to no deductions as being my first clue.

Yesterday a call came in from Anne's nephew and he said he is coming to the city from Saskatchewan. The family wants to take the kids to West Edmonton Mall. Anne's out buying roast dinner, treats and snacks, cleaning up around here. Yeesh.

 

I tried configuring my Samsung wifi camera to take video and disable the on board mic. That didn't work too well and the camera can only take .30 seconds of video. I recall St.Joe from Sounds and Gear reviewing the Zoom Q4 video camera. I'm reviewing this on YouTube. St. Joe did a great re view and Long has this going for $375. I'm sure I can take more then .30 seconds of video. Anyway, that's all for now.

As cold as it was

at 11am yesterday morning heading into work, it wasn't that bad. The ice that was plentiful is more or less gone in most places I need to go. The only real hazard was from Corona to the parking lot adjacent to the Matrix hotel. For the most part I didn't need to wear my cleats. 

My work day was steady. I had my first 10 minute break about 1pm and my half about 4:30 and I called Anne for a chat That reduced my shift to 3 hours. My next 10 was about 6:15. After all that and some bathroom breaks I still was able to keep my flow rate steady. 

The only regret Sunday was I couldn't make it for out lodge practice. I didn't have anything to do or say anyway. I wasn't really needed. I needed the hours.

 When I left I was exhausted and I had a headache. I shot this less then a minute clip from my iPod Touch last night about 8:30pm waiting for a Northgate bus. Anyway, I'm in from 5-9 this afternoon. It's a short and easy shift. Anyway, that's all for now.

This morning before bed I was able to

get my little Samsung camera to upload a 30 second video to YouTube. The frame rate has to be set to 320 x 240 and no longer then 30 seconds. It doesn't upload directly to YouTube but the work-a-round is to email the video to self and then drag and drop the video to YouTube. I can upload YouTube video's ok from my iPad but then I still get those black bars on either side of the video, uggh. 

 
I would have had my schedule emailed to me by now, and so far nothing in my in-box from the office. In other words it looks like I have no work lined up for next week. Anne was looking around last night and found a couple of things of interest, we'll both be looking into. I'll find something to keep me going until work becomes available between now and the end of the month. 

As I post this it doesn't look good for a schedule in my email. It's already going on to 2:30pm. Next week also includes tomorrow but at least I have enough hours for most of July's rent. So I've got to get my ass in gear and get onto something after the weekend. We still have bills to pay. With $4 bucks to my name, the weekend doesn't look good. Yet I recall when I had nothing. Anyway, that's all for now.

The best part about

wrestling last night was the Rock/Cena panel near the end that had Bret Hart, Dusty Rhodes,Booker T and Mick Foley.

With this being the 130th year of the typewriter, not much has changed in the standard qwerty style keyboard. Especially when one is trying to text message on a cell phone. Along comes something new called Minuum. Minuum condenses all the keys on a traditional keyboard down to one line at the bottom of a touchscreen device, leaving acres of precious space left to view apps. This is pretty cool:

What's on my plate today? I'm getting a 6/49 ticket this morning as it's a $20M draw Wednesday night. I'm in the office from 9-5 for another long day. After that it's home I'm working on some Lodge and some music stuff. Anne's doing laundry all night, Anyway, that's about all for now.

A couple of things going on

this month. First off it's the Edmonton public library's main branch Centennial year, nice. Too celebrate the City of Edmonton is handing out free library cards to any city resident. It's a good deal. I haven't used the library in years but it's free right. why not?  

Yesterday I found out my job isn't permanent. It's on a project by project bases. I have these hours for at least the middle of June. After that I don't know. If near that time, I have no conformation of anything, say like a week or 2 off, I can live with that. If however things are shut down for a couple of months, then I have a few other options. If all we have is evening work, I can live with that. I'd rather work part time where I am now then full time out out on 124th street with the gang. Maybe I'd do it next year when the Nait line opens up. In that case it'd be a train to Churchill and connect to the Nait line out to Kingsway board the #12 out to the job site. That might be easier, but we'll see. I don't want to give up on my present job for just a few dollars more an hour.

This caught my attention from i09 earlier: Should we put criminals under surveillance instead of in prison? The thing is putting criminals under surveillance wont prevent crimes. And how are we going to apprehend these criminals once they figure out that resources are so stretched it's going to be very hard to catch them? Read more here:

The other thing I want to do one of these Saturday's this month is head out to the Telus World of Science for the Star War's "Identities" show before it leaves by the end of the month so maybe next Saturday night. I really want to see this before it leaves. I can get a bite to eat at Westmount and take the #5 to Corona station from Westmount and the train home before Anne calls.

The other thing is our local landmark, the High level bridge, has a built in attraction called the "High level bridge waterfall."  It's normally an event for the summer, usually around Summer long weekends. There are lights that shine from behind the waterfall hooked up from just under the bridge. It's nice at night but the event has been shut down over the past couple of years. Forces at City Hall want to bring it back but with Redford's cutbacks and all that affect the City, it's hard to come up with the funds to justify opening it again. What's odd about this project is the water wasn't pumped from the river below and recycled. It was treated water. Now City councilors want to use the water from the river. They should have done that years ago.  

On Coast this morning the topic is about how scientists have succeeded in developing the first living cell to be controlled entirely by synthetic DNA. Cool. Looking forward to listening in on this for a bit. Anyway, that's about all for now.
 

Yesterday afternoon from about

2pm till around 5:20pm, the gang I used to work with met at BP's for a few hours. There was about 10 of us. We had a good time and we will be doing this about every other month or so. After work I thought about going over to Audrey's for the finale book of the "Last of the Jedi" series but I was hungry and I wanted to try Tim's tomato soup and their new grill cheese sandwich. The soup wasn't that great and the sandwich even though the bread was grilled it looked like they just smeared cheese whiz between 2 slices of grilled toast. For that they charged me $7 for that and the bottle of diet Cola. That's one product I hope they remove. I would have got better value at Subway. After I ate and a wait for my Clareview train I was home about 6:35pm. Besides Tim's breakfast sausage-egg sandwich/hash browns and donuts/coffee, the only thing worthwhile about them is they have wifi.

I'm about ready to wrap up Stardoc #3 and then put this series to rest for awhile. I still need the last 3 books in this series but for now I need to go on and read some Warhammer 40K "Space Wolves" second Omnibus.

I read for awhile had a chat with Anne and watched the Oiler's/Flames game. I should have had them on my Proline today because I knew Calgary would win. They hadn't had a win this year, it was the over hyped "Battle of Alberta," the media likes to tout, the Flames were in their retro jerseys. They had all the ingredients. The team that played in the Saddle-dome last night was not the same team that beat LA 2-1 in OT the other day. Calgary was the better team and they needed this win, badly. The copper & blue came out of the gate looking bland but the Flames won by only 1 goal, 4-3

Tonight on Coast, the topic is on Vaccines & Geopolitics. Not exactly a topic I find interesting. Sunday night though the topic is UFOs: Secrets & Leaks! Should be a good one. Most likely I'll update this blog through out the day. Anyway, that's about all for now.            . 

First person point of

view SF book series don't come along that often. I think I have 2 series in the 10 volume range. Stardoc is one of them. Very enjoyable. 

In the wee hours of Saturday night Sunday morning the NHL/PA have made a tentative deal ending a 113 day lockout. The owners now have to vote on the deal, which will be on Wednesday and maybe a short training camp, the Oiler's could be back on the ice by the 19th of January! the game is back.

One of the big stories for me that came out of 2012 last year was how Disney had purchased LucasFilm Limited George Lucas selling to Disney. Also the promise of 3 more Star Wars movies over the next couple of years. I just hope that Disney doesn't "dumb down" the movies and keeps to the original concept and spirit Lucas put fourth in the original 3 movies

WTF? JK Rawlings might do a Doctor Who story? At least that's the rumor going around over there at i09. It's not just Rawlings but other authors as well and apparently there will be a anthology when its all said and done. If it happens. 

In my wake up email, I got my Black Library newsletter and   
BL is releasing an ebundle of all of their 2012 Warhammer 40k short stories. Now this might be something worth getting. I'd rather the short story collection be in Trade paperback form but what the heck. For $32 or whatever, its a pretty good deal. Anyway, that's all for now. 

Despite having been woken up to

an annoying stereo behind our bedroom wall where our bass board of our bed is at 9:30 this morning, I had a good day.

We had a real change in the weather as well as earlier this afternoon it was about +20 until the wind picked up.

Also, I found out how to remove photos/video off of my iPad, which gave me an extra 3 Gb of space on my iPad.

After the wind storm above Anne went to get us some Pizza from her staff discount and it was really nice. 

I've got a nice bag of "Crispers" chips here for Monday night Raw, which will get underway in about half an hour. That's one of the reasons why I don't like working Monday nights is because Raw now is a 3 hour show and I don't want to get the encore edition at 10pm and be up until 1am watching wrestling all night. 

My blood sugar reading is way to high right now sitting at 13.4! Too be fair though, I had just eaten a small pizza and a small piece of cake

This is the last week of standard time as ext weekend we go back to daylight savings. Anyway that's about all I have for now. 

Not much going on today

I was checking out this documentary on The Money pit on oak island. Fascinating subject but when I went to my topics page, I discovered I have 2 topic pages and the video's I put in there somehow vanished. I probably for got to save them but I'll try again and fix them. But here's the 5 part YouTube documentary on the money pit. This is part 1 

Later this afternoon the Esks are in Toronto playing the Argo's. Should be a good game but on a Monday?  As far as I know this is the only game in the CFL schedule that is being played on a Monday night, why?

Over this last weekend the Fringe festival wrapped up and Sunday at Giovanni park the Italian cultural club had an East meets West festival where you could be "Italian for a day." Looks like they had a lot of fun. Anne and I were talking about taking a bus out there to the Italian bakery I'd like to go there because it's one of the few places that I know of that has off track horse race betting here in Edmonton.

With so many festivals going on the City crams them all into a 2 month time frame to take advantage of the kids out of school. They go back after the Labor Day weekend, then I can get my ETS LRT schedule back that takes a break from July 1st to the end of the Labor Day weekend. But there's enough festivals out there to go from May 1st to the Labor Day weekend.

I'm making slow progress in my book that I'm reading but I read a bit each day. I'll probably have about 4 books read by the end of the year when usually I'll have between 8-10. It's not a race or anything.

Other then the CFL game this evening, I'm watching Monday night Raw wrapping up a few things and bed. Anyway, that's about all for now. 

We had a nice thunder storm

go through here over the last few hours. Lots of rain and boom, booms, good stuff.

I went into the evening shift and stopped into Tim’s for an iced coffee. I should have got one of those iced caps/slurppe kind of things instead. It was very warm this afternoon when I tweeted earlier it was +31 out there. Hence the storm:

 Wow, Mars rover Curiosity is going on a bit of a trip today. It’s going to move forward for a bit and then back. Very significant early steps.

I had a slow evening on the job but I was more or less on par with everything else but I’m glad I wasn’t there the whole day like a few other‘s were having a hard time all day. 
 
Once in awhile I get asked, “Jim, what are you watching on TV these days?” I watch, local/international news, Monday night Raw the odd CFL/NHL game, reruns of the original Batman TV show and The Rifleman and the occasional episode of “Reviews on the Run” or “Attack of the Show.” That‘s it. I don’t watch a lot of TV maybe 5 hours, week. If that. Anyway, that‘s about all 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.

  

The only

Difficulty with composing a blog post on my I pad is Blogger won't let me change the font in this version. They have a mobile version for tabs and phones.

After the late news last night about Midnight, Anne and I rented Mission Impossible 4 "Ghost Protocol." This isn't a movie review or anything but on a scale from 1-10 I'd rate the movie a solid 10. The only thing I didn't like about the movie was the primer scenes at the beginning but other then that minor annoyance, yeah a solid 10/10. I got the feeling though I was watching a James Bond movie more then a MI movie. I saw some great movies last year. Ghost protocol was out December 16th and costs $145M to make but its return at the box office was $693M! That doesn't include DVD or video on demand sales. In watching the movie I was fascinated by the Burj Duba tower where one of the major scenes in the movie took place. The building is the tallest man made structure ever built built in 2004 and opened 2009 at a cost of $1.5 billion. The movie itself did nearly half of that in sales. Crazy.


If the space elevator ever gets built then that will obviously be the tallest man made structure in the world. Yet that won't happen in my lifetime. Or if it does, I'll probably be on my death bed when they announce plans to build it. 


Anne talked me into another day. I go from Tuesday through Saturday anyway and Monday is my natural day off and I said to J I'd try and be in for Monday but don't expect me in until Tuesday. I hinted at Monday because I have lodge night Thursday but I'm half a day on Thursday. Next week I'll have my Monday-Friday and a couple of Saturdays off.


I got a bug of some kind in my desktop causing my browser to lockup on me. It's nothing Telus is doing and its not a big deal so I'm going to have to go in and have it serviced get Vinny to take a look at it. 


This evening Anne is going to be making the chili for the festive board and I'm calling Dan to see if we got enough beer. Anne is getting the chili ingredients later this afternoon after a bottle run. She suggested getting some taco shells and sour creme and cheese to sprinkle on top. She's also going to look at getting another crock pot as they're selling them at Exes Cargo for under $20 and they have disposable soup bowls across the street for a buck at the Dollarrama (15per package.) I've also got to call Neil and see if he can pick me up for Thursday all I need is buns possibly donuts for desert. So the last thing we're going to need is the donuts for on the way back. I can get 3 boxes of assorted for $10 bucks. The good news for me is the JW fund will  reimburse me for what I spend out of pocket. I gave Anne $25 for the chili fixings and the bowls are a buck buns are about $3. If Dan says I have to get extra beer, then I'm SOL because I won't have that amount of cash on me. .    


The good news in this chair is I have only 5 more months to go (the Lodge shuts down in July & August) but there's our participation at Fort Edmonton park, which I've been attending over the last couple of years and the Lodge BBQ in  August. I'll be glad when it's over but the real test is who's going to do this in next year and my year and my IPM year? There's a lot of un answered questions. 


Tonight though I'm home, watching hockey and wrestling and making a few phone calls. It's a good thing I didn't go in for this evening. Anyway, that's all for today.

I headed out of here last night about 9:10pm

to meet my wife, at Bay station. I took this video last night as I was waiting for the bus just outside my place. It's not a very long video. You'll notice a bus shelter across the street towards the end of this video. That's where I get off every night to cross by the lights home.

I brought $75 bucks with me. She met me moments before the train pulled in and ten minutes later we were walking towards Rexall It cost me right off the bat $24 to get in for 2 of us. Some metal band playing, which I didn't recognize.Anne was like in a daze watching everything. She had a pizza and she was just wandering around aimlessly. The crowds were almost shoulder to shoulder. I felt pretty much I was just there to pay. We walked and walked and My left foot was cramping up. She got Pizza, ice cream, fudge, Pizza, french fries. I don't like walking and eating like that. We looked at rides and fireworks, which I liked. I didn't eat anything by this time. Later towards the end we watched this one ride called "Skyscraper." Anne was utterly captivated by it. I didn't get a video because it was too dark. But "Skyscraper" had a line up of about 20 people. What it is, is 2 tapered like crane structures attached to a tower of about maybe 300 feet. Like a pinwheel. There's an alcove seat much like a ski left that harnesses riders inside at each end. This thing just spins around 3 times. At the end of the last spin, the riders are at the bottom, while the others are at the top enjoying the view. At the end of your Skyscraper "experience" you get a DVD to mark your 30 second ride. Now get this: The ride itself is $75 for about 30 seconds! And people walk away happy. And there's a recession going on? After that we went to the Agricom pavilion. More walking. So we went to the casino and I put $5 in to play some slots. I had fun and won a few more credits. I bought a corn dog ($5) Everything food wise at the X is $5. On the way out we looked around some more. The military had a few things on display. The crowds were significantly thinned out by this time. I bought an ice cream. Anne wanted to look around some more but it was closing on 1am and I didn't want to miss that last train home. For the most part except for the ride and in the pavilion, Anne was caught in a spell, so talking to her about the things going on was an exercise in futility. After the ice cream it was time to go. Most of the vendors were closing up shop anyway. We caught the train back to Clairview. A couple of guys were on the bus with us as I was looking for a wifi connection. They befriended us for the moment and one of them ake what I was looking for on the net in particular. "The results from the Stamps/Riders game." A few minutes later he replied Riders 18/Calgary 22. It was a close game but my 3/4 winning streak came to an end. That was a long shot anyway for the Riders. It looked good on paper. I ended up spending $55 on the night. We were there for an hour and a half. We both agreed that it was kind of a waste of money but we wont need to go back there for another couple of years. I had fun, Anne had fun. So it wasn't a total loss. At least we went.

I'm left with $40 which I plan on saving for the weekend. I think I might be in a position to get MM 17 next weekend. I need to find out if there's a service and a currency conversion fee. I have $43 cash on hand. I get a full check plus bonus money for a total of $390. The feds might take off $47, so I should be left with about $345. More or less. Anne will get her weekly $220 and I should have about $125 remaining. Plus if I can keep this $40 I should have roughly $165 remaining. All I need is $150. The card itself will cost me $20 + $115 for the program, +$3 service fee and a $3 fee (?) for currency exchange. Total:$141. I'll have about $25 left over. This could work. 
 

I'm having a decent day off today

today hoping I can upload my first YouTube video. According to Wiki, YouTube gets about 100,000 uploads of video each day! That's a lot of video. If this works, I'll post a link on my Blogger blog maybe even insert the video as well.

Anne's out at the veggie market today. Someone last night while she was working stole some eggs from their lunch room fridge at her place of work. Her place of work (I wont say the name) are a bunch of scumbags. They wont put in security cameras in the lunchroom. Our place doesn't either but they removed the whole fridge. We're getting cameras installed eventually. The boss says they have them in Vancouver and Calgary. Anne knows a lot better now not to leave anything in that fridge. The other thing is her place of employment posts on the white board when her breaks are. Yeah like that helps out a lot. They do this for everyone and with 40+ people working there on any given night they know when she takes her breaks to go in and help themselves and place it in their tote bags.

I had 2 numbers on my 6/49 ticket last night. If I had the bonus number I would have won $5. Last week I won $10. I usually win small amounts like that. I've never had anything like 4 numbers or anything like that.

Thanks to a pointer from SF Signal Data Blog has posted a spreadsheet of every TV Doctor Who villain. They don't go into the villain's in the over 300 Doctor Who books or anything. Its a pretty good spreadsheet. You can head over to Data Blogs Flicker Group and check it out there as well.

Speaking about Doctor Who, its on at 5pm on Space. I'll be glad when we get that PVR so I can watch all this stuff. The thing with the router/modem combo might have the same problem as in our ISP's existing wifi all-in-one: They let you hook up a laptop and that's it. We've got 4 other wifi enabled devises here and I need them through Bluetooth to talk with the router/modem. If we can get everything working together then I can get onto Xbox live and start playing some of those other games other then Oblivion.

Ok now that the batteries are charged and Anne's out lets shoot this video. Anyway, that's all for today.