Since January of this year

I've had 2 colds and I've got something that just activated over night Friday. If this gets developed then this will make 3 for the year. Ordinarily I just get 1 cold a year. The blood test I took a few weeks ago yield up nothing. I'm at a loss here for an explanation as to why I've got 3 colds.

This week's forecast is in the 30's. It's not official or anything as far as I know but I'd say we're in a drought here in Alberta. Especially if farmers have to get hay from other provinces. Here in Edmonton, we've had under 40mm of rain since July 1st. Hopefully we'll get some rain soon.  

Update: I had a decent sleep overnight and I'm feeling better. Still having episodes of phlegm through out the night. My scratchy throat is less scratchy and I'm about to have my first coffee for the day on this. The downside is my voice is rough and hoarse. Other wise, no worse for wear. 

My 10 year old Xp computer as pictured here life cycle is almost at an end. I'm looking at a refurbished system for about $200. It's an Intel pc with 4Gb and whopping 160Gb!
 
  Friday I walked into the office and the super said the boss has the cheques. They had a small crew doing clean up The boss said if I call Wednesday he'll know with more surety what the week of the 18th will be like. August usually slows down. They will be back in September with more frequency. 

Since last Thursday I've been I've watching a lot of CFL football. Three games so far and one more today. I also watched Smackdown (wrestling) I've been watching a lot of sports over the last 3 days. Anyway, that's all for now.

I'm up out of here at

about 7:45am to catch the 8:30 bus to Hermitage for my x-ray this morning. There's also an ultrasound in there as well. I don't care so much for all of that as I hope I'm out of there by 10 so I can get breakfast at MacDonald's on the same property before they stop serving breakfast. 

Coast to Coast has a great show underway what with my favorite topics; Current Events/ Space, Aliens, & Secret Societies. Speaking of space and the story that broke yesterday how Nasa gave a $100,000 research prize to have a solar sail the size of Texas to launch a small payload to Alpha Centauri. A 1 way trip could be done in as little as 15 years. The idea is to propel the solar sail by laser. I doubt this will occur during my life time but its really cool. Nasa has been focusing on solar sail technology recently and has plans for a lunar and asteroid mission within the next 5 years. 

What with hacking being a form of terrorism, auto hacking could be right up there. Any software system can be hacked so imagine if hackers got a hold of a auto software system and took control of vehicles still on the road in a major city? The results could be catastrophic. Hacking could not be just the geography of cars but even aircraft, oil tankers, anything. The Internet is a beautiful thing but is also a very dark place as well. The good news is that as frightening as these scenarios could be it forces software developers to be constantly on guard and try to develop systems that are 1 step a head of the those scumbags. Anyway, that's all for now. 

Instinct kicked in shortly before midnight

and I thought to check my phone call display. Our isp records who called and sure enough my place of employment tried calling Wednesday shortly after 1pm. That's why we need our vm activated. It could have been to tell me the project has been delayed for a week or two or for me to come in Thursday for training. It's not like at the other place where its a conference call between multiple offices. I just need a minimum amount of instruction and I'm ready to start. 

So yesterday I left out of here for my Doctors appointment noticing signs by the Muttart lands Brookfield residential popping up all over the place by Stadium South of the lrt tracks. I arrived to my Doctors appointment right on time. I got weighed at 204Lbs for my height I'm just about 40lbs overweight. I seem to recall my first visit my weight (2008) was about 260. I dropped a lot of weight over the last 7 years. I got another form for my X-ray and one was faxed over to that office. After that I went to this seniors office and they said that the Federal Government will prompt me a year from now to apply by sending me a form in the mail or through Service Canada via my email to apply. After that I went to Corona station to get a bus to City Centre mall. I decided why not go to Rickies? I treated myself to a burger and a beer. After that upstairs to Coles and I got a Warhammer 40K book, "The Grey knights" omnibus. I've got about 4 more omnibus books to get. Since I haven't been in City Centre mall for a long time, gone was the stationary store (formally Wilson's) but The Source (radio shack) was still there and on my way out there was a Tim Horton's. Cool. I got my train and I was  home by 4pm.

The only casualty of last night was (I think) that the British open preempted the Esks/Lions CFL game. I did see some of the highlights on the news so there must have been some TV coverage. The good news is Esks won 18-13. They're off to a great start.

Also in the news Telus was saying they are investing $1B to fiber every subscriber home over the next 6 years. Its at no charge to subscribers. It means that currently, broadband internet is 25 megabits per second. With fiber, Internet speeds will go up to 150 megabits per second. According to Telus only about 10% of North America uses Fiber. This is a highly significant announcement.

So having learned that my place of employment actually tried to reach me Wednesday, and me leaving a vm message last night, means I'm up shortly before 10am to find out whats going on. If there is nobody answering the phone at 10am, then that could tell me that the project has been delayed. Actually if that's the case, I could use a week or two off. Anyway, that's all for now.

Our flat screen TV broadcasts out at 720P

but 1080p was just coming online when we bought our TV. It worked great as of about a year ago. Now we get signal drops often and heavy pixalation makes watching our TV a struggle at times. Now that I have some time off, I'm calling our cable company today to get some trouble shooting help

I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the funeral of Edmonton Police Officer Const. Daniel Woodall. His funeral service is this morning. He was killed in the line of duty last Monday while investigating a hate crime incident. He was a proud member of the Edmonton Police service.

Daniel Craig who is the current actor playing James Bond has been trying to get out of this franchise since the beginning. He's got one more film after Spectre. The #1 odds on favorite to replace Craig will be Damian Lewis. Looking forward to seeing Spectre. 

It's a pretty quiet week leading up to Friday: Then we have the inspector and I've got to head downtown for my Doctors appointment and then City Centre mall Coles see what Warhammer 40K Omnibus books they have and a bite to eat before home and the Esks/Lions pre season game. Anyway, that's about all for now.

Its beginning to warm up

out there. Even though we're not getting really warm days or breaking any records. We do need some rain just to freshen things up around here.

I was watching today's Reviews on the run. One of the topics was the Apple watch. Or iWatch. I could see a use for such a device but I don't have a iPhone, or even want one. I don't need a cell phone. I have iPod Touch and that works for me because in my work environment cell phones are forbidden. What uses would I have for a iWatch? I can check sports scores when I'm at work. I don't know how Periscope would work discretely on a iWatch. I heard that the iWatch is about $500 CND. Too rich for this blogger.

I tried several times to get a hold of my Doctor as he wants to se up a time with me for this X-ray. I'm going to call later this morning to see if I can set something up for Tuesday. Anyway, that's all for now.

Sunday would have been a good day to get out because of the weather

as temperatures climbed up to 9.2 Sunday afternoon. I was surprised to hear Anne say she ordered Royal Rumble for me. Great. I had a bag of chips lots of pop after our breakfast for the show and had a good time.

Next Saturday after work (after checking out times etc) I’m going to go to the new Clareview arena. Hopefully I can get a tour of the facilities and use the pool, hot tub and steam room. Maybe spend an hour or so. I think this would be great for Anne and I after she has her Sunday face time with her sister. I need to see my pharmacist anyway so I can get some more Insulin and maybe arrange for a free rec centre pass. I’d use it every weekend if It was free.

Earlier today I was fooling around with iMovie on my iPod Touch. It's an app that came with my iPod. It's not as good as Windows Movie Maker but for the iPod, it is what it is. I'm trying to find a way to have the iPod mic enabled so I can just have silence and over dub on top of it and add my own music etc. There are other iMovie apps that are similar to iMovie.

Later today Anne and I are heading out of here at 2pm to the Apple store at Southgate. We're having issues with our sound on our iPad and I need to find out why I can't access iTunes from my iPod. They have our Apple ID on file to set up the appointment and my email address in case we have to rebook. After that we're going to Coles Indigo to cash in on my gift card and get a bit to eat and home. Anyway, that's all for now. 

I was exausted last night and having a

early sleep sounded good at the time. Because of what happened with our iPad (see below) I felt bad and that compromised my sleep. Anne was pissed with me and rightly so:

Since our iPad usage space was almost full, we began to look for ways to remove things from it. One of the main culprits was Anne saving her iM messages/photo's. There was almost 6Gb/16Gb used from just that alone. She didn't want to delete them but if I could back them up for her, no problem. Then she said it's ok to delete just her in her sister's conversation, which included a lot of photos. Anne is the only one that uses iM. She uses the iPad more then I do. So I began checking in her iM if there was a delete function. I found that and it highlights a blue circle besides each entry. I wasn't looking for a undo feature. Ok. I showed her that if she highlights individual parts of the iM conversation as in my example as I showed this to her it should just remove the parts in the iM conversation she wants to have remove. When I hit the delete key to my shock it deleted all her sister's iM conversation. Anne was livid and this cause a kerfuffle in a big way. I felt terrible about this but its not a complete loss as her sister should have the same conversation on her device and all she has to do is copy and paste parts in the conversation that has the photo's etc she's missing. As compensation I gave the iPad to her since she uses it more then I do anyway. Apple needs a undo feature in their iM app.

This wrecked my sleep and about 5 this morning I figured since Anne was mad at me and wasn't talking to me, I'd read what's left of "Fulgrim." I've got a few pages left remaining and I need a memory card for my Kobo before I order in ebook format I want to order Legion on. I hope to go get my books at Audrey's Friday night run down to Rexall drugs at the end of the block and get a Visa gift card before work. Well that's the plan. I'm not sure about getting the desktop hard drive just yet as I'd like to have at least 1 day to sleep in. Anyway, that's all for now.

Anne went out and got me the

Brother MFC-J475DW all-in-one inkjet printer last night while I was at work. She went over to Northgate town Centre. It was the same one we were looking over at London Drugs and for $60 bucks it's a pretty good buy. For the most part I have it set up and registered. I made a test copy and it prints, so far pretty good. 

Some sad WWE news from earlier. The wrestler known as "The Ultimate Warrior" passed away and he was just on Monday night Raw speaking to the crowd in the ring. Almost as if he was saying goodbye one last time. 

This afternoon I have my appointment with my Ophthalmologist at 2pm and I'm going to have eye drops and probably ultrasound. If I have my vision un impaired,I'll go into work for my 4 hour shift. Anne suggested that since I have a 5.5 and 2 back to back 7.5 it might be a good idea for me to take tonight off. That might be a good idea but we'll see. Anyway, that's all for now.

Because of our income

or lack there of I might be able to get medical benefits. Hopefully with these I can get my dental work done and get dentures. That's the plan anyway for this year.

I'm at the half way point in "False Gods", great stuff and for my April read it's 'Galaxy in Flames." 

The Pharmacist suggested I try small doses of Metformin. The reason why in small doses is because it side affects can cause gas. Also Metformin gets the most out of insulin and that's a good thing. Anyway, that's all for now.

Rare is the occurrence that I'm able to have a weekend off for a

a change. I'm going in for my 5 hours today and my weekend begins from there.

I'm about to get a sshd upgrade for my laptop and if all goes well, I might get this by tomorrow. I'm kind of reluctant on this upgrade because I'd rather get a new desktop. Before I leave out of here today I'll know if I'll be able to get it done. 

Next Tuesday, my wife and I are out to Northgate Centre as I've got a 10am appointment to get my insulin calibrated. While I'm doing that she's going to Alberta Works and after my appointment I'm joining her then we're off to have some lunch and home. I'm not done on the day yet as I'm heading to Lodge after that. At least that's the plan. Anyway, that's about all for now.

That was a long day yesterday

and even though I need the hours, I'm glad I have today off. Even though it was a short week.

It's only a 1 day event, 4 times per year. Its the 1st ever Edmonton Collector Con (ECC). This year it's at the Chateau Louie across the street from the Ramada and way smaller then the Edmonton Expo held in October. Next ECC dates are: June 8th, August 10th and Nov 16th. I'd go but there's not much opportunity to sit down.

I'm waiting for a invitation to work at my 2nd job, which begins next Saturday. I really need a break from my current job though and work just Saturdays. Only if I can find something steady during the afternoons. If I don't get the invitation back for my 2nd job that is. If not, then I'm off to AW to find something I can do during weekday afternoons with an hour for traveling to my 1st job. I'm going to aggressively look for something like that in March.

It's been in the news recently. By now everyone has heard about Apples email hack with it's iPad etc. This apparently is only if one is trying to access email and use the app store at a free hot spot. I'm sure Apple is trying to fix the problem. not that I'm a huge fan of Apple but I do like their iPad/iTouch devices. I wouldn't buy a iMac etc. Way to expensive and their Ram is overpriced.  

Now I'm sure this is a product of diabetes but I'm having difficulty swallowing food. My wife says it's got to do with blood not flowing properly at the back of the neck. She thinks it's the sign of a stroke about to happen and she could be right. I take a aspirin every day as this has me a bit worried. I can swallow soups, ravioli, canned stew, chili that sort of thing. This only began to happen about a year ago. Personally I think it has to do with drinking too much diet pop.   

The Canada/Sweden mens hockey game is on at about 6:30am Edmonton time? Local bars have got a special license to serve alcohol at 5:30am! It's a historic occasion. I'll be sleeping at that hour. Anyway, that's about all for now.

I was in bed by about

3:30am listening to a bit of Coast. The topic was undercover operations. I was mildly interested but passed out.

As a filler on our local news and somewhat related to the above was a story how real estate agent companies will use drones mounted with a video camera to fly around a piece of property to showcase certain features of the property with music and voice over. From the drone models I’ve seen on YouTube most of these drones sound like weed whackers, very noisy. A drone was used to fly over rioters in Poland last year to get a good look at the crowd but if it’s a windy day I wonder how useful they are?

After work yesterday I walked down to Audrey’s. It was very nice about +25* My first day without a jacket. I wasn’t really hungry but I went in and bought my Star Wars book: Fate of the Jedi “Vortex.” I’m expecting “Going pro with Cubase 6” any week now. I like Cubase but it’s suffering from a lot of clipping and it’s hard to get my audio interface in the device set up to stabalize.

Hard to believe this July will mark the 25th anniversary of Edmonton’s “Black Friday” 1987 tornado that killed 27 people. I was at Cobogo warehouse on that day now known as “Cobogo lofts.” I was 34 years old at the time.

I just headed for home and at Clareview station while waiting for the bus I thought about checking my email on my iPad but my connection was lost. I got home and checked into it and was still off line, then it came back on line.

I headed for bed taking the phone in with me and set my alarm for 8pm. I had an hour and a half nap and Anne called about 8:30pm. I had the rest of the night off and worked doing some recording on “Chair” and I got some good takes. I wanted to use Vari audio in Cubase but I’m having some problems with it.

Later this afternoon Anne and I are heading over to Earl’s again. We haven’t been there since her birthday. That was March 16th but we went on the Sunday on the 18th. I enjoyed the burger was nice. That’s probably what I’ll have again. Anne likes to head to the Pet Smart store first before head over to Earl’s.

So the 2012 NHL draft ended up with no real surprises for the Oiler’s. We got our #1  pick and (again) yawn. It would have been better if this guy had some better credentials but oh well. We need to sign him to at least a 3 year deal and see what he can do. Or sign him for 3 years and trade him for someone we can use now or over the next several years. The real action will happen at the NHL free agent draft next July first. 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.

  

At 4am I knew I was going to be in for

trouble, sleep wise and sure enough I couldn't sleep and when 4:30am rolled around, well at least I'd get 5 hours. I was lucky if I got that and I could use another 6 hours. I'm exhausted at the moment but I got an 8 hour day ahead of me.


I'm thinking maybe I should pick up one of those "5 hour energy" drinks but I heard somewhere they're not that good for diabetics. But after reading a few comments on the forums, nobody is saying anything bad about them. Maybe one sip is all I need but if they cost around $10/per bottle, no. I can see $5 yes.


We're finally getting a little bit of Sun out there after a weekend of overcast (Thursday-Monday)


Whats up with the LA Kings? A last place seeded team in the playoffs taking out the Vancouver CanucksPresidents trophy 1st over all in the league get taken out by the bottom dwellers? They go into Saint Louis and I figure well that was a one hit wonder with Vancouver. Now they're up 2 games to 0 in St. Louis's own building. The way the Kings are going (They've never won a Stanley Cup) could ended up with a sweep with the 2nd seeded team. I think St. Louis though will bounce back in game #3 Wednesday. If though the Kings keep going like they're on 5 hour energy and win all for games and sweep St. Louis in 4, they might go to the finale. It could be LA/Washington. Like I said elsewhere the only time that a Canadian team is ever going to win the Cup will be if there are an even number of teams in the NHL. Say 12 Canadian 12 American teams and to make it truly a National hockey league "league" have the American teams have a cap "like" in the CFL 80% domestic players and 20% Import players. Like that'll ever happen. 


Ok time to start packing up my things and getting ready for the day. It's going to be a long one. I'm going to post Twitter tweets through out the day.  


If you see some strange text, it's only because my laptop mouse wasn't frozen. Anyway, that's all I have for now.. 

I got into work

Tuesday morning no problem and had an OK first half and called Anne. She made me some sausage rolls and some mexi fries for lunch and a couple of sandwiches. I had a better 2nd half and ended up with #2 total on our board. I think everyone from De up was doing the political thing, all in all I had a good day.

The TV hasn’t been hooked up yet only because we’re waiting for the cable to come in and then the TV will be mounted and hopefully it’ll be in the middle of the room for everyone.

I talked with Anne at my 4:30pm and I asked her if I could have the $500 only because I want to get Cubase 6 and that if I only get $400 it’s going to delay me getting the program by 2 weeks, so she agreed.

Also Keith said he tried calling about 6pm but I think Anne had the Vacuum cleaner going and I missed his call. He said he would give me the pen drive and all the programs and their exe files would be available for me to download on my own and I kind of thought he’d be going in that direction. I can do this on a Saturday night.

So far it’s been day 4 since I asked Blogger for that bit of help. I should check and see if there was a response but I somehow doubt there was. Monday morning we received another note under the door that the plumbers are coming in to fix pipes and taps and crap. This was like 2 weeks ago, yeesh.

February it’s NHL hockey trade deadline and there are some Oiler names floating around: Ales Hemsky, Nikolai Khabibulin, but no Paajarvi or others. Most likely the Oiler’s are going to get screwed again. Their “trades” lately have been lack luster at beast. It would be nice if we could get a Rick Nash but when the Oiler’s “trade” they usually unload salaries and talk future considerations. As usual the Oiler’s could remain quiet but never say never, anyway, that's all for now.

Having fun working on a

track this morning before bed, so this is going to be a short post as I want to read for half an hour.

I'm also getting eaten alive by all the bugs floating in around here, driving me nuts.

I had a good day on the job yesterday but I had a bit of a headache but I forgot to take my insulin when I came home. I like these hours but it's hard for me to get into a routine with my insulin with these hours. I don't trust leaving my insulin in the fridge where strangers linger around. I keep missing my insulin when I come home. I should take it as soon as I come in. I went and set my alarm on my Ipod to go off at 10pm Tuesday/Friday to remind myself to take my insulin when I come home. I can take anything with it like some cereal or something or even a left over sandwich.

I read now when ever I can. For about half an hour in the mornings before work. On my commute, on my breaks at work and until Anne comes home. The rest of the time, I'm working on my music. What I'm trying to do is to get a program called Team Viewer (I've used before) to get one of the east Indian kids to sync up with my laptop and get into  my Linux from a remote location. He's our go to tech support guy in the office and was the fellow that got me FL Studio last October. The idea is to show me how to refresh my hardware devices in Linux so I can get my wifi up and running synced with my gmail where I've subscribed to SF Daily And my Itouch. That's the plan. Anyway, that's about all for now.