Over the last 30

years(since 1980)I put together a daily diary. This was just an outlet for me to vent speculate on my daily struggles and obstacles that life put in my way. A lot of it contained what if's about the women I was chasing after my fantasy's and other pretty much useless events that when I look back upon them seem trivial and inconsequential. They'd bore most people to death but the diary gives me a kind of glimpse into what my life was like in the 1980's. But what I'd like to do with all of this is to archive it electronically to the web for "future generations." The thing with Google is that Google might be around for another 25-50 years but at least the data would be out there. More or less. This would be a huge undertaking on my part because of the legibility of my hand "written penmanship" and that each duotang folder is one month. Some days are brief posts and others are 10-12= pages of me rambling about the object of my desire of the day etc.Most months I'd have between 60-100 pages, so from May 12th 1980- September 2005 I'm looking at about 24,000 pages. So, multiply that by 200 words on a page, is roughly about 4,800,000 words. And that doesn;t include my Blogger posts from after September 2005 when I moved everything over to Cyberspace, there's a lot of posts. Anyway's that's aall for now.

It's our 10th wedding

anniversary today and in those 10 years its been challenging to say the least. We got married by a JP and for our wedding night we went to Kelsey's. I almost didn't think we'd get married. not because she didn't want to but because of all the hoops we had to go through. Our appointment to see the JP was 3pm at a posh home in Riverbend. It was overcast snowing and not a great day. Anne drove us out to pick up our witness, Bridget. We were running right on time but we didn't know the turn off to Riverbend on 156th street. They didn't have Google maps at the time. Anne's indecision cost us to have an accident. The car wasn’t totalled at all but we couldn’t mover forward. We could move it out of he traffic flow and off to the side. We knocked on a few doors and someone let us use the phone and let us leave the car parked in front of their yard. We got a taxi and got to the address. The cab driver was having problems processing Anne's bank card for payment. I was broke. The wedding was anti climatic but the JP was nice enough to drive us to the house and called us a tow truck to a garage Bridget had recommended. Bridget stayed with us until the car was repaired well up to 7pm. The garage head mechanic put our work order on priority and we managed to get to drop Bridget off and have Anne meet Bridget's husband Jim, Our wedding night consisted of a dinner at Kelsey's just over here on 137th Ave. That location is long gone.

But during those 10 years, like most marriages we faced challenging times. We fought, yelled, raised our voices in heated shouting matches and even threatened to leave each other but I never once hit my wife. During those 10 years I had acquired diabetes, had 2 cataract operations. Anne lost her parents and I lost Pledges and learned years later after the fact my brother died. There were times when I didn't think we would last the year and every year we stayed together was a blessing to say the least. I can just imagine what the next 10 years will bring. God help us all. Anyway, that's all for now

A busy day for our anniversary dinner

Anne and I are heading out of here within the hour to our dinner. its not exactly balmy out there but by the time we get out there it should be about -7, which isn’t that cold at all.

many aspects to FL studio9, that it can become a bit overwhelming. Thank God for YouTube and a little bit of time on my hands to be able to figure some things out. That and the on board help section is excellent. Last night I was able to get one of their "generators" to work. It's called Edison and I got that to work and now my "vocal tracks" sound full and on both sides of the track mixer. I got that to work ok and with their templates in FL9 I was able to export a 10 second sound clip. I think I can drag and drop that into the play-list. I'm having fun with this.

Hey, the Oiler's have won 4 in a row now. They host The Ducks at Rexall Tuesday night and since I'm working days, I'll be watching that. Good stuff.

Anne and I are heading out of here in about half an hour she wants to take me to Montana's steak house and then after that I take her to Red Lobster. I hate sea food. But its not about me.

9:05pm * We went out but the whole thing took us 6 hours. Too our surprise a contingency bus came along but we got a regular run bus to Clairview station and that contingency bus to Corona because the Clairview line to Corona was shut down due to "upgrades." Then at Southgate we had a 15 minute wait for the #304, which was a block away from Montana's. It took me 40 minutes from order to check-out and Anne almost 1.15 hours from order to check-out. We got home around 7:45pm. That #304 is a nice run as it stops along several excellent places to eat. I want to take Anne to the Radisson as she says they have an upscale buffet. Hopefully the LRT will be running from Clairview to Southgate properly. If we leave say here at noon, we'll be at Southgate at 12:30pm At the restaurant by 1pm. Spend 1.5 hours from order-check-out We could be home by 3:30pm easy. But add the LRT being down and Anne watching me eat my burger and me watching her eat her sea food, took up most of our time. But it was a good afternoon and I could have taken a few pictures but I'd forgotten my camera and insulin as well. Anyways that's about all for now.

Today was a great

day. Four of us were called into the office for a meeting to do the OTH big taps. There weren't that many of them but I had a great first half. I think I had about $600 by noon. I went and played my Proline: Oiler's/Montreal, Oilers to win (they did in OT.) It was a beautiful game. Now that's the way the team should be playing. So far they won 2 back to back. Then I had on my Proline ticket, Washington/St.Louis. I got the Caps to win and finally Vancouver/Calgary, the Canucks to win in Calgary and at this time in the 1st they are up 2-1. If all 3 win then I get $20. Also, Warren and I bet $2 on the Oiler/Habs game and I won $2 from that.

I called Anne at 2pm and no Telus. We we're getting worried we'd be without our TV and Internet. So when I got home, I noticed our new modem/router. The tech guy was saying to Anne that because the router and modem were stacked on top of each other the heat ended up frying the inside of the router. So now we have (hopefully more stable system)everything combined into one unit. This system that we have now looks a lot better and there is less clutter and wires at the back. I've got enough clutter and wires as it is.

I couldn't resist taking this cute cat photo of Silky and Sporty earlier this week. Sporty cuddled right up to his brother. These 2 cats are amazing and are always making out with each other. They are from 2 totally different litters but they totally love each other. Silky the dark one has maybe 5 years left in him and I'll feel bad for Sporty because when Silky goes, Sporty is going to lose his buddy. Boots still has to be kept apart from the other cats. I love Boots. When he plays he's a lot of fun to have around the house.

My friend Keith Graham (see his blog under friends in the sidebar at left) was talking about a Squido article he wrote about how to buy a Big screen TV. Keith's Blog is always thought provoking and entertaining. I'm a regular visitor there. Do yourself a favor and visit his blog. Now, I'm no expert but I thought I'd show Keith a photo of our 46" inch TV. It looks small in this photo but it's a big 720P TV. The orange cat in the wall unit is Pledges. The newer ones are 1080p and that's the new industry standard. Ours is 3 years old as of next April. We paid $1,000 for it then. Just a heads up though about HDTV not every network/channel is HD. We have maybe 10 channels that are HD ready. It's not quite there yet when everything will be fully HD ready. Another thing, most TV's don't supply a HDMI cable. If you want to play Xbox 360 games on one of these big TV's your going to need to buy a HDMI cable sold separately. Same thing if your new computer has an HDMI port. Most Mb's today have a HDMI port to have TV sent tour computer. I haven;t read Keith's article yet but he most likely talks about this.

I didn't get my Lodge newsletter until just a few days ago and in the notice I was appointed to do the WT for tomorrow night. I've not yet done the EA WT so I was able to barely get ahold of Neil around 5pm earlier and mentioned my situation. He volunteered hed do it for me. So I felt good about this and with the Oiler's winning, I had a great day. Now to make my day complete, would be to win on the 6/49 ticket and or win all 3 of my proline picks, either or. Anyway, that's about all for now.

I didn't know this

right away but my Internet was down. I was too busy with FL9 but noticed it when Anne called. it was a real bummer because that meant that last night was going to be dreadful.

We placed a couple of irate calls and before missing the Grey Cup game this afternoon. Al's won 21-18, I came back into the office and found out the modem box lights are all lit up. Indicating we're back in business--maybe. Anne's got the TV on another "Channel" I can't get to our service provider one to see if all channels are clear, At least my ITouch is working. Anne came home just briefly about 10 minutes ago and stepped out to do some shopping and she doesn't know the good news yet. We're not out of the woods yet though.

Yesterday I was informed that there would be no late afternoon shift and even though I could have used the hours and all, I was grateful as Vinny download FL9 onto my laptop from his USB drive but it wouldn't work. Packing up my laptop in my knapsack we went to his place (across the street from Grant MacEewan University) he ended up getting the whole program installed with no trouble. It works great even now. I figured after that was done, why not take the #2 bus and head over to Wendy's and get a burger for my lunch. Why not get a bottle of diet Coke, wait for the #2 but I was to far East and missed the connection. After wandering around the downtown core, trying to figure out where to go get a bite to eat I found myself outside City Centre mall and decided to go in. Rider jerseys everywhere. Then I decided I hadn't been to Sizzling Wox in a long time. They changed the company name but it's still the same place. I bought 2 orders of Chinese and and a diet Coke, sat down at an empty table and enjoyed my lunch. On my way to Coles, Ebay games was still there. I looked around and they have some used copies of Assasin's Creed 2. At $27 the price was right but I didnn't have the money. I was also looking at the Dsi the one with the 2 camera's on it. They had it for $179 plus it caomes with games as well. Perfect for my commute. After that I headed over to Cole's with my laptop with me all the way. I hadn't been in Cole's for almost 2 years. I shopped around and looked at their version of the Kindle 2 the Kobo. I'm still leaning towards the kindle 2. Shopping around for books I came across Jack Whyte's books. I've never read Whyte before but his books are in the SFF area. I bought the first book of "The Eagle" duo-logy "Clothar The Frank." Book two is there as well but its part of a larger series.

Since I didn't need to go out with Warren and the guys Saturday night I had a night off and enjoyed playing around with FL9. Anyway, that's all for now.

From yesterday and today

I went and bought my 6/49 ticket at the Clairview Redi mart to get change to whomever might have won Thursdays (US) NFL Thanksgiving day games. But when I got inside the office, according to Gerry they only had a few games. The rest will be played on Sunday.

Ok so it doesn’t look like I’m going to be able to upgrade my laptops video card for gaming purposes. I’m back to upgrading my desktop, again. Vinny was saying earlier that my desktop mobo doesn’t need to worry about Sata cables etc. for a video card upgrade but to play today’s games, I defiantly need PCI express slots and my mobo doesn’t have PCI express. So I need a mobo upgrade. I’m looking at one from Gigabyte. Its got 2 PCIe slots but most likely I will need to go into the Bios to disable it before I install the graphics card. I’m looking at possibly the GTX 480. I’m not sure yet.

I went to bed about 1am and woke up suddenly at around 3am and I couldn’t get back to sleep from there. I wanted to get up around 7am anyway about when dawn breaks because this way Boots won’t want to jump the balcony when its daylight. I just began a cup of coffee and I‘ve got an hour or so here until I stat getting ready for work. The last thing I‘m going to do is to pack up my laptop for the office. It would be really nice if Vinny could install the software for me before we start the shift so right after work (4:30pm) we can head immediately over to BP’s. I can get a bite to eat there and hang out with the guys before heading out to “Hot to Huddle.” Well, I want to check it out as long as it doesn’t cost anything. I think it’s a free event open to the public. If anything, I’ll be hankering to get into FL9 tonight after a bite to eat and a beer at BP’s in my system, I’ll be able to nap for an hour or so and a couple hours to myself to get into this thing.

Tomorrows the big game. Grey Cup edition #98. After work last night as I was doing my banking the “Rider Nation” was out in full force. Green “S” jersey’s everywhere. The bars are full it’s a great time for the city. Next year it’s the 99th Grey Cup and the host city will be Vancouver. Game time starts at 4pm Sunday. Go Rider’s Go! They have home field advantage against Montreal.

SF Signal today asks about SF turkeys. Books that have been “turkeys.” one of the most uninspiring books I’ve tried to read over the last while has been Sheri S. Tepper’s “The family tree.” I stuck it out for about 150 pages, uggh. I haven’t read many books this year. In fact I’m currently reading my 6th book of the year this month. None of the books I’ve read this year have been strong enough to hold my interest except the last L.E. Modesitt jr. book and even then that wasn’t exactly a page turner either.

Coast has another boring topic on for tonight, “Non Conformity.” Oh brother. I’m not a programming director or anything but for the love of God can we get these soft topics off Saturday night? The good stuff is always on Sunday nights, when Ian Isn’t hosting the show. I’m heading back to business Monday morning for a full day At least I’ll get 40 hours in. Anyway, have a good weekend everyone.

Its not like I'm going

anytime soon but Blogger will be around a lot longer then me. My website will only be around for as long as there is funds to keep it going. Bloggger is free and more or less forever, But From July 20th I lost a lot of material from my diary. So I'm going to try and copy and past the entries from July but what I wanted to post kind of exceeds bloggers limitations.All the above is leading up to I'll be posting both on my website and here. I've done this before but lost track of what I was doing.

I've been looking at getting "Napoleon Total War" by Sega but I'm a long way off from PC gaming and I don;t think I can get a video card upgrad on this laptop.

Today I'm in from 5-8:30pm and off to my bank.

Weatherwise it's been a nice couple of days but we're supposed to go back into the deep freeze next week. it seems when Eastern Canada gets good weather we get bad, and vice versa. But these nice little breaks during winter remind us that Spring is not far off. Anyways that's about all for now