I'm still bringing up a lot of

phlegm but for the most part that cold I had last week is almost gone but never say never right?

The other day ETS went and fired their top manager over all the recent delays over the opening of the Metro line. Metro was supposed to be in full operation a year ago but ETS hired Thales to modernize its signaling system. The original system was put together by General Electric. Thales had to merge the old technology from 1978 with the new technology and that's why there had been so many delays. ETS's last manager had over 30 years of experience in transit so he ended up being the scape goat in all of this. ETS says the Metro line will be opened when its reliable enough. Translation: When the City can have a staged opening and the Mayor can make his speech with the Province, Feds and ETS partners as a backdrop. In the meantime the testing of cars along Metro and Capital lines is continuing, stay tuned.

Anne's getting up in about half an hour and wants to go over to Wendy's for me before she heads to work. Great. Then I can get cleaned up and leave out of here for Lodge. 

For the most part the

cold virus I've been struggling with has almost come to an end. I was on the job last night holding out better then I expected. For the most part the cold is out of my system.

Anne bought me some new running shoes Sunday and I'm phasing out the Spring cloths for summer ones. The weather has been up and down a lot. We've had 1 near plus 20 day this month. More on the way I'm sure of it. Anne's doing laundry tonight I'm at work.

Yesterday I was able to pick up my Space Marine Battles book at Audrey's and I ordered another Horus Heresy novel book #30. Other then that, not much else going on. Anyway, that's all for now. 

My Sunday consisted of the following

and in no particular order: Reading my Warhammer 40K book, answering email, music production research on YouTube, Connect2Edmonton message board, that sort of thing.

My cold seems to be on the mend. Sunday morning I was having a sinus-phlegm coughing attack. It began to abate after I drank a lot of cold diet cola. My voice is about 70% back to normal. It should be back by Friday at the latest. Now Anne has laryngitis and talks with a whisper.

This weekend has been cold and windy. Hopefully by the weekend we'll get up to some +16's and without that howling wind. It'd be nice to get some sunny skies in there was well.

Sunday the Oiler players were at Rexall cleaning out their lockers before they get on the course, putters in hand. What a disaster of a season. That's a 9 year drought of not making the playoffs. At least we did not finish in last place. The playoffs begin Wednesday Ottawa/Montreal. My prediction for this year: A Canadian team in the East and Saint Louis in the West with Saint Louis to win overall. 

I'm in the office from 4-9:30pm all week as we have a new project apparently Monday. which is apparently supposed to keep us going until the end of May. We may also be doing some political stuff as well because the upcoming Provincial election May 5th. So basically it's a 4-9:30pm thing Monday-Friday and Saturday 10-6pm. There's no Doctors appointments, no lodge. Just a straight Monday-Friday work week. Anyway, that's all for now.

Sunday morning I could barely

talk my voice was that raw from this cold. So I've been taking a mixture of salted warm water and gargling with it. I hope to do this 4-5 times by this time tomorrow.

The LHC or Large Hadron Collider after a 2 year upgrade is set to go back online again almost doubling its power. This time the goal is to find the existence of dark matter. The LHC cost's about $10 billion. Before the LHC shutdown researchers discovered the Higgs boson that made headlines. They (cern) don't expect to find any major discoveries anytime soon but finding dark matter is right up there with finding the Higgs.

Other then work this week, I've got a Doctors appointment Friday but I'm going to rebook that for the end of the month. I'll be doing that Tuesday. Anyway that's about all for now.

I'm a little late by a few months

and I sensed a head cold was just around the corner. Right now its in the throat, with a bit of scratch and phlegm. Its a "good" time to have one while I have a few days off on the new job.

If your out of town or a shut in and are curios as to how our downtown arena is coming along, you can go to the webcam and see in real time the current progress. Crews are working around the clock. The link above will get you to the action. 
Also you can go to time laps on the same site and see other views. In the first view you'll see the Metro line lrt. It's been ready for use for over a year now but because of mismanagement, nobody is saying with any surety when the Metro will be operating. The recent start date is the end of May of this year. Its a bit of a running joke around here. One thing is for certain, the downtown arena will be ready on game day October 2016 when the Edmonton Oilers move into their barn.

Mostly last night I watched wrestling sucking on cough drops (Halls) and dozing off on the couch. I know this cold is going to get worse before it gets better. Anyway, that's all for now. 

My Wedensday

yesterday was ok. I was able to secure Saturday and Sunday off. Also, I talked to my ride out to Baseline and got that more or less arranged. I just half to be ready and call Saturday morning at 9am. We need to be there at 10:00am as it starts at 10:30am. 9am is kind of pushing it. 

On Coast overnight, the topic will be about The Merlin Project and Privacy. Soft topics for tonight for sure. However on local news and probably making international news the meteor that crash landed into a lake in Russia was recovered weighing at half a ton. It was the largest of it's kind. .

I had a great first half of the shift but I took my half at 7pm so it made night go by faster. last call rolled by pretty quick. I shut everything off and bolted out of there in a hurry to get that early train on track 2 to Grandin so I can get the train going the other way. I was actually at Clareview as the #182 Northgate bus pulled in and in the apartment at 9:30pm, wow.

I'm starting to come down with something. It's that time of year. The boss has it as well. My throat is getting raspy and probably by the weekend, I'm going to be into the Buckley's from last year. Anyway, that's about all for now.

It's been an interesting couple of days

first of all by now, most of the world has heard about the Boston marathon Bombings. Despicable. Most likely those responsible will come forward or the FBI will expose the ones responsible. 

Since Sunday night I've been having sinus problems and all day today. Hopefully they'll go away by Thursday night but in the meantime, it's causing me some grief.  

One of my favorite topics is the sinking of the Titanic. Check in my "Topics" section.  

 A few years ago I thought about writing a paranormal/historical fiction/romance novel about the Titanic and I used the above book for research. I never wrote the story. It's not that good of a picture,sorry about that.

So, the Edmonton Oiler's fired Oilers finally fire Steve Tambellini, name Craig MacTavish new GM. I knew the move was coming when Mac T was brought on board. Other then Glen Sather Craig MacTavish won more games then any other coach in Oiler history. This was a good move in my opinion. Anyway, that's all for today. 

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.

With all the medical issues I have

it's amazing I'm not sick as often as I should be. So when my yearly cold bug came upon me this weekend,in a way I was relieved. Normally I get a cold like this around December. I'm going to see how things go this morning and if I can stay for the afternoon, great. If not Anne says come home. That, I can live with.

Yesterday I was able to figure out how Reaktor's Lazerbass works. With all of Reaktor's synths you've got to "go under the hood" and connect things. That's how I got it to work. Well sort of. I got a lot of static when inputting data but that's because my Cubase routing wasn't fully configured. 

I'm not much of a video gamer and I'd rather read then watch a movie then watch TV. I'll watch The Oiler's, Doctor who, Wrestling, CFL and of course the evening news. Other then that, I don't follow a TV series. I haven't done so since Lois & Clark the adventures of Superman in the 1980's and then latter Star Trek's Enterprise and Voyager. After Enterprise other then Doctor Who, that's about it for "following TV" but Monday night Raw is tonight. 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.

  

I was ready to go in this morning

but at the last second Anne said ok, go in for 4pm. Then when we woke up around 1pm as I was in a savage bronchial coughing attack she said I'm staying in for the day. I called J and I said I'd see him Saturday morning. And I'm bringing my laptop to see if Vinny an do a quick diagnostic and see if he can recover my win 7 over the next few days. I'll bring my back up drive in as well.

Sunday after work Anne and I are heading over to the medi centre to see what's going on with this cough/cold or whatever it is. 

This evening I watched what I thought was going to be a better Oiler hockey game. The injury ridden Oilers were 4-14- something when the other team gets the first goal but that stat wasn't made available to my knowledge until the post game show on the radio. Sam Gange and Hall were the only players that showed up tonight. Too lose 5-0 to a team in the standings behind the Oiler's after the Oiler's lost 5 straight is deplorable. With LA Kings coming in here Sunday, I won't mind being at the midi centre with Anne. With the way the Oiler's played tonight I can say for this evening "Oiler's suck".Anyway, that's all for now. 

Apparently the Norway shooter

that killed 76 teenagers and 7 others in the Oslo bombing was a Freemason. Now watch I'm going to get a lot of that at work today. "Yeah like your an expert." So if a guy from say Amway, that kills a bunch of people its Amway's fault. Watch the blame game now. The guy was a right wing extremists and felt that Muslim's were taking over Europe. He hasn't made a statement yet but until he does I doubt he'll say anything about Freemasonry.

To continue on from where I left off yesterday, when I arrived here to Edmonton it was in August 1978. Mike & Doris's wedding was on Saturday August 19th. I left New Westminster BC by Via rail Monday August 14th to arrive there Wednesday on the 16th at the CN tower. I had planned on a 5 day stay over to leave on that Monday. Something made me think about staying. Mom said she could get me a job. I asked UIC to have my check sent to me but they could only send it to a TD bank of all places in Saint Albert. I recall catching a Westmount bus to Saint Albert Thursday August 24th and a few days latter I was working for Wacken Hut security. Doris's dad Fred Jucker's was the one that got me the job. I quit that and got a job at the Army & Navy department store working in the warehouse (Great West Saddlery building.) More about this next time.

My throat is all clogged up my body aches my sinuses are bugging me. It's going to be a long 8 hour shift today.

My online friend Dennis Hurd was lamenting yesterday over how he wished he would have more time to go over things like his music, blogs, podcast's etc. No kidding. I can relate, what with the half dozen or so podcasts I have etc. Not to mention the time I'd love to have reading. Anyway, that's about all for now. .

I'm recovering from a cold type thing this weekend

cold kind of a day today. I had a decent day today even though I didn’t venture outside to go anywhere.

Most of the day was spent reading “The Automatic Detective,” which I finished earlier Saturday evening. So here’s a brief “review:”

*****/5 Stars

Synopsis: Our hero of this tale is a robot cabbie named Mac. Mac Megaton’s friends and neighbours (The Bleakers) have been kidnapped. The story is a delightful romp through the City as Mac tries to find his friends and finds himself in an alien conspiracy in the process.

Pros: Strong character development in a nice mix of techno jargon that isn’t over the top. World building is handled expertly and the narrative flow is fast paced.

Cons: The villains could have been made more threatening to the MC‘s supporting cast. The supporting cast didn’t have enough substance in them for me to care about.

Bottom line: This was a fun read and might just be the best book that I’ve read this year. It’s impression will be with me for a long time.

We have a few more days of this cold snap to contend with. So far this winter we've had about 50 Cm of snow, which is roughly about 2 feet. We begin to warm up here in a few days. Hopefully this next warming trend will be with us until at least the end of the month. I love winter and the snow, makes us appreciate Spring, summer, fall. I grew up in the lower mainland in the 1960's and '70's and for the most part we got very little snow, if any. I recall maybe once growing up 1970 ish when we actually had a good dump of snow on Regan Ave at the old place. I like winter, I just don't like severe winter.

Now I'm right in the first 10 pages of reading Alastair Reynolds "Pushing Ice." It's a big book and I don't think I'll have it read until about the end of February if that, what with all the work I have to do at the Lodge coming up in February. It's work I want to do anyway.

I haven't been doing so good at the job lately though since I got that $1800 banner ad cold sale on the card, last Wednesday. Thursday I got nothing and Friday I got nothing. My commission on the banner ad though is supposed to be nice. I'll believe it when I see it. That sale was the largest single card sale I have ever got in all my 10 years where I work.

I'm not one for Vampire movies but after seeing the trailer for "Priest" yesterday afternoon on Attack of the Show, this looks really good. I think its supposed to be coming out in May of this year. There are other trailers on YouTube. Priest is a science fiction, fantasy, martial arts, horror, type movie. This is one movie, I want to see this summer.

I haven't heard anything yet about Matt Smith and new Doctor Who episodes for 2011 but I imagine they are in production and I hope they keep the whole production team from last season. "Discovering" Doctor Who last year was one of the best things about 2010. When I can I also like to watch the previous Doctor before Smith, David Tennant. I wish I would have discovered the Doctor back then. It's great science fiction, I love it.

Coast (as usual on a Saturday night) has another boring topic but I think I have a new SF Signal Post I can listen to to fill in on these Saturday nights when Coast to Coast has lame Ian Punnet topics. Sorry Ian but your shows are lame. Anyway, that's about all for now.