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.

Its been a long week

Yesterday and today, I caught the flu. My head and shoulders, heck my whole body aches. My sinuses are plugged up, the whole 9 yards. I didn’t through up yet though. I’ve got 31.5 hours in this week so I can’t complain. Because I’m ill, Anne wants me to come in for just half a day today.

I’ll take her up on the offer. I have a couple of errands to take care of first: I have to cash my check at Scotia, take the #1 bus to City Center mall area, well a block South of that to the RBC bank and try and get my replacement card going. They’ll give me a replacement card because I’m going to owe service charges for 2 months. I’d feel a lot better getting that cleared up. I\ve had that account since 1978 and I don’t want to lose it. It’s always good to have 2 bank accounts going

Finally, the Oiler’s won one in SJ last night, 5-2. If it was NK in net, we would have lost. He lets in 2 many soft goals. The officiating was still a little questionable. They let a lot of things slide. But 5-2 isn’t bad. The Leafs lost which I like ending their 4 game winning streak so JT can stop his gloating now.

I’ve been trying to find time to finish reading my book but haven’t had much luck. We’re still gripped by this cold snap but we’re going to warm up next weekend to about -7, which is a lot better. Anyway, that’s all for now.

I haven't been in here lately

because I had temporarily lost my Google accounts. Seems since I've been away, Blogger has added a few things.


But if you have been here before,I hope you have found my link to my website and that's where my main blogging activity is anyway. I'm considering using Blogger as a bit of "The best of the week" type thing. It's a filler for my website as I don't want to give up on Blogger altogether because I like using it. 


While my main blogging activity is on my website, I'll be making "The gist of the day," scenes, so you'll get an idea of the larger expanded view/rant whatever here. I'm going to be utilizing this daily but photos etc will be on the website.   


Sorry about the absence, that's all for now.

Jim

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.