Winter solstice arrived here in

Edmonton at 3:44 this morning. After today the days get longer by seconds and then by minutes moving into January and February. With the weather warmer then its been some time off and some income coming in, I feel pretty good about myself.

On my commute home from work last night I began getting mild blood sugar shakes. I had a cookie left over from my lunch at Belvedere station and felt a bit better. I had one thing on my mind pulling into Clareview and boarding the #183 as it was ready to pull out: Getting my $15 iTunes gift card. I picked that up at Shoppers and headed home. Anne was making us a kind of "Shepherds pie." I make mine better in layers and put more cheese in the mash potato and some dried onion in the hamburger with a mix of regular and lean ground. Anne had to go across the street to Shoppers for cream corn and I had a couple of cookies to boost up my sugars. Feeling better I redeemed my iTunes card, and bought Elastic Drums, and Bilbao for Korg Gadget. I'll be playing around with these over the holidays, installing Linux on my laptop, finishing my book and relaxing.

My Westend job's last day of calling before they break for the holidays is today. That's when the cheques are ready. Last day of calling for my Southside job is tomorrow. So I'll be out of here at 2pm later today to run over and get my cheque, then swing into work. I need to have my iPod charged so I can catch the scores on the Oilers/Anaheim game tonight. Then Friday, the Oilers are in San Jose. As for this afternoon, I'm going to suggest to Anne because I have the extra days on my Southside job, that I should just leave my 2 day cheque at the other place for the New Year. Saves me a bit of running around this afternoon. If it was left up to me, I'd say ok. I might anyway. 

I'll have another blog post over the weekend, most likely Saturday as I'm getting into my Christmas holidays. I had such a good night on the job yesterday, I'm hoping for about the same today and tomorrow to close out the year. Anyway, that's all for now.

Heading home after work

last night I felt good completing almost a full day on the job. Even the weather on my commute home felt good and I got work (more or less) secured for January and February.

This morning before bed, I thought about hacking my iPod Touch 5 gen, since i0S 9.3.5 there will no more os updates after that for this thing. A bit of YouTube research later, I came across several jailbreak options. All without the use of a computer. One video, (August) for i0s 9.3.5 demo a 4 step process. I did everything right but no Cydia. There were no changes on my iPod. Oops, I forgot to turn off the application (which wasn't made clear in this process/video. It was made clearer in another video) before shutting off my iPod. I tried again and the first attempt kept refreshing the process. I tried (properly this time) and still nothing. I found another video and a different process, which was more complicated but it works, more or less. When I use the Cydia app, the second process states this is a Cydia alternative (clone) My iPod still isn't jail broken and when in "Cydia" the first process keeps refreshing with other apps to try. Later on I'm going to delete all this stuff and try again back to the first attempt. Its a easy process as long as the instructions and the one hacking knows what they are doing. I hope hacking my new Ntendo 3ds is as easy. I'm trying to find a screen recorder my 32 bit iPod can handle, since Airshou wont work and Vidyo won't work on my 32 bit iPod. I'll be doing stuff like this over the Christmas break.

This week I'm at the other place on the South side until Thursday. I just have a out of my way stop to pick up my cheque for the 2 days. Then after Thursday, my Christmas break for 11 days begins. Excellent. Anyway, that's all for now.

Other then the weather this Saturday morning

I don't mind heading off to work. I had about 4 hours of sleep and Thursday/Friday I had about 6 hours. So its just out the door at 9am, in by 10am.

Not much going on this weekend. The Oilers are entertaining Tampa Bay Lightning at Rogers place tonight. The Oilers are slowly sinking out of a playoff spot. They are still playing 500 hockey but better teams like San Jose Sharks are leaving the Oilers in the dust. I'm about 10% confident the Oilers will squeak into a playoff spot. I'm not very confident the Oilers will win against Tampa tonight but I'll watch. 

We began 2 projects at work yesterday (I can't name of course) but one needs about a 100 completes and that's our only project for today. In other words I'm hoping for a short shift and out by 1pm. At least I have steady work for January. Not much more then that this weekend. Anyway, that's all for now.

I like overcast skies heading on my

afternoon commute. That Sun even while wearing sunglasses can be glaring in my eyes. At least we're no longer in that arctic vortex that's held a ice grip over the city for the last ten days. Right now its -16/-23 wind chill.

So Trudeau is ramping up its national legalize marijuana (pot, mainly to tax it) campaign promise. I'm split over this whole thing. Just the ethics of legalizing pot alone gives me pause. On one hand by legalizing pot and having pot sold at specific retail vendors, will have a significant impact on crime. Also, by legalizing pot, pot users will know what their getting. Buying pot by a dealer, could be laced with anything. What I don't like about this, is that I might be faced with breathing in unwanted 2nd hand pot smoke. I live here in Capital place apartments, and have been doing so for the last 16 years. Use street view and zero down the first building across the street from the Dollarrama. You see that strange wooden thing on the main floor? I go past that everyday. My wife and I suspect pot users. More so in the summer, but now we'll be breathing in 2nd hand pot smoke. I imagine a lot of my colleagues will be "high,"during their shift. I can see companies installing a periodic work place drug policy, that could affect me as well. Many people I know in the trades face that already, now with this even more so, and what about the legal snags surrounding that? Who can I trust now getting behind the wheel of a car that drives me to Southgate or from the lodge home? Also, what about the dealers that are going to target their customers? "You continue to buy from me or else," threats, and the collateral damage that can cause. Pot gets on peoples cloths and smells bad. What about quantities and price? There are other issues as well such as mothers smoking cigarettes around their children. Now children will be exposed to 2nd hand pot smoke. What about the ramifications of that? Since pot (depending on who you talk to) is addictive, how is that going to affect the household? Again price. "But Jim, as a teenage from the 1960's didn't you smoke pot?" Once and I got nothing out of it. Since JT and this plan to legalize pot is in uncharted waters, there's just too much we don't know, like how will this affect the Canadian US boarder for the states that have yet to legalize pot? There's all kinds of legal snags to get around over the next months ahead.

So, today I'm in at my South side job as that's winding down next week. I expressed my desire to work in January if there is any clean up work. I have a few things I'm looking at for January. I'm hoping to go in on Friday, Saturday and Sunday at the market research job, and 3 days at the South side job to wrap up the year. Anyway, that's all for now.

Heading into work Saturday morning

wasn't too bad. I was happy to get out for the "weekend" when I did. At the moment, its -13 with a -19 wind chill. Coming home will be a bit different but we should be out of that extreme arctic cold snap for a few days. By the weekend the long range is about -1, which is going to be nice.

This week is going to be busy. I've got a full week's worth of work between both jobs. I didn't get that iM1 app this last weekend but most likely I'll order it on the weekend coming up. The highlight for this last weekend was watching the Winnipeg/Oilers game last night. Kassian on a breakaway scores into the jets net but Jets coach called a challenge saying the play was offside. Kassian's foot was in the air on the blue line. Good call by their coach. It was Patrik Laine of the Jets that scored our 3rd goal. He was trying to clear the puck making a defensive play that went into their own net. Charlie Huddy (on their bench) might have reminded Laine about our then rookie defense Steve Smith goal in 1986 during a game 7 that helped the Flames to get their one and only Stanley Cup. Laine should be grateful that goal wasn't in a playoff game. I think Winnipeg was the better team last night, tbh. Late in the 3rd, Laine banked the puck off a stanchion that hit our goal post, and had our goaltender fooled. McDavid once again tries to score into a empty net and can't beat the clock and scores on 0=0 time. 

So, I'm on my 2:30pm commute to my South side job today and same for Tuesday. Then its my West end job for a couple of days in the middle of the week and then next week, on the 21st my West end job breaks for the year and the day after my South side job breaks. So I get 11 days off, wu who! Anyway, that's all for now.

The theme for my opening blog this morning is

weather. At the moment it's -23/-28 out there. Its the 2nd number that concerns me at -28 and it supposed to get colder as the morning progresses to -41. The good news is its supposed to warm up over the next ten days to about -8. I can handle that. 

Yesterday during my commute I bought a blackjack scratch n win ticket at the redimart, and played on the train as it was waiting to pull out of Clareview. I won $10! Wu who. What the hell I can always catch the next train. I went down to catch it and there was a line up as there was this one person two down from me tying everyone up for five minutes. Then there was a debit card, yeesh. Finally my turn. I got my $10 and went to get my next train there waiting upstairs. I knew I was going to be late, what the hell? At least it was bright and sunny on my way in. I got to Southgate and from the platform I could see across 109th my #52. Would I make the connection? I began to pick up my pace in the pedway and hurried down the stairs. As soon as I got outside the doors the bus was raising its entrance and opened its doors for me. Any longer I would have missed it. Whew! 

I was able to make it into the office right on time. I got the Metro, the area manager said, "Hi Jim, cold enough for you?" "Oh, yeah," as I'm taking off my face mask, scarf etc. I told her a brief story as she was heading about where my wife is working and how I tried and failed to write a test to work their. "So she's working this weekend," She said "Well, your a better fit here, have a nice weekend," That was nice. I felt good about that. So I got a hot chocolate, settled in and signed in. By 4:10pm we had 6 people. Looks like a short crew as others began to show up, eventually. At least I never handed in a empty recap at the end of the shift. A colleague from Brazil and I walked down to the bus stop and joined by one of the new girls as we waited in front of Tony Roma's there on 51st Ave and Calgary Trail but the bus was delayed or it felt like it was a long wait because of the weather. Five minutes can seem like 15 in this weather. At Southgate the new girl and I were on the pedway there was our early Clareview train ready to pull out, crap. I checked on the Edmonton/Wild, nhl game tied at 2 ready to go into ot. I'll catch this oncoming Nait train to someplace further up the line where its warm but my iPod Touch battery was in the low red. At Grandin, I checked the game and Minni scored in ot. We're losing too many of these ot games now. That's 5 points we let go. Next game will be a Sunday event I'll watch tomorrow. I got home shortly before 10pm after leaving out of the office before 8:30pm. That late #6 was the difference maker last night. After dinner I was able to watch a bit of the "Late show," shut the computer off and I went to bed.

I'm out of here at 9am. I'm sure its going to be very chili. At least I'm not in at the other job. Their shift for Friday was cancelled and the office is closed for today. At least I have my other job I was at yesterday. I'm in the market research job office on Wednesday at 3:30pm and for Thursday hopefully Saturday. I need those 3 days. The market research job is done for Christmas break on the 21st and the South side job where I'm at today, closes on the 22nd and resumes in March. My 4 hour shift today is done at 2:15pm and I think Mark is there today. He usually drives me and Brazil to Southgate, which makes a difference in this weather. 

So after work its my commute home and I'm going to buy a iTunes card at Shoppers so I can get iM1. If I can make it across the street in 1 piece. I'm home all day Sunday and I have the Oilers game to watch Sunday night. Anyway, that's all for now.

Since May 12 1980

I've been writing a kind of daily journal. I'd write this out on hard copy, sometimes going on for pages at a time. Those hard copies are still here and there could be about 20,000+ pages. Just things going on in my daily life, the women I've been interested in my ahem, "encounters" with them etc. The journal was to be a kind of "occult journal", a documentation of the "The great work" whatever that means. I wanted it to be like Aleister Crowley's diaries, however, it never got to be that way. I hid each "volume" here in my office as best I could until September 2005 when my wife found my diary and read my musings about this woman I had a passing interest in. That interest evaporated within a month but as that interest was sputtering out Anne read the entry. Since Anne and I have been married December 6th 2000, I have never had a external relationship with another woman. Anne occasionally rubs salt in those wounds.

So as of 2005 I've had a electronic copy of my diary on 2 different computers. The first was a custom made pc in 2001. The PC came with about 10Gb of hard drive space. There's nothing on that pc worth saving. Thanks to the Ralph Kline resource cheques in 2005 I bought a Windows Xp media centre pc. Right after Anne discovered that journal entry September 2005, I went from that to my blog in 2005. I can't recall if my journal went electronic on my old pc. It was a ATX tower and I recall I had both of them running together, so most likely I was running a journal on the old ATX machine running Windows Millennium 2005-2010. I still have the original millennium cd. Since I took out the ram of the old pc for a colleague and I don't know where it is  to reinstall it. It might be easier to take out the hard drive from the old ATX and install it into one of my empty drive bays into the Windows Xp machine to see if I can still use it.

Okay, so where all this is going (finally) this morning when I tried to open my diary pt. 2 Microsoft Works wouldn't open it. I had pt.1 on a usb flash drive and pt.1 was a longer document and it opened for me, no problem. Pt. 2 on the flash drive went until May of this year but there is 6 months of a journal gap. I tried downloading Abiword but there are some programing issues and Open office with the same. Works, fits best for me but now I don't know if I can trust it any more  to open a new document. I need to eventually migrate from that platform anyway, eventually. 

At the moment my commute weather this afternoon is going to fell like -27. I wore a t-shirt under my sweater and that worked ok. I don't mind cold, it's just the ice. Coming off the curb just by Shoppers here is a stretch of ice where vehicles have been packing it down. So its better to cross a few paces before where there is less ice. otherwise I need to where cleats for that one little area.

Anyway, I'm out of here in an hour to Southgate on the lrt, for my short bus trip into work. As long as I'm dressed for winter, it doesn't bother me too much.