Make your own kind of music

LOST last night was something else. I feared that they would drag me through yet another hour of television without elaborating on the storyline with Jack and Desmond, and BAM, here we are with nothing but more info on the leading up to that point. While I could have gone without Michael's back story part II last night, I really liked the different perspectives shown from the time that the hatch was blown to present, albeit very frustrating and annoying to have to wait another week to "figure things out".

The others actually exist, and look like cavemen. Weird indeed. Maybe Locke can trade the razor-blade that he uses for shaving his head to one of the others for his safety. I've got to stop watching the previews for the next weeks show. They only consistently show the "scenes from the next LOST" on ABC, whereas CTV doesn't always show them. I find that it takes away a lot of the mystery of the show, after all, they've left enough loose ends to drag people back next week without the need to remind them about what they are going to see. bah.

He thinks everyone is sick outside the hatch and inputs the numbers to reset that clock thing to 108 (which is the sum of the numbers 4+8+15+16+23+42). His washer and dryer look new-ish and his blender too, although everything else seems from the 70's.

Ah well, I'm hooked. Counting down those hours til the next episode, seems there's about 108 hours left... oh NO! The NUMBERS!!!!!!!

Can you tell we're related?

Technology saves the day!

Well, the power came back on, and how did I find out? On my new Cell Phone. I bought a phone last week, Pay as you go from Virgin Mobile, in hopes of it working past North Bay on our trips to Cochrane. It worked like a charm, all the way to the house in Clute with digital coverage. It seemed like the best deal of all the big companies, having the best per minute feature and offering extra features like voicemail with no contract or monthly fee. Very easy to setup, quick and on the internet! If you want my number, ask me for it.

In other news, I did get to see the LOST premiere... the same old cliffhanging endings that kept me wanting more until the next Wednesday. That can't be the same guy... can't be... nutty stuff. Good to see the background behind Jack's fiance. Hurley can't get anyone to take him seriously. And don't you find it odd that QUARANTINE was stamped on the inside of the hatch, as if to say that everything outside was being quarantined, not what was locked inside... Love that ABBA!

Well, bed soon

Just when I thought...

...it couldn't get any worse...

Thr friggin power is out in Cochrane, seriously hampering my plan to watch the season premiere of LOST. I'm sure we'll see it somewhere, just not at Faith's parents place. Boo-urns to power outages!

The Fabulous life of...

My Head!

I've gone through many a phase in the past few years, as far as my head goes. I've always enjoyed doing strange things with my hair, so here is a phot journal of what my hair's been through in the past few years.

First shot is January 2004, quite short then, I think I had started from scratch the fall prior and that's where I was at. I had decided to grow my hair until I could have dreads. I had never grown my hair all out, having a year or so of forgettable hairdo's courtesy of Dave.

The next shot is as Grandma's place, October 2004 when Faith teased my hair enough to make it stand up and almost walk out on me. They straightened it before they teased it, and somehow my hair didn't fall out due to shattered self esteem.


Next is January 2005, my nephew, Garrett, is seeing how big my mouth can open. My mom didn't much like me with loing hair, but she did like my curls.


Next was the age of hair extensions. Final Count: 104 braids, instant length. It was cool to have hair that long without putting the effort or time into growing it that long. I really enjoyed the month I had these, but man, did those stupid things smell. They smelled like a dirty dishcloth, and took forever to dry. Plus, my hockey helmet had a real tough time getting on my head.


Next up is the old shorty long... Business in the front, party in the back... the soccer shocker... the kentucky waterfall... the ape drape... the safety cut... on and on... I sported a full-on mullet for 5 days spanning trips to Wonderland, Marineland and the Acton Fall Fair where I posed with silver Elvis. This was fun, but agonizing. I got a lot of funny looks and reactions, but really didn't like not being able to pull all my hair back. I wanted to wear a hockey hair for the first game of my Church league hockey season, so I did and skated around the rink without my helmet during warmup.

Which brings me to today, coming full cycle to the uncle fester look. I chopped it right down to the "wood", scaring most of my music students today and not being recognized by my wife. I'm liking the "Powder" look, and just hope I don't get bad razorburn. Been there, done that. There ya go MOM, I cut my hair. I hope you enjoyed my synopsis of my hair's do's.

At least I didn't pick the old guy to win.

So seems I've only been ruled out on 1 of my picks so far, and 1 has been pretty much confirmed. I reckon my first out pick would have been right had we seen the other tribe at council, so I will consider it still active pending the other teams tribal council.

Rafe is such a fruit, so that's 1/6 so far.

I was pretty pleased with the tougher challenge to start off. The only realy overnight challenge I can think of was on Survivor UK, so this one was pretty good. It was cool to see them bring the CURSE OF SURVIVOR PAST to join the tribes. Sure, Steph's tribe did win immunity, but heck, those two were cursed, and will bring bad to anything they touch this season. They'll have to call in the Brothers Grimm to take care of things.

Anyways, I didn't manage to watch it til 11:00 cause it got shot down the priority list this year, and I've seen my share of puke this season, so now it's time for some real drama. or something like it.

Survivor Starts Thursday

So, after much deliberation, I have made my early picks for the New Survivor... If you can remember, my pick last year didn't even get to play, so I've spread my picks out.

Most likely to be:

Final 3: Brandon (Redneck), Brooke (curls), Brianne (cheerleader)
Early Winner Pick: Brooke
First Out: Amy (Police Sargent)
Gay: Rafe ... what a name
Funny: Judd
Sketchy: Brian

Seems they abandoned their formula for having a "JUGS" girl. There's a few cutesie girls, but no girls well endowed enough to be considered for the JUGS award.

We'll see where this one goes, Thursday at 8pm.

Birthday-o-matic

So I'm old... 27 to be precise. Faith got me a beer machine for my birthday. It's pretty cool, and quite stylish. The best part--IT ACTUALLY COOLS DRINKS. I know, craziness. It fits 12 cans of whatever is a standard can size, such as: most beer cans, pop cans, can of worms, mccain concentrate juice from a can, those stupid souvenirs with stuffed moose in a can. You get the point.
My birthday was great overall, consisting of me sleeping in til 10:30 which is unheard of these days, and getting 2 free meals. I milked the system on my birthday, going to Caseys for Ribs and Wings FOR FREE, and going to the Whale and Ale for supper, having the Rib-eye steak FOR FREE! I returned home, well fed, to cake and icecream with a bunch of strangers in my living room. Booyah!
I got a few "paper gifts" which helped with the purchase of the Complete First Season of LOST. I've gone through some of the 8 hours of extra crap and some of it is pretty cool. There's some pretty neat stuff with behind the scenes stuff and making of crap. There's also a funny spot from Jimmy Kimmel live where he was on location. Pretty Funny.

I'm old, feels good.

Sure can't sleep....

I've somehow managed to get about 3 hours of tossing turning/restlessness in so far. I've been surfing ebay and whatnot for 1 1/2 hours which brings me to now, not tired one bit... sucks. Gotta wake up for work in a couple hours. That'll be pretty tough since I probably won't have slept by then.

Last time I laid down, I couldn't get my mind off re-arranging the computer room. I should probably clean the fish tank anyways.

You know what I blame? My afternoon nap. I usually try not to take the Sunday nap, but today I slept from 3 til a bit after 5. Best part of afternoon naps, feeling like you go straight into deep sleep. Worst part, waking up with that fuzzy feeling, and being all sweaty.

I think I may be boring myself to sleep... I can only hope so.

It Just shows to Go ya.

It turns out that if you're persistent enough, you can acheive the impossible.

for example: a while back, I was trying to find a way to hook all my laptop up to my C64 monitor to do the dual display. I didn't feel like just using an extra monitor, I wanted to use the c64 monitor which only has composite(rca) video input. My computer only has VGA out and s-video out.

I set out in search of a converter, be it an RF modulator, or converter cable. I found a few and tried them, to no avail. One night, in Futureshop, I asked one of the sales people if they had anything. He told me that it was Impossible to switch S-video signal to RCA. Can't be done. I walk away unsatisfied, but my frustrations were confirmed.

A few weeks back, in The Source (formerly radioshack), I found a little converter by Nexxtech that claimed to be able to switch rca to s-video and visa versa. I was very sceptical, but went back tonight and bought it. I brought it home, and VOILA! It works. Looks not much different from anything I had tried before, but it works. I acheived the impossible because I kept looking...

The Source by Circuit City... the place where dreams come true!

Red Eye

Good movie

Getting Medieval on your arse.

So, the trebuchet was a HUGE success. It took us about 14 hours total to build, planning all along the way.



Left to Right: Matt, Rudy, Me, and Jeff built this sucker with special consideration going to Patrick for helping before the hard work started. Jeff (Master of the Chainsaw) worked his wizardry on the forest while Matt (Jungle Math) calculated all the angles and lengths using a stick on the ground in the forest. I was there, obviously for my good looks, but mostly cause I was bigand could carry heavy stuff. Rudy supplied the farm courtesy of his wonderful parents, and miscellaneous girls provided food and criticism. We used trees for the frame, I think they were mostly elm, and used "Ironwood" for the swing-arm. My contributions were the concept for the firing mechanism, which worked wonderfully, and building the sling. I made the sling out of a scrap of carpet, attached it to 7ft of rope on either end and gave it a custom sewing job for strength. The counterweight was provided by the tractor weights, 100lb aprox each, which we slid on as we went.

We got 6 shots off before the thing almost busted (notice the bend in the axle in the top picture). Here's the details in order. (shot #, projectile weight, distance, and counterweight)

1 - 5lb - 151ft - 400lb
2 - 20lb - 32ft - 400lb
3 - 20lb - 68ft - 600lb
4 - 5lb - 252ft - 600lb
5 - 11lb - 166ft - 600lb
6 - 11lb - 215ft - 800lb

*note that there was one throw that was stricken from the record for being tremendously anti-climactic. The baseball was much too light for our setup and barely got out of the sling.

It was quite something to watch the thing take off, as it was quite quick and very smoothe. Probably the most remarkable part was the spin that the rocks had when they left the sling. LEFT is a pic of the crater left by the 20 lb rock on it's first throw. It only went 32 ft forwards, but it was probably 150 ft in the air. The hole it left was at least 6 inches deep. All of our shots were quite accurate, the first 4 landing in a straight line from the trebuchet, and the other 2 deviating slightly due to the bend in the axle.

Good times had all around and great anticipation for the day soon to come, Pumpkin throwing at Halloween... I will post videos if I can figure it out.

Trebuchet Day only hours Away

So, tomorrow we're off to Rudy's farm to build a trebuchet. If you're not familiar with trebuchets, check this link out. It's a medieval type of catapult used to hurl things through the air. The basic concept of the treb is to load something to a long arm and swing the arm by using big counterweight.

Yes, we will be careful, and yes it will work.

We will post many pictures afterwards and hopefully some videos... I can't wait.

Sure, Hockey's back...

BUT, today I heard news of one of my favorite "former" Leafs, Alexander Mogilny has signed in New Jersey. The Leafs had no more money to keep him although, I was really hoping they could work something out.

This is the NEW NHL, teams not able to hold onto stars like they used to. The Leafs couldn't come anywhere near to the $3.5 million he got in Jersey. I was hoping that the season would have been salvaged so I could see Mr. Mogilny in a Leaf uniform again, but no dice.

The real kick in the crotch for the Leaf nation was that since he was under contract and got surgery on his hip after the last playoffs, he WAS paid while recovering, by the Leafs or their insurance, and they don't get return on their investment...

Ah well, good luck in Jersey, Alex. May the reporters ask you many a stupid question, and may your responses baffle them like days of old... And may you never score a goal against the Leafs again.

oh, and I hope to see more gay pictures of him and Pavel Bure... tee hee

Oh, to be old. This made my day.

I was in a variety store this morning, when an elderly lady walked in to buy some chocolate bars. She was shaking a lot, probably parkinson's or something. She asked the attendant, with her thick german? accent, for some plain chocolate. The attendant, a woman elderly to a lesser extent, came around to assist, and was interupted by the first lady every time she offered any help. Once she had found the chocolate, it was time to pay.

She pulled out her purse and asked the attendant to "count please" and dumped out her change pocket revealing nickels and dimes. The attendant showed some frustration at the growing line and having to count $2.15 in change, but got it done and gave the woman her change back, quickly shuffling to the other side of the till to take my purchases.

Once she had started ringing me through, the woman asked for a "bag please", repeating it until she got a response. "Just a minute" replied the cashier, forcussing on my purchases. The woman asked again, like a small child badgering her mother for something, each time getting more frantic. The cashier finished with my purchase and got the woman her bag.

As I was leaving, I (being the gentleman I am) held the door for the old woman. Much to my amazement, as the old woman exited the store, what did she put in the garbage can outside the door of the store?

The bag... after all that, she threw out the bag.

Snap!

Another prime shot of me half naked

I thought I'd leave another pic with y'all before I go camping for the weekend (in the rain). This is a picture of Rudy and me at a synchronized canopener contest. We certainly won 1st plce which is an amazing accomplishment for a) men our size, people of our gerth don't enter watersports contests often and b) social workers, as social workers have proven 49% less likely to win anything compared to the engineer being 93% more likely to win something... This was photographed by Trish Curry, another social worker... what are the odds. Notice the alignment of our lower feet... perfection.

They're for my athsma

Well, we wrapped it up last night, winning the B-Cup finals in churchball with a whopping 21-5 win in Listowel. Last time we played, the score was quite the opposite, so this was somewhat anti-climactic. We won the series with a forfeit on their part and a 21-5 drubbing, not nearly as difficult as expected. Hats off to Listowel, they went out with class, having fun til the last at bat, and commenting on my obvious steroid use throughout the night, to which I replied, "they're for my athsma!"

Big E, big deal...

I never figured it would ever happen, but alas... it is finished. The Big "E" (and I don't mean Enema) has landed in town. I have to say I like his price tag and his point production last time he played, it's just he's bound for another injury, which worries me. If the Leafs have too many eggs in their injury prone basket, like last season when they had too many eggs in the geriatric basket, they could be in for trouble if/when someone gets injured. But that's not gonna happen, right? Finally a player for Antropov to look up to, so hopefully he can learn something and start getting concussions and retire early... stupid Antropov.

A rousing melodramatic hooray and a loud "show me what you can do" comes out for this move. Here's to the big E!

He's back, and it's for good this time...

Like an abused woman, I was ready for more abuse, hearing that the NHL is coming back, saying to me, "I still love you, baby" and "Those other leagues meant nothing to me..."

I don't care, I'm pumped about hockey.... Civic nation, I mean Leaf Nation is back! Should be interesting. I'm happy with John Ferguson's early moves, bringing in Jeff O'Neill and letting the fossil brothers go (Roberts and Niewendyk). It's long overdue time for some young'uns to get their chance... Stajan and Wellwood meet the NHL.

Ready yourselves, folks for a flurry of strange free agent signings, and sit back and enjoy the wonderful new NHL

Hair today, gone tomorrow.

Look at him, he's dazzling...I thought I'd put up a sultry pic of me at Rudy's parents pool. I thought that if Cindy Crawford could pull off the look, I could. There you go.
Ok