Out of The PIT

Due to my sickness, I have been getting a bad case of heartburn. After a day or so I finally gave in and decided to do something about it. I was thinking of getting something like Pepto Bismol to coat my esophagus but MJNL got me Tums. Now I would prefer not to reduce the acidity of my stomach considering that it is one of the first lines of defense and I was still fighting the bug, but I was desperate for relief. ML suggested I take some apple cider vinegar instead. I was a little skeptical and MJNL was a little incredulous at the idea of adding acid to help with heart burn, but I figured that if it didn't work, I could take the Tums later. Well, it seemed to work! Maybe it causes the sphincter to close which would make the most sense to me. Now there is no clinical proof that this remedy works, but I'll try it again the next time I have this problem.

I had a serious bout of food poisoning yesterday and had to come home from work early. I'm now experienced enough to know when I'm about to get sick and with the drive home so long now, early detection is important. In any case, as with other stomach bugs I had, my system got purged and I had no appetite. This time however, I didn't eat or really drink anything for the entire day, as I was trying to get some rest. That was a mistake now that I look back. Late last night, I went to the washroom to brush my teeth and clean my tongue. I noticed that my tongue was bleeding at the back - possibly because of the stomach acid that I didn't properly clear out. As I was making that thought I suddenly had a slight migraine and felt really weak, so I sat on the counter. I felt so bad that I laid down on the counter to rest. This was not the most comfortable nor safe positions but I don't know how long I was there before I convinced myself that sleeping in bed was a mu

So I had organized an Artemis SBS session but everyone bowed out until it was just Laz, Werdna, and I. Since a three player game is not so fun, and Laz and I were interested in checking out Werdna's new bow, and this was one of the warmest and least snowy December's on record, we headed out to Seton Archery Range for some target practice.

Taking on extra work because - well because I can? So hopefully I can free up some time to get some projects out of the way before the end of winter (yes, winter has not started yet). Spring's arrival will also usher in a new arrival to the family so.. yeah. My life will be very busy from then on.

I got a call on my way to my dental appointment at 0915. They were wondering where I was. I told them that I was on my way but could've sworn that the appointment was at 0930. When I got there I confirmed the time in my calendar was 0930 but they had me down for 0900. Now I did not change the time from the original booking, but there was a lot of back and forth the past week where they asked if I could come in earlier or later than scheduled. I should have paid more attention to the time that they quoted as the original time so that something like this would not have happened. Next time I guess. The next appointment is at 0930.

When MJNL and I spent a week downtown to see what it was like to live near Fort York, I had forgotten my deodorant. I figured that one week would not kill anyone, but seeing as MJNL would be spending the most time with me I would get some feedback from her first to see what it was like. She told me that she liked it better without the deodorant. She said that she didn't notice my body odor and the deodorant had too sharp an aroma. Really? <- sniffs at shirt. I dunno, sometimes I find that I could start smelling a little ripe in the afternoon. It was something I noticed more succinctly during our trip to Indochina when I had to re-wear a shirt or two. Or five. I was even using using deodorant at that time. Well, I think I may end this experiment sooner rather than later. It doesn't seem to reduce the number of people coming by my cubicle.

Found an interesting site from VSauce2 showing some animated gifs which describe how certain objects work called Anim agraffs .

The day after I got my second poppy, I lost it. I thought I was being so careful this time, but the tighter one clenches their fist, the quicker things seem to trickle out from between one's fingers. Okay, the third time will be the charm!

I have had my poppy for a number of years now. I had saved it after each remembrance day to use again the next year - a reminder of how long this token of remembrance has lasted. Unfortunately, the leather jacket I have now is not the easiest to poke holes into, so I had slid the pin through the zipper of a breast pocket. This had the unfortunate consequence of making the poppy less secure, and many a time I had to pick the poppy up from the floor or my chair. Well, last night when we went out to dinner, my poppy had come off before I got to the restaurant, and I could not find it anywhere. So long poppy. Time to pick up a new poppy!

I have been planning on winterizing my bike for a while now. I was actually planning on doing it last week, but the weather was not particularly good, and the forecast for the past weekend looked much more promising. The bike has been sitting in a garage for over three months. One month was during our trip to Indochina, but the next two months were difficult to have it stored and out of reach as the weather this autumn has been rather good for riding, and I missed out on several weeks of potential riding opportunities! Such is the life of a housing nomad. In any case, having the bike sitting around for months on end without use or maintenance is not usually good for the bike, so I decided to winterize the bike before it got too cold. I was given the keys and garage door opener so I could get access to the bike, and I drove out to the garage. Half way there, I realized that I had left the garage door opener are the house, so I turned around, picked up the garage door opener, and hea

I was explaining to the receptionist that my notes should not be used for any purpose as they are pretty much useless. She told me that my notes were actually "quite neat but illegible". My point exactly!

I have always found sitting down on a chair or other piece of sit-able furniture which was recently vacated by another person a rather warm and uncomfortable experience. The heat from the seat and the perceived moisture combines to form an icky feeling each time I find myself in this situation. Why does this happen with seats from other people and not from seats that I have vacated? If I get up from my chair for a moment and sit back down, I feel quite normal. I assume it's because the temperature difference is minimal between my seat and.. my seat. But if I take someone else's seat, even if they were away for a minute, it feels as if I was placing my rear in a warm moist heating pad. I guess it is a question I can pose to those more knowledgeable than I. In other news, on the way to the washroom, I noticed a half-full pizza box in the kitchen. I was told that the pizza was left over from a meeting and free for everyone, but they would probably go fast. I needed to wash my

The arrival of Thanksgiving also heralds the start of the broomball season. I certainly am out of shape and will need to get reconditioned to running on ice again. With this additional pull on my time, I have to start letting go of other events. The first of which is archery. I have been arching at Shawn's Archery since June (with a break in August). So for the past three and a half months, I have definitely improved my skills as a (left handed) archer. But I am getting to the point where further improvements are better gained by acquiring my own equipment and I can't take that leap at this time of my life. So this fact, on top of the crazy commute and the cost, is the main reason why I've decided to stop going after this month. It was fun, and I had a good time. I even got Laz to sign up and learn. It's a great place to learn to arch, especially in the winter time, so I would recommend anyone who lives downtown and was interested in trying it out to sign up for at l

If I was asked by someone the best way to live one's life, I would use the above statement. Each part which I've added to as I've aged.

I went on a bit of a spending spree several months ago to purchase replacement boards for my three broken hard drives. The drives themselves were good, but the boards they were using were fried, as could be seen from the scorch marks on each of them. Fortunately the BIOS chips were still good so I could get them back up and running so long as I could find replacement boards for each one. Well, I was planning to do this for a several years now. But getting the drives fixed was not a high priority and they sat at the bottom of a box or bucket for that time. When we started to move around everywhere I noticed them more because I had to move them and hard drives are not light. Eventually, I decided to do something before I moved out of my parent's house. I found replacement boards available on eBay and quickly purchased them. Two were from Data Rescue Laps and the third board was from Fast Moose Tech. One drive worked after the transplant and I purged the data off it it. Due t

After a month or so commuting from out of town, I have started to get used to the daily grind and battle through the highways. I can see how many residents have come to accept spending hours each day driving (or mostly sitting) on asphalt. However, this is not a state that I would like to be in for a prolonged period. I do believe in living a life worth living and spending a few hours a day behind a wheel (or in the saddle) is not something that I would say contributes to one's quality of life. But considering our situation and the situation of the country as a whole, this is probably the best choice for now. So I will wait, and I will bide my time, but I must prepare. For next week, the hordes will be unleashed and I have yet not seen what damage they can do.

I just got back from my trip. It was good but it is nice to be back.

My commutes have gotten a few times longer since I moved. I have also been spending a lot more time on the expressways. Plenty of that time was spent idling under the blistering sun. Most cagers don't notice the effect the sun can have, protected by their wind shields with their air conditioning blasting into their faces. But for me, with only a plastic shield and sunglasses, staring in to the sun is surprisingly draining. The stop and go traffic, eating the car and truck exhaust, even sweltering in the heat and humidity (some given off by the cars in front of me) is nothing compared to the constant abuse I get from the sun as it's rays beat down on me for an hour every morning. How do sun worshipers do it? I end my ride to work exhausted, soaked with sweat, slightly dehydrated, and with a mild case of sun stroke - or at least it feels like it. Certainly not something I would like to continue to do day in and day out. In any case, I have resorted to something I call "s

The milk I had in the fridge was a little suspect. It had been sitting in the cooler all day and I was worried that it may warm up more than it should have due to the placement of the bag relative to the ice packs. As such, I should have tested the milk first before pouring it on my cereal. However, hind sight is 20/20. When I took my first spoonful of breakfast, the sweetness of the cereal mixed with the sourness of the milk to produce a really strange taste. Strange enough for me to test the milk separately and realize that it had gone bad. There goes several dollars worth of milk and cereal down the drain! Ick. I had a glass of orange juice instead to replace that caloric intake.

Okay, so I will admit that I kind of sort of remembered being asked to be a groomsman by HKL, but this was a while ago and nothing was in writing. I expected some sort of e-mail or message or something later to confirm the attendance and duties for all of the groomsmen. So I decided not to commit it to memory since I would get a reminder closer to the date of the wedding. Well, I did get one: The day before the wedding. It basically mentioned that we were to meet somewhere if possible. Then a followup e-mail indicating style of dress: Formal, but no matching necessary. I am so glad that I decided to bring a suit anyway. The ceremony was nice and simple. The attendees were basically immediate family only, but considering the size of the two families, we completely filled the tiny chapel. It was hot and sunny that day, but after the two DR weddings, hot and sunny here has nothing on a Caribbean wedding. I at least was able to keep my shirt on in this instance. An interesting coincid

So MJNL took me and my parents out to lunch yesterday, and then to the Ontario Science Centre where we checked out an IMAX movie (about the Hubble Space Telescope), the Planetarium, and the Mythbusters exhibit (which was very well done I might add). Afterward, we had a hump date at the local Cineplex VIP theatre where w watched Terminator: Genisys. The movie was not as bad as I thought it was going to be. I mean, sure there were plot holes and really strange decisions made by the characters, and a bit of that whole "alternate timeline" thing they did with Star Trek. But I basically turned my brain off for this movie and watched things get blown up.

I've been using the new Google inbox and so far it really has not really yanked my chain. It functions fairly well, and I do like the reminders, but the interface is slower than the old one and finding messages is a little more annoying right now. However, something that is really bothering me is the way that it does not automatically save drafts in a timely manner. I lost two messages because I flipped between two e-mails and drafts for both e-mails vanished into the ether. What the hey? THAT is really annoying.

I ended up watching all of the Expendable movies this weekend. I started watching the first movie again last night and just kept watching them this morning and afternoon. The first one was fine for what it was. The second was entertaining with all of those cameo appearances and self referential remarks. The third was had a few too many people in it. I also decided to go cycling for my errands today instead of riding or driving. The weather was great for biking and I may not get too many more chances like this in the near future so off I went for a couple of hours. Of course I still forgot to pick up milk, but hey, we're not all perfect.

Something I forgot to mention about from a couple of weeks ago. While I was playing with FF in the pool, she pulled the WEML on me. For one, I had not seen it for a few years, and secondly, the last (and first) person to use it on me was ten years old. For one, I was surprised that the meme survived this long, but considering that it seems to be some sort of tweenish meme, perhaps it survives the same way as children's games and songs survive by getting passed down to the next cohort as each group ages. In any case, I'll keep my eyes open in case my nieces and nephews start using it on me in a few years time..

A number of years ago, I had tried out the 100 push up challenge but stopped because I did not balance out the muscle growth with any of the counterbalancing muscle groups. My joints started behaving a little funny and I lost power with a number of my lifts. I'm not sure if it was because my muscles got too tense, or something else. I figured the easiest way to get back to normal was to stop the challenge after a few weeks. Now that I've picked up archery again, my back muscles are being worked on without corresponding work on my chest muscles. I figured that I should try starting on the challenge again. Let's see what my initial test looks like..

I went to For the Win Cafe to try out some board gaming with Laz and AK. I got there early with Laz and I wanted to try out "Game of Thones" which I discovered was a 3+ player game which I didn't realize because I got it mixed up with "Battles of Westeros" which was a two player game. After getting it fetched, we discovered that the game was too complex to complete in an hour so we switched to "A Few Acres of Snow" which seemed a lot simpler and quicker to play, but AK arrived while we were setting up and we switched to "Boggle" so that AK would get to win something. After we had our fill of being clobbered by AK at "Boggle" we tried out "Ghost Blitz 2", which was a fun fairly mindless game. Then finally "Crappy Birthday" which was very much like "Cards against Humanity". Even though it was a 4+ player game, we got around it by allowing each player to place two cards down instead of one. The food ther

I stayed up a little later than I normally would have liked last night and right now I am paying for it. I got that feeling at the back of your eyes telling you that, despite waking up before your alarm, you are not actually awake. You may think you are, but this is just an illusion. Your brain is very much on autopilot. I am sure I will be up late tonight as well which bodes poorly for catching up on sleep, but I think it was worth it. It was nice catching up, and it was the perfect opportunity to ask those unasked questions that have been bothering me for years even though most of the answers were "I don't remember". Ah well, we have questions for another missing member who we will accost at another time.

Uh.. my dad got a letter from Rogers telling him that illegal downloading was traced to his IP address. He asked me about it and wondered what he should do. I told him it was probably my fault and told him to keep the e-mail. I recall reading about people getting these e-mails a little while back. I've generally been good but I had a bit of a catch up blitz this past weekend that must've triggered their radar. I knew I should have spread everything out a bit and perhaps not uploaded as much.

Part of me is worried about fatherhood. Not the parts about dealing with pee, or poop, or puke, or those types of things (although I do think I will be losing a few lunches over the years), it's when the kids are in the tweens or teenage years. By then I will definitely not be a spring chicken. Would I be able to keep up with the constant demands and requirements of being a parent of children who are not quite ready to be left on their own, but may require more attention and effort than I can handle? On Saturday I spent a few hours with one and ended up pulling both of my calf muscles and dealing with more sass than a beauty pageant full of valley girls. I have no problem dealing with it once a year, or even monthly. I can see it wearing thin weekly. How about daily? Hourly? I believe that I will be able to handle it. I've been trying to stay healthy most of my life and I know I can physically keep up. I've been trying to keep sharp so I know that I can mentally keep up

I have been collecting a bunch of links in my inbox that people have been sending me but haven't had time time to really go through them all, or have gone through them and wanted to keep them for reference. I figure that instead of clogging up my inbox, I'll post them here, although it should be more than easy enough to just archive the e-mail and search that way. In any case, there's an article from Laz about foreigners and crazy NY real estate prices from a year ago. He also sent IT War Stories and Acts of Gord . Maggie had a link for TPL e-books ,  what to do with your pension if you quit early , what happens to your debts if you die suddenly , a Portuguese bakery , a book titled The Third Rail: Confronting Our Pension Failures, a lecture titled Cities by the Water: Postcolonial History and Participation by Newcomers, and free online courses from Coursera . Hrm, lots more links in my inbox I'm afraid. Maybe I should actually check them out instead.

See, every few years I have another Squishy sighting. This time it was on the VIA train on the way to Ottawa. I would have to admit that this Coburg Squishy looks less squishy than the real Squishy, but I think age may have something to do with that. Gosh we're getting old..

I went arching last night. It has definitely been a while. The beginner session on the 23rd was only a taste as I only got to shoot twelve arrows due to the lesson and time restrictions I had. This time, we were given full range to do whatever we wanted, and I went through a least a hundred arrows. That practice, plus the instruction helped me get back into the groove. However, the tab and arm guard also helped a lot. I got the tab because my fingers were starting to hurt - although it seems that if I was holding the arrow at my second knuckles instead of the first, I would not have been hurting my fingers as much. Secondly, once I got the tab I started to hit my arm repeatedly on the same spot, so the arm guard helped with flinching. I have a nice little welt right now on my arm. Yes, I know that you are supposed to rotate your arm. I'm not hitting the elbow or upper forearm - I'm hitting the middle of my forearm. There were actually two other guys there who started the clas

Hrm, in about an hour after posting the forum website on Facebook, the forum server, as well as the static server (which was not directly linked), have both been brought down to their knees. I am having a hard time accessing either one to find out what the heck is going on - which is quite annoying. I am tempted to change the DNS listing so that I can at least have a look see - but then I'll probably have to look into cobbling together a MUCH more powerful server quick if it is indeed a horsepower issue. I have the resources available - I just did not think it was necessary. I'm wondering if it's more of a spider/bot issue rather than actual people accessing the sites. But then again, it could just be the service itself is not designed for this type of activity. I'll give it an hour before I pull the plug.

Yesterday I found a spider mite on my keyboard. I picked it up on a sheet of paper and tested the pen ink trap on it and it worked! I hadn't realized that the last time I played with a mite was over three years ago . I decided to show it to some of the co-workers who was surprised at the mite's reluctance to cross the line. I was going to show it off to someone else when it dropped off the paper on to the carpet. There was no way I was going to find it again, so I went back to my desk. About twenty minutes later, I saw yet another spider mite on one of my loose pieces of paper, so I picked it up and brought it back to the common area. Unfortunately at this time, RM had turned on one of the stand up fans and I walked, with paper in front of me, right in front of it not realizing that it was blowing. In an instant, the mite was gone. I went back to my desk. No more than ten minutes later, I saw yet another spider mite on yet another sheet of paper. (It could have been the

RM came in and noticed my helmet, so he stated, "Oh, you brought your bike to work today." But I corrected him, "No, the bike brought me." I could also have easily responded with, "Yeah, and my back is killing me. I should've got a lighter bike." But the moment was lost, but we did come up with other versions (like the flying in - arms tired joke).

I've upgraded the virtual server by doubling the CPUs and quadrupling the RAM and the web server is running much faster now. It also helps that the new server is not being spammed by those ad hits. Things have been quiet for the past day or so, so I think it's ready for prime time. I will look into retiring the old server in the next little while. Just want to make sure that there is nothing on there that I still need. I've turned off the web service so hopefully the logs will not blow up in my face again.

My website is suffering a DoS event, related to what looks like some sort of website ad redirection to my IP address. In any case, it might explain the spotty performance of the web server since its inception, but I need to move the stuff quickly off the server while I can before it becomes too hard to access - I cannot change the IP address of the server. My only recourse is to create another one and copy the contents over.

I had a potential kijiji buyer coming by the house early this morning (0800) to pick up the wardrobe and bookshelf. This meant that I did not get all that much sleep last night. Don't take it the wrong way, I am glad that all of that extra furniture is gone now. The living room looks more livable, but I really need to hit the sack soon before I fall asleep on my keyboard. Oh, now that the big ticket items are out, I can now see some of the smaller ticket items that need to be dealt with, like the shoe cabinet. Kijiji (or Craigslist) to the rescue! I spent most of the rest of the day catching up on e-mail, chores, and what have you. There are three weddings to attend (so far) this year and we are trying to keep everything in check. I should say I am trying to keep things in check. MJNL has her hands full with placement work so I have been holding down the fort organization-wise. Yay for task lists and apps! I also got a chance to bike down to the shoe store to buy some clearan

I had a dental appointment this morning so I had to get up somewhat early. I had wanted to ride my bicycle to the clinic, but it was just a tad bit too cold that morning, and I think my joints would have frozen by the time I got into the dentist's chair. In the end, the ride was chilly, but at least I got there fairly quickly. Nothing interesting was found, so I rode back home to shower before we headed out for brunch at Panagio's All Day Grill. I definitely loaded up on carbs, but next up was heading down to East York to check out a couple of open houses before going to the beginner archery session at Shawn's Archery . I was not expecting to learn much, until he suggested that I shoot left handed. Why left handed you ask? I'm glad you asked, because that was my first question. My dominant eye is my left eye. I've known this since University. However, in high school, everybody shot right. I do not recall doing a eye dominance test, but I do remember that I learn

So I mentioned how we tried out the original room escape a couple of months ago . I scheduled another meet up with the same crew to try out volume two of the mysterious room series, but this time we were unable to get two of the original participants. Instead, we replaced two of the girls Growly's wedding with one of the groomsmen from Growly's wedding. As with last time, we had dinner at One of A Kind Pasta & Grill and funny enough, people arrived at the restaurant in the same order as last time! We nearly did not escape the restaurant in time this time as our party did not all arrive until half an hour past the reservation time, we didn't order until 45 minutes after, and our mains took around an hour to arrive after ordering. So even after factoring in a two hour dinner, we were left with fifteen minutes to eat and rush down to the site. Fortunately this time I double checked the location of the room and it was only a five minute walk from the restaurant. Our vang

Sometimes when tapping into a large repository of something, the resources you expect to extract do not always flow out like you expect it to. Sometimes you need to prime the pumps to get the flow started.

I had a relatively small lunch so I had a hankering for some chocolate from Trader Joe's that MJNL got for me a couple of months ago. I tried to break off a small piece to eat and in the process ended up "randomly" breaking it up into four unequal sizes. When I eyed the pieces, it looked like they were pretty much proportional to each other. Each piece half the size of the large piece. It really started to bother me after I ate the first piece, so I took a picture. Each piece - half the size of the next larger piece. I am not too much bothered by it to actually try measuring the bits to see how big each piece is, but visually it does look close no? (Try imaging what that first small piece of chocolate looked like.) Also, to get this sort of ratio, one can not just break the bar in half again and again. Mathematically that does not work. The first break needs to be 8:7, then 4:3, then 2:1. All this math is making me hungry. I am going to finish off that bar.

I was planning to go through the box with my old cards and letters and try to organize them some way, some how. I had started to split apart some of the cards into separate smaller boxes and then I came across some photos I had stashed inside, and it is amazing how long ago those pictures were taken. How old I already felt at that time, and how much I thought I knew. Now I look back at the me that was there and I feel like kicking him a few times. Meh. I put the cards, letters, and photos back more or less how I found them, but moved them into a bigger box. That's so I can keep collecting more cards, letters, and photos. So that my future me can look back at me now and feel like kicking me a few times. Perhaps I should do it anyway just for his.. my sake.

We had a drain pipe burst in our office. Fortunately, it was in an area that was away from most electronics, and the water was contained before it reached any electrical equipment. I took some pictures, but I figure that I should not be posting them here. I think there was a leak there before, but not of this magnitude, as the ceiling tile had some water discolouration before the pipe itself burst.

I spent the last two nights organizing our stuff in my parents' basement. Now that MJNL has moved her stuff here, I've been able to finally reorganize the stuff into something that's a little less disorganized, and a little easier to get around. It also helped moving MJNL's clothing upstairs. I can probably fit all of my clothing into three tubs. That reminds me, I should pick up more tubs. Those seven tubs were not enough. One of the first things I wanted to do was to take some of the more personal items and move them off the floor. Yearbooks and photos that don't react well to water were moved up a little higher so that they don't end up wicking up the moisture from the carpet. Also, if for some reason the basement floods, they'll be okay so long as the water doesn't rise more than a foot.

I went downtown to Snakes and Lagers with Laz and AK. I think it was the first time I've been to that establishment as the only other boardgame cafe I have been to was Snakes and Lattes. We had a pretty good time playing Kingdoms and Cards Against Humanity . I had played neither before, and I found Kingdoms surprisingly fun. There's quite a bit of counting involved, but the scoring is straightforward and the tactics are fairly simple. I had never played Cards Against Humanity either, but it too was pretty fun even though there were three of us. I can see how entertaining that game can be with more players and more selection, although a lot of our responses seemed to be eerily similar to each other.. We were originally slated to meet up at 1930, so I spent the time before meeting up with KK who I had not seen in over two decades. It was good catching up, as he had a number of stories from way back when that I honestly don't recall. I have to verify with the parties involv

I was able to convince my dad to park the car outside, which meant that I could move all of our bikes into the garage. This also meant that I could pop the battery back into my bike and start riding this season! I had been watching the riders out on the streets for the past few weeks with a bit of envy, but I knew that I needed to wait until at least MJNL had moved everything back home first. Anyway, it felt good going on a test ride on the bike. I think I'll be riding a fair bit this week..

That's ticking backwards? Huh, I just noticed that the proposed changes to the TFSA has changed one thing that nobody is harping on: They've removed the indexing to inflation. That means that over time, the actual value (in today's dollars) that you can put into the TFSA will decrease over time rather than stay constant as it does with the original indexing method. Interesting that everybody is focusing on the doubling of the contribution when in 35 year's time, the value that you can sock away will be half of what you can put away now with an inflation rate of 2%. At 5% it'll only take 14 years to halve your effective contribution room.

Won't be able to.

I normally keep my lunch in these large glass containers which I store in the fridge and pick up each morning before I go to work. Last night, my dad made a whole lot of spaghetti and used these containers to hold the extra pasta to use later in the week. This morning I grabbed a container and figured that it was my lunch since it had the same heft as my lunches usually have. When I got to work, I realized that I had picked up a container of plain spaghetti at which point I realized that I was buying lunch today. I'm spending some time to upgrade my servers to the just released Debian 8. Lets see if we get some new toys to play with!

I had a dream on the weekend where I came across this small bunny rabbit, that looked more like a stuffed animal that was really thin and looked so hungry. It looked like a tube with bunny features as it was six inches long and only a couple of inches wide. The rabbit had just caught a small insect and ate it, but looked too tired and hungry to do much, so I went up to it and picked it up with my left hand. It struggled for a bit but after it calmed down tried suckling on my thumb. After realizing that was going no where, tried suckling on one of the buttons on my shirt. This also proved fruitless for the rabbit and it started to cry with such a sorrowful wail that I decided to find some nourishment for the critter. MJNL and I got into the car and I drove to a nearby mall, which was jam packed with cars and people. I was able to squeak into one of the short term parking spots and told the bunny that we'd be right back. I quickly rushed into the mall, which had a strange pyram

I used to have a list of bookmarks on my homepage so I could check up on the various web sites that I frequent. Before The PIT went down, I actually set up a page to display the latest feeds from the various home pages that I frequented as well, but when the server went down, all of my links went with it. I did have an archive of those links, so it wasn't as if they were gone, but I liked having a place where I could access this information from anywhere. Well, now that I've finally got my new server up and running, I can do it again! Except I have decided not to. These days everybody and their dog has a feed (RSS or Atom) and browsers and some applications can handle and check feeds so simply and easily now that there really is no need for me to have a dedicated page for all of this. Google used to offer a place to track feeds, but since they dropped that service, I've decided to just use a local app and not use a browser. So now I have a few dozen feeds that I keep tr

Uh oh. I noticed an odd video in my YouTube subscription list and decided to check it out. It was a message from YouTube indicating that my device will not longer be supported in the next update of YouTube. My device, the original iPad, is basically only being used to view YouTube videos as it is currently too slow to do much else. Without YouTube.. well, I will have to see what other apps still work on this guy and decide on what to do with it. It has served me well for nearly 5 years..

I had a dream last night where MJNL and I were on a roller coaster. It was a fairly tame one, and at the end of the ride, there was a lamp post with a free ticket attached to the lamp portion. Those daring enough could try to stand up to grab the ticket, and I tried my luck. Unfortunately even after standing up and reaching up I was still a few feet too short, and jumping would have been too dangerous, so I just let it slide. After we got off the ride, we went into the shop to look for trinkets, and a group of other people came in with the lead guy waving the free ticket. Apparently he had climbed up the pole to grab the ticket, so I went outside to look and noticed that the pole wasn't that high up after all and anyone could have done the same thing.

So one of the houses in our neighborhood exploded ! Before the explosion. You can see the effects from before and after. After the explosion. Not a pretty sight. The before picture is a satellite image from Google Maps. The second is the image from the twitter feed I linked above.

This dog definitely got shafted.

So we've closed another season of broomball and now I will be on right arm sports hiatus for at least the next two and a half weeks. I hope my arm will be able to take advantage of the rest. I would like to be right handed again, although training for ambidexterity would be a pretty cool thing to put on a resume..

So it seems as if the TrueCrypt audit has been completed and the program has been given a green light. Too bad it is no longer under development..

This kickstarter for GNL Mats is tempting..

Wow, it has been three years since our wedding website has been online. I've finally put it back up on my own server !

While I was cleaning up and "fixing" The PIT (which I am happy is on a named host rather than an IP address now), I would on occasion start reading some of my old entries and comments and get lost in the banter that used to go on on the website. I remember being obviously obtuse in my remarks, but mostly to protect the ones I talk about, especially after the two not-so-nice conversations I had. In any case, because of my obtuseness and terrible memory, some of these entries are a little annoying as the subject matter is unknown, but some others did bring back memories. So, good enough I guess. If it was important enough to be remembered, I would have remembered it.

I decided to bite the bullet and purchase a domain name. It was high time I guess. I now own BEGghILOS2.net, and I've set up my old static web sites on one of my virtual servers. This link should be a bit more permanent..

I've finally finished turning The PIT into a static website. The whole thing ballooned from about 10MB to 200MB in size! This is what happens when you have a lot of repetitive HTML. So the site itself is currently on my temporary web server . But I plan on blowing the old web server away and starting fresh with just the wedding website and The PIT hosted on it. I can then just let it run forever.. Unless I plan on hosting another static website there. I should have plenty of space.. *rubs chin*

My lift supports came in today so I picked them up this afternoon and was fortunate enough to have some sunlight available to install the new supports. I discovered, to my dismay, that the connectors for the supports were facing the wrong way, but after noticing that the two new supports I had both connectors facing different directions than the other support, gave me hope that I could twist the end around so that it would fit. It took quite a bit of torque, since it was hard to grip the thing. Otherwise, the whole installation was fairly straightforward and only took me thirty minutes, which got chilly on this spring evening. I'm just happy that I don't have to keep my broomball stick in my trunk to keep the lid open!

It has taken me a lot longer than anticipated to static-ify (is that even a word?) my old website. Getting it up and running took a little time, and conversion was fairly painless, although each conversion takes over an hour to do. So after each conversion, I would take a look into the log to see if there were any errors I need to deal with. This led to many alterations on the web page to take into account the lack of form processing in static HTML files, which took up the bulk of the time this weekend for changes. However, even after getting that out of the way, I still had issues with broken links and improper settings. I mean, the site pretty much is 99% working. That 1% really bothers me though and it will take another day or so to fix. Annoying!

I came across a product called HTTrack Website Copier which I ran against my website. It did a pretty good job of pulling everything and compiling a nice, neat, self contained folder with just about everything from my website! Now there are some things that it does not handle too well, like forms, and there were quite a number of broken links on my page, but this is a good sign. I do think I'll just fix up the links on the page, make some changes to deal with the forms, and compile a static site so I won't have to worry about it for the rest of my life?

I've had a task on my list for quite some time: Revive the PIT. Since I had purchased a virtual server a year ago, I have had the tools to set it up, but just never bothered starting the project. There were some security issues that bothered me, and I wanted to convert my website so that it was static. Making the website static would mean requiring only a very small and simple web server to host the page, but to do that I had to bring the site back on line. I finally gathered the will to set it up this weekend. Well, I had anticipated working on it all weekend, but managed to bring it online in four hours. Some things may still be broken, but right now I realize that because of the way I had set up the web page, I can not easily freeze the site like our wedding website. I think I'll leave the website up for a bit. After I clean out any of the old data and remove some of the unnecessary functionality I'll reassess the situation and decide then whether or not to keep the

My right index finger feels like it's permanently jammed. MJNL thinks it's because of overuse, and I am inclined to agree with her. I've tried applying pressure to the muscle that controls that finger, but this issue seems fairly chronic, as it has not gotten better over the weeks. MJNL has the same issue, and attributes it mostly to excessive writing. My routine hasn't changed much for the past year, and after changing my ergonomics and use of braces, I thought I had limited this type of impact. I guess the stress just transferred up the arm. In any case, I've been moving things to my left hand again: badminton, mouse use, carrying stuff, just to give my right hand a rest. We'll see if things improve, since broomball should be ending in a month and that would just leave hockey..

We had a rather large CME earlier this week, and I had wanted to make a note at checking the space weather but it had completely slipped my mind. MJNL sent me a link that had some photos from the one that hit on Tuesday . Gosh darned it! But in hindsight, the weather was kinda overcast last night so I do not feel too bad for missing it..

MJO sent me a link to a Second Reality parody video that some folks made. It's an interesting parody. I especially like the Dr. Whoesque special effects for the spaceship scene - plunger and all! I do remember when Second Reality came out. It was quite an impressive feat of coding at that time, and I can not recall where I put my copy of the demo. (My copy is probably long gone now, but thanks to the internet, it will always be at my fingertips ..)

On Friday night I had booked Laz and Growly's birthday present: A night to Escape from the Mysterious Room . It looked like it may be a real live version of The Crimson Room , which sounded like fun! In addition to the two birthday boys, I had asked them to list people they wanted to invite to the party (up to eleven people were allowed), so we were able to gather eight people together, six of us went to dinner at One of A Kind Pasta & Grill before heading up to the room. Actually, we had issues leaving the restaurant as the cash we put down for the bill added up exactly to the bill amount. For some reason there was no tip added even though both Laz and I had put in a tip (I knew what we had both ordered and we definitely put in a tip), and I was pretty sure I knew what Tomer had ordered and I was pretty sure he put in a tip. That left the remaining three.. but it was all straightened out in the end. So after our escape from the restaurant, we headed out to the room, where

MJNL sent me a link with lots of interesting space based images.

So it was JW's birthday and Jeanious had set up a day of food of merriment on Saturday. First was a lunch with family, with much time spent in front of the Xbox One dancing and blowing up lots of shapes. Afterward, JW's bestus buddies got together for some Archery Tag at the Archery District . It was fun, but I probably will not go out of my way to do it again. I would rather go to an archery range and do some real arching. Jeff's boyz (and girl) at Archery District. Anyway, afterward we went to Rally Sports Bar & Smokehouse where the food was really tasty and the portions were good. Desserts were not so good, but you do not go to a bar and smokehouse for dessert right? Finally I went to hockey where we had a really close game. Really close. Drat.

I got an interesting e-mail about someone using my Apple ID to access my account from an obviously non-authorized device. There was a link in the e-mail to "confirm" your billing information and change your password. I initially did think someone did potentially access my account, until I took a closer look at the e-mail and link. Here are the contents. I've removed the link so people won't accidentally click on it. Dear client, Your Apple ID was used when connected to iCloud and iMessage from an iPhone 5s appointed : iPhone Ahmed  Date : 10 March 2015 a 04:12 Operating System: iOS 6.1.3 If you've recently connected with this unit , you can ignore this email if not We're concerned that someone is using your Apple account without your knowledge. Recent activity from your account seems to have occurred from a suspicious location or under circumstances that may be different than usual Please confirm

Laz and I participated at this year's Board Game Jam again and came up with an interesting idea of having players set up events in the future that they could try to leverage as they were playing the game. Unfortunately we had not designed a game mechanic that would use this event driven dynamic and spent the weekend building something, which ended up borrowing a lot of aspects from Agricola. When I was asked what name we should give our game I suggested "TINA". i.e. This Is Not Agricola. Laz (rightfully) disagreed, and we settled on "The Villagers". The game was kinda fun, but incomplete, with ending conditions not very well thought out. But a decent effort on our part I should say. Not bad for two days of work. It is amazing how quickly time flies when you are trying to design a game.

So I've been told that it is root erosion. I'm getting it filled right now.

I noticed something funny with one of my molars a few days ago. It felt as if there was a ridge near the gum line. Unfortunately, the tooth was hard to see and the ridge was so close to the gums that self inspection was difficult. Last night I tried probing with floss (which drew blood) and my fingernail, which drew.. another ridge deeper in. Uh oh, could this be a crack in my tooth? I will find out this afternoon when I go to the dentist.

HKL sent me a link informing me of the DRAM class action for anyone who purchased electronics between 1999 and 2002. I know I did. I'm debating whether I should dig through my old receipts to see if I can claim more than $20..

Leonard Nimoy passed away today.

Well, I expected something like this to happen eventually. One of my side mirrors cracked from the extreme cold we've been having this month. Cracked passenger side mirror. I had a lot of trouble starting the car as well this morning, but was able to get the engine to turn after half a dozen tries. I don't think I had the car start on the first try at all any morning this month. The rear struts that keep the hatch up don't work in this cold weather. I've had to use one arm (or my head) to keep my trunk open when loading and unloading stuff. This was especially annoying when putting in some heavy groceries into an already full trunk. My window has problems with opening and closing in cold weather and I'm hoping that the motor doesn't go out on me. I've already had part of my tinting stripped off this month due to the friction. If this cold keeps up, I don't think my poor car can take much more! (I was way too pampered with our underground parking at

So Google finally pulled the plug on the Google Talk app. We've been using it at work for nearly a decade, but Google had been telling people for years now that Google Talk was replaced by Google Hangouts and that Talk would be discontinued. Well, that day has come. My Google Talk app didn't log in and I got an e-mail from Google telling me that someone tried using Google Talk using my ID. Ah well, time to use something else. Perhaps I should use more sneaker messaging instead.

So I've been trying to find out who the original narrator of the usage of the F-word sound clip was. So far there are some people who say it's Jack Wagner, but I'll keep digging.

With the long cold snap we have been having and with MJNL out of town, I have spent a lot of my free time indoors. Most of it working on a long term project that I had been meaning to do for years: Cleaning up my music files. I have collected a lot of music over the years from various sources, and a large chunk of it came from a time before iTunes or any music tagging was easily available. As such, the information is stored on the file name itself, and every so often the information is wrong. Things like House of Pain's "Jump Around" being named Kris Kross's "Jump" instead. Or worse, having file names of 04.mp3. WTF! The process is to listen to the song, make sure the song isn't broken or corrupted, determine what the name of the song and artist are (usually by lyrics if I don't recognize the song), and then figure out which version of the song I've got. Some songs have multiple versions, and some have remixes on top. Figuring out which is whic

I have been having some terrible sleep of late. I'm not sure exactly what is the cause yet, but I have been going to bed at a fairly good hour (before 2300), and I usually wake up before my alarm goes off at 0630. So I should be getting close to eight hours of sleep no? Even seven hours should be pretty good, but I'm worried that my quality of sleep is what's keeping me un-asleep at night. Normally in the morning I have no recollection of the night before, so I assume that I had a normal sleep, except that I feel exhausted. That doesn't make sense. Last night I tried adjusting my pillow higher, to see what affect it will have on my sleep. Well, I do remember last night. I woke up several times in the middle of the night only to fall right back to sleep again. I wonder if this is sleep apnea. With the higher pillow lifting my head at a higher angle, it may block my airway enough to cause me to stop breathing and wake up enough to notice that I've woken up. Prior ni

I took the bus to work today. It was a fairly uneventful experience. It did, however, take a lot longer to travel by bus than by car. Over twice as long in fact as it took me an hour to make it door to door taking transit when normally it would take me twenty to thirty minutes. All of this just to save a bit of gas. Speaking of gasoline, I think those Saudi princes are being fairly shrewd to allow oil prices to drop this much and stay this low for so long. If I were them, I would have done the same thing: flood the market, let the once profitable companies cash starve and possibly go bankrupt, pick up the pieces, turn off the taps, and profit some more, now with even more control over oil reserves.

I finished watching The Prisoner . I can see how it became such an iconic show, and even despite the dated effects, and strange science, many of the concepts of individuality, indoctrination, paranoia, free thought and free speech were still quite interesting to explore.

AI sent me a link for a video of some guy who set up an oscilloscope to play Quake . A week later, I saw a video link from The Weather Network showing earthquakes from the past ten years .

Happy new year to all of you who celebrate that sort of stuff. We had a New Year's Eve party and a cottage trip planned for the new year but things came up and MJNL's family had to scramble to get things organized and prepared for next week. We did have one day of games and cards though, but the rest of the weekend will be spent preparing and organizing before we all get back to the grind..