Archive for June, 2009
29 items.
I was talking to Luke the other night on the topic of sunburns. He and I do not typically sunburn but when we do, it tends to be pretty stunning.
A couple years back, he managed to get sunburnt armpits due to “unfortunate arm pit shirt holes” and a failure to sunscreen said armpits. I think this is a wholly acceptable oversight because who would ever expect to sunburn in the armpittal region? I don’t think deodourant has any kind of SPF value, nor should it (though I’m sure this very concept is occurring to Mennen right now and people will probably buy it. Maybe they’ll also call it ‘anti-oxidizing’ and sucker in those chumps, too).
His most recent adventure involved a day of kayaking and failure to sunscreen the insides of his legs, resulting in significant discomfort in the leggle regions. This put me in mind of something that happened to me when I was on my first co-op. I spent the summer between first and second years of college framing houses in Waterloo and surrounding environs. I was in really great shape because I was riding my bike between 15 and 45 minutes to get to the project sites.
Most of the houses we built used plywood for the exteriors of the walls because the people who were going to live in them were fairly cheap and plywood is pretty inexpensive compared to some of the other options. In a more upscale neighbourhood the owners-to-be wanted to have a higher insulation value on the house (probably wise) and so we used a foil-backed rigid foam insulation. This is good stuff for a couple of reasons. The added inch of insulation makes a pretty noticeable difference to the heat lost through the wall and the foil backing tends to reflect the heat back into the house in winter and reflect some of it away in the summer. All around a pretty decent product except for what it does to the installers.
To those of you not intimately acquainted with the process of constructing houses, the walls are typically built on the flat and then lifted up into place. We started building these places in mid-June when the days are extra long and extra sunny. The day that we put up the main walls, I spent about 6 hours in bright, bright sun walking around on a highly reflective silver surface. I had a sunburn that began at the tops of my boots and ended somewhere just shy of the trumpet and skittles, if you take my meaning (thanks to Terry Pratchett for that one). It felt awesome and looked even better. After about two days of excruciating agony any time something touched my legs (something includes: long pants, sheets at night, any kind of insect, cool breezes, etc. etc.) it calmed down into the darkest tan I have ever had in my life. There is a picture of me on the beach that summer that looks a great deal like I am wearing 8” high bright white socks and it is probably one of the finest pictures anyone has ever taken of me.
the sound of a time bomb ticking away
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Over the summer, BCC (warning: link contains horrible, horrible midi music and things that are animated) is doing a series called The Way and it’s focus is on how Jesus’ life showed us the Way we should pattern our lives. I haven’t been around for the whole thing to this point (birthdays and sanctuary dedication services near Barrie and things keep cropping up) but I’m really thinking hard about what it all means.
At our practice tonight (I sing bass with one of the praise teams who lead the singing), we talked a bit about what “The Way” means and I had something of an epiphany. It was in the context of a discussion on John 14 where Jesus talks about being “the way, the truth and the life”:
14:5 Thomas said, 12 “Lord, we don’t know where you are going. How can we know the way?” 14:6 Jesus replied, 13 “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. 14 No one comes to the Father except through me. 14:7 If you have known me, you will know my Father too.15 And from now on you do know him and have seen him.” taken from the Net Bible
In conjunction with this, we were talking about the different ways roads and paths and ways factored into the life of Jesus. He told stories about things happening on roads (the Good Samaritan, as an example). He walked on a lot of roads and one of the most famous is the Via Dolorosa. We also discussed the Kingdom of God and its presence on Earth. A lot of the time, we look at our relationship with Jesus as “you’re my ticket into heaven,” but I don’t think this tells the whole story. In the Lord’s prayer, Jesus talks about the will of God being done “on earth as it is in heaven,” which implies to me that maybe we ought to be making earth a little more heavenly while we’re here.
I consider it this way. The more traditional view of one’s walk with Jesus is kind of like our trip to Florida at Christmas time. We drove all night and didn’t really take any notice of anything on our way. It’s possible that there are some great sights and neat things to do in between our house and St. Augustine but we were really intent on our goal and didn’t stop except for gas. This to me is the “Jesus as ticket to heaven” metaphor. Your whole purpose is to get there and never mind what goes on in the meantime.
I believe we’re called to something that more closely resembles our trip to the East Coast last summer. We had an eventual destination in mind, definitely, but the process of the trip was our main purpose. We didn’t blast our way through. We took our time and tried to get a feel for the areas through which we passed. This is more in line with Jesus’ example. He was on earth for a reason, expressed at the end of the last road he travelled, but in the meantime, he worked to make people’s physical lives on earth easier and blessed them. I wonder what would happen if we as believers worked toward making other people’s lives easier not for the sake of them coming to church with us, but just for the sake of the example we’ve been set. It could be revolutionary.
My mum and younger sister took a trip to the east coast recently and got back in time for us to celebrate my mum’s birthday (which is today. We got her an orchid which she had apparently ‘always wanted’ so good going, Amy, for picking that out). They had a really good time meeting some of our family. Most of both of mum’s parents’ families still live out that way.
When they were in Charlottetown (capital of Prince Edward Island, one of our provinces for you Yanks), they saw a sign for a glass shop called Happy Glass run by one BJ Sandiford. We have a fairly uncommon last name so they decided to have a look. They introduced themselves and it turned into a bit of a family reunion despite the fact that we’re pretty sure there isn’t a closer relation than the last 6 generations or so. They brought back a necklace and bracelet for Amy, my other sister and my grandmother. My brother-in-law, other sister’s boyfriend and I got potato seasoning (which I promptly forgot there due to being the best son ever) because PEI is basically known for two things: Potatoes and Anne of Green Gables.
Part of the tour of the east coast (1500km driven and they flew out there) took them into Nova Scotia. Apparently on the boarder between Nova Scotia and New Brunswick there are large signs warning against the importation of bees. They are large, bee-behind-a-slashed-circle affairs that I hope to photograph when we’re out there this summer. There isn’t any rationale given for the ban which leads one to think it is probably racially motivated. They just don’t want those stripes in their fair province. Perhaps the reason that bee populations are dropping around the world is because they’re all moving to Nova Scotia and the Nova Scotians have had it up to here with all these immigrant bees.
I wonder how they prevent the natural migration of bees (which is something I’m fairly certain happens. Thousands of bees in large, v-shaped formations winging their way to the summer hives near Halifax). They’d have to be tracked in some way. I’m picturing a crack team of snipers with guns that shoot tiny anaesthetic darts. *Phut* and a bee drops. The dogs come bounding out and gather the unconscious bees in their mouths and bring them back to the huddled crowd of apiologists and melittologists who gently catalogue and tag the bees. Unfortunately they have to use birding tags so the bees are left to walk themselves along, dragging the (relatively) giant radio collar behind them.
in my opinion the drug is ready
I am always interested to see what people carry around with them and so I will inflict my interest/nosiness/curiosity on you but in reverse. In addition, this gives me a good reason to clean the thing out. Here are the things I commonly carry about with me.
This is the 2007 model of Ogio’s Hiphop bag. It’s got quite a lot of pockets most of which I don’t use. I got it on sale at Henry’s camera for about $30. Best Buy was asking $80 for the 2008 model so I think that worked out rather well.
I made mention of this in an earlier post about notebooks. This is my Vostro 2510 laptop. Dell made them for a while then stopped and now makes them again (also available in black, apparently). This was about the only laptop in my price range with a discrete video card. I generally have the battery out of it because it’s fairly uncommon for me to be far from an outlet when using my computer and I’ve read that one can achieve a longer battery lifespan if the battery is left out when not needed (keeps it from being too hot). It is not depicted because batteries are boring.
This is my Wacom Bamboo Fun tablet and associated USB cable. All but one of the computer doodles I’ve posted to this point were drawn with this. It also has a mouse but I use it very infrequently so I no longer carry it around. I actually use this pretty infrequently while I’m out of the house so it likely won’t make it back in.
These are my current crop of pens. From left to right (write?), Blue Sharpie ($0.50 at going out of business sale for the sole downtown office supply store), Red Double-tip Sharpie (ditto), Duke Copper Temple Fountain Pen ($9 at Gold Quills, currently loaded with Private Reserve Avocado Ink), Duke Beijing Opera Mask Fountain Pen ($12 at Gold Quills, currently loaded with Sanford/Higgins Sepia Ink), and lastly Staedtler drafting pencil/lead holder with HB lead.
The front smallish zippered pocket carries these oddments. Wall plug USB charger (primarily for iPod), iPod connector/charger cable, Staedtler vinyl eraser (I typically forget that I have this and just scratch things out and start again) and SanDisk 128MB flash drive. I bought that in a hurried panic the day before my interview for my current job. I needed to collect drawings from third year project group members and that was the best way. It cost me about $55. It hurts me to consider how much storage that same $55 would purchase today. I keep it around for emergency file transfers.
Amy noticed what I was doing at about this point and asked me why I was taking glamour shots of my notebook. This is the Xonex Rü notebook (also from the earlier notebook post) and the freebie lint-free cloth that I failed to use on my laptop for its picture. I usually use it to wipe off the screen (a terrible fingerprint magnet) and rarely think to clean the very glossy cover.
Lastly, we come to entertainment and sharp things. I have a second generation 4GB iPod nano that goes nearly everywhere with me. Currently it’s loaded with a really eclectic mix that resulted from filling it totally at random because I was tired of the same old albums that I always put on. The earbuds are Skullcandy Ink’d Buds that I got on sale to replace the stock iPod phones. They are not particularly well constructed but the sound quality is miles ahead of the stock phones and they were really inexpensive. The knife is just a knife. It is useful for cutting things and sharpening pencils whenever I happen to have a wood pencil around. I got it from my old job and the company name has almost completely worn off the handle. Not pictured because it is dull (he said, aware that one of the pictures was of an eraser) is my umbrella which fits neatly into one of the mesh side pockets.
We went out for dinner last night (went out successfully, I might add, not the ‘walked into a restaurant and walked back out without eating’ of earlier in the week, a passtime that I cannot recommend as healthy for body or mind) and discussed this very topic. To buy a ‘bottomless’ cup of pop will run you close to $3. Iced tea can occasionally be $0.20 more yet. There are places that don’t do free refills and they tend to be closer to $2/glass. This is patently ludicrous in either case. Consider:
Pop (or soda for the northern US or coke for parts of the southern US, more on this further down the page) comes in something called a Bag-in-Box which is about as appetizing as it sounds. Essentially the raw syrup of your beverage arrives in a concentrated form and is mixed on-site with carbonated water (or uncarbonated for iced tea). A bit of fairly rough web searching results in a price of about $0.06 per glass for the syrup and perhaps $0.10 for the carbonated water (on the outside). Let’s just take it as read that pop is pretty much the widest margin product that is sold in restaurants.
I’m not sure if this is the mis-recalled experience of my fractured youth or the fevered imaginings of somebody who went to sleep at 2:30 this morning after watching Transformers 2 and Star Trek back to back while sitting in the driver’s seat of my car, but I think there was at one time the option of not paying for refills at restaurants. One would have the option of paying, say, $2 for a single glass and then upgrading it to bottomless for another dollar. We would like to see this brought back. I have a tendency to try to get my money’s worth out of my $3. I have been known to drin upwards of a litre of beverage over the course of a meal (particularly when the food is slow. I tend to just drink whatever’s handy until it’s gone so it is probably good that I don’t care much for beer). Amy, on the other hand, will drink two glasses, tops, and only if the food is particularly salty or spicy. This two-tiered system would not directly benefit the restaurant (making it unlikely to be implemented) but would make us feel frugal and thrifty and I think that is a valuable service that can be provided.
Now, with respect to pop vs. soda vs. coke. I had an argument online (and yes, I know what is said of arguing on the internet) with someone from Texas or Louisiana or one of those other humid and tetchy states. He was insisting that coke is a legitimate generic name for pop, much as Kleenex has become generic for facial tissue or band-aid for self-adhesive bandages. I maintain that this is a fallacy. Coke is definitely a type of pop but it is a particular branded flavour. If somebody asked me ‘what kind of coke do you want’ I would think them an idiot. There is but one Coke, albeit available in cherry, vanilla, lime, diet, caffeine free, diet caffeine free, diet lime and possibly others but ‘root beer’ is not one of the available options and to insist that it is brands you a dunce.
an empty room with all the windows smashed
We have been using Gmail at work for the last couple of years as the mail package provided by our hosting service gives us 15MB of storage space and almost no other functionality than very basic sending and receiving. I switched us over primarily because we would stop getting emails if we didn’t clear things out 3-4 times per day (tricky on weekends in particular).
Initially I set up the old account to just forward everything and we would still send from the other log-in. Now that Gmail has added the option to send from a separate email account (rather than “on behalf of”), I only log into the old account if something breaks (usually something server side on our hosting end). I have found a few things that are probably only really useful to my particular situation but I will share anyway.
We only have one email address for the entire office which can be a double-edged sword. On the one hand, chances are pretty good that every email will be seen by somebody. On the other hand, since everybody sees it, sometimes things get left un-done because the expectation was that somebody else would deal with it (I am guilty of this myself). I haven’t figured out a way to solve this completely but I am getting more successful in sorting out the signal from the noise.
My boss uses this account as his only email so all of his personal stuff comes into it as well. I do my best not to read things that I know are his own stuff but it happens now and again (I found out what my co-workers and I were getting for Christmas because of just such a mis-opened email). He also subscribes to several investing-related mailing lists so in any given day we will get between 15 and 20 emails, 10-12 of which are not really work-related. I set up Gmail’s filters and multiple inboxes so that all of his investment stuff goes into one inbox and his personal stuff goes into another (I will have to keep maintaining this and adding new addresses to the filters as more mail comes in). This sorts everything neatly and keeps the main inbox free for actual work email.
Lifehacker has a lot of useful articles on Gmail but one I’m really going to plug is this pretty straightforward how-to on switching to a Gmail account. Eventually I will get around to ditching my old hotmail account (which I’ve had since I was 17 and used pretty frequently during this past decade) but right now I have Gmail retrieving everything from it via IMAP and it is handy as a throw-away registration email for various forums and things.
We have something of a tradition of going out for dinner at least every other week or so. This is something we’ve done pretty much since we got married. We like to go on dates despite having been married for six and a half years. I have previously mentioned, we’ve made a policy of going to non-chain restaurants. For the first time, this pretty much backfired.
One of the reasons we like indie places is because the service is usually really, really good. Tonight was a pretty stunning exception. We tried three restaurants in St. Catharines and one in Jordan. In the first (a fairly upscale Italian place), there was straight-up nobody there. No one was sitting at any table, nobody was behind the bar. We could hear somebody rustling in the kitchen but nothing further was forthcoming so we left.
We went into an Asian place next. I have never actually seen anybody in this particular restaurant at any time. They’ve had a chalkboard out front with the words “New Menu” written on it for about a month and a half despite having only been open for about five months. The decor is really nice though the BLARING PRINCE MUSIC was a bit much. The single waiter (possibly manager) looked at us blankly for a moment and then motioned us to a table, presented us with menus (new ones apparently, though mine had hoisin sauce or something all over the back). There was nothing particularly appetizing so we left.
Attempt the third was to a pub to which we have gone before and really enjoyed. It is a seat-yourself sort of thing and the bartender (single waitstaff again) noticed us and said hello as we sat. Then continued to sit. And sat a bit more. We were there for a solid five minutes (and perhaps more) and he made two trips to the only other occupied table in the place without dropping us off a menu or two or even making a token ‘be with you in a moment’ so we left. He sort of waved menus at us as we left but our minds were already made up and one of the 200,000 words that describes me is ‘steadfast in meaningless decisions.’
We went and did a bit of shopping and decided to try a place a bit closer to home. Sat ourselves again after making eye contact with one of the waitstaff. Nothing at all for another five minutes. We began to wonder if perhaps we had died and were condemned to forever wander restaurants in search of a server with Whoopi Goldberg-esque medium powers. I am starting to think that Niagara’s reputation as a tourism based economy is unjustly founded.
i forget the same things you forget
I am not a golfer. Of all the words that could be used to describe me (debonair, handsome, witty), golfer is not even in the top 200,000. I am an adequate mini-putt participant but hand me anything beyond a bent putter and I am all at sea.
It is an activity that I have no desire to invest in. If I want to go for a 4 hour walk, I will just walk (this is pretty unlikely but it could happen at some point in the future. The distant future). It is an extremely expensive hobby to take up both in terms of equipment and actually playing. One of the 200,000 words that describes me much more accurately than “golfer” is “cheap.”
The whole culture of golfing is foreign to me as well. It has a jargon all its own. The only reason I know a golfing birdie from a piece of badminton equipment is through playing Tiger Woods on my laptop. Eagles are large and majestic birds, not a means of keeping score. Bogey is an affectionate nickname for a 40’s film star and double Bogey is what I will have when my cloning experiments are successful.
I have even given golfing a shot, if you’ll pardon the pun. A few years ago, I went to a driving range with my father- and brothers-in-law (though at the time they were just my girlfriends’ family). I didn’t even know then (and continue not to know) which ‘hand’ I am for golfing. I’m pretty sure it’s the same as hockey and possibly the same as baseball but as a basically sedentary lifeform, I am not particularly clear on which side I’m on for those, either. In any case, we went to the driving range on a really nice summer afternoon (much like today but perhaps slightly less sunny). We each bought (or more accurately, rented) a bucket of balls and headed off to the tees or pads or whatever they’re called. I manage to have approximately equal hooks and slices. I can drill the ball pretty well but not in any particular direction. The few that I actually hit straight went between 100 and 200 yards, generally, which I think is pretty good for a noodle-armed wastrel like myself.
My father-in-law had recently received or purchased a fairly heavy-duty driver (one of the big, meaty clubs you use for your first couple of shots as opposed to irons which you use to fend off attackers in the night). I got to take a couple of shots with it and managed to smash myself in the toe with the ball. I was wearing a pair of Converse Chuck Taylors which are not exactly noted for the rigidity and strength of their materials so I might just as well have been golfing barefoot because then at least I wouldn’t have ruined a half-pair of socks. I’m really unsure how I managed it because the ball started off directly in front of me and then suddenly was trying to bond with my left big toe (which was suffering from being mildly ingrown at the time to boot and let me tell you FELT GREAT <- highlight to reveal that because it is kind of gross).
I have decided to take this event as clinching proof that golf is straight up not for me. Every so often I think “man, that might actually be kind of fun” and then I remember all these things that I have just related and remember that I would rather sit inside in the dark. It’s just healthier for me.
who’s in the bunker who’s in bunker
This evening we sat down with my brother- and sister-in-law to add some structure to our nebulous plans for our east coast trip this summer. We’re doing a bit of a rehash of our last summer’s trip but this year we are taking two weeks instead of just one in the probably vain hope that it cannot possibly rain every day for two weeks as it did for the entire time we were there last year.
Thus far our concrete plans include staying at one particular campground in Quebec (already booked). Apart from that we have several things we’d like to see but no pressing schedule or even a firm list. One nice thing about the east coast is that it tends to lend itself well to this kind of unfocused holiday. The culture out there is very different and nowhere is this more obvious than when driving.
One of the first differences we noticed was in the manner of driving. Virtually any time somebody blew past us at 40+ over the limit, it was a car (or more frequently, a minivan) with Ontario plates. Any time we got cut off or somebody blocked us from merging, Ontario plates were to blame. We had heard from friends that the speed limit is higher out that way but if you’re caught speeding, your license is taken away and mailed back to you and so you get a 2-3 day break from driving whether you like it or not. We decided not to put this to the test.
Another big, car-related difference that we noticed was in the area of construction signs. Being part of Canada and being summer, most of the roads were under greater or lesser degrees of destruction. I provide here a helpful breakdown of some of the road signs one may see while traversing the highways and byways of Nova Scotia in particular but we saw most of these in all the provinces we visited.
Warning: Unicyclist juggling on uneven pavement (next 20km)
Driver may become lighter than air and pull left wheels off highway.
You will be hit by a concrete truck and there is nothing you can do to stop it.
Forklift is about to pick up your car and fling it into the ether (does not apply to vehicles with more than one person inside)
Cars on the right are just better than cars on the left.
Close your sunroof. They are not wearing diapers.
Cellulite removal (by force)
picture yourself at the mgm grand