Archive for ‘misc’

214 items.

It’s a Long Way To the Top

by adam on November 29th, 2009
Posted In: misc

Today we took the students to the CN Tower, a place I had never really been (apart from the old Tour of the Universe moving theatre ride they had back in the early 90s).  It is pretty tall from the ground but once one actually ascends, it doesn’t seem all that high up.  I certainly wouldn’t want to fall off of the thing (the second worst part would be how long one would have to contemplate the impending contact with the ground.  The worst thing would be the contact itself) but I sort of half-expected it to feel higher.  I think the fact that I have been in three storey apartment buildings with significantly longer elevator rides and wait times probably contributes somewhat.

In the plaza below the tower (and specifically below the glass floor which is awesome) there are several large X shapes.  Amy thought they looked like targets.  I forgot to go and look to see what they were when we got down.  Probably targets.  Comparing the experience to the Empire State Building, I think I prefer the ESB.  Part of that was that New York has a certain mystique that I have long since misplaced for Toronto.  When I am confronted on a more or less daily basis with the vagaries and irritations of the people of Toronto, I feel that I know the place almost too well.

A more significant part of the difference is that I was in NYC at night (and with my wife alone rather than with a dozen students), and I was able to get a picture like these:

sup, flatiron building

sup, flatiron building

I just realized that I made almost this exact post in August but that is okay because I didn’t talk about the CN Tower that day.

you and i must fight to survive

  • Share/Bookmark
  Comment

Ten Things I Have Learned

by adam on November 8th, 2009
Posted In: misc

Yesterday was our “house-aversary” wherein we achieved one year of living in our new place.  I have gathered many pieces of wisdom, knowledge and information in this 365 day period that I should like to share with you now.

1.  Assume the Worst
I wish it weren’t so but it must be, based on all my experience to date.  The previous owners of our house were some kind of crowd of thumb-fingered, well-meaning blockheads whose reach exceeded their grasp by a couple of orders of magnitude.  There is so much that we just shake our heads in wonderment, trying to decipher the train of thought that led to a particular set of decisions being made (viz. all the wiring, most of the plumbing, a pretty fair percentage of the decorating, etc. etc.)

2.  We Mock What We Are To Become
Even as I wrote the above, I realized that anybody coming into our house now (or likely me in two years trying to do something else) will feel exactly the same way about me as I feel about the previous owner.  There are surface-mounted wires all over a couple of rooms because I didn’t want to hack up the wall.  The power for the new fan in the bathroom comes from the same junction box in the basement that feeds the basement bathroom light, the exterior outlet and the backyard light.  All of these decisions seemed like a good idea at the time but in retrospect (or from any outside viewpoint) they were pretty dumb.

3.  You Can’t Tranquilize the Neighbour’s Dog or Grandkids
Although you definitely should be allowed to do both.

4.  Living Four Doors From One’s In-Laws Is A Mixed Blessing
On the one hand, pies for no reason.  On the other, they notice when I don’t mow the lawn for three weeks (though this resulted in it magically becoming mowed [Thank you, Ed]).

5.  (Related To Above) Reel Mowers Work Best When Used Regularly
Going through 3″+ grass with naught but muscle power is a challenge at best and rare torture the rest of the time.  5.a. is that mowing one’s 1/4 acre lawn with a reel mower in under an hour in 30 degree weather is  a recipe for dizziness.

6.  It Is Important to Have at Least 5 Circuits in The Kitchen
And really unimportant to have labelled any of them on the panel in the basement

7.  Immediately Over The Electrical Panel is The Best Place to Have the Shutoff For the Outside Tap

8.  Water Shut-Offs For Toilets Are Highly Over-Rated

9.  Brown Is The Best Colour For A Bathroom
In fact, they liked it so much that there were five different shades of it present before Amy painted all the trim white.

10.  The Best House Ever Is Our House.

don’t you know it’s gonna last

  • Share/Bookmark
└ Tags: , ,
1 Comment

Let’s All Waste Our Time

by adam on November 1st, 2009
Posted In: misc

The high school I went to was one of those that insisted on the graduating students actually having achieved the full requirements of the Ontario Secondary School Diploma prior to the graduation ceremony.  They were picky that way and there were about 500 of us to be graduated when I came through so as a result, our graduation ceremony was in November of the following year.

Everyone had already lost touch who wanted to (this included me) but we were dragged back together on a Friday night just after Halloween and just before Christmas decorations in the mall really began in earnest (maybe the 7th or so?).  The place we were dragged to was one of the largest hockey arenas in Kitchener-Waterloo, the Clarica Arena of the Waterloo Memorial Recreation Complex.  It was most likely the largest and cheapest venue available because they certainly didn’t select it for aesthetics or acoustics (both of which it has a serious lack).  I had no interest whatsoever in attending but I was prevailed upon by others who felt it would be a good experience or bring closure or something, so I went along with it to avoid causing a scene.

Even a small and well-run graduation ceremony entails a fair amount of complexity and gives the impression of teetering at the edge of the catastrophe curve.  Mine did not teeter on the edge so much as careen wildly downward toward the trailing edge of insanity.  The 500 or so grads were herded through robing and hatting in the changerooms beneath the bleachers and led, like cattle, to the ice surface (fortunately covered up though I suspect it would have been a much more entertaining evening had we all been slipping and sliding along in our gowns and dress shoes, alas) whereupon a more-or-less adequate number of plastic folding chairs had been erected.  Our loved ones sat in the stands (behind the glass which is removable but hadn’t been taken down) like Romans in the Colosseum, awaiting the releasing of the wild beasts upon the hapless graduands.

We were each issued with a small piece of paper and the instruction to write down what we were doing with our time now that we were no longer within easy grasp of the high school.  The intent was for us each to hand the paper to the principal as we crossed the stage and he would read out our life plans and any awards we had received (scholarships, etc.).  One of the people in the mid-C range of the alphabet wrote that he was attending the DeVry Institute (and was serious about success) and that he had received the C. Montgomery Burns Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Excellence.  The principal made it all the way through that, looked a the grinning fellow and the hooting audience and decided it would be the last such note read.

All of this by-play was utterly lost on the spectators in the seats above as was every word uttered by anyone at the microphone.  Instead of providing a sound system appropriate to the event, the organizers had elected to use the built-in hockey announcing speakers which are difficult to hear at the best of times.  When the arena has 3/4 seats empty, the echoing completely precludes any opportunity of understanding.  Nobody down below had any idea of this and several people rambled on at some length about how great it was to be done with high school (possibly I am recalling this through the rose-tinted ear trumpet of memory.  Being done with high school was pretty high on my priority list).

Since everyone there had already finished up their final courses and received not only their final grades but also their diploma and yearbook, we queued and crossed the stage to collect blank sheets of paper with significant pomp and ceremony.  I decided while waiting at the side of the stage that this was the last graduation of mine that I would be attending.  I skipped out completely on my college graduation partly due to a fear of mind-numbing boredom but also because it was paired with the graduation of the police foundations students (a more drug-addled, law-breaking pile of jerks such as are rarely seen) and primarily because it was at 3:00pm on a Wednesday afternoon in my third week of my new job.  I didn’t think it was a wise plan to ask my boss for an afternoon off after having already taken off the afternoon of my very first Friday of work to attend a wedding.  I felt that mightn’t sit well.

no hurt or pain, no suffering

  • Share/Bookmark
└ Tags: , , ,
  Comment

Topical Halloween Discussion

by adam on October 31st, 2009
Posted In: misc

Last year at this time we were making ready to move from our tumbledown shack on the campus of Amy’s school and were in no mind to prepare festivities of an All Hallows’ Eve nature.  Nearly all of our belongings had been packed away into boxes and we were well into the phase of pre-moving “eat everything so the fridge is easier to move.”  (As a bit of a sidebar, we put everything that had gone bad or we didn’t want into a box with intent to throw it out and somebody very helpfully grabbed it and put it in the truck.  It may well have been me.  Moving is a ridiculously hectic time)  As a result, we were completely unprepared for Trick-or-Treaters.  In our defense, to that point we had never had anybody come looking for candy and it had become something of a low priority.  We had bought candy every preceding year and been forced to eat all of it myself (a real hardship) but we had no desire at all to box up candy and move it to the new place to be eaten.

We were continuing to box up our Earthly goods that evening when a knock came at our door.  Our neighbours’ little girl was out for her first real Halloween (previous years she had taken the ‘go and see family members in costume and have pictures taken’ route).  I can’t remember what she was dressed as but I knew we couldn’t disappoint her at the very first house she had ever visited.  Fortunately, I had a plan.

Each year my parents put together Easter baskets for us.  This tradition started years and years ago when we were quite small.  Usually there are jelly beans, chocolate eggs, those marshmallow eggs with a hardish candy shell (I love them, most people hate them so I am more than happy to take them off siblings’ hands) and one big solid bunny.  A pound of chocolate takes a very, very long time to eat and so from childhood I’ve had the habit of keeping it in the freezer and breaking off big chunks whenever I needed a fix.  The previous year’s easter bunny was one of the eight things left in our freezer and I brought it out with much ceremony.

“Do you like chocolate?”
*big eyes gleaming and the nodding of a pig-tailed head*
“Here you go.”

The pound of chocolate was nearly more than she could carry but she hauled it down to the driveway where her parents were nearly falling over laughing.

For contrast, this year we have had a total of three kids, none of whom were dressed up.  They each carried a pair of skates (we live down the street from the arena) and held them out.  Each got an Oh Henry and I have been sitting and eating Reese Peanut Butter Cups for the last few hours.  Halloween is the best holiday (though I think I will blow up some stuff for Guy Fawkes’ Day on  Thursday).

i was cold as a stone

  • Share/Bookmark
└ Tags: , , , ,
  Comment

Humble Regrets

by adam on October 29th, 2009
Posted In: misc

I tried to do something fancy with the theme and appearance here and everything went pear-shaped on me.  I’m working on a fix as fast as my legs can carry me and I hope to have something worth looking at here by tomorrow evening.  The comic has been drawn, inked and photographed but cannot yet be posted and I’m very sorry.

EDIT: After several hours of poking around, it turns out to have been a permissions problem with my hosting.  This is not the new permanent look by any means.  Please continue to bear with me.

  • Share/Bookmark
└ Tags:
  Comment

A Second Career?

by adam on October 29th, 2009
Posted In: misc

It was brought to my attention today that Canada has some kind of cheese importation quota.  I’ll give it a moment for that to sink in.  There is a limit (according to my sources) to the amount of cheese that may be brought into our country from outside.  I am of the firm opinion that the Canadian Dairy Lobbyists have simply gone too far.

I picture the Canadian Cheese Board as acting much like the CRTC and prescribing Canadian Content rules for the cheeses available to the common consumer.  They sit at a board room table in Tavistock (the cheese capital of Ontario likely, Canada possibly and certainly of Tavistock) and make the hard calls.  How high a percentage of Gouda?  What of Edam?  These pedestrian Dutch varieties occupy little time in the counsels of the great and curdy.  Tyrolean Grey Cheese may be big this year.  I hear that El Salvadorian Cuajada or Enredo might be an up-and-comer to say nothing of Australian Coon (the Swiss, Italians and British, by the by, each have their own wiki article on national cheeses because they are just too good for the ‘cheeses of the world’ page).  I picture a scene of portly gentlemen, each with a snifter of brandy and a wedge of Camembert discussing whether or not to lift the ban on Buxton Blue or let it continue for a record-setting thirtieth year in a row.  Discussions of great heft and import.

It is time to rise up and take these powerful cheesemongers to task.  Too long have they controlled the quota, importing vast quantities of what they feel is best for the uncountable ranks of cheeserists all over the country.  Their stated purpose is to protect the public but what they really want is the full wheel, no longer content with a wedge here or there.  There is no room in their Emmenthaler world for an independent and so I have decided to go renegade.  I will become a cheese smuggler, like my great-great-great-granduncle Phineas “Do You Smell That” Sandiford.  He was the prototypical cheese mule, bringing boatloads of Raclette from the shores of Geneva to the shores of York (now Toronto).  The equipment of the cheese mule has matured with time and is now nearly indistinguishable from that of the heroin or cocaine mule save that our precious cargo can be consumed more or less without permanent incident or damage should we be discovered (there is a tendency toward heart attacks and constipation but these are merely obstacles on the way to cheese smuggling greatness).

We can be distinguished by our cry of “Awk awk awk whaharammm” which, broadly translated from the original Greek means “hey, buddy, I’ve got a lump of Feta that’s been in a bag up my butt for 40 hours, you want some?”  It is also the battle cry of the discovered cheeserist when the bomb or drug sniffing dogs get too close and he is forced to commit the dishonourable practice  of Gruyerery (the aforementioned consumption of the cargo, formerly performed in one’s cabin at sea but now often in lightly traveled airport concourses).

think you got me confused

  • Share/Bookmark
└ Tags: , , ,
2 Comments

What Hath Science Wrought ‽ Episode Ten

by adam on October 27th, 2009
Posted In: misc

Woooo ten of these!  Woo, I say.

Amy is doing school related things at the school where she works and I am preparing dinner.  I am preparing quiche which is probably the most complicated single dish that I personally can prepare with any degree of success.  Here, let me share with you my recipe in the form of a chatlog with AN UNNAMED GUEST HOST:

GUEST HOST: hi
GUEST HOST: how are you?
adam: i’m well, you?
adam: making quiche
GUEST HOST: i’m okay
adam: like a boss
GUEST HOST: nice!!!
GUEST HOST: i’ve never made quiche on my own before :S
GUEST HOST: it’s so good. why haven’t i made it?
adam: it is so easy
GUEST HOST: do you make your own crust?
adam: you take a 9″ pie crust
adam: pft no
adam: i can’t be doing that
adam: it is beyond me
GUEST HOST: that’s where i get stuck
GUEST HOST: i’m not good at pie crust
adam: see i just buy the crusts
adam: they come right there in the pie plate even
GUEST HOST: and i can’t bring myself to buy them because i know i SHOULD be making them myself
adam: pft
adam: pfffffffft i say
GUEST HOST: i know
adam: you are denying yourself
adam: quiche
GUEST HOST: my stupid biases are keeping me from quiche.
adam: which is like the third or fourth best egg thing
adam: and certainly the most complicated one i can make
GUEST HOST: i do heart eggs.
adam: so basically
adam: what you do
adam: is get a 9″ pie crust BY WHATEVER MEANS NECESSARY
adam: you cook up some fillings
adam: like vegetables
adam: maybe some bacon
adam: get something like 1.5-2 cups of this stuff cooked up
adam: just in a frying pan or whatever
adam: then get a bowl
GUEST HOST: k
adam: crack 4 eggs into it
adam: add some maybe cream if you’ve got it
adam: if not no worris
adam: *worries
adam: maybe a little cream cheese
adam: blend that up
adam: or beat it with a fork
adam: then tip in your cooked stuff
GUEST HOST: yummy cream cheeeeeeeeeese
adam: blend it some more with a fork
adam: add some spices
adam: to taste like
adam: grate in some cheese
adam: pour that crap in the pie crust
adam: bam
adam: 45 minutes at 350
adam: or until a knife/toothpick into the middle comes out clean
GUEST HOST: maybe i will be brave enough to try that tomorrow
adam: let stand 10 minutes IF YOU CAN STAND THE SUSPENS
adam: e
adam: then slice/dice/consume
GUEST HOST: i could try, but lets face it… if it works, i’ll just have to have a burnt tongue
adam: that is the price one pays for success
adam: actually the 10 minutes is to let it like congeal or some crap i dunno
GUEST HOST: yeah that makes sense
adam: this is basically going to form tomorrow’s post
adam: you are like
adam: guest host

So that is pretty much the size of it!  I chopped up onion, mushrooms and peppers, sautéed them in a little bit of Greek salad dressing and baked the whole thing for a while.  When Amy gets home we will see how successful it is. My hypothesis: AWESOME.

talking trash to the garbage around you

  • Share/Bookmark
└ Tags: , , , ,
6 Comments

Register Biscuits

by adam on October 25th, 2009
Posted In: misc

This Penny Arcade Comic (warning, it has a cuss in it) filled in a hole in my vocabulary of which I was completely unaware.  It brought me the delicious phrase ‘register biscuit’ to exactly and perfectly describe the minimum wage earning, incompetent teens who populate the behind-the-counter areas of the local electronics stores.  Let me give you a for instance or two, if you have not immediately picked up on what I am laying down.

Before we got married, Amy and I were out shopping for a stereo for her to take to university.  We arbitrarily picked Future Shop because they are kind of a big deal when it comes to consumer electronics at the quality and price point we were seeking.  They are also apparently on commission though you’d never, ever be able to guess this from their behaviour toward people who are presumably helping pay their wage (more commonly known as “customers”).  We walked through the stereo section (having done some research beforehand, we had a pretty good idea of what we wanted) and tried to attract the interest of one of the what can only be called staff, due to the fact that they were all wearing matching shirts that had the name of the store emblazoned thereupon.  To be fair, we may have happened upon the Future Shop bowling team making a visit to the sponsoring store and sort of huddling around talking to each other and ignoring all other lifeforms in a 30m radius around them.  Such is the right and privilege of bowling teams, after all.  Perhaps we were being too judgmental of them when we decided to walk through the store and give the sale to whomever made eye contact and/or spoke to us first.  I think we ended up with somebody from the music area or possibly games but she was more than happy to ring us through while the bowling team… um… bowled?  Maybe?

I’ve had a broadly similar experience to this in Home Depot stores.  Similar in that I am getting no service but also different in that there is not an employee to be seen.  Generally speaking, when I am headed into a home improvement store, I have a pretty clear idea of what I’m there for and some kind of clue where it is.  This is a behaviour born of necessity because Home Depot in particular suffers from tragic underemployment.  Rona (kind of a Canadian Home Depot or Lowe’s) is better staffed or has not yet equipped their employees with customer avoidance radar.  Rona’s downfall is that their very helpful and friendly employees often don’t know which end of a lightbulb is intended to be screwed into the socket.  I was absolutely shocked a couple weeks ago that, while at Home Depot, I was standing in the carpet section after having picked up some tile grout.  I was trying to figure out where in the store I would find backer rod to seal up some of the more egregious failures of the bathroom tile and an employee, apropos of nothing whatsoever, asked me if he could help me find something.  I was absolutely floored by his presence and willingness to be of assistance.  Now, he didn’t know what the thing was I was looking for or even where to begin looking for it, but he seemed to genuinely be interested in helping me.

just to watch him die

  • Share/Bookmark
└ Tags: , , , , ,
  Comment

My Structural Roots

by adam on October 24th, 2009
Posted In: misc

As many of you are already aware and several of you are just about to find out, I work for an architect who designs church buildings.  This probably comes as no particular shock to anybody who’s ever seen me play with LEGO (though to be fair, I really expected to be designing space craft and giant robots based on my prowess with the plastic brick).  In thinking about it in response to an interview question, I realized that I actually do have some family roots in construction.  My aunt and uncle have both been designing for years and years, one uncle on the other side used to install and service major heating and ventilation equipment and another sold tools.  My grandfathers are/were both pretty handy guys and built sheds and garages for themselves besides doing some renovation work and my dad is a pretty good example of a jack-of-all-trades, comfortable with a torch for plumbing or a hammer for framing or a set of sidecutters and a wire tester.  Nowhere was this more evident (and here I am tying into my topic sentence at the beginning) than at the old church building in Waterloo.

Dad (and Mom) spent countless hours maintaining that old beast.  It was built as a temporary structure sometime in the early 1960s and served an Anglican congregation before the Waterloo church of Christ bought it in the early 1980s.  It has since gone on to its reward (it has been torn down and replaced with student housing.  I suspect that student housing is pretty much not the Paradise that many people are hoping for after they die).  Why do I say temporary building?  The whole thing was built on what must have been an underground creek.  The basement was always wet and the sump pump ran roughly ever ten minutes.  Since the water coming in had a whole lot of mud/dirt/silt/newts in it, the sump pump would become fouled on a pretty regular basis and stop working entirely.  This would lead to four feet of dirty basement water and total destruction for anything found in the water’s path.  I dimly recall somebody taking a rubber raft down there but I suspect that I have made this up in a fit of wishful thinking.  The flipside, however, was that the basement made a fantastic lion’s den and belly of the whale for different Vacation Bible School lessons.

these but quite a bit larger

these but quite a bit larger

The main auditorium (or sanctuary if you prefer) was built on much larger versions of the concrete deck supports that people sometimes use when they can’t be bothered to dig proper post holes for their decks.  They looked a lot like the picture on the right.  Due to the uncertain nature of the soils underneath, these concrete pier deallies had been sinking into the ground slowly for some years while the Anglicans owned the building.  When we bought it, we replaced their red vinyl kneeling cushions with large, heavy, oaken pews.  I know the kneeling cushions were of red vinyl because for some reason we kept them under the auditorium instead of throwing them away.  The weight of the pews drove the outside edges of the auditorium down at a significantly faster rate than the centre beam and so the room had a pronounced and noticeable inverted V shape to the floor.

The first plumbing repair I ever did was at that building.  After a potluck one Sunday, the sink in the kitchen backed up terribly and took ages to drain.  I looked under the counter and found that somebody in their wisdom had repaired a past leak with black electrical tape which had over time slipped in between the edges of the crack and effectively sealed off the drain (I had to sift through quite a lot of lukewarm, greasy water in order to get it cleared out and draining into a bucket so we could finish the dishes).  I looked at it for a while and decided I could fix it so off I trotted to Home Hardware and bought pipe cement, a new p-trap and a proper brass sink fitting (which is what the electrical taper of years past ought to have done).  I borrowed a wrench and took an afternoon and got it put back together properly for about eight months until the building was sold.  It was time well spent because now I know exactly what to do when the sink at my house breaks (expecting this to happen soon).

  • Share/Bookmark
└ Tags: , , , , ,
7 Comments

Don’t Look Back/The Centre of the Universe

by adam on October 21st, 2009
Posted In: comic, misc
Don’t Look Back/The Centre of the Universe

Living as I do in more or less the shadow of the CN Tower (it has to be a pretty sunny day and the planet has to be tilted pretty badly for the sun to be shining from that angle [basically due north] but the shadow nevertheless), it is easy to forget that the rest of the country hasn’t the fond feelings for Toronto that colour my days with neon happiness and iridescent sparkles of joy.

Take for example, the preponderance of Toronto-centric news.  I can recall at least one time in the last year when traffic tie-ups on the 401 made the top of the hourly national news on CBC.  It wasn’t even for a particularly large or gruesome accident.  Just your standard volume of a weekday in the big smoke.  I think it is the responsibility of the 2.3 million people who live in the Atlantic provinces to understand the depth of suffering of the 5.5 million who are all somehow stuck in the 20 kilometres of 18-lane-mayhem that make up the 427-404 corridor across the top of the city.

The radio morning shows are great to listen to as well.  They don’t bother me with pesky details like traffic headed to any other part of the broadcast area, going so far as to simplify the QEW’s directional mess to ‘eastbound’ and ‘westbound’.  Here, for reference, is the routing of the QEW:

the section in red is the section in question

the section in red is the section in question

The morning shows also help me to avoid any local entertainment entanglements by never, ever focusing on any portion of the broadcast area further afield than Oakville.

There is also a level of convenience to Toronto unseen in any other city in Canada.  I think specifically of the IKEA situation.  The entirety of the rest of southern Ontario goes either to the Ottawa or Burlington IKEA stores (approx. 7 million people/2 stores = 3.5 million people per store.  They’re considering replacing hot dogs with Soylent Green).  Torontonians have the benefit of 3 IKEAs amongst their 5.5million people (roughly 1.83 million people per store which translates to a vacant wasteland full of LACK shelving and lonely meatballs spinning through the void).  Lee Valley is even more opulent in its space allocation in TO.  1.83 million per store for three stores.  Compare to Vancouver’s claustrophobic 2.1 million people to one store.  I feel that store-based population demographics is a shockingly under-reported aspect of the census process.

we are cheap and see-through

  • Share/Bookmark
└ Tags: , , , , , , , ,
  Comment