Gecko Bloggle

Just a quick note so people don’t think I forgot how to count. Yesterday we shopped.  All day.  The kids went to grandma & grandpa’s place for the night, and we shopped the heck outta Vancouver.   Actually, we mostly shopped the heck outta North Vancouver, and a little of the downtown core.

We bought groceries, shopped WalMart (nobody got hurt), shopped MingWo (I think there’s a branch of techie/geek that designs kitchen utensils, and they’re making a *killing* out there, let me just say), we shopped one of those “As Seen On TV” places, and *just* about bought some stuff that I’m sure wouldn’t have made it through lunchtime on December 25th.

Dropped our stuff at home, and headed back out into the night for some steak dinners dinners with a guy that was the mid-30 blonde-ponytail version of John Goodman.   He was awesome, without trying.   I think it was mostly that he was NOT one of those greasy “Hi there, my name’s Kurt, and I’m going to not understand that you’re just here for dinner, not as a redbull-and-vodka-fueled entertainment experience with spinach dip.”  He was just human.  Just a guy who had access to some truly awesome steaks, and was willing to part with them for a fee.

After dinner, we bought our “Our Gift From All Of Us To All Of Us” which Arwen and I had to test out, of course, so we did a little bowling, a little tennis, a little “This is gonna be FUN.”

I returned a call to Visa to tell them that there was no need to freak out, and yes I had in fact just bought dinner for $80 and then electronics four blocks away for $360.  The teller at the Future Shop had put in the wrong expiration date once, which had triggered Visa’s WTF-ometer, so they’d phoned the house to make sure we were cool.   At first, I wondered if that meant we’d accidentally walked out the door without actually PAYING for the stuff we’d bought, but no, it went through the second time.  Oh well, we’ll have to win the raffle some other time.

Then we went to see “Body Of Lies,” which was all about US involvement in Jordan.   Yeehah, right? Action-packed thrillride adventure.   Wheeeee! Ridley Scott directs (Blade Runner, Alien)! Happy-happy-joy-joy! With kittens and balloons, and unicorns that fart rainbows with baskets full of puppies chasing butterflies.

Ahee.

Seriously though, a good movie, but heavy, and long. there was also what seemed like 30 minutes of commercials, many of which were ones we’d seen on TV, so it’s not like we were getting big-screen ultra-rare artsy-fartsy commercials.   Just car ads and things.   Odd.  Also super-duper loud.

Then we came home around 1am to our empty house and went to bed.  We slept in until 10:30am, which is unHEARD of in our house of kids that think 7:00am is sleeping in, and Saturday/Sunday are days they don’t go to school or preschool.  There’s no sleeping in, ever.  Today, coffee was at 11am.

Sure, we blew through a lot of money, but it sure felt like a day off from being responsible parents of two kids.

And normally, I can’t STAND shopping.  Yesterday?  That was a tactical strike, all day.  Good times.  Good times.

This is my 600th post on this incarnation of this blog.  I had another one at Blogger for a while, and I think I have them somewhere, I’ll have to make sure they’re back in my archives.  Maybe another 15 posts or so.  Elissa is over for our quad-weekly visit and Pimms-fest.  Booze-amahol is inherent in this post.

Today my brain kinda went into neutral at work.  I got stuff done, honest.  I got to order a bunch of something that I would normally have shot down, or suspected isn’t really necessary, which translates to “I’m worried they’ll become toys.”  It’s that enough of a sort of purchase that the person at the vendor said “Oh, are these gifts for people at work, like a giveaway?”

I feel like putting stickers on them when they arrive that say “No having fun with this.”  I’m such a grump sometimes.  I’m a hardware junkie like the best of them, but sometimes I feel like people want things because it’ll be fun to have them.  Not because they’re needed for business purposes, but because they’re cool.

Click here to read more.. »

In which our hero stayed home to be with his sick 3yo son, who (sorta/kinda) watched the Teen-Age Mutant Ninja Turtles, Baby Einstein, They Might Be Giants, and The Little Mermaid Prequel thing.  Considering how I remember movies when I was a kid, I’ll be surprised if he doesn’t grow up thinking Singing Sea Turtle SockPuppets once taught him to read.

Was at home during a slightly scary mail server thing at work, am totally proud of my co-worker for not freaking out at all during the whole process.  It’s an American long weekend, so the product that caused the explosion in our mail queues was not supported today.  Whoopsie.  Oh, and our boss (both technically and literally speaking) was out of town, so it was just the two of us, and I wasn’t even on-site.  The two of us flipped things on and off, Googled around, and did stuff to whatever, and managed to get it going again.  He was 99.999% there already, and there was one little glitch that Microsoft let us do, that didn’t work, because while we were allowed to do it, it didn’t work once we’d done it.  Co-Worker totally held the fort though, and I’m proud of him.  Woot!

You know how they say strangers are friends you just haven’t met yet?  J. Smooth from Ill Doctrine is the guy you wanna get jacked up on coffee and then talk to about what went wrong with rap in the mid-90s.  But until I meet him, you’ll just have to watch this for a few minutes about how winning an election is just the very first thing you do to make change happen.

As more and more people see my moustache (rather, as it bcomes obvious I didn’t just miss a spot shaving), I’m starting to get comparisons to famous people.  So far I’ve got Burt Reynolds, Earl from “My Name Is…”, Chuck Norris, and Robert Dayton (and no, I dunno who that is).

(I really will get to the post about email administration some time, ’cause I think it needs to be written about).

I need to clean out the two cabinet things I have here that’re both full of computer and audio stuff.  It’s getting outta control again.  I don’t even know what’s IN there, much less WHERE it is.  There’s cables, video cards, hard drives, a little LCD TV, a DVD/VCR player, headphones, webcams (I seem to collect them), a bunch of Dreamcasts, and then some assorted weirdness.  Just stuff.  Techie things.  Enough bits and pieces to build a real Transformer (that a cat could drive, maybe).

Maybe I could turn it into an art piece, like this:

I suggest you press log in, hit play, and then RUN AWAY!

I mean, how much fun would that be?  (If you’re me?  A LOT).

Finally, just because people seem to be in a bit of a funk heading out of November, maybe you know about LOLCats, and maybe you also know about FailBlog, but have any of your run across the red-headed stepchild of the two?  OmNomNomNom?  Stupid?  Very.  Funny.  Occasionally.  When it’s funny, it’s funny.  But it does make me look at architecture in a slightly bent way.  For non-bent pure “oh wow” architecture, check out BLDGBLOG.

Tonight had a 30-Rock marathon on one channel, and The Office marathon on the other.  Not the usual “omigod Thursdays RULE” lineup, but pretty darned good.

New Movember stache photo to follow at the end of this post, I think.

Gonna go all point-formy on y’all tonight, forgive me.

• It is currently 1c here in Vancouver (34f, for our non-metric readers), which means tomorrow’s downhill 40km/h might include ice.  I think I’ll take my “alternate route,” which will mean stopping at every red light down the hill (assuming I can stop), which would be annoying, but much better than being run over by a dozen cars before they even NOTICE I’d lost my bike out from under me.
• New Podcast is up.  Come and get it.
• I gave blood yesterday, which was fine.  It took longer than usual ’cause they couldn’t find my vein on my left arm.  Rather, they could find it by poking and prodding, but not by actually sticking a needle in my arm.  The right side?  Darn near popped the bag before they could get me unhooked again.  Hooray (?) for blood pressure.  (Mine was fine for a guy who’d just braved ten blocks cycling in rush hour traffic).
• The lady across from me while I was giving blood just about fainted.  It was weird to watch.  She was a very pale blondish lady, who reminded me a little of Julia Stiles minus the gigantor cranium.  I noticed that she’d seemed a little nervous coming in (there’s usually a lot of near-giddy chatter, and she was almost silent), but she had asked for a blanket and didn’t get one, and seemed a little freaked out.  I asked the nurse attending me if maybe the lady across could get a blanket, ’cause she seemed uncomfortable, and the nurse followed my gaze, and just about jumped out of her chair, calling in the “tank” or something similar sounding.
• Got everything all fixed at the bank today.  The RRSP from EA via GWL is now inbound to TD, OK?  Mechelle at Davie & Burrard TDCanadaTrust was everything Saturday’s experience wasn’t.  I still don’t know how it all works, but was totally confident that now everyone else can figure out how to make it go.
• During a conversation with someone tonight, I was totally twigged to go find the old video laser disc games.  Dragon’s Lair, Astron Belt, MACH3, and even Cliff Hanger.  Been forever since I’ve even thought about those kinds of games.

And now, on to Movember news: because I’m going to keep growing this thing until either I hit the $100 mark, or the end of the month (it’s pretty close now, frankly, either way), here’s another photo of my incredibly bad 26-day-old moustache.

Ready?

Camera Flash at Point Blank Causes My Forehead to Expand

Yeah, so you think that’s bad?  Check the ZOOM.

You can't handle the mo.

Alsoplus, if you’d like to donate a few bucks online to the Prostate Cancer Research Foundation of Canada in honour of my horrifying moustache, please click this link to donate on my behalf, or send a cheque (it’s like a check, but Canadian) to

Prostate Cancer Research Foundation of Canada

Attn: Movember
145 Front Street East
Suite 306
Toronto Ontario M5A 1E3

G’nite folks.

And if that was just too much, may I suggest you visit the Recombobulation Area?

Sorry folks, gotta vent.  I’ll write about the bank thing, and reading email tomorrow, probably.  Also the new podcast episode won’t play, and I can’t tell why, which is (as 3yo Tate would say “Fwustwayting.”

AGM Today.  The short version: the thing that was attempted by a person who isn’t liked (but had a little groundswell anyway for one PART of what he was trying to do) was suddenly retracted *right* before the vote, thus rendering all the stress and craziness around it totally null and void.

The Long Version: Thanks for coming out.  Thanks for suddenly making it enough about you (after telling us ALL ABOUT how it wasn’t personal at all) that you were willing to drop the whole matter when you didn’t think you could win any more.  You talked yourself into a hole instead of just letting people decide for themselves whether or not they wanted to lend their vote to what you were trying to do, and then took away the chance for anyone to actually, y’know, VOTE on the MOTION by suddenly making yourself unable to be voted down.  You didn’t want to lose, so you’d rather just not show up for the fight.  Half of the people that might have voted for you later in the evening on the 2nd topic walked out the door shortly after you pulled the rug out from under them.  I don’t blame them, and I feel sorry they didn’t feel heard.  Again.  Again.

Last year, at the AGM, I was one of the rabblerousers, and trouble-causers that you claim to be.  I got nominated from the floor at the very last moment, was accepted by acclimation, and then picked up the fight Arwen had been fighting for the previous nine months.  It was ugly, and I was being told I should quit, and that maybe I wasn’t doing it for the good of the society, and was being scolded for contacting the “higher-ups” in the Govt bodies to do something as rude as asking “can he/they/we do that?”  But when the old Executive Director and Treasurer quit within a week of each other (after getting ito a full-on flamewar with me over Xmas), I like to think I had something to do with it.  I like to think I made things uncomfortable for people who weren’t honouring our rental agreement (individual, or with the gov’t body that holds it).  Make the people who were attempting to invade my privacy and break agreements because living where I live is “A privilege, not a right.”

So, way, to go, asshat.  You actually did the *exact* opposite of what you claimed to be trying to do, so you’re either useless, or evil, and isn’t THAT what you were claiming you were trying to put an end to in the first place?

The fact that you were surprised you didn’t then get voted onto the board, that fact that you thought you had a chance, thought you had a hope, shows me how utterly disconnected from the tenancy and membership on the block you actually are.  You stole the passion, the bravery, and the energy from the people who tried to make changes last year (and to people like myself and a few others on the board, who are still trying to make changes happen).  It’s a tough fight, and we are often met with eye-rolling, deep sighs, and suggestions of mental instability.

What you’ve done over the last six months made all the dismissive actions seem totally justified.

You claim your eviction had to do with you “becoming political” last year.

I didn’t see you at the AGM last year.  I don’t remember you talking to your neighbors about the attempted (and against rental agreement) increases in rent.  You didn’t say ANYTHING until you got caught out on a basic tenet of rental housing, and they had you dead to rights, and then suddenly you wanted to hear what sorts of problems other tenants had.

A little late to the party, dude.

Just watching The Hour with George Strombatromboneaphoneapolis, and David Byrne is on, and he looks, oh, maybe 40.  I think he’s been taking lessons from Bowie, or something.  He’s got white hair (like me!) that’s kinda sticky-outy on one side (like me!) and rides his bike around town (like me!) and has worked with Brian Eno (like m-… oh wait).

I feel like I know a little about Eno, ’cause I’ve read his journal.  Not a blog, but a published diary, called “A Year” and it was vaguely uncomfortable to read.  It was interesting, but at times I felt like I was reading someone’s mail.

Which I’ve done.

Ooh, there’s my topic for today.  Scootch in children, I have a story to tell.

I’ll tell it tomorrow.  I’m too busy helping Arwen talk me down from painting half my face blue for tomorrow’s AGM.

Two things today.

Quaker meeting & Podcast.

Guess which one had lot of loud music, swearing, and laughing, and which one put me in that weird place between being asleep and awake?

Answer: Both.

One of them was totally in my head though, while the other was recorded for posterity.  You’ll have to check the postcast blog to hear the recorded one (and that’ll happen over next week, I think).

Quaker meeting is odd, for someone like me who grew up in a (for Canada) bible belt.  The question I heard when meeting kids I didn’t know wasn’t “Do you go to church?” but instead “Which church do you go to?”  I’d tell people I didn’t go to a church, and they’d look like I’d just kicked a puppy, and then say “But, but, you’re going to Hell then…” and just kinda wander away from me.

Quaker meeting is different.  There’s silence.  Just… silence.  Left with your own thoughts.  Think about the last time you were somewhere that left you thinking “Wow, it’s like, freaky-quiet here.”  I hear/feel that up at my mom’s place from time to time.  Her place is just over the tip of the first layer of mountains in the Fraser Valley, and since there’s not a lot of dirtbikes or chainsaws running, it can get silent out there.  Like, “Oh, maybe I’ve gone deaf” silent.  It was usually nice.  Left you to your thoughts.  Sometimes, it was a little freaky, ’cause you’d be left with nothing but your thoughts.

Quaker meeting is like that, a little.  You’re aware of the other dozen or so people in the room, but don’t know anything about them, except that they’re also enveloped in this silence.  The folks in Chilliwack would probably have equated it with meditation, which would instantly mean satanic cult stuff.  Amazing that I wasn’t eager to jump on the first bus  to Who Would Jesus Judge Camp, huh?

This silence is just whatever it is.  Sometimes people have things to say about things.  Sometimes they don’t.  Sometimes it’s about whatever’s happening in the world, or what’s happening to a particular individual, or just some philosophical point that happened to move the person to speak.  Sometimes it’s funny, sometimes sad, corny is fine, too.  Sometimes, like today, it’s just silence.

The idea is that there is “That of god in everyone.”  There’s something very Douglas Adams’ Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy about that for me.  The whole “Answer to life, the universe, and everything” was being determined by this supercomputer, which had a massively distributed program running on every human on the planet.  The computer was called Earth.  There’s part of me that likes the idea that the people who make me insane are just portions of “the answer” I just haven’t figured out how to interface with, yet.

Maybe it’s that my deep focus in the temporal lobe won’t let me.

Ooh, fifteen minutes into the first Bourne movie.  Fun!

Did a double-feature podcast with Johnny Vancouver and Duncan again today.  It’s fun.  I dig the music, and enjoy the chatting, but it feels a little too hectic sometimes.  We end up talking over each other in our panic/joy about whatever we’re talking about, and I have moments of “Is any of this going to make sense at all?  Is this going to be coherent at all when someone who wasn’t here listens to it?”

I often have that feeling I used to get when I would walk into a music store, and completely forget every song by every band I’d heard in the last six months.  I arrive at John’s place and start getting ready to put together my stuff and think “there was something else I was going to play today, something better than this.”  There was talk today of doing the next show via Voice Over IP (Internet Phone).  I figure that’s the only way we could make the show nerdier: to be wearing headsets while we do it, and not actually be in the same room.

Ever noticed how the guy from the movie F/X looks like the tall guy from Who’s Line Is It Anyway?  Just me?  Maybe just me.

This morning started with a sleep on the couch while the kids finished breakfast and watched a little TV (a couple glasses of wine last night, and watching some awesomely bad music videos while Jesse was over).

I went to do some banking (moving our RRSP from my old job’s group thing to my own bank) while not really quite awake yet, and not knowing what I was doing, and got some really bad advice.  Like, if the forms had been there, and the transit numbers ready, I would be out about $10,000 on our RRSPs.  Way to go TDCanadaTrust.

Thankfully, nothing was FINISHED finished, so all I actually did was sign up for matching his & hers credit cards we don’t need (was thinking we could put it all in one bank instead of having my credit card account in another banking institution).  I’ll cancel them when they arrive, whenever that is.  Doi.

Got home, had some lunch (taco fixings from last night in a wrap, but microwaved lettuce = evil).  I crashed again.  Ended up sleeping for a half hour and then going to Rip’s school to meet up with everyone.  There’s new swings and both the kids went from being totally weirded out by them to having fun and giggling while trying to kick my hands as I stood in front of them.  Rip was on there for about 30 mins, I think.  There’s pics somewhere on my Blackberry, and I’ll try to upload them later.

Home to make crepe-like pancake things with cottage cheese, peaches, and shredded coconut (we seem to have about nine pounds of the stuff in the house, due to one of those shopping glitches where we think we need something, so we buy it three weeks in a row).  It’s good though, ’cause Arwen likes to make things like chocolate haystacks (is that what they’re called?) and I like eat them.  A lot.

I’ve also been trying to get my music organized for tomorrow’s double-feature of podcasts.  Once again Johnny Vancouver, Shields Up, and yours truly are getting together and doing a show.  This time, we’re doing a ouble-feature, so we can have something ready for now (November’s show) and another for December’s show, ’cause it’s always difficult to figure out when we can get a show done during time when we should be shopping for xmas stuff.

I’ve been mentally keeping notes for tracks for tomorrows shows for the last two months (since the last show, and maybe a month before that).  The tricky part is trying to REMEMBER and re-source everything I was going to use for the next show.  I’m pretty sure I can get 10 tracks together for Noon(ish) tomorrow, so I’m good, but there’s that “I’m going on a trip tomorrow, is everything packed?” panic that I always have before a show.  The stress is fun stress though, not dread, like when I have to go to a board meeting.

Tomorrow afternoon is for hanging with some friends, and listening to some good music.

Should be fun.

Movember Day 21

Can you believe this?  What the hell, right?

Yes, that’s me (scary, I know) and yes that’s a moustache under my lip (scarier).  Alarming, huh?

21 days and this is about as good as I’ve got.  There’s a lot of salt in there, which makes for a sorta transluscent stache.  Last night, I had to cut back the “chops” a little, ’cause at the bottom of my mouth, my moustache goes WHITE.  Not just mostly silver, but platinum/white.  I think maybe I should have left it, but GEEZ.

So until the end of the month, I’m going to become more and more of a skeegy-lookin’ dude.

I’m loving the responses from people over the last few days.  From “Oh hey, are you doing that Movember thing?” to “What’s the uh, the deal with, uh… are you growing a… uhm…” and they point as if I had glued glitter, spaghetti, and gummy bears under my nose.

Oh!  Maybe next year I’ll do THAT!

Why am I doing this?  It’s Movember, and to get bring attention to men’s health issues (’cause men should be talking to their doctors about more than things we get spammed about all day).  Cancers and things?  They don’t spam us about those things.  Probably a good thing, now that I think about it.

Oh, and if you’d like to donate a few bucks online to the Prostate Cancer Research Foundation of Canada in honour of my horrifying moustache, please click this link to donate on my behalf, or send a cheque (it’s like a check, but Canadian) to

Prostate Cancer Research Foundation of Canada

Attn: Movember
145 Front Street East
Suite 306
Toronto Ontario M5A 1E3

Please help out, since I’m one of only 8000 or so Canadians.  Australia?  100,000+  I bet there’s one in every photo on Flickr right now.

Thank you, good night, and may your Mo, go with you.