Gecko Bloggle

I’m changing the titling so as not to offend KarlaBabble (like SHE ever comes HERE any MORE), but mostly ’cause yeah, I agree that the vast majority of my own “I’m going to write every day for X days” challenges are deeply depressing to myself, ’cause I don’t usually get past day three before skipping a day or two, and then doing one more day, and then giving up, assuming nobody noticed in the first place.

Karla has this to say about it:

Do us all a favor and vow NOT to participate in NaBloPoMo this year. If you’re already committed to it, then at least remove the word “NaBloPoMo” from every post, because that’s like announcing, “This is going to suck” in big letters across the top of the post. Allow us the temporary illusion that you blogged today because you were inspired, and not because there’s a national bore-a-thon going on and you’re determined not to be left out.

This is why I don’t use something like Twitter (or Twittr, or Twitr, or Twtr, or whatevr they’r calling it this wkr,) it’s just too much pressure.  I’m afraid people would actually start to get annoyed by what I’m tweeting.  See?  I’m already annoying myself by talking about it.  Shut UP.

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In which our hero stays glued to CNN for the evening, watching the election, and constantly feeling like “How are they going to steal it this time?”  Spoiler alert for those of you who TiVoed it: It wasn’t stolen, and Yes, They Did.

I’m not feeling 100% today.  Little sore throat, a tiny headache in the side of my neck (?) but other than that a good day.  Hard to complain when the good guys win, for once, though, woohoo!

Oh, and just in case you’re American, and voted, and felt like it didn’t matter much?  Mr. Saul Williams would like to have a word with you (hat tip to DreamPepper) about the whole idea of history.

Click here for more videos from Vote For Change

My fave piece from this video is this chunk:

Dear History,
You are behind us and we are no longer looking back. We are standing on the threshold of new times, new days, new worlds, and charging forward without battle cry or trumpet, while cynicism, apathy, and cowardice take their place beside you, behind us.

Also, the HipHop-For-Thinkie-Types guy over at Ill Doctrine had some smooth stuff to say about voting, ’cause you’d feel like a real heel if you have to tell your children you sat at home the night Obama almost won.

What else?  Today I figured out how to make Ubuntu perform badly on a network.  Seems like the sort of thing one should avoid, but in this case it’s something we’re TRYING to create.  Some “real world” networking stuff is needed to see what our all-multiplayer-online games are like when you don’t have $50,000 worth of networking gear between you and the server.  I’ve been using Ubuntu as my surfing box for a year or so now, but it’s nice to actually have to learn something at work with it.  Makes me push that much harder/faster to figure out how to make it do something I want to do.  Good times.  No, really, I enjoy that.

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In which our hero finally sits his two little ones down in front of Star Wars.  It might be the “fixed” version, but it looks pretty good.  When they get older, we’ll get into the whole thing about how the “real” version is the “best” version.  Han shot first, dammit (but in this version they shoot at the same time, and that Greedo is a lousy shot, lemme just say).

Laundry night (writing in bits and pieces while hauling stuff).  Tate and I went to Sport Ball at the West End Rec Center tonight, which meant leaving a little early from work, and hauling butt up the hill on my bike, so I could then walk back down the other side of the hill with Tate.  Cycling’s going really well, I think, since I’ve only NOT rode my bike for maybe four days since starting, and I had a Dr’s note for that.  Really.  Like, specific “No riding a bike for at least a week” kinda instructions.

So, SportBall, or “Dad & Me” class.  Imagine a half-dozen or so kids between 3 & 4 running around with an equal number of dads, all playing sorta-kinda sports.  Each week is a different sport.  The first week was soccer, sorta-ish, and this week was basketball.

Tate *hearts* the running and kicking and throwing, but sometimes his natural inventiveness gets the better of him, and he wants to roll the hulahoop and then chase it WHILE trying to throw the ball through it (to me).

In the control room Luke and the gang hole up in, there are large reddish buckets near the door.  What’s in those things?  Toner for the printers?  Buckets of new helmets?  Wine?  I bet it’s wine.  No wonder the StormTroopers are such bad shots.  They should have all just set their guns on stun, and blue hoopie-thingied the hallways every five minutes.

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Cold Stares Gold stars for parenting, in which our hero wrangles a pound and a half of pot roast into an edible (and even non-life-threatening) meal, and my old job cans a few more peaches.

So, after the time change, and the kids of course not realizing the sheer joy of being able to curl up under the covers for that extra hour, we were up and at ’em.  Some coffee and scones later, and we were booked for a CanCar (the Prius, for the discerning putting-around-towner).

Off to MEC, which wasn’t open yet, so we schlepped the four or so blocks up Broadway to Main, went to some non-Googleable place for caffeine and muffins, and then meandered our way down 10th again.  Freakishly beautiful houses (many heritage ones) along 10th here.  Like crazy-awesome places that are solid stone and giant beams with yards and old trees and just plain, like, HOMES, man.  Who knew Vancouver still had ’em.  Of course, in our bubble’s-a-poppin‘ Vancouver financial venue, these places are all probably pegging in at roughly the annual salary (plus unlisted bonus) of certain executives at my last job.

So, no, we’re not buying in the area quite yet.  Ahee.  Still, nice to see that they’re not all turned into quadruplexes and condo-wanna-bes.

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Theme change today, ’cause I’m seemingly pushed to post by changing my blog’s theme.  Style over content, I guess.

{Let’s see how far I get with THIS}.  Bets on how many days in a row I go before hitting the “pfft” button?

National Blog Posting Month begins now.

Saturday Brunchening.  Paved Vancouver sky.

Right now, the kids are speaking gibberish and shoving orange pipecleaners (anyone ever actually used those things for cleaning a pipe?) into a big slab of red clay.  Sense of scale is for *other* kids, it seems.  These guys are going for broke.  Big foot-tall things with super-bendy legs.  They remind me of those vaguely alarming inflatable cactus things at the side of the road near used car dealerships.

So, Halloween went without a hitch, aside from me being sick and staying home all day.  Slept from 10:30am or so until somewhere around 2:30, and still felt kinda groggy/spacey.  Generally hated the world, and was sketched out by just about everybody everywhere.  Took the boys out treating with the lady next door while a sick(er) Arwen stayed home and handed out stuff to kids.  Rip (6) was Terry Fox – his own idea, with me taping a mini bicycle pump to his lower leg, and Tate (3) was a ghost (white dress shirt of mine and white tool for that ethereal look, with awesome makeup & hair by Arwen).  Pictures to follow.

Remember when we were told to watch out for blades in our apples and asbestos in our popcorn balls?  This year it was melamine in the chocolate pirate coins, and stolen police cars hitting cyclists hard enough to break the front forks on our streets.

Sorry, that sounds flip.  I don’t know anything about the bike accident other than what I saw, which was a schwack of police cruisers over a block away from our house, and a bike that I thought had been stolen via hacksaw or something, since the front wheel was off and still had the forks attached, looking like they’d been cut.  Turns out there’d been some sorta highspeed chase from Robson, ending in hitting two different bicycles.  Suggestions of “suicide by cop” and hitting cyclists was the easiest way to be considered a lethal threat, if you can’t find any pedestrians to hit, or maybe they’re easier to pick off the road than sidewalkers.

Anyhoo, as winter comes, I’m watching every morning for frost and ice as I whip down Nelson hill at 40km/h (25mph).  Much like the old saying “It’s not the bullet that kills you, it’s the hole,” in the case of bicycles and busy roads, it’s not the icy fall that’ll kill you, it’s the six cars right behind you that’ll do it.

So yeah, I’m looking at changing my routes (and have to tighten my brakes before I’ll even have a chance to wipe out, instead of just slowly rolling into an accident, ice or no).

We had a power outage at work on Thursday for a few hours.  Enough to send everyone home.  Fave moment was seeing Briggs sprint for the server room the *instant* he realized the lights were out, and start shutting down servers before the battery backup gave up (about 20 minutes).  It was a strong techie moment for him, whether he realizes it or not.  His techie instinct was in full flourish in that moment.

Arwen has surfaced from her sleepless night of coughing, so I’m going to sign off for now.  More later, or at least the next day.