Down the Road

I have decided to move my blog to Wordpress. Please visit me over there.

A Beacon to Humanity

When the aliens visit they will see this. Nothing good can come from this. Of all the things that we could announce to the universe we have decided to display our love for greasy food that makes us fat.

Or much worse:

It could be seen as a shrine to our leader, Col. Sanders, enslaver of chickens. What would passing by extraterrestrials think if they discovered that we committed daily mass murders of a subservient race in order to satisfy our insatiable taste for Original Recipe Chicken? Would they contact us and try and to convince us to change our ways? Maybe they are followers of the Prime Directive and would leave us to evolve naturally. Perhaps they would attempt to free the chickens by destroying their oppressors. What would the apes, dolphins and owls think about this?

For now I will continue to barbecue from the secrecy of my deck. All the while keeping a eye to the sky hoping that KFC has not doomed us all.

Or maybe not.

The Internet : Now with only 1% Pron

Somebody paid money to determine that the internet has now only 1% adult content. Why should we care? That is about as usful as funding a study to determine what the water to urine ratio in your toliet bowl is.

What I would like to know is what percentage of the internet is made up of blogs that nobody reads.

Busted

We have unravelled the Coffee Crisp case and the culprit has been brought to justice. The kidnapping was exceuted by a militant java developer claiming he committed to crime to bring attention to his war on hunger. Sadly the Coffee Crisp did not survive the ordeal. After some intense interrogation it was discovered that the perpatrator was working alone.

He has been sentenced to fill the snack area with tasty treats.

Mysteries of the Nice Light Snack

The Coffee Crisp is now missing. No individual or group has claimed responsibility for its disappearance. Our whole office has been rocked by this drastic and shocking turn of events.

The game is afoot

I work in a great office. Quite often someone will bring in treats for all of us to share. Typically these treat will be left in the designated "community treat" section of the counter in our lunch room.

Today someone has left a single Coffee Crisp in the treat area. I believe it to be a trap. No on has touched it yet.

I will be patient.

What you make of it

Yesterday we attended the funeral of our friend's Dad. There were certainly some tears shed but mostly there was laughter. The few funerals I have attended have been very somber events. That is what most of us expect out of a funeral. This one was different.

Instead of dwelling on how much he would be missed and how hard it will be to go on without him the eulogist (his brother) talked about some of the memorable practical jokes he played over his lifetime and some of his legendary one-liners. Before to long the church was full of laughter and very few tears. It was a wonderful way of focusing on the way he lived his life rather than on his death.

I can only hope that when my time comes(preferably in the far, distant future) I will have inspired my family to do the same for me.

The robots are coming!

I like bacon. I like bacon a lot. If these robots like bacon as much as I do .... run for your lives!

Joy to the World

Now that Remembrance Day has come and gone I can fully jump into the Christmas mode. All the freaking snow on the ground is helping with that process too. We are now going to get blitzed by the commercial side of the season. I am OK with that. It makes me smile to think of a fat man in a red suit jamming himself down my chimney to leave me some presents. I like to put up Christmas lights and I like to decorate our tree.

What I don't like is how every year some religious group has to tell us how un-christian we are being. Aren't they supposed to be teaching tolerance and forgiveness? If I want to hear about the true meaning of Christmas I know where to find you. It just one more thing that is pushing me over the edge with my faith.

But Christmas is supposed to be a happy time. So I will not dwell on the negative and go do some shopping for my son.

It is so easy to hate them

I love watching the Red Sox make fools of themselves. It is what they are good at. They have now made themselves poster boys for the need of a salary cap in baseball. They have spent $51 million for the rights just to attempt to sign Daisuke Matsuzaka in 30 days. He may turn out to be good or he may turn out to be Hideki Irabu. Either way the Red Sox will still suck.

Cheer up Red Sox nation, 2090 is only 84 years away.

Aren't you a little short for a stormtrooper?

David left a comment on how he would like to see more positive posts. He makes a good point. I always feel better after a write something while rage cup is empty. Although it is hard sometimes only good things come from being positive.

On that note my son really made me proud yesterday. We were planning to go pay our friend a visit. Our little boy had his monkey pants on and was getting tired and out of control. Before we left we had a talk with him about being on his best behavior. What a good little gentleman he was. He was so well behaved that I promised him that we would watch all the Stars Wars movies this weekend (Yes my three year old already likes Star Wars. I am so proud). We have a weekend of light-sabers, Jedi and Imperial Walkers ahead of us.

May the Force be with you.

Something Sad

Our close friend's Dad lost his battle with cancer yesterday.

My thoughts are with you today

Taking a Minute

My last couple of days have been filled with frustration and joy. It put a jolt into my normally quiet life. A little excitement is good for the soul anyway, eh?

First the frustration:
During my last two days at work I have been overrun with support calls. Not just the regular calls where I have to use problem solving skills to resolve them. The issues I have had to deal with are with users who can't figure out how to click a set of buttons in order. My angst was heighten by a co-worker who confessed to being bored. Somehow he was not bored enough to check the support email.
People have been driving worse than usual if that is possible. Yes we got snow. The same as we do every year since cars were invented. Why is it such a surprise to you all?

Now that I got that off my chest....

The Joy:
I bought my son the Cars DVD and we watched it last night. We got nothing but smiles from his little face.
We also heard the sound of a strong heartbeat from our unborn baby. That was a sweet sound. Just yesterday my wife felt baby move for the first time.

Some how the Joy always washes away the frustration.

These are not the Movies you are Looking for.

I finally got around to watching X-Men : The Last Stand this weekend. It was very good. I really enjoyed the whole X-Men series so far. I consider myself a science fiction fan but I have recently realized that I have not really watched a lot of what would be considered science fiction films. Having a three year old son is a contributing factor. I end up watching mostly the Incredibles and Madagascar but I have not even watched Blade Runner yet. There is no good excuse for that. I have watched a lot of Star Trek but that only makes me a Trekkie. Do I have to hand in my geek card now?

A have a question for the millions two or three of you who take the time to read my blog. What movies would you recommend I watch to broaden my science fiction experience. How about books? I have mostly read Asimov. Help me be a geek again.

I Need an Explanation

Why are college sports so popular with people who are not in college? I liken it to choosing to go see a movie starring Cathy Griffin when you could have paid the same money to go see Jody Foster.

Is it evolutionary? Is the same afflication that cause someone to become a Red Sox fan?

Please explain.

How Much Freedom is Safe?

I got an actual comment on my post about Penn Jillette. That means somebody has actually read my blog a felt it worth the time to leave a comment. Oh, how my ego is growing.

My inflated head aside I would like to reply to Dan's comments. Quoting Penn Jillette, Dan states: "Freedom is not the freedom to do smart things, it is the freedom to be stupid."

I would agree with this statement if I had any confidence in humanity's ability to learn from its mistakes. Left to our own devices I think natural selection would take care of the really stupid. My fear is in that process the caliber of the mistakes made by the evolutionary challenged would wipe out the rest of us.

It is unfortunate that those elected to legislate common sense are evolutionary challenged themselves. It's a deep good hole we have dug ourselves into.

Live Long and be Weird

I like Star Trek. Sometimes I do weird things in the name of Star Trek. Not this weird however. If you want to live a life based on "pure" logic and absent of any emotion, by all means go for it. It think that you may be taking it too far when you alter your appearance with "disastrous results" in the name of your faith. It is just another example of our society exhibiting a debilitating lack of common sense. It's not very Vulcan of them.

I Like What he has to Say, but ....

Last night I caught a little bit of Penn Jillette on CNN. He had some interesting things to say about the media and freedoms. Even though I do not completely agree with his views I was impressed that he presented them in an intelligent and entertaining fashion. Something that I find to be rare.

A few of the points that heard that I found interesting were:

The news media (be it print, broadcast or other) should be upfront with us all state their political preferences before reporting the news. In Canada I would love to see the CBC do this. At the beginning of each broadcast they could read the following statement, “We at the CBC strongly support the Liberal Party of Canada. We despise Steven Harper and the Conservatives. Watch as we kiss some Liberal ass.” It is unfortunate for the CBC that the Liberals are no longer in power. It is more unfortunate for them that no one really watches the CBC expect on Saturday when Hockey Night in Canada is on.

The other point that Penn made that I would like to comment on is that he feels we live in a society with far to many restrictions and very few freedoms. He would like to see things like the removal of gun control and the legalization of drugs. On principle I agree with him on the fact that we need more freedoms but there is a major problem with this point of view: Western society, in general, possesses a debilitating lack of common sense. Even with the strict controls on us we still see gangs, high crime rates, drug addiction and Boston Red Sox fans. As a society we have proven that we are not smart or mature enough to live in a world with unrestricted freedom. We have forced our governments to legislate common sense.

If we could only elect a government with common sense things would not be so bad.

Not So Mild

Last week my buddy and I went to Hudson's Tap House on Edmonton's Whyte Avenue. We watched to Oilers get their asses handed to them by the Ducks of Anaheim and the Evil Chris Pronger.

After a couple pints of Rickards Red I decided to order some wings. I initially went for the medium but my friend intervened and asked that we get mild. I called him out for being a wimp but I relented and agreed to mild wings.

After the first wing my lips were burning and my tongue had lost its feeling. Who was the pansy now? As I looked over at him to see if he had noticed my discomfort I saw a bead a sweat rolling down his forehead. He was suffering too! We were both relieved to know of each others struggles.

Like troopers we slowly finished off the wings over the third period. Our pain was intensified by watching the Oilers get shamed on a big screen TV.

Next time I am ordering the potato skins.

Excessive Justice

The administrator of a popular bittorrent site was recently sentenced to 5 months in jail and 5 months probation. I am the only one who thinks this is way to extreme for the crime of copyright infringement? Drunk drivers go to jail for less time. So do some rapists. I guess the MPAA and the FBI feel,in their crusade against those who would cost a handful billionaire's some coveted profit, that an illegal downloader should be punished more harshly than someone who puts other people's lives in danger.

I wonder what the sentence for reckless self importance is?

Sound Waves

If your are interested in Internet radio you really should check out the Atlantic Sound Factory. It is all I listen to at work now. John plays a really nice mix of music from the last 40 years including some recent releases. He runs the radio station by himself as a hobby. It is obviously a hobby that he spends a lot of time on because his radio station in the best I have seen on the Internet. He even allows requests on Fridays. It's all kinds of cool!

Do yourself a favor and go have a listen.

Misplaced Goblins

Last night we dresed up in our Star Trek costumes that my wife made for us to celebrate Halloween. Unfortunately the wind chill of -20 celcius forced us to wear coats. My son had fun anyway. When you are three getting candy is the all the fun of Halloween.

With the cold weather it made me wonder how irreverant it would be to move Halloween up a month for those of us living in northen climates. Would it be the same if we all dressed up on September 31? It wouldn't be so scary if it was still light out when the kids were out ringing on doorbells. But we wouldn't be freezing our asses off.

What about moving it to August? It doesn't have anything exciting happening in it. Sure we gave it a Civic Holdiay but that does not have any pizzaz. October has Thanksgiving already. Why not throw August a bone? Spice it up a little. Who's up for some change?

Big Loser is Watching

I found this article about corporate emails. I didn't read it all but it did remind of a situation that happened at one of the companies I used to work for.

(I won't give any names to protect the guilty) I was working at as a software developer for a large Edmonton company that provides optimization and process control services and software to clients. My supervisor suspected that one of the IT peons were reading our emails. One day he sent our group an email with a small note to the IT peon in question, even though he was not in the send to list. Not surprisingly he replied. Either he was:

1. Amazingly dumb


2. Incredibly brazen and confident in his job security

The more we interacted with him the more apparent it became that assumption #1 was correct. If you have figured out what company this is and you are working there, its the creepy, little guy in IT who is reading your email. Tell him I said Hi.

The Big Lighter Conspiracy

The pirates are claiming that the music, software and movie industries are inflating statistics that indicate how much money they are losing to piracy. The MPAA wouldn't do that would they? This is a case of one thief calling another thief crooked.

But that is not what I found interesting in the article. There was a link to the contraband product rankings. In there I found a couple of fascinating things:

• What is the difference between human trafficking and human smuggling?


• Trash smuggling? How do you sneak around with a load of trash? It smells and is quiet possibility radioactive.


• The possibility of counterfeit airline parts installed on any flight I take scares me. Although after my last trip on United not so surprising.


• 30% of the lighter market is counterfeit? Can it really be that profitable to sell counterfeit lighters? What are they 35 cents each?

Just some thoughts as I wait for 412,000 rows of data to be inserted into a table.

Just a Question

How is it, no matter the situation, that women always find something to make them angry or displeased?

Resolving My Faith

Religion has been on my brain lately. Mostly because it seems half of the blogs I come across using the next blog button is about how somebody found Jesus. Today I came across this article (it is a long but an interesting read) that actually helped me focus my thoughts on what I have been feeling about religion.

Events over the last couple of years have made me question the role of religion in my life. I used to go to church every Sunday like a good little Christian. I stopped doing that a little over a year ago. While I am certainly not an atheist I am going down the path of agnosticism. In the article author Sam Harris found the words that I have been feeling but not able to articulate. To me following an organized religion is the “denial of tangible reality.”

As we continue learn about the universe around us it becomes less plausible that God exists in the way we have been taught. My believe is that there is some higher power but how and where it exists is something that is an evolving mystery.

To Do My Duty and Obey the Copyright Law

This one made me laugh out loud. Now that the MPAA has no one left to sue they have some spare time. This has lead to some unsupervised thinking time. The Boy Scouts are now going to reap the rewards of the ingenuity emanating from MPAA think tank. They are going to educate our future leaders on the evils of breaking copyright laws. In return for their good work in spreading the MPAA swill the younglings will receive a spiffy merit badge.

I would expect the MPAA to do something like this. It is as stupid as it is funny. I would not expect the Boy Scouts to pander to a self-important organization and their bastardly ideas.

Everyone involved should be awarded a “Head Up Your Ass” merit badge.

Rotten Apples

Something has been bothering me for a while now. Every time I turn the TV on I end up seeing one of the new Mac commercials. The ones where the “cool” Mac shows us how much easier he is to use than the nerdy, incompetent PC.

I have experience with both Mac and PC in my working career. It has been my experience that a high percentage of Mac users are incompetent and dimwitted (and most likely Red Sox fans). If all you want to do is look at pictures and videos of your dog licking himself than a Mac is probably right for you. In fact at a previous we gave the Macs to the employees whose only job was to place pictures of cars into documents. The people who actually had more than one useful purpose (developers, accountants, the receptionist) got PCs. My point is that Mac's suck and so do their lame ass commercials.

I just wanted to say that. Thanks for your indulgence.

The Real Curse of the Bambino

My blog is evolving into something I had not originally intended it to be. That's OK. I think it is much fun to let this have a life of its own. (segue in three, two, one....) According to an evolutionary expert the human race will evolve into two distinct subspecies. (See how I used evolution as a tie in? Brilliant!)

The “upper class” species will be tall, slim, healthy, attractive, intelligent, and creative. Much like I am now.

The “under class” will be dim-witted, ugly, squat goblin-like creatures. If you take a look at a Boston Red Sox fan you will get a preview of what this genetic under class will look like. One can assume that future subspecies will be slightly less dim-witted but probably still Red Sox fans.

Sometimes an Emoticon is Just Not Enough

I suffer from road rage from time to time. Mostly because the drivers on the streets of Edmonton are complete assholes. I'm sure many people suffer from web rage too. It is easy to talk a big game from behind a 17 inch flat screen. Never have I heard of anyone acting on their web rage, until now.

It does not surprise me that the perpetrator collected enough information to find where his victim lived. What does surprise me is that the fight broke out on a religious chat room for people who have an interest in the Muslim faith. Maybe that shouldn't surprise me actually.

Allah would not be happy.

Tips on Using the Potty

It has been a while since I have made a post here. Today I am going to have blogarea. Which leads me into a couple of points I want to make about bathroom etiquette.

• If you use the last of the toilet paper please be considerate and replace the roll. Or at the very least please inform your spouse of the TP shortage before he goes ahead and delivers and epic dump to the plumbing. It benefits everyone.


• When you share a washroom (particularly when you share one with other offices on the same floor of your building) the double flush rule is always in effect. No exceptions. Yes fat man from office #905, I know it is you who is violating this code of toilet conduct.

That is all.

Get Off My Lawn!

I am getting older. It is a fact of nature. Yesterday I discovered that I am aging far quicker than I need to be. We decided to go out to our new local leisure center for some exercise and fun. My Wife took my Son to the children’s play area while I went for a workout. The place was packed with teenagers. It was difficult to get on any of the equipment as there seemed to be packs of the adolescents hovering around each station. I managed to get most of my workout in but I was becoming cranky.

I went downstairs to take my Son to the pool while she went for a workout. As I searched for a locker in the change room I quickly noticed that most of the keys had been broken off of the locks by some little delinquent. My mood continued to sour as I tried to navigate though the flock of screaming kids, who were without parental supervision, on the way to the pool.

Eventually we made our way back to meet my Wife again. After plodding through another gaggle of hyperactive youths she asked me how things went at the pool. I told about my experiences and her comment was “It sounds like you did not have a good time.” I was about the agree with her but then I stopped and asked myself “Who’s fault was it that you got so ornery?” At that moment I was afraid to look into a mirror for fear of finding a weathered old man chasing young whippersnappers off his lawn.

It made me think back to when I was much younger. My brother would spend every single day at the golf course during the summer. I wonder what all the “grown-ups” thought about us when we would spend half of our round walking in the woods looking for lost golf balls. Probably the same thoughts I had yesterday at the leisure center.

Like my brother and me on the golf course these were just kids having the fun that kids have. We adults quiet often forget what having mindless fun is like. The pressure of being a responsible citizen does a good job of sucking that out of us. It also turns your hair grey. Yesterday I realized how important it is to hold on to that youthful silliness just a bit. By letting it go it makes me old and it takes something special away from my son and the people around me.

It is now time to have fun.

Course Correction

Already I am falling behind on my nefarious plans to become Supreme Overlord of all the Internet. Last week I was sidelined with the stomach flu. My son and wife had previously caught but my immune system had resisted it for a while. By the time Friday hit I was lying on the couch curled up in pain as my intestines convulsed trying to expel anything I tried to digest. Things got worse as I watched Mike Weir double boogey the 18th hole to miss the cut by one stroke. I was in misery.

Fortunately I bounced back quickly and was able to enjoy an amazing Thanksgiving dinner prepared by my lovely Wife. I even felt well enough to partake in the trash talk that came along with our annual family cribbage tournament.

Amid all this excitement I have been able to do a little bit of reading. In my research I have decided that just learning HTML will not be vary useful. I have switched my focus and will be learning all about XHTML and CSS. XHTML is going to be the standard for the new, more structured web that will take us into the future. CSS (cascading style sheets) is a useful tool that will no doubt make it easier for me to rule the information super highway! Muuuuwahahahaha!

Those plans will have to wait however. Tonight the Oilers are playing the evil Sharks and another survivor is getting kicked off the island. It’s all about priorities.

#1 The Saga Begins

The first thing we need to have is some kind of text editor to create and edit our HTML files. Something simple will do for now. If you have a PC and are using windows Notepad will suffice. If you are using a Mac, HTML is probably over your head.

First we will start by creating a new document in Notepad and typing the following.

<html>
<head>
<title>Nothing but the Thruth</title>
</head>
<body>
The Boston Red Sox suck.
</body>
</html>

This is the anatomy of a very basic HTML page. An HTML document consists of different tags that tell your web browser what to do. HTML tags are surrounded by the < and > symbols. In most cases a tag will be accompanied by a closing tag indicated by a “/” symbol.

What does each tag do? Let me tell you.

The HTML tag tells your browser where the HTML document starts and ends. Pretty simple.

The HEADER tag quite cleverly contains all the information that is contained in your document’s header. None on the information within the HEADER tag will be visible in your browser window.

Inside your HEADER tag you can have a TITLE tag. The text contained in this tag is what will be displayed in your browser’s caption.

Finally we have the BODY tag. This is where all the links to naked women and porn valuable information you want to share with the world goes. This is the stuff the gets displayed in your browser window.

You can now save your file with the .htm or .html extension and open it in your favorite browser (I recommend Firefox). You are now a web developer. Go rule the world.

This was just the basic, simple stuff. Like I said I am going to start from scratch and learn this properly from the beginning. No matter how bored I get.

Slow Start

Already I am slacking and finding excused not to get started learning. I have been heavily distracted by the baseball playoffs which are safe to watch as the Boston Red Sox are not part of it (as you know the Red Sox suck). Also the hockey season has just started and in addition to cheering on the Canadiens and Oilers I have a hockey pool to worry about. It adds a whole new dimension to my viewing habits, much to my Wife’s dismay. There are also my regular duties of throwing the Boston Bruins some hate.

I have a good feeling that I will find some time today.

Qualifier

Before I get too far along I wanted to fill you in on some of my background. I am far from a neophyte as far as “writing code” goes. I have seven years experience of creating windows applications in Delphi. I have also dabbled a little bit in C++. I have even done a little bit of HTML and JavaScript but not enough to claim to be anywhere near an expert. I have moved out of software development for the time being (at some point I will post about how this came to be) and I am currently working in software support for a company that makes software for the automotive industry.

In any case I have decided to start learning HTML from scratch to hopefully eliminate some of the bad habits I have picked from my small forays into web development in the past.

Introduction

I have tried on several occasions to start a blog. I have tried to write humorous blogs. I have tried to write cynical blogs. I even tried writing a sports blog. All of them quite frankly sucked. Despite these failures I still find myself wanting to give it another kick at the can. I am not sure why I keep trying but here I am to make another attempt. Now the big decision is what should I blog about.

Just recently I have decided to learn more about web development. Reading about me learning the intricacies of the img tag will certainly be far from entertaining. To spice things up a bit I will also be writing about the many excuses I find to avoid doing any learning and the many events in my life that may legitimately affect such learning. If we are lucky I may even chime in on some of the events going on in our world and perhaps I may give you some insight on why the Boston Red Sox suck (there are so many ways that they do).

The bottom line is that this blog will basically be a personal blog with a focus on my efforts to become master of the World Wide Web. Har! I hope you enjoy what I am schilling out. Please leave comments. I would love to link to your blog.