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?