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Hey Internet. Long time no see.
So Metric played at Bluesfest tonight, as they usually do. But this time we were smart and not only went, but brought a camera. Behold!
There's something magical about watching Emily Haines go insane on stage.
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Holy crap! How did I miss this?
Just newly dropped on Wii Ware is Final Fantasy IV: The After Years.
Bona fide sequal to the original, Yoshitaka Amano artwork and all, taking place seventeen years after the original ends.
This had better be worth my 800 Wii points.Current Music: Clinic - 2/4 |
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Here's what it takes to get me to post something in my LJ!
Looks like my complaining about buying a Flickr Pro account the month before we Rogers started handing them out for free was totally unjustified.
Starting July 1st, they're not providing the accounts for free any more.
Ah, well.
Anyway, we're going to visit friends for dinner, and I'm stuck bringing Gewürztraminer, since they're making Thai curry.
Now, I don't ascribe to the "Gewürz with spicy food" thing. I like beer or whiskey with spicy food. But at least this way I can start clearing out my back stock in preparation for the wine tour next month!Current Music: The Rolling Stones - Indian Girl |
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I was feeling all caring and decided that it was a good idea to insure my wine collection, since I'd hate to lose the $1000 deductible should anything go wrong with it.
But apparently my wine collection isn't counted as a "collection" for insurance purposes, because I actually drink the stuff. How about that? So instead it'll be insured as part of my home contents.
And here I was being all interested in how insurance works. NO MORE.Current Music: Ben Folds Five - Narcolepsy |
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![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) untoward made me do it!
That's kind-of fun.
Props to Skitch for making screenshots so easy. When they come out of beta and become a pay product, I will buy. And that's massive praise, coming from me.Current Music: Wesley Willis - Larry Nevers/Walter Budzyn |
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Got an e-mail from my alma mater saying that they were going to be shutting down my @uwo.ca account.
Thank goodness! I've had eighteen months of nothing but ads for scientific equipment and College Pro Painters.
This will probably compromise my ability to get a student discount at the Apple Store, however.Current Mood:  blah Current Music: The Cars - All Mixed Up |
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Years ago, I bought an inkjet printer for cheap. It was a solid performer—a business-class cp1160—but eventually the print quality dropped like a rock, and no amount of replacement print heads could fix it. I still have it, but I use it as a shelf. I'll get rid of it when I buy a replacement console-type thing for my desk, just you wait.
For now, all of my printing needs are fulfilled by the tank-like LaserJet 5P. It's almost fifteen years old now, and I think the only thing that's gone wrong is that the manual feed is a bit finicky.
Build quality just ain't what it used to be.
As a reward for extended service I just shelled out $20 to boost its RAM from 2MB to 50.
Not bad, considering list price was $1100 back in the day.
And I may now be able to approach the theoretical max print speed of 6 pages per minute now, too!Current Mood:  relaxed Current Music: Genesis - Tonight, Tonight, Tonight |
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Well, it's Valentine's Day, and that means . . . well, I guess it doesn't really mean much for us. It's an opportunity to be *sure* we do all the fun things that we like doing, all in one day:
- Pastries from The French Baker for breakfast, washed down with many lattés
- Kisses
- Grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch
- Kisses
- Vietnamese restaurant for dinner
- Kisses
- Stratus Red Icewine and truffles (from the delightful koko chocolates) for afterwards
- Kisses
So it's no different from any other weekend day!Current Mood: recumbent Current Music: Cake - Commissioning A Symphony In C |
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Man, I never use Facebook's note feature, but I have been a bit enamoured by the "25 Things You Didn't Know About Me" meme that's been doing its rounds.
People may know some of these, so really it should be "25 Things Only Some People Know About Me."
Not tagging anybody. Do what you will.
25 Things Only Some People Know About Me
- My main computer at home is a Mac—a lovely 20" number that OSAP paid for when I was at grad school. I'd like to think I'm not a zealot, since I try not to insist that all the world's computer problems would disappear if everybody used Macs.
Sometimes it doesn't work out so well.
- I've never broken a bone in my body (but I've definitely sprained my fair share of limbs.)
- I've never been in a car accident (but I've definitely spent my fair share on body work)
- I've got one visible scar on the inside of my right leg. Got it by crashing my bike into a post fence when I was 8 or so. It was probably the most injurious day ever for our family.
- My wine collection is currently worth more than my car. Granted, the car's a 97 Taurus, but still.
- I still cannot cook a whole chicken to save my life. I always undercook the thigh meat, since I don't want to overcook the breast meat. It's a combination of not having a thermometer and not being able to reliably identify the thickest part of the thigh when checking for doneness.
- In high school I got really angry at the RIAA's position on file sharing, since they claimed that music "piracy" was costing them billions in lost revenues. I got so angry, in fact, that I stopped both buying and downloading, thus ensuring that they couldn't blame me for their problems. (I bought every Aimee Mann album that came out, since she was independent at the time).
I gave up after about four years when I read that, not only was it legal to download stuff in Canada, but I really, really missed music.
The month I started downloading stuff again was, coincidentally, the first time I got a love letter from Rogers saying "you're over your bandwidth allowance for the month. How did you transfer 120 gigs of stuff in one month, anyway?"
- I really, really, really enjoy progressive rock. Genesis, Yes, Rush, King Crimson, etc. are my home boys. And for all you haters out there, Dragonforce is prog in disguise.
- I was on TV once when I was in Grade 5 (or maybe Grade 4?). CBC local news came to our school and interviewed a couple of us. I forget why. Something to do with the future. I think I looked quite dapper in my grey sweater.
- I've only been in two non-sibling fistfights. They both happened in public school, and I think they both ended in draws.
- I acquired a taste for aquavit when we were in Copenhagen last year. There's something deliciously refreshing about high-alcohol spirits that are infused with herbs and spices and served ice-cold.
- I'm not an early adopter of technology, despite my techno-joy. I held out on buying an iPod for years and years. Spent a lot of money on MiniDiscs, though, in the four or five years I used my MZ-N505. Lovely machine, but so hamstrung by Sony's software.
- The sound and feeling of a spoon being scraped through sugar weirds me out. It sets my teeth on edge and makes my hair stand on end. Walking through sand does that sometimes too.
- Everybody has a band they're ashamed to like. Mine's Ace of Base. Because I'm not ashamed of liking Kylie Minogue.
- A good breakfast pastry is a sublime thing. I was at a conference in Montréal once, and took the bus out to St. Viateur, at six in the morning and -30 temperatures, to buy bagels. I nearly burst into tears they were so good.
- I was seeing a psychologist for a span of about for months. The short version was that I couldn't understand why girls didn't like me. Which really explains a lot about why I was there, doesn't it? Man, I was lame when I was younger.
- My feet are way flat. Which is why I'll probably not try jogging again without investing a lot of money in good shoes.
- I used to play a lot of computer games as a kid/young adult/university student. I don't any more, since there are so many other things to do. However, I can't get enough Dungeon Crawl. I didn't think that any game could be better than NetHack, until I saw Dungeon Crawl. Tiles that don't look lame! Huge, semi-random maps! A clever skill system! Play balance that rewards strategy! Writing this has taken me five times longer than it should have because I swap out to vanquish a couple of foes every now and again.
- I berate myself for not being better at fighting games than I am. Given the amount of time I spent as a kid playing Street Fighter II, you'd think I'd have learned something. So, really I just play them now because it's fun to see shiny things fly across the screen.
- If I'm filling the car with gas, I have to aim for a whole dollar amount. If I overshoot, I consider it a personal failure.
- Man, I really love Twitter. But I sadly don't use it enough.
- I played soccer quasi-competitively until I was 16 or so. I ended up quitting because, long story short, I went to a different high school from everybody else and that didn't work out so well.
- Oh, and I am totally one level away from getting my black belt in tae kwon do. Maybe I should try for it, even though it's been fifteen years? I bet I could totally still break boards just by looking at them sternly.
- I have a pretty effective filing and productivity management system, based mostly on the teachings of Merlin Mann and David Allen. Ironically, I put off reading Getting Things Done for years until I was sitting in a chair on a beach in Cuba.
- The only way that I could devote time to write this was by using Evernote. I started using it a week ago, after much research and/or procrastinating, and I've fallen in love with it. Now instead of keeping random tabs open on all three computers to remind me of things, I can capture, categorize, and sync them with this one handy program.
Current Mood: relaxed Current Music: Dragonforce - The Flame Of Youth |
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After many, many years of "employee consultation" and "ensuring contract obligations are still fulfilled" and "just not frigging doing anything about it", my work has finally secured a corporate rate with GoodLife.
It brings the cost of gym membership down to something I'm actually willing to pay: about $30 a month. Shame you have to pay by the year, rather than month-by-month.
Given that there's one two blocks or so away, but I don't know how often I'll actually go, any more money than that would make me feel uggy.
Other than exercise, this provides me with an opportunity to rate as many iTunes tracks while still getting something done.Current Mood:  sleepy Current Music: Morcheeba - Over And Over |
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Oh, but I have missed the low whirr of buses running outside our apartment window. It's so soothing.
Can't use 'em to get to work yet, since service starts on the 9th and my route's a low-traffic (read: low-priority) one, but maybe in the next week. Or two. Or six.
I'm most looking forward to going back to one car fill-up every five weeks, rather than every eight days like I do now.
Actually, no. That's not true.
I'm most looking forward to having almost two hours of time per day that I used to spend driving, but now spend watching episodes of Doctor Who on my iPod.Current Mood:  pleased Current Music: Beastie Boys - The New Style |
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Apparently for the low, low price of $55 a month we can pay for all of our annual recurring purchases, like magazines, homeowners' insurance, and the like, and have a little pot left over just in case something neat pops up.
That's EASY!Current Mood:  silly Current Music: Neverending White Lights - A Little Piece |
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Things I ate in Cuba that I either shouldn't have or wouldn't have if we were in Canada- Salt-cured fish salad: Nothing says "severe food infection" like eating raw fish in a developing country. This was, sadly, so heavily dosed with its salty curative that I couldn't finish my serving.
- Rare beef: Raoul's assumption of power may have meant that we greedy tourists were finally able to get quality beef: my parents have said that the last four-odd times they went the beef was inedible. The stuff we ate, this time, was rare and actually chewable. It was just sliced for putting on a salad or something.
- Peacock: At least, we think that's what it was? The servers said it was "pão", and the bone structure was unlike anything I'd seen before. Lots of hollow, straw-like bones. It was a bit tough, but tasty.
- Cassava: Just because you don't see it served in Canada in restaurants! Tasty, though, and I didn't eat so much that I have to worry about goiters.
- Langoustine: Oh, the decadence of the secret chef menu order! So delicious: grilled and with lots of garlic. It's on the list because, let's be honest, if we were in Canada we'd be eating lobster.
A+++++++ WOULD GO BACK TO CUBA.Current Mood:  bouncy Current Music: The Postal Service - The District Sleeps Alone Tonight |
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This weekend marked the first time we rented a car and actually got the sub-compact we requested. So, Enterprise, you win my Rental Carnation.
Why were we renting a car?
Well, friends, Olivia and I drove down to Niagara to attend a special invite-only Stratus Harvest Party.
And what a good time we had!
Food provided by top restaurants and caterers around the Niagara-on-the-Lake area. Eleven wines on pour. One-on-one consultations with the winemaker to discuss whatever (suggested topics: childhood in the Loire, changes in integrated pest management over the last five years, his beard.) Dessert and mounds of ice wine. Networking once again with all of the nice assistants that have helped us in the past.
I left this party much poorer. And also much more sober than I'd like to have been, since we had to drive back to Hamilton and all. Ah well!
I'm really looking forward to the next one already, even though it's a year away. It pays to keep in touch with people and be nice! (That's a common theme in stuff where I spend a lot of money.)Current Mood: tired |
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And now for something completely different: an update on how the wedding planning is going.
They're going well! We've got:- Venue
- Photographer
- DJ
- Dress (almost)
- Suit (almost)
- An idea for favours
- Possibly some semblance of a decorating colour scheme
But none of that is as important as the replacement fountain pen nib I got.
Yes, more than three years after an unfortunate accident with ink-that-turned-out-to-be-not-for-fountain-pen-use, I got everything all fixed up and am once again with pen.
It looks something like this:
Only the nib is now a sweet and saucy 18k gold number, which means that it should ever-so-slightly wear down to conform to my writing mannerisms.
That's fun!
Of course, now I want to make sure that I don't clog it up again, so every day since I've gotten it I've gotten it out and written absolute gibberish on an index card.
That's fun, too!Current Mood: relaxed Current Music: Ben Folds Five - Don't Change Your Plans |
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With Olivia gone for the weekend, I've been free to do whatever I want, and eat whatever I want, and not fear of divine repercussions.
Unfortunately, I'm lamesauce, so this is what I've done:- Played Warhammer 40K against my brother yesterday. We definitely need to find a larger table. Eight hours of gametime led to . . . a tie. So that kind-of sucked. But great fun, and maybe I'll even try to paint my guys.
- Ate picked herring and drank aquavit
- Not shaved (but I often do that on weekends anyway, so part marks.)
- Cleaned
- Done French Homework
- Baked a tart.
Oh well. I'm sure that the cocaine and call girls will be out in full force next time she's gone. Or something?Current Mood: tired Current Music: Maceo & The Macks - Soul Power 74 |
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Yay! Thanksgiving Monday! A day of sitting around in the morning, drinking coffee, eating cinnamon buns, and not going to work. This is the stuff that dreams are made out of.
This weekend also marked the 4th birthday of BoShek, my dear little Tecra A2 laptop. While its 1.5GHz Centrino processor and 512 megs of RAM screamed at the time, it's starting to show its age, both in terms of horsepower and in terms of niggling things that should work but don't so much. To wit:- The power brick doesn't always register as being plugged in. You've got to tilt it and jiggle it and then set it down on a flat surface very carefully to get it to charge.
- Dragging fingers along the edge of the trackpad no longer scrolls. (This makes navigating almost anything extremely painful.)
- Power saving doesn't always work when the lid is up. I think I got this one fixed by rebooting, but you never know when it might turn up again.
- Hard drive occasionally thrashes madly and makes weird grinding noises under severe YouTube stress.
- Shift and space bar keys are loosening and shifting, and sometimes stick while I type. (It's not for the reasons you think!)
So I think I'm ready for an upgrade and, therefore, a switch over to an Apple laptop. While interoperability between my laptop and my desktop usually works pretty well, I've been longing for OS X lappy goodness for quite some time now.
My ideal situation would be if those MacBooks that are reported to be announced tomorrow are a replacement for the storied 12" PowerBook of old. I use this thing either on the couch or in bed, or occasionally while travelling, so portability is more important than being able to run the latest zOMG games.
How exciting! |
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It was the first week of our recreational curling league today! Although my team had a bye, there were a couple of teams that were short, so I got to play anyway.
And, let me tell you, I suck heinously.
But if there's one thing that I've learned, it's that it's all about the practice. Curling, much like golf, is very Zen. It's less about the shot, and more about the process. Once you have your consistency down, everything else is just details.
Details like not curing it too much or not throwing it too hard or not throwing it hard enough. Errrrrr, yeah.
But there's a bright side! The winning team buys the first round! Yay!Current Music: please don't tell anybody i'm watching prank patrol on ytv. |
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Anybody else out there using Twitter? I find that I'm using it more and more (particularly because it's easier to read and update it while at work or in transit, thanks to the BlackBerry), and I do enjoy the constraint that 140 characters enforces on you.
Requires a different way of thinking. I quite like it.
http://twitter.com/momomotoCurrent Mood:  productive |
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Folks, we're going to need to harness the power of The Internet to make this work! Let's Rick Roll the MTV Europe Music Awards, and write in Rick Astley as "Best Act Ever!"
ema.mtv.co.uk/vote/
ema.mtv.co.uk/vote/
ema.mtv.co.uk/vote/
ema.mtv.co.uk/vote/
ema.mtv.co.uk/vote/Current Music: Strong Bad Email- Specially Marked |
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It's hot as hell outside (well, 28-or-so Celsius), so now's as good a time as any to finally put up pictures from the sugar bush we visited in April! Mmmm, delicious maple products.
Man, the place was paaaaaaacked. They had two parking lots set up.
Anyway, that's all.Current Mood: pleased |
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Long weekend ahead means general faffing around and a little bit of volunteer work. It's Olivia's and my 3rd anniversary today (of dating, not of marrying, no you didn't miss anything), so we're going to go out to Allium for dinner. Yum.
But this post is actually to announce that I finally bought the bullet and bought a BlackBerry Curve (an 8310).
I spent countless months (SRSLY!) debating in my brain over whether I'd get a BlackBerry or whether I'd get an iPhone. The BlackBerry ultimately won for the following reasons:- Full keyboard (I like 'em tactile)
- $50 cheaper than an iPhone (it was a rough month financially, what can I say?)
- I fear breaking it less (although that's purely psychological)
- Sister works for RIM and thus I'd never hear the end of it if I didn't submit.
Capsule review? I like it. Quite a lot. The keys are satisfyingly clicky, voice quality's fantastic, and it buzzes soothingly when I get an e-mail.
One of the first things I did was throw Opera Mini on it, since the normal browser is pants. This is Extremely Important: I don't need to place mobile calls all that often and like to think of this thing as a tiny useful computer more than a phone. Opera makes it run smooth as eggs.
What are the bads? No Wi-Fi, no 3G. Bluetooth doesn't pair with anything other than headsets and hands-free devices, meaning that I have to plug it into my computer to sync it (lazy me).
I was thinking of buying a fancy-pants case for it, but will likely hold off and maybe get a less-fancy-pants one. Instead I'll wait the year and get a Bold, or maybe a Javelin if they're priced properly and I discover that 3G isn't all that after all.
Aside: Rogers, what are you thinking? If an iPhone is $200, don't sell the Bold for $400. That's just dumb. And kinda unfair. I'm just saying.
I guess now that I have a cell phone camera I should practice my bloggerface!Current Mood: sleepy |
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Olivia's brother and her best friend were both in town last week, so we celebrated the submission of their respective theses with a delicious dinner. Home-made steak frites, using filet mignon since it's a reasonable size steak, and a wine that still blows me away, five days later. It was a Côtes du Rhône-Villages, all smoke and pepper and herbal spiciness. Some sauteed mushrooms and onions on the side.
It was great food, and great company. Well, almost great food. Our filet mignons were inexplicably tough, and had a line of gristle running through the side of them. Beef tenderloin should not be tough, and should not be gristly.
Definitely not from happy cows.
Perhaps I should rethink my decision to buy beef from Hartman's. I'll stick to Saslove's, thank you very much.
Kinda makes me want to cook steak frites again, just to get the steak done right.Current Mood: relaxed Current Music: Thirsty Traveller |
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In order to detract from the fact that I have three, maybe four photosets that I have yet to sort through and post onto Flickr (and therefore here), I'm going to announce that I finally bought another deep fryer.
The old one up-and-died a few months ago, when I was half-way through making a batch of fries. That sucked in many ways. While the bottle of wine we drank that night helped dull the pain of a broken deep fryer, the relief was fleeting.
I've been searching for a new one for many months, and finally found one that conformed to my specifications: 3L capacity or larger, with an element that sits under the oil reservoir (as opposed to inside it, which would result in another part to clean.)
And only $55! Used to be $70, but I think Canadian Tire's discontinuing them. They're not available in the on-line store.
So if anybody's used this 3L Bravetti something-or-other and it has sucked heinously, let me know!Current Mood: blah Current Music: Dream Warriors - Do Not Feed The Alligators |
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Oh, and I finally found an affordable SATA/FireWire enclosure for the 750-gig drive I bought months ago. I have named it Zetadrive, since it definitely won't be the last hard drive I buy.
This sets up a chain of events that goes as follows (yay more lists!):- Clone internal drive to Zetadrive using SuperDuper (such a good program, and one that I'll actually buy)
- Swap Zetadrive into the case (I will pay to do this)
- Get Leopard installed (it's stable enough now that I think I'll take the plunge)
- Get Boot Camp reinstalled (preparation for Fallout 3)
- Get Aperture 2.0 (and potentially use the external drive as a photo backup)
- Not worry about hard drive space for some time to come
How exciting! |
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