Randomness

Yesterday I picked up somebody from the airport. That’s the third time this year I’ve gone down to Pearson to pick up somebody. Terminal 1 I can now get around with my eyes closed. Yesterday though, was a Terminal 3 pickup, a domestic flight. The security seemed a bit lax. This having been my first time in Terminal 3 in many years, I found that the signs weren’t very helpful. I had to guess pretty much where I was going. Eventually I found myself in the luggage pickup area. I could have walked right in there, grabbed a bag and walked out. Anybody need some XXL t-shirts?

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Well, like it or not, the Sopranos ending is going to lead to a lot of copycats. Started yesterday actually. Sportscentre’s Top 10 yesterday was their Top 10 Controversial Endings. In the middle of the highlight for number one, the screen went black.

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A couple months back, Juice called me up asking for my picks for the Stanley Cup Playoffs. I gave him my picks. He won second place which is going to turn out to be some Jays tickets. Now Juice is not a fan of baseball. He’s offered me the tickets. Sweet. Betting on sports can be profitable if you know which way the fix is in.

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This morning I had to drive out to Sauggytown. I drove down there, picked up a 13 dollar spring and drove back. In the car I heard Bachman Turner Overdrive’s Takin’ Care of Business three times and Kenny Loggins‘ Footloose twice. Footloose was actually being played two seconds apart. What has happened to radio these days if every station in town is playing the same songs as every other station in town?

Recommended Listening: Radio Ga Ga by Queen.

Weekend Recap: Running Around Like A Chicken With Its Balls Cut Off

Friday

See Ya Later

I spent most of the day running around. Running around for work. Running around for Carmine. You see, Carmine had returned from Italy with some DVDs.

The guy who sold Carmine the DVDs had told him the DVDs would work in North America. That is sort of true. The discs are not region coded or more specifically, coded for Region 0 which is supposed to work in all DVD players. Now, there is a catch with DVDs in terms of compatibility. Not only does the region code of the disc have to be compatible with the player, but so does the format of the video files. European DVD video files are stored in the PAL format. North America uses the NTSC format. Here lies the real problem. Breaking the region code of a dvd is a simple process I can do with a small program on my laptop with the DVD burner. Recoding a PAL video to NTSC is a real pain in the ass. So much of a pain that I’ve never done it for my own DVDs in PAL. But what Carmine wants, Carmine gets.

My goal was to allow Carmine to watch these DVDs he bought.

Off to the local electronics store. Me, I know what I’m doing, I go straight for the store manager.

“I hope you can help me. I am looking for a DVD player that has a built-in PAL to NTSC converter.”

“The new Yamaha DVD player is supposed to convert it, but I’ve never tried.”

“If I brought in a disc, could I try it out on a floor model?”

“Sure.”

“See ya later.”

A couple hours later, I return to the store with one of the discs Carmine brought from Italy. It worked. Perfect. I called Carmine but I couldn’t get a hold of him, so I went back to work.

Later when I saw him, I gave him the results of my search.

“The 2001 Audio/Video has a Yamaha model that plays your discs.”

“Go buy it.”

“Don’t you want to know how much it costs?

“Here’s my credit card.”

“See ya later.”

See Ya Later, Yeah Right

During all my runnings around I took five minutes to check out the local Value Village. Normally I don’t like shopping for other people’s throwaways, but once in a while some good vinyls could be found for dirt cheap. Want proof of that, ask Juice. That guy found a good condition Chicago. Today, all I could find was a decent Catch Bull At Four. Oh well, maybe in a couple of months, some good stuff might appear.

(The following in italics are my thoughts, much like a cloud bubble in a comic.)

Well, back to work. Now how do I get outta here.

I passed by the section that had the little ballerina dresses.

Who makes their kids wear that shit? Oh well, there’s the exit. Shit, that girl over there looks familiar. Just keep your head down and maybe she won’t notice you. Just two more strides and I’m gone. One…

“Hey WIGSF!”

FUCK! “Hey, look who it is! What’s up?”

She’s gonna wanta hug isn’t she. Yup, there’s the arm stretch. She wants a hug.

“What’s the matter? You’re so tense.”

If I wanted to spend time with you, I wouldn’t have broken up with you. “I’ve been running around all day, my head’s not there right now. I’m sorry.”

So me and my ex-girlfriend caught up with what we’ve been up to and the mutual acquaintences and stuff like that.

I don’t like running into exes. It’s not a common thing due to the lack of opportunity and sheer lack of quantity of exes to run into, but I still don’t like it.

After a couple of minutes of useless chit-chat, “I gotta get back to work. It was great running in to you. See ya later.” Yeah right.

See Ya Later CB4

I watched the Raptors game at Bob’s place. Poor Raptors, they couldn’t eek out a victory in New Jersey this year and it cost them their first playoff series in years.

Chris, Andrea, TJ, Joey; see ya later.

Saturday

Usually at work, I enjoy listening to talk radio. But, being Saturday, talk radio is very, very lame. So work went real sloooooooow. I flipped and flipped and flipped through the dial and got fed up. I pressed play on the tape deck. You never know what someone may have left in the tape deck. Traveling Wilburys Vol. 1 I must have listened to that album two or three times before trying the radio again. When the second round of flipping grew tiresome, I said screw this and went home. I wasn’t getting any work done anyway.

Me and Bob tried out this newish sports bar called Hoops. Small and cramped but it was well planned in terms of the video screens. There was a great deal of screens in this little place. Many of the screens hanging from the ceiling were hanging in pairs. This allowed each seat to face two different broadcasts simultaneously. What a great change of pace from all the other places that plaster the hockey game on every screen. Heaven forbid somebody actually want to watch another sport for a change.

And the draft beer, perfect temperature for me, colder than the average draft. I like my beer a bit colder than the next guy. It was very refreshing.

Sunday

Recently, I have seen this jar of honey in my Mother’s kitchen. Apparently there is such a thing as alfalfa honey. I don’t know how one can get honey from an alfalfa but I don’t let that bother me too much. I leave that to the bees. Then, on Sunday while at a health food store, I saw a jar of buckwheat honey. I checked for darla and spanky honey, but I couldn’t find any.

…

Yeah, that was probably the worst joke you’ve ever read.

Oh well, Sunday was a rather uneventful day. I spent much of the day with my Mother doing mamma’s-boy stuff.

Recommended Listening: What’s She Doing Now by Garth Brooks, Working for the Weekend by Loverboy.

Weekend Recap: This Weekend Goes To Eleven

Friday

Lazy day, lazy post about it. Here are some interesting links. Well, interesting to me.

This is pretty much a joke, but a joke I found funny and it kinda made me think. Try this Insanity Test, my score: 26.136%

A good description of what’s wrong with Canadians on 101 People who are screwing up Canada.

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Harry Shearer was in town for his wife’s musical performance. I guess he either tours with her, or plays bass in her band. For those who don’t know, Harry Shearer is a multi-talented performer. He’s either best known for being the bass player in Spinal Tap or performing many voices on The Simpsons. Geez, wonder why I’d waste my time blogging about him, right?

So with Harry being in town and with an upcoming Spinal Tap performance at Wembley Stadium for some benefit show or something, Harry has been doing the morning talk radio shows. I was a bit surprised there was no mention of the most recent Christopher Guest film For Your Consideration. Harry was often asked about his role in Tap and his relationship with fellow Tappers: Guest and McKean. CFRB’s Bill Carroll asked him about Jamie Lee Curtis a lot.

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I plugged the good ol’ Nintendo in. Darn thing wouldn’t work. I tried holding down the reset button, nothing. I tried the blowing on the cartridge trick, still nothing. I grab a can of compressed air and sprayed inside the cartridge deck, again nothing. I went online and searched for a guide to cleaning a Nintendo.

I found a wonderful site called NESHQ. There is plenty of useful looking guides on the site. I printed out the guide to cleaning an old Nintendo. It took some time but I got the Nintendo opened up. Let the cleaning begin! Wow, I finally have a use for some cotton swabs.

I let the thing dry then I put it back together and plugged it back in, nothing. Okay, I tried the holding down the reset button trick and poof! Would you like to shoot him now, or wait ’til you get home?

Saturday

I’m very proud of myself for continuing this string of cleaning, organizing and generally making my home more liveable for normal people, not just dirty slobs like myself.

Oh the crap I was finding. Why was I keeping a receipt from Radio Shack for a wire? A wire.

I actually found a necklace underneath a pile of various receipts and scraps of paper. I’m not a necklace guy so I usually store my few necklaces in a little box in my desk. How this one got out baffles me.

I also found a telephone jack in my bedroom. Who knew? If I want a landline phone in my bedroom I can just plug one in. Yeah, that’s how much of a mess my bedroom had become. Two foot high piles of crap in various corners.

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I met up with an old friend from high school. Chalk this up to Facebook for reconnecting me with this guy. We caught up over drinks at some bar, I don’t remember the name, Southern Accents maybe. Fun night discussing not old times but what we’ve been upto since last we spoke. We are both such incredibly huge nerds its unbelievable.

What was more unbelievable was the fact that this guy knows everybody. He was well aquainted with the bartender and a waiter at the bar. Okay, that makes sense if you frequent a bar. Then some people walk in and “Hey, how’s it goin?” Every third person he knew. The leaving the bar, just passing people in the street. This guy made Toronto feel like a small town. A lotta fun was had by all.

Sunday

Such a beautiful day! I went for a drive with the sunroof open and just soaked up the Summer. Yup folks, Spring is now over in the GTA* as Summer has steamrolled into an early existance.

A nice drive in the ‘burbs. Sun shining, birds chirping, bicycles, motorbikes and convertibles everywhere, children running in the streets, me trying desperately not to run any of them down.

I didn’t drive too far or too much though; I took a peek at gas prices and saw $1.05 a litre for regular so super would be around $1.20 and that’s a bit too much for just Sunday driving.

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I watched that movie Children of Men, meh. Not that there was anything really wrong with the film, there was just nothing special about it either.

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* Greater Toronto Area, not Grand Theft Auto.

Recommended Listening: Lazy by Deep Purple, Big Bottom by Spinal Tap, Mungo City by Spacehog.

What’s Going On

Life hasn’t been that interesting in the past 24 hours. But here’s what’s been going on with me.

The Calgary Trip - I spoke to my cousin who spent some time in Edmonton. I asked him what sort of things near Calgary should I see should I rustle up some funds for my vacation. He handed me some Lonely Planet book about all the national parks near Calgary. Apparently Banff and Jasper have some breathtaking views of nature (trees and rocks and shit like that). That could be interesting. Trees, those I’ve seen. Mountains, I’ve seen mountains, not big ass Rocky Mountains, just those dull B-cup mountains by the I-75. I guess that’s why I’m not awed by the thought of a mountain. There’s also supposed to be some glacier around there as well. I would like to see some giant hunk of ice in the middle of Summer. The juxtaposition of ice and Summer somehow interests me. If the cost of the trip is going to be too high, I’m just going to buy a cowboy hat, some boots, one of those string ties and walk down to the nearby cattle farm and have some photos taken of me next to a cow. Or maybe I’ll go at a time that doesn’t include the Stampede. I guess I really must decide between going to Calgary for the hell of it, or going to Calgary for the Stampede.

Talk Radio - I listen to talk radio all day long at work. I like it. It gets my blood boiling and it makes me think on a regular basis. But right now my favourite talk radio station, CFRB 1010 is doing a telethon to raise money for the Hospital for Sick Children. Having been treated and operated on several times at that very hospital, I want to support the charity. But I hate being guilted into it. I’ve listened to the telethon for the past couple of years (the telethon is an annual thing on CFRB) and it depresses the hell out of me. The radio hosts interview children who’s lives have been saved at the hospital and the parents of other children. I know the hospital does good work. But I cannot hear another child say “Thith hothpital thaved my life.” I want to help but I feel like I’m being panhandled to by the sickest kid they can find. Something inside me keeps saying “What the telethon is doing is wrong.”

The Pet Food Recall - The Cat seems to be doing fine. Never bothered to check to see if the food it eats is on the list of potentially poisoned food. The Cat usually eats dry food, people food and whatever it can catch, so I don’t think the recall would affect it.

Recommended Listening: Wild Eyes by The Stampeders.

“My car gets 40 rods to the hog’s head and that’s the way I likes it!”

The program director on CFRB 1010 took to the air to answer phoned in complaints and questions from the listeners on Wednesday, January 31st. That was cool. I love it when people put themselves in the frontlines knowing full well they’re going to get shot at. Some of the comments were nice, some weren’t, really, what do I care, right? One caller asked why the station doesn’t report the temperature in Fahrenheit anymore.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Metric System!

If you’re reading this and you live in one of the few places in the world that don’t use the Metric System, don’t take offense, I’m not attacking you. I’m attacking those people who live in places like Canada, places that have converted. There are people today, in Canada, who have still yet to grasp the concept of the Metric System. Hello, people! Conversion began in 1970.

The company where I am employed uses measurements all day long. We use the Metric System. Our handwritten layouts are in centimetres, but are software is limited to millimetres. On dear, what are we to do? Hmmm… Cut the last digit off the millimetre measurement and voila, centimetres. Easy, isn’t it.

In regards to the Fahrenheit Celsius debate in Canada, give up the Fahrenheit. Celsius is easier to work with in regards to why we as Canadians need the temperature. In Canada, the first thing we need to know is whether or not water will freeze. Celsius is designed for just such a need. Water freezes at 0 degrees. Below 0 degrees means cold, above 0 degrees means warm. It doesn’t get easier than that.

For crying out loud people, convert!

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Could someone explain to me why cars have that feature to tell you “ICE POSSIBLE.” It is always obvious to me whether or not ice is possible on the roads. If there’s ice beside the road, there could be ice on the road. If the temperature is below freezing, there could be ice on the road. If there’s a car flipped upside down in the ditch 50 metres in front of you, there could be ice on the road. If you had an icicle sword fight while waiting for the car to warm up, there could be ice on the road.

Recommended Listening: Too Cold in the Winter by Cry of Love

Why Toronto Broadcasters Can Kiss My ASS!

I just got work, and I’m pissed so instead of doing any work, I’m going to rant, bitch, moan, complain and anything else like that.

This morning I got up and got ready for work, what else is new, its Wednesday. As usual, I check the weather of every TV channel I can find. Oh, its just a bit of snow thats gonna melt before it hits the ground. Roads should be okay. You know what, that’s all well and good if you live between two fifty storey buildings in downtown TO. What about the million or so mofos like me that don’t! Would it have killed these dirty fuckers to tell me that there’s freezing rain everywhere north of the city. Do these people who broadcast on the morning shows realize that there’s a shitload of people who drive into the city every damn morning!

I live just off of Dufferin and I work just off of Dufferin. It would be nice if they mentioned that Dufferin was closed!

The broadcasters waited until there were accidents on the road before thinking hey, these roads are kinda slippery. You think they’re slippery.My usual fifteen minute drive took a friggin’ hour this morning.

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This is the usual city bias biting the ‘burbs in the ass again. City people don’t give a shit about the road conditions. They don’t have to drive. They let the TTC do it for them. Road conditions should be for the people who actually use the friggin’ roads. People like me. But its people like me who think the Allen should be extended further south. Friggin’ Forest Hill with your traffic calmed neighbourhood hiding behind your fifty friggin’ million street signs. Have you ever driven through Forest Hill? You cannot see the houses from the street because of all the signs saying “SPEED BUMP AHEAD” and crap like that.

I’m gonna move to Sauggytown. I can’t take this shit no more!

1984 Is Alive On AM Radio

This afternoon I was listening to the John Moore Show on CFRB 1010. A popular show on a popular radio station. The host John Moore was interviewing Dee Snider and Mark Mendoza from the rock band Twisted Sister. You may remember them from the early ’80s with hits like We’re Not Gonna Take It and I Wanna Rock. They were in town promoting their new Christmas album.

The interview meandered, as interviews sometimes do, to how the band was influenced by Arnold Schwarzenegger and how he eventually used one of their songs in his campaigns. During this part of the interview, someone broke into an Arnold impersonation. Right in the middle of this impersonation I could hear some sounds in the background, muffled by not being right in front of a microphone. That is very uncommon on radio. The muffled voice was very masculine and I distinctly heard the word “brother.” It was Hulk Hogan! He was crashing the interview!

The Twisted Sister interview dissolved into a series of anecdotes about how Hulk Hogan and Twisted Sister first met. This was the best five minutes of radio I have ever heard. And I’ve heard myself on the radio talking up The Musical Box.