Flower of the Day out of Nowwhere

Crocus flowers
Little story behind this picture. I’ve had this mystery plant popping up a few leaves in my rock garden for about 5 years now – I think it showed up as a hanger on with one of my purchased plants. Every year, it popped out a few long leaves from a bulb, then it would die back before June was even over.

I was tempted to rip it out on several occasions, but it wasn’t really spreading anywhere, and it died back anyways, so I’d forget about it again. Then this year, after all the rotten snow had just melted and the rock garden was just starting to green – THESE FLOWERS appeared today with no warning. Amazing. I’m assuming they are Crocus by the look, and the early flowering. Pretty decent macro for a little point and shoot camera, me thinks.

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Wacom Tabet saving my wrist so far this spring

I got a Wacom tablet this spring to help stave off carpel tunnel on my mousing wrist. I was expecting to use it only for drawing site maps, where the continual mousing all day drawing was becoming a strain. I have yet to draw much with it but I find that I’m using it more for day to day software, including the database software we use that has the crappiest interface I have seen on business software for sale. I SHOULD be able to do anything I want with a keyboard, but I am forced to use the mouse, for all those missing keyboard shortcuts. Once I start using the mouse, I tend to finish what I’m doing using the mouse. As of late, I’ve gotten very good at quickly heading the right hand over to the mouse, clicky-draggy on the one or two items I need to get with the mouse, then go back to the keyboard.
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1TB External eSATA/USB unit @ $150

‘Ya know, having to buy computer stuff for work means you end up buying a lot more stuff for yourself. But based on the previous 2 days happenings, I think I have a pretty good excuse. Besides, $150/TB of external HDD goodness seems like a good deal, but what do I know? I don’t follow this stuff regularly.
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Madly waving the Rubber Chicken to Kill Bad Computer Mojo

The title sums it up for you non-computer types. For the rest of you, long, nerdy, techy rant follows.
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If I was King of the World

So let’s pretend I was King of the World. One day, the people’s representative comes to me with a problem
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Random tomfoolery

Farewell emails in this recession era are one of those things where people have gotten bitten by technology they don’t fully understand. First of all, why, oh why do companies give there employees the ability to send globally in the first place? As a rule of thumb, if you can’t remember the name of every employee in your place of work, this probably should not be allowed. Even so, if you’ve managed to accumulate a large address book list, or have many mailing groups you can send to, you can still hit a lot of people with your bridge burning flame fest, or your eloquent touching ‘so long and thanks for all the fish’. Personally, I don’t think it’s worth it to go for the scathing flame thrower email – you never know when that might come back to burn you (ouch!).

Speaking of recession, “What recession?”, I ask. Home Despot is out of stock on battery operated smoke detectors. The smoke detector shortage, according to one Despot worker, is due to landlords buying them all up after a basement suite fire that resulted in deaths to occupants where said equipment may have been lacking. Everyone seems to be fixing there toilet for some reason, I bough out the last flapper valves, and lots of other items are missing. I have no idea why these are out, the Fed tax credit don’t kick in until you hit a thou, (grasping at straws) perhaps there is a rash of toilet thievery going on – I arrived home on Friday night to find my place broken into. Gone was Six DVD sets, toothpaste, and (wait for it) my downstairs bathroom toilet paper. The thief had discerning, er, taste too only going for the good stuff, and leaving the generic backup stuff behind. Even took the roll on the spool. So, perhaps it’s going to the next level and thieves are stealing toilet parts to kick start plumping businesses. Plumper kickbacks anyone?

Coming back to “What recession?” I note that it is also still stupid busy in a lot of restaurants out there. Swans PubThere seems to be so much excess money to burn in Calgary that it’s taking awhile for the current money pile to smolder down to ash before we notice the downturn. I’m hearing rumblings on the work front about opportunities being way thinner now than a year ago, so it’s coming. Frankly, if you have a good stable job a recession is a great time. Line ups in stores disappear. Fancy restaurants always have an open table for you. Staff are actually available to help you in a store. Parking spaces can be had for less than a king’s ransom. You can hire a contractor, this month, not ‘sometime next year’. Incompetent idjits get fired from your workplace. So, it’s all good, as long as you have a job.

At least “Swan’s” in Inglewood is still not too busy. One of the few genuine pubs in town that doesn’t try to also be a sports bar on “Flames nights”, so I can actually go there with friends and expect to chat all evening, rather than having to yell over the game volume. Probably my favorite outing place in town right now – good food, good service, fair price, and some of the colorful character you would expect out of Inglewood, so don’t bring the kids. Oh, they know how to pour a Guinness. ’nuff said.

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Really Good Tiki Bar TV interview with the Doctor

Check out this interview with Jeff Macpherson, creator and the Doctor in Tiki Bar TV. Lots of interesting stuff I didn’t know about the show. Nice to see one of my favorite podcasts starting to figure out how to make money. He points out something interesting in that it’s hard to hire people to edit a show that has a non-conventional format. One of the things you’ll note after you’ve watched a few episodes is that “mistakes” are included as part of the episode. It’s part of the charm in the show, the “we don’t take ourselves so seereeouslee, so just watch and have fun with us”. Try finding an editor to edit that.

Also, interesting to see the road they are going down trying to make money doing a show on the internet. Advertising, sure – now I know why they don’t have a liquor advertiser – the lawyers don’t want them advertising on a show that has *actual drinking*. Go figure. Also it seems traditional media producers don’t get this “podcast” thing. Not surprising – they will fall soon because of that, among other things. At least the Tiki Bar guys have been making money on merchandise in the meanwhile, here’s hoping they can figure out an advertising model that doesn’t drive the audence (and me) away.

Looking forward to the new season on the high seas!

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Prediction for 2009: Duke Nukem Forever will finally be released!

Alright, you might be thinking ‘wtf is he smoking?’ or ‘wtf is Duke Nukem?’, if you’re young enough. That second part is scary. It has been well over TEN YEARS since the original Duke Nukem 3D was released. It was a heady time for first person shooters – Duke 3D and Quake were released in 1996 and they totally blew away DOOM, which could be argued to have popularized the genera in the first place.

Duke Nukem was much favored by me over Quake. Sure, Quake had a more realistic 3D engine, but Duke had *personality*. The sound track rocked. There was humor. Quake had several sequels released – what happened to the Duke?

I spent several years waiting – having played Quake, then Quake II and still finding them lacking in the fun that was Duke. Eventually, I gave up on a sequel to Duke Nukem 3D, having come to the conclusion that due to perpetual changes in the game, the Duke was relegated to being perpetual vaporware.

The today I was reading the Wikipedia article – what got me interested is that there is video of Jace Hall playing through a level – plus the 3D Realms website has been slowly starting to update with greater frequency and more detail on the game, which leads me to believe they might actually be serious about releasing this puppy some time soon when it’s done.

Oh, and screenshots have been appearing:
DNF screen shote sept 2008
a sure sign that *something* has been coded to produce said screen shot. Oh, and from the FAQ sec.1.13 for DNF, they state that they do not plan to release any new game shots until right before the game is released. Hmmm. First screen images released in Sept ’08. Considering how long development has been, I’ll take any release in ’09!

Alright, I admit, this is a bit of a long shot for a prediction, but If I’m right, I’ll look like an ef’n genius.

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My Style of Webcomics

I don’t know why I’m not big into the Calgary comic expo, because I do like comics. I attended in 2008, and mostly went for the SF BSG, and ST:TOS guests. But for the comic part of the convention? Meh. I suppose a lot of it has to do with comics focusing so much on super heroes and manga, both of which I’m not that interested in. I classify myself as interested in “other” or “Sunday Funnys” comics, which, at least the Calgary convention, does not pay much attention to. So, being the holidays, and being that you might just possibly have some free time to peruse the funny pages, I give you my list of comics that I follow on a regular basis:

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Shamwow humour

I got to wondering about those Shamwow things they advertise on TV. You can watch the ad online in case you never watch TV, or you can take my word that it’s a rag that’s supposed to have some amazing absorbing properties. Do they actually work something like advertised? So I go do a little Google search and come up with infomercialratings.com, with consumer reviews of the said Shamwow product.

WARNING – I am about to do something I despise on the internet – post images of text. I’m just a data whore tonight.
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