I suspect it has something to do with federal funding, but that’s just speculation.

That’s neither here nor there though. When supper was in the over, I turned the TV to the Canadian Antiques Roadshow last night. I hadn’t seen it yet, and figured it’s a good type of show to only watch a few minutes of, since I planned on working with the computer most of last night. Well, surprise surprise, the episode last night was the one in Saskatoon. Kind of an odd coincidence. My only comments are that when the guy with the “travelling medical kit” was on, one of those jars probably contained cocaine ;)

Oh yeah, and there was a really cool collection of old pilot pictures/autographs (like Orville Wright, Amelia Earhart, Howard Hughes etc.) The interesting thing about that is that when we were talking about it at coffee this morning, it turns out that it was one of my coworkers’ brother who had the collection on there (so by extension, the collection was gathered by his father back in the 30’s and 40’s.) Kinda neat anyway.

I spent some time working on the new computer after that, and got the sound card working, which is something I expected to be a lot more difficult than it was. I tested it by playing back an mp3, and everything sounded just fine. I think the machine is getting close to being ready for the magical command “emerge mythtv” Well, maybe not super close, but close enough that I can see the end of the tunnel.

Then there’s the NHL lockout situation. I had TSN on in the background while I was working with the computer last night, and they had a poll that asked “Do you want the NHL season to be saved” It was pretty much 50-50. Not a big deal, you’d think, but they were running the poll during an airing of one of their classic NHL games. That means that half of the people who are big enough fans of the game to watch a playoff game from 1990 don’t want the season to be salvaged. If I’m the league or the NHLPA, that scares the crap out of me.

Simpson’s quote of the day: “Is there some confusion about this? Take it! Take it, you poor shmo!” - Mr. Burns

Erin and William are probably at the airport in Calgary right now, heading to Edmonton. Good luck with that flight, you two.

Last night was pretty low key - I didn’t do much of anything. Made supper, watched some TV, did some web browsing, watched The Amazing Race, went to bed.

I’ve got a cold though, so I’ve been sneezing and coughing quite a bit. I’m also pretty stuffed up. I suspect that I’ve just got the cold that William had just before they left for Calgary. The weather is warming up some, which is nice — not that it ever got that cold to begin with.

Back to the title of this post though. I make it no secret that I watch “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” regularly. I don’t remember exactly when I started watching it, but it was certainly before 9/11 happened. What I’ve seen is that since 9/11, the show has taken a much darker/more serious direction, and I don’t think it’s nearly as good. It’s turned into some nightly political diatribe, and the funny bits seem to be fewer and further between.

Maybe I should explain a bit. When I started watching the show, the guests were minor celebrities plugging movies, tv shows, bubblegum weight books, or whatever. They’d throw in the occasional journalist, magazine writer, political hack, whatever, but for the most part, the interview section was a break from the “daily events” portion of the show. Now, it seems like every guest is the author of this “important” political book about how the Cotton trade influences the price of sugar in Columbia or something. I don’t mean to trivialize some of the serious political books that have been plugged, but the net result is that the show’s tone is dragged way down into darkness and despair. It plays into the angst of the “anybody but Bush” crowd, and I guess that’s probably by design. It’s less about parodying the news, and more about how depressing the world is.

Now, having said that, keep in mind that I still watch the show. I just seem to tune out more and more of the interviews - even skipping through them to get to the end of the show. Clearly, the show has been changed by 9/11, but I wish they’d bring back stories like the steroid guy - offbeat news, as opposed to “an offbeat take on the normal news.”

Simpson’s quote of the day: “Arr, why buy a house, when ye can buy a house boat.” - Captain McAllister

I spent a little time last night working on the new computer, and got it to boot from the hard drive. After that I went to bed though, so not a lot of news on that front. One piece of information that I don’t think I’ve shared here though, is that William tossed Erin’s PDA to the floor a while back, and broke the screen. That meant that we were sharing one PDA as a bookreader for a while before I could replace it. I put in some bids on some pdas on ebay, but I didn’t see anything there that just screamed at me to purchase them. I had seen the Ebookwise 1150 and wanted to check it out - I even had my credit card number typed into the order screen before I got the shipping section where the (then) $99 ebook was going to incur another ~$35 of shipping, which suddenly makes it a lot more expensive than getting another PDA. On a whim, I punched “Ebookwise” into ebay’s search, and came up with one seller, selling them for the same price as ebookwise.com, except she ships via USPS, so instead of ~$35 shipping, it would be ~$10. Turns out she’s the mom of the guys that own/run ebookwise.com. Anyway, I ordered it, and it arrived on Friday.

After spending the weekend with it, and reading on the bus for a couple of days, I have to say that I’m very impressed. I’d have a really hard time going back to a PDA after using this device. The screen is big, bright, readable, and white background with black text. My only complaint is that the battery isn’t user-replacable, and with the known limitations of LiIon batteries, it’ll be dead in a couple of years :( Hopefully if I take it to the local battery shop, I will be able to get it replaced at that point.

I think Erin still prefers the PDA because it’s so much smaller and lighter though.

Speaking of reading things from a screen…I’m scheduled for a computer upgrade at work, and the new computer came in last week. While it’s being set up, I got to break out the new monitor - a 17″ Dell LCD (E173FP) I was pretty excited about it, and hooked it up right away. Within a short period of time, I had a massive headache though. I haven’t had a headache like that in a long time, but for some reason I didn’t put two and two together for a couple of hours. At that point, I turned the brightness down from the default 75 to 0. (No kidding, zero) and my headache disappeared. I was pretty relieved, because it’s got more screen real estate than my old CRT, and I didn’t want to have to go back to a CRT.

Erin tells me that William has his molars coming in, which is making for a less than enjoyable trip through Alberta. The house is pretty quiet without them, but they’ll be back before I know it - it’s Tuesday already, and they’ll be back either Friday or Saturday.

Simpson’s quote of the day: “Now, now, this is not a lending library. Put down that
magazine or I???ll blow your heads off!??? - Apu

Almost forgot to post today…

The weekend was pretty laid back, but eventful just the same. Friday night I shovelled the driveway a bit, and slipped on the ice, tweaking my back. It’s livable, but still not fun. Saturday I took Erin and William to the airport where they flew to Calgary. I guess William is missing me quite a bit around bedtime. Hopefully he gets over it fairly soon, cause otherwise Erin might have a rough week. At the airport, I circled looking for a parking spot, until I realized that the piles of snow between cars were actually supposed to be parking spots. It was one of those things where you get up a head of steam, plow into the snow as far as you can, then back up and repeat until you’ve plowed out a spot for yourself. Took three or four attempts to get the car far enough into the spot. Wasn’t too bad getting back out though.

Later, I went to a friend’s place for a games night, which was good. I had to do the same thing in order to park the car on the street, and didn’t have quite as much luck getting out of that spot. Not a big deal, it just took a lot of forward/back/forward/back to get into the ruts, at which point the windshield frosted up completely. Unfortunately there was nowhere to pull over, so I just slowed down to a snail’s pace, and hastily scraped the inside of the car to enable me to drive a block or two to the nearest convenience store parking lot. No big deal though, I arrived home safely.

Of course even though I’d shovelled the driveway twice between getting back from the airport and leaving, I had to shovel again when I got home. Wasn’t too bad though.

I watched some football game yesterday. Apparently one team beat the other, and Paul McCartney didn’t have any wardrobe malfunctions. Oh, and there were a lot of commercials for tools and investments, but I don’t remember what companies they were for. :P

Simpson’s quote of the day: “I wonder how Richie Rich died?” - Bart

After some days of balmy weather this week, suddenly we’re in the middle of a “heavy snowfall warning.” The accompanying 15 degree swing in temperatures has made sure that my office, and my fingers, are quite cold. I guess it serves me right for drinking Iced Tea.

So, I haven’t regaled you with poker stories here for a while. I played quite a bit on the weekend, and lost a lot of $10/$1 tournaments, which ate into my free bankroll, so I left the game alone for a bit. I did play a single $5/$1 tournament a couple of nights ago though, and managed to win it all through a little bit of luck. I got to the top two through good play, but without hitting some nice hands at crucial times once it went heads up, I would have finished second. The site that set up the $10,000 free tournament last month is having another one this month, and I still qualify, so I get to play in it (at least I think I do.) Anyway, I learned a lot about that kind of tournament poker in the interim, so I should be able to at least beat the people who don’t show up this time…

I read somewhere that the NHL is likely to cancel it’s season today or early next week. Fine by me… Any objections from anyone else?

Yesterday Jason mentioned something to me about that indoor football league that was announced last summer - I’d completely forgotten about it, so I did a quick search. Apparently they’ve abandoned any thought of starting play this year, but they’re still hoping for the league to be a go next year. I’m sceptical, though I’d still like to see it. I would probably get seasons tickets for the first season if they actually got going, and decide from there if I liked it enough to continue - though it’s unlikely that they’ll have a first season, let alone a second one.

Oh yeah, did I mention that my fingers are cold? I’m going to blame any typos on that, cause even though I’ve corrected about a million typos in this post, I’m sure I missed some.

Simpson’s quote of the day: “Well, that’s a funny looking strike.” - Moe

If you want to know what some random football team’s helmet looks like, The Helmet Project is probably the place to find it.

Simpson’s quote of the day: “So, ummm…do you like stuff?” - Ralph Wiggum

That’s be come a familiar phrase around our house, as William’s capabilities and desire for independence have both continued on their never ending forward march. The biggest thing is dressing himself lately — he really wants to put on his own pants and shirt by himself, which he’s fully capable of doing. The problem comes in that when he’s upset enough to be screaming about wanting to do it himself, he’s too angry at the world to do much of anything. Eventually he calms himself down enough to put on whatever item of clothing he was getting upset about, and the world returns to normal. Needless to say, this isn’t doing wonders for Erin’s mental health.

Last night we made pizza, and William helped every step of the way. He “helped” Erin roll out the dough, he helped me poke holes in it with a fork, then helped me spread the sauce on the crust. We hit a bit of a snag with the spices, because he just grabbed a handful and dropped them all in one spot, but that was easily remedied by spreading it around with a fork. He helped put the ham and pineapple on the pizza, finally topping it off with some cheese. He was busy sampling the ingredients the whole way too. Once I put the pizza in the oven, he parked his chair in front of the oven and watched it bake. It was a lot of fun to work with William, and he behaved really well during the whole procedure.

We also made a dessert(apple) pizza last night, which turned out really well, but the sauce leaked off the edges and burned onto my new pizza stone (Christmas gift from Erin) which kind of smoked up the place a little bit. After it was in the oven, we gave William the apple mixture bowl to taste the cinnamon and sugar, and at some point he decided it was a hat. I’ll just say that it wasn’t the first time I had to give him a prerinse before his bath, and it probably won’t be the last. Maybe if we’re lucky, Erin will post some pictures of him on his site at some point in the near future.

Simpson’s quote of the day: ???We must move forward??? not backwards, not to the side, not forwards, but always whirling, whirling, whirling towards freedom!??? - Kang