I don’t know if it’s just that there are more undecideds running around, or if all the major parties disgust people enough that they don’t want to be publicly associated with them, but I don’t see nearly as many lawn signs as usual. Granted we moved to a different neighbourhood since the last election, but even in driving around town I don’t think there are as many signs up.

Could just be a side-effect of the weather too.

Simpson’s quote of the day: “Mmm…organized crime…” - Homer

We got a lot of snow dumped on us yesterday, and it looks like the snow is continuing today. Good news for snowmobilers, not such great news for the rest of us. We had a fairly low key weekend, kind of settling in to the Winter weekend groove. I finally picked up a calendar for my office, so I no longer have to be confused by seeing December staring back at me. I got to play some more Knights of the Old Republic on the Xbox (though not a whole lot more) and we tried out Shadows over Camelot with Dave, Katriona and Bryan. We beat it, but just barely, despite the fact we didn’t know what the heck we were doing for the first batch of turns. It’s a pretty neat game, and I look forward to trying it out with the traitor possibility thrown into the mix as well.

Simpson’s quote of the day: “Let us celebrate with the adding of chocolate to milk.” - Homer

As I’m sure Erin will attest (if she ever gets a chance) William discovered the joys of computer games last night. As we were watching Poko, a “little boys” show, on TV, I had a question about something, so I fired up the web and punched the show’s name into Google. Well, it wasn’t long before I was shuttled to a link with a Poko game on the CBC kids site. Poko on the TV got paused while we made Poko on the computer do his thing (complete with “Silly Minus”)

Anyway, before too long, William was running the show playing the grandma memory game, building gross looking snacks and posh looking doghouses. He plays his own way - when Granny tells him to pick three specific items, he makes sure that one of them is the last one he picks - so he gets a chance to click on everything. He was having a really good time with it anyway. So I think now I have to set up a computer for him to play on, cause the laptop isn’t exactly the best solution for him. Apparently he was so excited at getting to play the games again today that he was vibrating.

That’s my boy…

Simpson’s quote of the day: “You’re doing a bang-up job, Mitch.” - Bart

I’ve decided that every January 11th 2006 I will post some quick links. This is a limited time offer, so click them while they’re still alive.

First off, Katamari Damacy is cool - making remote controlled katamari balls out of velcro and then making felt things for them to pick up is even cooler.

Secondly, if you play must Monopoly, there are a bunch of good Monopoly house rules at that site.

Thirdly, if you know what bittorrent is (or even if you don’t) and have an interest in public domain films - either movies that didn’t have the copyright renewed, or ones whose copyright have expired (think Charlie Chaplain) then you owe it to yourself to check out Public Domain Torrents at some point.

Simpson’s quote of the day: “All you have to do is think of things which people need but which don’t exist yet.” - Professor Frink on inventing

Over Christmas, I’d fallen out of the physio exercise habit, and last week I really paid for it. The knee was sore, stiff, and seemingly getting worse. I started up on the regular exercise regimen again, and it’s doing so much better that I can’t really believe it. I won’t be running down the street any time soon, but at least I feel like I’m walking normally. Stairs are still a trouble spot, but I know that’ll get better as the strength comes back to the knee.

Then last night I screwed up the xbox a little bit, and spent a good chunk of the evening undoing my screwup. At the end of the night, I realized that I had to fsck my backup filesystem because there were a few minor problems with it, and then everything went smoothly. I probably would have fixed it more quickly if I hadn’t been so eager to try and replace it with a different version. As it stands right now, it’s still running fine, it’s just Xebian, and I’m not very familiar with the debian toolset, so it takes longer to do things than it should. I’m much more comfortable with Gentoo, so I think the next time I take a week off, I’m going to try and install that on there instead. It makes sense to run the same distro on the frontend and the backend anyway, and once it’s set up it should be virtually zero maintenance the same as the Xebian version is right now. I suspect there’s a new version of MythTV coming out soon, and as it stands right now, I wouldn’t be able to upgrade because my xbox doesn’t play nice with the debian repositories (I think it’s an X.org issue - specifically that it doesn’t work on the “new” XBoxes without a lot of tlc.)

Simpson’s quote of the day: “Now the man that puts the ‘you’ in impr-you-vment!” - Troy McClure

So, way back when I was in school — in fact, when I was a student painter — I applied for a credit card from CitiBank. Miraculously I was approved, and I’ve had a CitiBank credit card ever since. At first it was a CitiBank Visa, then a CitiBank MasterCard, and most recently it’s a CitiBank Sony card (1% of all purchases in credit toward Sony merchandise with no fees.) Anyway, I really like the photocard option, and I’ve had my photo on my credit card for most of that period. Recently I got a letter in the mail from Citibank saying that I’d been sold. My Sony credit card was now going to be administered by MBNA. Calling CitiBank, they tell me that the only way to have a Citibank card for me is to cancel my MBNA card and apply for a Citibank card. I’m guessing it’s part of the deal that they sold me to MBNA.

Anyway, so my credit card is changing hands. I know that MBNA does a lot of credit cards - loyalty cards, fan cards for sports teams, alumni cards, cards with pictures of baby penguins etc. The thing is - I never agreed to this changeover, and it bugs me. I really like having my picture on the front of my credit card. Bah.

Changing gears completely…I got two copies of the same game for Christmas (not that surprising - I only had two things on my Christmas list…) so I returned one yesterday to go in search of the other game that was on my list. Apparently Knights of the Old Republic isn’t as widely available as I would have thought. Anyway, after driving to a game store in a less than nice part of town (20th and Ave H - for those of you keeping score at home) I got the last used copy in town (with no manual.) So far it seems like a decent game, but I think I’ve just barely scratched the surface at this point. I also picked up Shadows over Camelot which looks to be pretty interesting. I’ll have to play it a couple of times to see how the rules play out. William seemed to like all the bits anyway.

Simpson’s quote of the day: “Please get out of my store, and thank you come again.” ~ Apu

I hate politics. With the election campaign in full swing, I once again don’t want to vote for any of the choices that are presented to me because they all suck. Unfortunately it’s simply not possible for the choices not to suck because we live in a complex world. Take just one issue - child care - and examine how the major parties stand on it as an example.

The Liberals and NDP would channel money into subsidizing daycare for the whole country. Personally, I find it offensive that I work to support my family, and we have chosen to have Erin stay home with the kids (sacrificing financially) and yet I would be forced to also support the families of people who have chosen to have both parents work so they can afford a dvd player for their bedroom. I’m not saying that childcare should be completely unfunded, but I am saying that universal subsidized childcare is offensive to me. Granted, I know that’s an oversimplification of their policies, but that’s what they boil down to.

Meanwhile, the Conservatives would give money to everyone who has a child under 6. That works out to $1200 per kid in my pocket. Sounds great. Uh. Except.. Uh, wouldn’t that be an incentive for people who can’t afford kids to keep pumping them out? To someone in the middle class, $100 a month is a nice reprieve, but it won’t likely cause them to have children they wouldn’t have had otherwise. Unfortunately for the poor, $100 a month looks like a lot of money, and might just be worth having another kid. I’m not even saying that they’ll spend it all on beer and smokes, I’m just saying that the unintended result of this policy will be to swell the ranks of children growing up in poverty. I think that needs a rework too.

I follow politics, but I don’t usually talk politics because I don’t think it accomplishes anything. People are either informed, or they aren’t. If they’re informed, they can make up their own mind without me telling them what to think. If they’re not informed, it’s unlikely they’ll thank me for informing them. Honestly. The information is out there - in the papers, on the internet, in my mailbox. If people don’t spend the effort to get it themselves, they’re likely to resent having it thrust upon them. I’m certainly not going to change anyone’s mind by telling them to vote for Party X because they will do Y and Z, or even worse, to vote for Party A because Party B will do Y and Z.

What really got to me though, was hearing that a particular party wasn’t going to campaign negatively, they were just going to focus on the track record of the Liberals. Uh. Yeah, you go and do that. So you’re going to say what a great job they’re doing, and that’s why you shouldn’t vote for them? <scratches head>

For what it’s worth, I’m still undecided, but I will certainly vote.

Simpson’s quote of the day: “Of course, none of this would have happened if you had been here to keep me from acting stupid.” - Homer