these gents displayed some wonderful stockholder appreciation. to save their companies some money in lawyers fees, they settled their dispute in an arm wresling match.

woohoo!! my fixed cell phone arrived back recently. I am once again a mobile communicator! they resoldered a connection, and replaced a data cable. the LCD’s are working. the funny thing is that the day my phone got back to victoria, I had just called telus mobility and reactivated my old startac. the next day I had to call again and switch back. all is well now.

bumpy phone – a new cellphone for visually impaired people. this cell has an integrated braille reader, and has many of the features mainstream cell phone and pda’s have.

laziest case mod ever? – you be the judge. is this cool? is this stupid? is this real?

one for me, one for my pda – a new fuel cell that uses ethanol instead of methanol to develop its power. interesting. when fully topped up can a pda (or laptop) then interpret drunk speak???

that is what it feels like when you are screaming down a hill on a mountain bike with only shorts and a short sleeve jersey on and you are being pelted by hailstones.

sunday saw me riding with mark, hugh, and hugh’s dog digby. yoshi was feeling a little under the weather so he stayed home. when we started the weather seemed fine, if not a little chilly. we started out, and did our normal route in reverse though. we stopped a few times to talk and rest, and I was feeling alright. I realized that I desperately need to get in shape if I want to race at hammerfest again this year.

nearing the end of our ride it started to rain. I wanted to get back to the truck before I got soaked so I picked up my pace a little. by the time I hit the fires road it started hailing big time. I decided to push on and get all the way back to the truck so I could get the pain over with as quickly as I could. it was amazing that the hail started to cover the ground. when I got back to the truck I took some pictures before the hail melted. check them out

saturday we had a birthday party to attend. samantha patrick turned 2. yay!

the interesting part about the part was that there were 13 toddlers there, and only 2 of them were males! lucky guys!

another interesting thing, sue and I were the only people there that neither had kids nor were expecting. interesting.

this weekend was a busy one for me. let’s start with friday night. sue and I went for diner at the old bailey pub downtown, then on to the royal theatre for a Matthew Good conert. he is touring in support of his latest album titled avalanche (run out and buy this one if you liked audio of being).

the show was opened by a band from montreal called the dears. they dearly sucked. some bands have good music, but a bad lead singer. this band had a bad singer, bad keyboardists, medium guitar and bass, and a fun drummer. the lead singer was awful which made me want to look around the stage to see what else was going on. the bassist and guitarist basically just stood there and played, and the two female keyboardists looked like they would rather be gouging their eyes out with spoons. at least the drummer was entertaining. their set lasted way too long, and I was more than happy to see them exit the stage.

I was looking forward to matt good. I love his new album, even if some others don’t. he took the stage and proceeded to put on a good performance. I enjoy watching bands that play with their live songs and good did that to a T. he even played with some of his older songs including symbolistic white walls. when his set was up, I was surprised, and didn’t even notice the time go by.

the downfall for me was the crowd. since we were at the royal, it was an all ages show. their were tons of screaming teens that just wouldn’t shut up when they were supposed to. during 21st century living he had a prerecorded rant about the war. I dearly wanted to hear what he had to say but the crowd couldn’t keep quiet for me to do so. to top it off we had a bunch of drunk teens sitting beside us that kept screaming things like “you’re so fcuking sexy” (have you seen matt good???) and “you fcuking rock matt”

set the crowd aside and it was a solid performance. not great though. I love his music but the live show was definitely lacking some depth. during the days of the matthew good band there was a guitarist named Dave Genn. his skill was certainly missed on a few songs. without them they were a little flat. matt tried to fill the gaps but to me, he came up a little short.

all in all though it was a very enjoyable evening

so, I was sitting at the computer last night, working on some website ASP. Yoshi is laying on the floor beside me, kind of watching to make sure I don’t make any mistakes.

Aphro saunters into the room, sneers at Yoshi, then walks over to the side of my chair. she sits, looks up at me, then meows softly. awwwww, I think to myself. I sit back, make a small motion, and she jumps into my lap. I pet her a bit, and she start purring nicely. she sits on my lap with her front paws on the arm of the chair, overlooking Yoshi (to my left), and gloats to him that she is up on my lap, and not on the cold, hard carpet. she then turns around on my lap and faces towards the wall. she curls up, closes her eyes, and purrs to herself.

I get back to my coding, and enjoy the nicely fuzzy cat on my lap feeling.

all of a sudden a couple minutes later, she quickly levitates out of my lap, bounces off my chest, flies onto the desk (all the while hissing), bounces off a stack of papers, towards the wall, pushes off the wall, then bolts out of the computer room past Yoshi, into our bedroom.

my reaction: “what the fuck was that?” Yoshi and I look at each other wondering what the hell that was all about. I look down, and see a tiny scratch on my arm, and that is it. I was confused for a couple minutes over that one. she is a weird one.

then later last night I crawl into bed and she jumps onto the bed and is sitting beside me. she starts kneading the bed with her front paws, so to me she is rocking side to side. I move my hand over (under the covers), and she start to chase the moving finger around (very cute). as soon as I stop, she goes back to kneading the bed. eventually she curled up and went to sleep.

of the site. the archive section is now up. should you wish to peruse back a while, you can do it a little easier now. check it out! don’t forget that you can always do a quick search too.

I gotta wear shades

I have horrible sleep patterns. I need a quiet relatively dark place to sleep, and once I wake up after 5am, I usually can’t get back to sleep. this time of year kills me.

making the transition to going to sleep in a light room, waking in a light room, and trying to sleep through chirping birds is brutal for me. lately I have also been waking up around 3 am for some weird, unknown to me, reason. to top it off, the dog gets up around 6 wanting breakfast. the cat hears the birds and walks around the bed. what am I to do?

as the week drags on I just get more and more tired and groggy. I can usually recharge on the weekends a bit. this morning I was awoken at 5 am by something, couldn’t get back to sleep, and eventually just got up at 6:15 when Yoshi got up wanting breakfast. I was at work by 7 am!

maybe I should get one of those sleep mask thingy’s and learn to sleep with earplugs in. I dunno. I really just want a solid 8 hour uninterrupted slumber. ahhhh, now that would be refreshing.

Everyone knows the periodic table right? I know I have linked in the Table of Condiments that Periodically go Bad

Today I came across the Periodic Table of Haiku, a periodic table with Haiku’s associated with each element.