The Week That Was [ Sunday, January 23, 2005 - 6:23 PM by Glen ]
First off, check out the satellite image page I've become addicted to. I like to click the "all(124)" option and hit the play to watch the storm build over Ontario, fade a bit, then blossom just before it hits Nova Scotia. Of course the current storm will only be available on this page a short time as they are always updating.

And now, the view from my apartment the last six days.
Monday.
Thursday.
Sunday. (1,672 KB)

That last video wasn't taken until the storm was just past my area based on the satelite images unforunately, so the wind sounds and visuals aren't that impressive.

World of Cold White [ Sunday, January 23, 2005 - 4:18 PM by Glen ]
Just in case you didn't believe me, read this. (I originally just read the title when I posted the link and wrote the rest of this post, but when I began reading the first paragraph it essentially repeated what I say below. Does that make the start of my post nifty or monotonous?)

I slept all day but the good news is the swelling at the back of my mouth from the infected sinus seems to be going down and I was worried it was spreading to my ear when I woke up this morning but that seems to have dissipated too. When I woke up I still felt like poop. I didn't hear the much-talked-about blizzard yet so I opened the blinds at the front of the house and couldn't distinguish the road that goes by 10 feet from the window. I went back to sleep for about five hours and now looking out it's just as bad, except more snow on the ground.

All those years of collecting heavy-duty winter clothing is finally paying off. In the GTA I used the stuff once or twice a year and now it's everyday wear. I heard this storm might last into the morning.

I might have spoken too soon on ear not being infected, just lost some hearing on the left side.

I have good news. I whined to Jeremy and it looks like he's going to do a new MT compatible design for me! This guy is an immensely talented artist and web design is one of his specialities, so the new site should look good now instead of the plain white page with 10 spinning .gifs I was considering.

New site coming...maybe [ Saturday, January 22, 2005 - 12:37 PM by Glen ]
I'm feeling pretty sick still and maybe that's why I am still not doing much with what will become my new home, but I suspect it isn't. The reason the site isn't being tinkered with and improved beyond the default template stems from the same reason I buy a hard drive and six months later it is still in the box. I like when things work, and I get frustrated and annoyed in the in between and necessary stage of getting things to the point of working. I'll probably end up copying the source from other sites I like the look and features of. Even as a hobby site I would easily pay someone a fair amount to do all of the setup and changes which I am about 1/3 of the way through so far. All I want to do is write my content and publish some of my photos and stories online and that's it.

Different strokes for different dopes.

I heard a blizzard, what will be the third in a week, is hitting Nova Scotia tomorrow. The drive home from work on Thursday was an experience to say the least. Complete white-out conditions and slippery snow covered roads that the limited number of removal crews couldn't keep up with. I ended up in a caravan of at least six cars in front of me, and possibly more as the sixth car disapeared often with the limited visibility, and four cars behind me. We all traveled at 40 km/h and the drive was a completely new one with no landmarks except for the snow covered trees along the side of the road. It was dusk but sometimes the white got so bright it hurt my eyes and when we reached the causeway and there were no landmarks in sight whatsoever I began to feel like snow was all that existed in this world.

After more than a month here I'm finally going to go on a "real" grocery shopping run in a few minutes in anticipation of being snowed in. On Monday I ended up eating my last package of peanuts and last box of crackers and was left with, literally, only a tub of ice cream in the freezer and Diet Coke and beer in the fridge.

I defy you not to vomit... [ Thursday, January 20, 2005 - 10:21 AM by Glen ]
...when you read this.

This guy sure likes to harp on freedom in a way that turns my stomach, at least. I especially like this quote from GWB: "We have a calling from beyond the stars to stand for freedom and America will always be faithful to that cause."

Let me guess, they had a meeting and decided to try to tone down the God-talk, so the speech writer proudly presented this line in his re-draft.

"It has the same message as before but it's -- SUBTLE!"

zzz [ Thursday, January 20, 2005 - 7:36 AM by Glen ]
Huh? Wha?

That was nice.

Bed [ Wednesday, January 19, 2005 - 9:28 PM by Glen ]
I spent the first month here in Nova Scotia sleeping on an inflatable air mattress with fold out frame intended for camping or as a little guest bed. I woke up perpetually cold and the first one had to be returned after a week because it would almost completely deflate within two hours. The night I spent sleeping on the hardwood floor of my apartment was probably the worst night of rest in my life.

For the past four or five days I've been sick and so the air mattress was compounding my misery, and then today my new bed arrived along with a sofa. I can't believe I went this long without them. I really had no comfortable furniture in my apartment except for the desk chair I sit on now and sometimes it just didn't cut. Sometimes you just need to lie down and watch TV or whatever.

Once I got the bed setup I dug out the sheets I'd brought and was pretty much unfazed when I realized I'd brought double sheets instead of queen. Unfazed because that's how this week has gone. I mean, virtually every little thing has gone wrong at home and abroad (quick sampling: lost power for two hours Monday night after storm, used the laundromat for first time and the driers don't even come close to drying the clothes properly with the default length, and you can't add quarters once it's done so I ended up with every sock, piece of underwear, shirts and pants hanging around my apartment today, etc.)

Doesn't matter, sleeping on a bed with ill-fitting sheets will be pure luxury for me and I'm actually going there right now in the hopes of shaking this cough.

My First Storm [ Monday, January 17, 2005 - 8:44 AM by Glen ]
Last night I made my way into the local pub for the dinner special and a beer while watching the Indy/New England game. The few people still in the place kept talking about a coming storm with winds up to 100 kilometres per hour and lots of snow. I thought little of it.

Everyone, wherever they live, always talk about coming storms and the weather, right? I also knew that bad storms here are much worse than in Ontario so when I got home I checked the Weather Network web site. There was confirmation of 25-35 cm of snow but the winds didn't look like they'd be that bad. This morning around 4 a.m. I began to hear the wind and ice pellets ricocheting off my bedroom window, but I've already heard that with a few other smaller storms already.

I got dressed for work, threw on gloves knowing I would have to shovel, and headed out to my car behind the house I rent a room at and found it to be almost uncovered by snow. The wind was truly fierce and had kept the car clear while implanting no fewer than two tiny ice pellets into my eyeballs. I pulled out, pleased that I might make it to work on time if the causeway was open when I got to the end of the driveway and faced a four foot tall drift about ten to fifteen feet long. The only shovel on the premises is a little sidewalk shovel so I got out and began trying to move snow. If I threw the snow to the right of the driveway it swirled and came back painfully into my face. If I threw it to the left it swirled and some of it landed on the small lawn at the front of the driveway.

I gave up after fifteen minutes of shovelling and came in to email my manager and tell him I had to wait for the plough that clears our driveway to come. Then I called another co-worker who lives in this town to see if he could get out and pick me up on his way into work (he's staying at a hotel in town), and he let me know the local radio had said work was closed until 1 p.m., and then I felt pretty stoopid.

So now I'm back inside and waiting for the plough to come and wondering if the infamous Nova Scotia power problems will surface with such powerful winds and icy snow.

I’m looking into changing hosts right now, if I do shift over and go to MT I’m thinking Daily Minutia might be a good name for my blog...

Kiss if you must, but please don't tell [ Friday, January 14, 2005 - 4:58 PM by Glen ]
Greg and Chad, sitting in a tree, K-I-L-L-M-E-PLEASE.

Cat Nap [ Thursday, January 13, 2005 - 3:58 PM by Glen ]
I'm 95% sure that when I went to the bathroom last hour there was a guy sleeping on the toilet in the stall.

Reasons I think that:
1. The steady and deep breathing associated with sleep was present.
2. When I washed my hands the breathing was disturbed and it sounded like he nearly fell off the toilet.
3. When I went back into the washroom some time later the deep breathing was present again.

I'm trying to imagine how that might be a comfortable place to sleep. I think I'd choose a cardboard recycling bin over a toilet...

Slip [ Wednesday, January 5, 2005 - 4:15 PM by Glen ]
It was a beautiful morning.

Canada had won the World Junior Championship the night before, and I’d allowed myself an extra thirty minutes of sleep to make sure I wasn’t too tired at work on this day.

I showered and listened to TSN’s Sportscentre while getting ready for work. I picked out a nice new shirt that I’d gotten for Christmas and a pair of extremely light brown pants. I usually avoid wearing pants so light in colour as even the wind seems able to produce noticeable stains on them, but with the shirt I had the pants looked really good so it was a sure thing.

I dig into one of the boxes I have yet to unpack and extracted a framed photo of me sitting in my desk chair holding my son when he was about six months old over the computer keyboard. My son’s hands are flat on the keys and it reminds me of when I used to do this with him often and compose emails of “afdsaffffffffffffssddddddddddddd” before sending it off to his mother with love from her baby. Looking at the photo today it reminded me of how much he’s changed. He’s currently four years old and constantly pushing for his own demands to be met. It can be exhausting and with my wife handling it on her own right now I feel bad for her. At the same, time she gets complete dominion over all parenting decisions for once, which she’s probably enjoying after two years of me spending so much time with him.

I open the front door to the house I’m staying in and see big, beautiful white flakes falling softly. There is some snow on the ground but not too much yet. The snow floats down without any wind to push it off course; gravity alone pushes each flake down to Earth. Sometimes you see something nice like this and it almost surprises you. I stand there for ten long seconds and take it in before leaving the front porch of the house for the driveway around the side with the framed photo wrapped in bubble wrap (to prevent the glass from being scratched before I get it to my desk at work) gripped tightly in my right hand. I begin to walk along the driveway to the back of the house. Large white fluffy flakes have fallen in steeped piles and have yet to be compressed by foot, tire, or melting, and my feet glide through the drifts of mostly air.

Step, step, step and then I’m confused. I’m not looking straight anymore, not walking. I’m falling, falling on my right side. I hit the ground hard and slide around, trying to get up. The palm of my right hand is burning and I realize that I dropped the picture at some point along the fall and its sprung free of the bubble wrap. I struggle to pick it up, getting onto my knees and trying to keep my pants clean. I see that the bottom right corner of the picture glass is cracked at a forty-five degree angle.

"Shit." My heart sinks.

I look at my hand, covered in the black gravel seen commonly on driveways in the area I am living in. I look at my pants and black wet gravel has soiled them from my right ass cheek down to my right ankle. "Shit."

Suddenly every step is difficult to manage as my feet slide back and forth. I wonder how I made it halfway up the driveway before I took my header, and wonder if fall number two is on the way. I look up to see if anyone saw my embarrassing tumble, but with only a few houses in few of where I stand I don’t think they did. Despite the fact that I will have to change and that will make me late for work, and that I’ve broken the only picture I brought with me to Nova Scotia, I still almost laugh thinking of how funny my fall would have looked if it was anyone else but me. I imagine it was very cartoon-like as my feet slipped completely up in the air and to my left side and it felt like I hung in the air for a second horizontally before I crashed to the ground in a heap.

I slide back inside and it takes me a while to find another pair of pants to go with the shirt, which luckily was protected by my coat. The next pair I put on becomes sullied as well when I stupidly put the coat I had on originally over top of them, spreading more of the wet dark gravel grime onto a previously clean pair of pants. Finally I settle on a black pair of pants and I choose another jacket (it’s a cold, crispy day even without a wind).

I am cursing inside about the broken picture glass and its potential symbolism, the pants which might be permanently stained, and a host of other stresses that now loom so large with my sunken mood. I drive around the rotary and over the causeway and look out over the ocean. I see a Bald Eagle standing on the ocean. At least I think it’s a Bald Eagle. It has a dark body with a white head and is quite large. When I’d first spotted it a kilometre back I’d thought it was a crazy person out on the ice. Despite being salt water, the inlet freezes when it gets a little below zero, due to its shallowness I suppose. The eagle takes off just before I lose sight of it out the passenger window of my car. I’m soon in tighter traffic than usual on my fifteen minute drive to work, meaning I can see three or four cars at any one time. As I get off the highway where my office is (it’s almost literally a stone’s throw from the highway I take home) I notice my mood has shifted.

The picture and pants would have had me in a foul emotional state for at least the entire morning in the past, but right now it doesn’t feel like that big a deal. I can try to clean the pants and if that fails, they can be weekend wear. Although I love the picture of my son on the computer and it’s the only copy, the glass is all that is broken. None of the fluffy white snow melted in time to seep in and distort the picture. For some reason my bruised ass doesn’t even seem like a big deal anymore. I feel more laid back than I ever have before. I’ve never gotten over a bad mood so fast. The people and this place might be rubbing off on me, I’m not sure.

Perfecta [ Tuesday, January 4, 2005 - 6:29 PM by Glen ]
First off, sweet! I hadn't been keeping up on my DVD news and was surprised to see an ad for this one today. One of my favourite movies, and I already owned the regular and Superbit versions which combined maybe had a trailer as a special feature.

Also, big night tonight! I am really hopeful that the recent Canadian hockey dominance continues for the juniors. The WJC is easily my favourite hockey event each and every year. Olympics is the only thing that comes close. I just wish there was a World Junior league with all the best under 20 players competing. The two best teams play tonight and I hope we win!

And finally, there is this job posting at zip.ca. I found it interesting that it specifically says, in ALL CAPS no less, that only non-smokers are welcome for the job. Is that even legal? I mean, as someone who doesn't smoke cigarettes and doesn't like the smell of them I wouldn't mind it but this seems like discrimination beyond legal limits. If they smoke on their two fifteen minute breaks and during lunch only, what's the problem for the company? I love zip.ca by the way. Best entertainment move I ever made was shifting away from local video stores and to zip.ca.

Fifth Element, Team Canada and Zip.ca. I'm in a really good mood now.

Getting there [ Monday, January 3, 2005 - 11:11 AM by Glen ]
I think this picture is so cool. Not sure how long Yahoo leaves photos available so check out the elephants helping clean up in Indonesia. I donated to the Red Cross yesterday even though I can't afford it right now (Then again, I couldn't afford the Seinfeld DVDs either). Something about looking for a deal on Boxing Day and seeing the CNN coverage that morning will stay with me a long time I think. I was already disgusted by our (North American's) behaviour this time of year and that just kind of summed things up nicely. Watching the TV while most people rushed (some running) by to find a door crasher sale price, ignoring the disaster coverage. I thought the 50,000 estimated at that time was an insanely huge death count, but now with it just over 150,000, it's simply difficult for me to comprehend.

On a brighter, and personal note, I'm finally in my apartment and beginning to set things up. Right now the computer and the table it sits on is all that I've done; priorities firmly in place.

Damn you Wright brothers! [ Monday, December 27, 2004 - 9:55 AM by Glen ]
Everyone's always talking about how Orville and Wilbur made what is probably the most significant invention since man discovered fire, or something.

I'm here to say that I wish Wilbur never played hockey. The injury he sustained to his mouth and face changed the course of his life and led him to his research that would help him invent the airplane with the aid of his brother about five years later.

Heck, I even wish the Wright brothers were never born, to be honest.

I realized this while clenching the armrest of my plane while either an unskilled or inexperienced pilot tried to bring my plane in to land on Christmas Eve. Having a fear of flying before that flight and then going through a lot of bumps along the way as well as the tumultuous approach has convinced me that I will no longer put myself through the flights except when absolutely necessary (read: Occasional trips home to see the family and for Cuba, that's where I draw the line).

I mean, if the Wright brothers never invented flight then eventually some other mode of speedy travel would have been invented, such as the Zip Tube. What is the Zip Tube? It's almost as fast as teleportation and relies on an intricate network of sturdy tubing that snakes over our planet and exists right now only in my mind. I would rather Zip than fly. So some one invent it please.

ASP [ Thursday, December 23, 2004 - 1:29 PM by Glen ]
About a week ago I was assigned to a project in which I need to do the bulk of my work with ASP. When I was at my last job I was always on the Java side of things and never really crossed over to do things on the ASP side, so I came in with a very basic knowledge of ASP.

Well, I just found this ASP quiz and I took three minutes and fifteen seconds and got 15 out of 20. Not bad for cracking the book a week ago. Although, if I had never been assigned to this project I still would have gotten seven or eight right with some basic knowledge and guessing.

Finally [ Thursday, December 23, 2004 - 9:37 AM by Glen ]
I'm waiting at my new apartment for the movers to arrive. They had promised 9-12 last night but had to postpone, then they promised around 9 AM but they called less than an hour ago to say they were about an hour and a half away. I can't wait to get things organized here and stop living out my car and suitcases.

This apartment is pretty decent inside and it almost made me want to get equally decent things for its interior if it wasn't going to be a (primary) second residence. Instead it's going to end up looking a lot like my old basement "apartment" in my parents' house during high school: All cheap stuff with a bizarre mixture of items standing in for actual furniture.

For example, my primary seat for watching TV (oh, I had to get a TV, you better believe it), is my recumbent exercise bike. If I could fashion a converter to power the TV with the bike in order to watch I might just consider that.

My bed is a blow up camping bed from Canadian Tire. It's the same one you see in commercials right now with that guy everybody loves to hate. Probably the worst neighbor you can imagine. On my first night sleeping on it the thing slowly deflated until I was basically sleeping on the frame. It might as well be a bed of nails for the comfort it brings. That made this much funnier. The second video from the left is currently a spoof of those Canadian Tire commercials.

The rest of the place will be filled with dollar store inventory and the only thing of value to me, my computer (which isn't currently setup, I'm on the laptop right now that I'll be bringing home when I fly out tomorrow).

Oh man, I just thought about my flight tomorrow again. Something just doesn't seem wise about flying an economy airline on Christmas Eve (literally, I will be in the air around dinner time). If I see a flask on one member of the cabin crew I'm going to grab it and drain its contents down my throat, and they'd need one of those tasers to stop me. I hope it doesn't turn out to be the pilots' pee jar. That's another hold over feature of the old basement apartment. I was going to stop there, but I just remembered that when I moved out of the house I simply placed the large pee jar back in with my Mom's collection of empty jam jars. Whoops.

Never, ever, accept anything from my Mom in a jar.

Little Update and Quote of the Week [ Friday, December 17, 2004 - 7:59 PM by Glen ]
It's been an interesting first week in Nova Scotia. Overall things are going really well. I'm sitting on the floor of my apartment right now with the laptop on top of a box left behind by the last tenant, so I could be a bit more comfortable, but I'll be staying at my new landlord's inn until my furniture arrives, sometime next week (I hope). Last check a few days ago the truck still hadn't left Toronto, but I missed the last East coast delivery window when I had to delay my move a little.

I have more than you could ever want to read in my head, in notes, and on a micro-recorder about the move and what I've seen so far. For now I leave you with what was the quote of the week, spoken by one of my new co-workers at Sobeys.

Average Joe [ Friday, December 10, 2004 - 7:15 PM by Glen ]
One nice thing about moving out here is the US feeds come from Boston instead of Buffalo. Huge improvement in my opinion, but I could just be sick of hearing about fires and the Bills. Anyhow, a news guy in Bahston is named Joe Shortsleeve.

Poor old Joe, spent his youth crying into his pillow at night after relentless teasing from peers, and now he's on television and he gets cracks yelled at him when he's in public.

I wait [ Friday, December 10, 2004 - 2:06 PM by Glen ]
I know this isn't exactly funny, but it is. It really, really is (yahoo news links expire so click it while it's...hot ;) ).

I'm waiting for about eight landlords to call me back and have nothing to do. I really wanted to see more places before they all took off for the weekend.

I went and saw the first two places earlier. Not bad, in a seaside town and one of them was right on the water, but the negatives were they aren't very well kept (the notes I got about this place from my employer mentioned the poor quality), and the beautiful view from the apartment on the water is kind of ruined by a big paper plant blowing smoke out all day accross the inlet. Still, the town was nice and there was everything I needed all crammed together.

Awesome [ Friday, December 10, 2004 - 10:18 AM by Glen ]
This web page is all I have to talk with, you see. So expect lots of stupid posts.

I just called a local area landlord and he told me in a thick Nova Scotian accent, "Just come by my place around one to have a look." That was the extent of his direction on how I would find him. I can't explain how much I like that. "I'm not from around here, do you have an address?" I said.

And he said "oh", and gave me the address. The place is within my budget and right on the ocean in a town so I'm hopeful that it's decent.

Drat [ Friday, December 10, 2004 - 9:41 AM by Glen ]
Yesterday afternoon I came within an hour of Rimouski, PQ. Any fair sized hockey fan knows after the year of coverage that Sidney Crosby, dubbed 'The Next One' by Wayne Gretzky himself, plays there (although I have my doubts that he can come close to Gretzky or Lemieux in today's NHL). I debated driving to Rimouski to try to get a ticket to the game if there even was one. I hadn't checked the Oceanic schedule so it might possibly have been a waste of two hours (one hour to Rimouski, one hour back to highway I needed to take).

I'd already been driving about ten hours at that point and decided to push on instead, given the low probability that the team was playing at home and that I could get a ticket. I just saw that the Oceanic were indeed home, that the team (and Crosby) had a good game and that the goalies fought! So soon after I posted a link to an AHL goalie fight (A Hockey League post a couple weeks ago).

Now I'm really disapointed I missed that ;)

zzz [ Friday, December 10, 2004 - 9:09 AM by Glen ]
I was on the road for a long time, and it's a bit of a long story that I'll bore you with later this weekend, but right now I have to start calling landlords and get going. Apparently these people wake up an hour earlier! If only someone warned me...

In 2000 I went on a trip to the west coast for a conference and while I was there I didn't need an alarm clock. The three hour delay over eastern time worked with my biological cap perfectly. Maybe I picked the wrong coast to live on?

Nasty [ Wednesday, December 8, 2004 - 12:41 AM by Glen ]
In the middle of packing to leave yesterday afternoon I decided to fulfil a commitment I'd made to the Carolina Hurricanes official site and I called Medicine Hat, Alberta to get an interview done and transcribed. It was with Kevin Nastiuk of the Medicine Hat Tigers (WHL) and he's one of the four goalies Canada has invited to their final evaluation camp for the World Juniors at the end of this month.

You can read the interview here.

Crazy, it is [ Thursday, December 2, 2004 - 12:42 PM by Glen ]
My son came down with a case of pneumonia last Wednesday. He was so ill that I had no chance to get key things done for the move as I watched over him. My wife had to help out this week with him so that I could begin getting ready for the move and finally, today, he seems to have turned the corner.

Today at around 2 p.m. the moving company I had hired was supposed to arrive and move out some of the big items that I wouldn't be able to fit in my car when I left for the coast. With my son's illness I hadn't begun to pack even yesterday and so yesterday morning I began to organize things to bring when I got a phone call.

Long story made short: I got a job offer from a start-up company formed by executives from a company I used to work for prior to 2000. The call could not have come any later really, but after going in to meet with them and find out what the deal was I had to pass. It was an extremely tough decision and I’m really not sure what the right choice will turn out to be. Even though it meant staying in the GTA there was just too much risk for me to assume. The job I'm going to in Nova Scotia will be better career experience and more stable, but the last 24 hours have really messed with my head. Now I have to reschedule the mover and resume packing with almost no time left before I go.

So, in the eleventh hour, fifty-ninth minute I had one of those things happen that you hear about from time to time. I mean, out of the blue I got a call (I had submitted my resume to one of the executives going to this company two or three months ago), right when I was about to move. Where was that call a year ago when I really could have used it? A big dilemma, with no time to decide. Exactly the type of situation I would have been bending my Dad’s ear on if I could. I guess now I fully realize just how distant my life as a kid without responsibility is.

A Hockey League? [ Monday, November 29, 2004 - 5:16 PM by Glen ]
I went to my first AHL game on Friday. Had great seats in a good arena with a lot of diehard fans of the home team, but I have never been so bored at a hockey game, especially pro. See, last post was about a movie that bored me like no other, now it's a hockey league. I'm a tough guy to keep happy.

There were some current and very near future NHL players in the game and one in particular was awesome to watch play, but the level of hockey wasn't all that great and it degenerated into battle royale brawls near the end because the home team was going to lose.

Overall I wasn't impressed, and then I came home and saw this recent (I think) AHL fight at the end of a game. And the final straw was reading about this yesterday. I thought on Friday that based on my first game the AHL was bush league, and those other two pieces of evidence confirm it enough for me. I'll still watch it on TV when there is nothing else, but I think I've mainly become a fan of major junior hockey. Even last year when the NHL had a pulse I preferred junior.

The OHL, and soon the QMJHL will be my main hockey viewing. It's bizarre, but their safety-first mantra even means that during the play if a skater loses his helmet and can't immediately put it back on he has to get to his bench or he will take a penalty. I've seen teams lose odd-man rushes because of this, but not very often. There are still fights, so it's not a squeaky clean league or anything, but overall I just like watching potential stars of tomorrow playing a good level of hockey. And the crappy players in the league will end up in the AHL and other lower pro leagues one day where they can goon each other to their heart's content.

I mean, I love a good fight and the goalie clip linked above is pretty funny, but all around I prefer those junior leagues now I guess. I was at a junior game last year where there were nine fights in the game, so I'm not really on a high horse here.

Overly optimistic [ Thursday, November 25, 2004 - 2:23 PM by Glen ]
It's too bad the trilogy fell apart after the first movie or I might consider this. I mean, I watched the Matrix Reloaded a second time at home on DVD and it might have been the most boring time spent viewing a movie that I can remember. Well, aside from Monica Belluci's cleavage. That was okay, but sadly this "ultimate" dvd collection doesn't have a disc devoted entirely to her.

I think it was more than just the story that caused the second and third installments to disapoint. For me, watching clearly digital animations of actors kind of kills the suspension of disbelief necessary.

Pictocryptic [ Friday, November 19, 2004 - 11:32 AM by Glen ]
That photo post the other day was meant to say I got a job finally. I'll be moving to the East coast in two and a half weeks to begin this little adventure in life. So after more than two years, about 300 jobs applied for, about 20 interview runs (most of which were heart-crushing), I made it.

I'll be working at the head office of a national grocery chain. In the second interview a few weeks ago I had to take a Programmer/Analyst aptitude test. Here is the home page for that test, if you're curious. It has a portion of a sample question but the sample really doesn't do this thing justice. That sample is the easier half of that problem, the other half of which was a big messy paragraph (sort of like this one) that went through all of the variations on shipping rates based on method, units, weight, etc. And that question was the only multiple choice one.

The entire two hour test was six problems long, about 25 sub-questions total, and halfway through I was zipping along well and beginning to really believe I was as smart as I thought I was. I got to the last problem with 10 extra minutes over what they have as guideline time allotments at the start of the test. I proceeded to read and try to comprehend the instructions for this last problem for 15-20 minutes. I simply did not get it. In fact, for quite a while I wanted to believe it was a trick question even though the instructions for the test clearly said that there were no trick questions. The problem had two parts, so with less than 20 minutes left I began to work on the second part of the question and within minutes I "got" it, worked furiously to fill in the answer for the first part as well, and finished with about a minute to spare.

I really liked this test because it did seem to tweak that area of the brain that does programming. I had the same feelings as I do with any coding problem. And with the time pressure I almost blew it and panicked, but I regained my composure and rallied to finish in time and correct, I thought.

After I got called for my references, because I'd done well on the test, I couldn't help but ask exactly how well I did. The HR professional paused, measured her words and said, "Well, you scored in the seventies, which is adequate for this position." That put me back in my place and quick. I had pictured a score in the high eighties or low nineties.

Anyhow, Chad, Pat, and Scott (DC Bush-lover) all guessed that I didn't just like cigars, champagne and ocean beaches. Scott even asked if living in Nova Scotia would almost make me a Newfie. That's pretty funny I thought (for Scott ;).

There's a ton to do here before I go, and an insanely unclear path ahead, but I'm pretty excited to finally be doing something again, and can't wait to be a loyal employee once more.

NatGeo [ Wednesday, November 17, 2004 - 4:27 PM by Glen ]
Just opened my final National Geographic, carefully unwrapping the brown paper covered in advertising as I've done so many times before, and almost peed my pants I was so excited. On this interactive page you only get a quick glimpse of the cover, but it's easily my favourite topic and the primary motivation for about a third of my story ideas.

Should be a good final read. As with a lot of things, I think I like the idea of reading National Geographic more than the actual act of it. The pictures are nice, the magazine has a nice weight, and it's filled with information that I truly want to read about, but I never seemed to find time to open too many of these and actually read. A sad fact is that I have no such problem with Entertainment Weekly and ravenously read it cover to cover.

Can you feel it? [ Tuesday, November 16, 2004 - 1:50 PM by Glen ]

haXed [ Saturday, November 13, 2004 - 12:07 PM by Glen ]
Check this out.

So Microsoft, probably one of the most pirated software makers in the world, unwittingly let an employee use hax0red software for their media player. Pretty funny :)

I wonder how often this happens with higher profile software like this. I know the last place I worked, use of pirated software was the norm until the company started ticking employees off and then worried they might get turned in to one of those piracy control places and fined, so they went out and licensed everything they felt we needed to do our jobs.

Remember [ Thursday, November 11, 2004 - 11:31 AM by Glen ]
This is easily the most consistently upsetting day of the year. It wasn't always that way. When I was in high school I didn't understand or didn't care about the so many Canadians and Allies who died fighting against a nation that tried to impose their will on and conquer other nations in the world through force.

Happiness is a warm gum [ Wednesday, November 10, 2004 - 3:05 PM by Glen ]
A few people have asked my wife why on Earth I was happy yesterday when I made that post a couple entries down. A fair question.

It was for three reasons:
1. Getting my first article published on the Carolina Hurricanes official site.
2. Then later that night a hockey team called needing a goalie on short notice. The team was from a high division and I warned them I'd never played a full game at that level but they were desperate, and I was anxious to see how I would do. The division is a good one and usually filled for the most part with former rep hockey players who are now bitter that they never fulfilled their dreams of playing pro, but large egos are still intact as well as a high level of skill. There's even the occasional former OHL player at that level, but in the game I played in there wasn't anyone quite that good. It was a good game and I played fairly well, and won, so I was happy about that as well.
3. The morning of that post I got a call and found out a job I want is in the checking references stage, the first time I've gotten that far in the process since getting laid off.

So there you have it. I'm sure I'll find something to be miserable about soon, but for the time being the sky isn't black at all times and the future doesn't look so grim.

Kids... [ Wednesday, November 10, 2004 - 11:14 AM by Glen ]
When I was a kid, I was basically a borderline devil. I have many stories to prove this but I'm keeping those for the memoirs when I'm famous. But here's one, just ‘cause I like you so much:

I grew up in Winnipeg, MB in a decent sized bungalow. The front hall foyer was quite large with an area wider than the double doors to take your shoes or boots off that would be covered in snow in the winter safely over vinyl flooring. Two carpeted steps up and the main area of the foyer was as large as a good sized bedroom, and from there the kitchen, stairs leading down to back door, living room, and hallway to the bedrooms all branched off. It was the heart of the house, in a way.

When I was about six or so my parents re-carpeted this large area with cushy blue (I think) carpet. I remember what I did clearly. I don’t know why I did it, but I remember the act itself. See, when I was a kid I was very early to rise. I still don’t understand how that works because as an adult, if I had absolutely no time obligations to anyone or anything I’d go to sleep between 5 and 6 AM and wake up at 3 or 4 PM. When I was in university I rarely saw daylight. Anyhow, being up around 6 AM when I was six my Dad and I would eat breakfast together and I’d see him off to work when he wasn’t on the road for business, and then I’d be left to entertain myself for the hour or so before my Mom woke up.

This new carpet smelt so good. The adhesive was intoxicating I suppose, and it might have actually controlled my thoughts that day. What smelt the same as carpet adhesive to my young nose? That’s easy: A black felt tipped market. And I knew just which kitchen drawer to find one in.

I’ve always loved creating plans. Plans for city streets for my Hot Wheels cars to drive around in with the theatres, grocery stores, houses all clearly constructed out of Lego or on paper.

I laid out a giant construction site that morning. I think I drew stick-figured men with their hard hats even. It took me a little while to complete but I was quite proud of my achievement. I had the frame work laid out for what would be the ultimate sky scraper once it was coloured in. It was around that time that my Mom appeared in the hall that led to the foyer and had, what was for her, a very unpleasant awakening. The marker was ripped out of my hand and I was sent to my room while she spent the next two or three hours on hands and knees finding out just how valuable scotch guarding was. I would meander out of my bedroom from time to time and peek at my creation being wiped away (with much effort and cursing, possibly even tears). One of the critical ways someone becomes a devil child is by not experiencing remorse. I don’t think I felt bad at the time at all except that I was grounded and maybe TV privileges removed, but I honestly didn’t understand that I had done anything wrong. What did it matter if my awesome skyscraper plans blanketed most of the new patch of carpet?

One of the reasons I feared having my own child was that this destructive and unmerciful gene would be passed on.

I often try to eek out a little extra sleep-in time in the morning after I’ve got my son all setup with his favourite kids’ shows which happen to be on a government supported channel that shows all good stuff. This morning he woke me up with a big smile and his hands joined together behind his back.

“Daddy, want to see my sense project?”

“Your sense project?”

“Nooo, my science project.”

His smile was so large and he looked so proud that I couldn’t say no. We went downstairs together and I first saw the hundreds of little shreds of Kleenex he’d spread over the family room floor, and then the glass of milk he’d apparently dumped on the table he eats at, which was soaking into his books and covering many of his toys.

I was steamed. “What are you doing!?”

“It’s my science project, see?”

He took another Kleenex, squeezed it into his milk cup and somehow even more milk overflowed out of the cup and over the table before dripping onto the carpet.

A little later on he admitted that the goal of his "science project" was to make a big mess. He's a success!

I grumbled and growled while I cleaned it up with the help of our dogs, but it wasn’t until I was done that I remembered that this was still nothing compared to the stunts I pulled. However, he's only three...

Later in the morning he came back upstairs while I was working on the computer and he held a toy hammer high above his head like a warrior.

"Where's that black spider gone?"

"Huh?"

"I was getting that big black spider cause it's bad. And when I hit it with my hammer it goes, woowooowoo (whining sound)."

I laughed. "I don't know."

Then I remembered that our black dog, an eleven year old lab/greyhound cross, had just come up and slunk into our bedroom. "Do you mean Sam is the spider?"

"Yeah! Where is he?"

"Uhh..."

He flashed a smile and ran into our bedroom (I suspect he already knew where to find the poor thing), and a few seconds later I heard the whimpers of an old dog that just wants to sleep and who has a very low pain tolerance threshold.

Dr. Phil, how do I turn my kid away from the path of destruction he is sure to wreak and into a pleasant child without the use of alcohol or drugs?

What's This? [ Tuesday, November 9, 2004 - 12:35 PM by Glen ]
What's this feeling I'm experiencing. So foreign...haven't felt this way in...years. Instead of a crushing weight on my shoulders I feel like something is lifting me up, almost off the ground. Is it? No, couldn't be. Could it? Am I -- happy?

Shocking!

Hurricanes [ Monday, November 8, 2004 - 3:39 PM by Glen ]
There might be a lockout on in the NHL, but the world of hockey prospects never stops. I was approached about doing some occasional articles for the Carolina Hurricanes official site a little while back, and the first of those was posted today.

Bats to be archived [ Thursday, November 4, 2004 - 12:37 PM by Glen ]
Scroll all the way down on this page to the very bottom and you'll see my favorite web post in the two or three years I've been doing this. Burrowing Bats. It's soon to be archived, but you can still get at those with the link button at bottom, though they come up on a white background which I'm too lazy to fix.

And more tooting of my own horn, want to know my favorite bit of writing outside of the news page? That would have to be this, or this (the applet viewing of that story is bugged I just noticed. Used to work fine, so I'll try to look into it. Just click the toggle background a few times and flip pages back and forth and it eventually comes up with the appropriate black background).

Both written in a short amount of time while in the actual setting. Though, for Ikea I just made notes on my little Ikea order form with those tiny pencils. I often see things that strike me as funny or interesting to write about but by the time I get home and make notes a lot of the vitality is lost. So that little experiment proved to me that I shouldn't be afraid to appear as a weirdo-crackpot walking around in the real world staring at people and furiously scribbling notes. I could develop a shuddering nervous twitch to make the package complete.

... [ Wednesday, November 3, 2004 - 9:01 PM by Glen ]
It's been a bad day for a lot of reasons (the least of which is the US election results believe it or not). It started out as a pretty good day for me personally, but that was tempered severely by upsetting news about a friend.

Anyhow, then I read in a forum about Sergei Zholtok, ex-NHL player who died on the ice from a heart attack at 31. You can read a little bit more about it here. If I remember correctly he even missed a few weeks at the start of last season because of weakness related to an irregular heart beat, and I didn't think much of it at the time except how it related to his value as a fantasy keeper league player in my pool. I have some issues with an irregular heart beat and earlier this year I wore a monitor for a few days. I was declared to be fine for now, but I'm 32, I play hockey (at least I try), and there is a family history of heart disease. It's selfish, but reading about Zholtok really frightens me, or any story where an athelete at my age or younger and in far better physical condition dies suddenly while active for those reasons.

Anyhow, I'm off to play hockey...

Rock the Bloat (or shake the Swift Boat...or something) [ Monday, November 1, 2004 - 5:32 PM by Glen ]
Nav posted this link at MOTM.

Go ahead and cast your vote so we can see who would win tomorrow's US election if the world had a say. The fact that you get to choose your country from a pull-down makes it seem vulnerable to a lot of fraudulent votes, but for interest sake it looks good. It's pretty obvious what the world thinks of GWB, and I suspected a huge amount of support for Kerry over Bush in Canada (at the time of my vote it was 79% in favour of that hockey playing war veteran).

Would you rather just look at the results? You can view them here.

The Snow Walker [ Sunday, October 31, 2004 - 6:19 AM by Glen ]
When I was in my teens I tried to read Never Cry Wolf, but failed to finish it. After watching The Snow Walker, a movie based on a Farley Mowat short story entitled Walk Well My Brother as well as elements from a few of his other stories, I'm definitely going to give it another try before renting the movie. Charles Martin Smith was the lead in that movie, and he directed Snow Walker. I'd say his most memorable role for me was in The Untouchables, where he was the little sort-of dweeby looking chracter from that film.

I really enjoyed The Snow Walker. I can't remember what got me to rent it originally, perhaps because Barry Pepper stars. Regardless, I'm not going to say too much about it except to recommend you rent it and give it a look. Lately I've been enjoying movies shot in great outdoor settings where the environment becomes another character in the film, as the Great White North is in this one. Parts of the movie were even shot in Churchill, Manitoba, one of the 5 or 6 places in the world that I have a strong craving to travel to, although I can't explain precisely why beyond the polar bear viewings. Alaska/Yukon, most of Europe, New Zealand, most of the Maritimes and British Columbia are the other places I really want to see, in case you're curious.

Anyhow, if you do rent The Snow Walker, make sure you watch the making of featurette. It features footage of Smith and Mowat talking casually about things, as well as behind the scenes stuff that enhanced my enjoyment of the film. I give The Snow Walker an 8.5/10, but it really spoke to me. I've had this strange need for adventure in my life creeping in more and more. Unemployed with a wife and kid isn't a situation conducive to the type of adventure I have in mind, so the next best thing is watching movies like this one.

I nominated Mowat for Greatest Canadian three or four months ago and find it hard to swallow he isn't even in the top 10 while Cherry, who I don't dislike in the least but can't see as great, is.

Update: If you like more details in your reviews, here is a decent one for The Snow Walker.

Ashlee Milli Vanilli [ Friday, October 29, 2004 - 4:57 PM by Glen ]
Tee hee.

Rickety bridge [ Friday, October 29, 2004 - 12:20 PM by Glen ]
I have a friend near DC who supports GWB as any proud Republican would. Unfortunately, discussing this topic with him makes my blood boil for a variety of reasons including I am powerless to affect the farce next week, so I can't even talk to the guy until the election is over and an acceptable gloating period is complete for him.

I say in all seriousness that the most troubling thing in the world for me is another four years of Bush-led America. Until and if their relationship with Britain falters there is nothing to be done anyhow. Evidence of a still strong relationship is that it was the UK leading the EU that gave Iran the last warning to cease production of enriched uranium.

Oh, and when the war begins live 24/7 on CNN, remember articles such as this. Kind of reminds me of this.

By request [ Tuesday, October 26, 2004 - 11:15 AM by Glen ]
My friend asked me why I hadn't mentioned him here. I thought I had, but I just checked and couldn't find it. For the sake of anonymity, let's call this friend Tadd Bitchamura.

Hey Tadd, I hate you with every ounce of energy that I don't have assigned to planning your untimely end (I'm thinking a spiky pit with rusty blades and lots of lemon juice).

!inSync [ Monday, October 25, 2004 - 2:20 AM by Glen ]
I watched my first new Saturday Night Live broadcast in about four years last night, and it was worth it! The Jude Law skits were okay, I suppose. The female weekend update duo was decent too (with an embarrassing and awkward to watch segment with the ghost of Babe Ruth thrown in), but it was the second song of Ashlee Simpson’s set with about 15 minutes left in the show that I really enjoyed. I happened to look away from my computer monitor to see it happen at just the right time.

The music started and you heard her voice clearly. She lifted the microphone to her mouth and her voice was the same clarity, then she looked confused and lowered her mic and her voice continued spouting lyrics at the same volume. It was clearly, clearly obvious that she was going to lip sync that song and might have done so for the earlier one as well. She danced around rather strange, smiled at some of the band mates and looked incredibly embarrassed. Not upset with them or anything, but embarrassed. The band kept playing the song they were supposed to and when Simpson slinked off the stage quickly they smiled at each other while sounding pretty good playing the song. The smile, to me, really looked like they knew that she had been caught. She was the fake, not them, and they didn't look like they felt all that bad for her. Then I read this and her lame excuse at the end of the show made even less sense. And the band probably felt even better about what happened when she tried to blame them for all this. This was such a beautiful moment, for someone to get "caught" like this. I'd almost wanted to believe the excuse she gave at the very end of the show, that it was the fault of her band playing the wrong song, but that could not have been true as they were correctly playing a different song and the vocal dubbing was still set on the previous song that she’d already. I had always thought that all musical performances on SNL were live, which was the main reason I was surprised. I mean, even Vanilla Ice sounded like crap when he performed on the show during his 15 minutes.

Simpson did absolutely nothing to remove the new William Shatner CD from the top of my next to buy list ;)

Update: I found a clip of this Simpson mishap and her explanation, and here's William Shatner interpreting Rocket Man.

Bush Bites [ Saturday, October 23, 2004 - 12:10 AM by Glen ]
I've been watching the ongoing US election race with guarded – pessimism, really. I never imagined it could be this close a race. And with it this close I can see GWB and his posse getting in for another four years when it’s all over. I just don't understand how it can even be a close call. That Americans (or those being queried in these advance polls) could give him that after what he's done the last four years, but as everyone knows you can overlook the flaws in the party you align yourself with, and the one thing that the GWB actions after 9/11 did was make me realize I'm definitely playing left wing. A liberal who grew up in a conservative household where being called bleeding heart was very disconcerting. I'm not saying Kerry is a much better choice than GWB, but it's crazy that the current President could get re-elected after all that's been done and all of the so incredibly obvious lies and manipulation of the US people he has used. But on the other hand, as I’ll get to in a minute, he ended up working backwards in a way that made his lies and manipulation a real possibility.

And now it's a close race and he's again pulling out his common reprise throughout this race: That Kerry won't be able to protect Americans. It's appalling to me that he even has the balls to say this. I mean, who the hell shook all the hornets’ nests the world over the last four years? Then they constantly reminded the American people they were in danger because of those same hornets (overly simplistic, I admit). The GWB admin created a situation where I would unfortunately GUARANTEE there will be another horrible terrorist strike on US soil. It will happen eventually (Hence my acceptance that his fear mongering through most of his term is now justified, after he and his administration’s actions escalated the problem). And it has a lot to do with past and current overseas policies by the US and, if anything, GWB made it worse than ever. The extreme cynic in me believes that this is an overall strategy to ensure that even if they don't get re-elected, in four years and after a few more attacks overseas against US citizens, and maybe one or two on US soil, they will say, "See, you need us to protect you, we told you so." And then they'll get in again sooner than what is good for the entire world. And if anyone is thinking it’s none of this Canadian’s business who gets elected, I say that everyone in the world is involved when the foreign policies of the US endanger lives abroad and those within and close to its borders, and I live close enough to its border that smelling Buffalo is no difficult feat. Or, come to think of it, maybe that’s Hamilton. And yes, I know Sadaam was/is a bad man who brutalized his people, I’m not disputing that fact, but I’m also not giving GWB credit when this was the plan before he even took office, and 9/11 was clearly used as the excuse to go in.

For the first time in my life I wish I was American for a reason other than being able to have TiVo and getting reasonable shipping rates on porn (Alright, I don't really buy porn from the US, silly-head). I so wish I could vote in one of those rural states where they love GWB and his get-richer-at-others-expense administration, not that it would do much good in those states anyhow. To the two Americans who might accidentally stumble upon this post before the election: If either of you like Kerry but weren't planning to vote, please go out and do it. Pretty please?

The entire thing is so depressing, because the sad fact is Kerry won’t be that much better, and then the same people behind GWB will probably be around for the next spin of the wheel. Ugh.

And finally, I thought I read that Rumsfeld had taken the blame for setting the tone that led to the Iraqi prison abuses. He got the public slap on the wrist, I remember. And yet, it’s the underlings going to prison for it while he vacations in the Hamptons, or wherever. Fine, they did wrong and should be punished, but shouldn’t something tangible be done to Rummy as well?

Skate [ Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - 12:18 PM by Glen ]
Lately I've seen the job market picking up noticeably. It was actually about four months ago it was said to have turned around, but it's been only the last two months that the increase in opportunities have begun to trickle down to me. The unfortunate thing is if the market had picked up a year ago my resume would be in a lot better shape. Being a man in an interview, explaining that part of what you have spent your time on is raising your kid is not something that helps whatsoever. We don't have a choice though, as I've said before the daycare option combined with me working some crap job doesn't make financial sense for us, although I think I've found an odd-hours part-time job that might help out.

Anyhow, with the shift in the market I am hopeful for the first time that I will be employed in IT again soon. And that will mean a complete shift in priorities and time available to spend with my son, so at my back's peril I took him skating yesterday afternoon. It was our first time on the ice together since his lessons ended back in April. When we were about to step out on the ice we heard some staff saying an old guy had taken a spill in the public skate. We got out on the ice and I saw a group of people standing at a team bench with an old man lying down on his side. We began to skate and practice to help my son regain some of his balance on ice and then the EMS got there and he began to ask what was going on. They were there for about fifteen minutes and then my son took a spill of his own, though his helmet protected him. We sat on the bench to see if he would be willing to continue or not when the stretcher got wheeled in to right in front of us. The questions began from my son and he saw as the elderly man was loaded onto the stretcher, the only visible issue a small cut on the bridge of his nose, but he looked really shaken up. Then we saw the man's helmet in a staff member's hand. It was about 30 years old at least, the white plastic of the helmet betrayed by fading yellow, and the top of it was pretty much shattered. A piece the size of a hockey puck was missing and shards of plastic filled the helmet. "Good thing he was wearing this," the staff member said. Then my son had more questions. Then we watched the EMS crew wheel the man out with concerned arena staff wondering if they should make notes to prepare for a pending law suit. They'd even slapped a complimentary Ice Sports hat on the guy.

Surprisingly, after all that, my son did want to skate again and we both had a great time, but he kept stopping to ask questions about the man, and I tried to explain that he wouldn't get hurt that badly if he fell, but he wasn't buying it. By the end of it I had to promise not to let him fall and my back was pulsating with hot and sharp spasms from the strain of his weight. It was still fun though.

Out in the parking lot another old guy who had come out from playing hockey with other seniors asked my son if he had a good time. No answer came, just a shy smile. I said, "Well, I had a good time." The man smiled and said, "You know, that's really the most important part. Winning and losing doesn't matter." I thought about how I treat games lately and how winning has become almost everything, and said so. He said, "Yeah, I was like that too once, but as you get older you realize winning isn't all that important. Just walking to the car after a game means you had a good day." And I thought about the other old guy that had been carted away by the EMS and nodded my agreement. Although, I don't think my desire to win will be reduced anytime soon.

Fitz [ Thursday, October 14, 2004 - 1:33 PM by Glen ]

I seem to have a growing interest in nautical tales, both fact and fiction. I started Heart of Darkness a month or so ago but after reading the same paragraph about 30 times I decided to take a break with another book.

The one I chose was Fitzgerald’s Storm. It’s about the Great Lakes freighter that went down on Lake Superior in 1975 in a near hurricane-like storm so far up north, and 29 men went down with her in the freezing waters (Fact: Superior is the largest fresh water lake in the world). It was an interesting read and my formal introduction to the subject, but now I’m even more interested and hope to give other books a read if I can find them used, and maybe a documentary or two is called for as well.

The author of Fitzgerald’s Storm, Joseph MacInnis, is a man who has overseen expeditions to the Titanic and the Fitz, and he was, at times, a brilliant writer with the insights of someone who knows life on water fairly well. The descriptions were often quite good but sometimes they went overboard (inappropriate pun). Even at a length of just 130 pages I became aware that MacInnis was trying to stretch out his content more than it should have been, focusing a sizeable portion of the book on the people that have tried to make money from the disaster with pages devoted to dives that frankly could have been summarized in a couple of paragraphs. The ships sinking came early in the book and I found that I wanted more of the men on board and more about that night then all that came after, especially his obvious distaste for the two men who tried to make some money from the tragedy, but the material revolving around the families left behind was moving although scattered a little too much for my tastes. If you’re interested in reading about the disaster this isn’t a bad book, but I think two of the MacInnis’ major source materials, Gales of November and Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald would make a better start, and I’ll be looking into them next.



Before I had started on Heart of Darkness I’d read M*A*S*H but forgot to mention it. I’ve found that the DVD release of the TV series has been pleasantly nostalgic to the extreme. Even better is that you can turn off the canned laughter and watch the show as it should have been aired originally. M*A*S*H is the primary series I grew up watching with my family early in life and seeing it again has been somehow comforting, and on what was the third try I even enjoyed the movie, so I gave the book that started it all a try. Though almost every page had made it into the movie or TV series in some form it was still a nice read for those that love the characters and their conflict. There are a number of differences between the book and TV series, although the movie was much closer to what was in the book including Major Burns' minor role.

I still don’t read as much as I should, but it helps motivate me when I write about them here afterwards. I hope they’re not too tiresome for you to avoid looking at ;)

X Factor [ Monday, October 4, 2004 - 1:31 PM by Glen ]
I've been reading about this from time to time over the last four or five years and when I read this today I was really happy. A few of my sci-fi stories are based on commercial space travel happening and I really hope that this is the first significant step towards that. All hail Peter Diamandis (guy who put up the $). I just saw on the TV news that they hope within three or four years this might be a viable option for tourism. I know if I was rich and it was safe I'd do it in a second.

The only time I feel like I might be a bad parent who warps his kid is when I see the salaries of professional athletes or when I think about space exploration. If he goes into either of those areas I would be beyond happy. Although I'd prefer the latter, the short-term-thinking, unemployed-luckless-sycophant in me wouldn't mind him becoming insanely wealthy.

Prepare them well [ Tuesday, September 28, 2004 - 12:00 PM by Glen ]
One of the unsaid, yet critical jobs of a father is to ready his son for the complicated social obligations and etiquette that he will need later in life. For example, preparing him for when, if he reaches university, he lives in a dorm, is a member of a frat, plays on a sports team, he is ready to interact and become a full-fledged member of the group or team he wants to hang with.

The other day I came in from doing some yard work and my son promptly greeted me with a loud fart that appeared accidental. Farts are still the joke that’s funny at any age, at least for guys, so with mock indignation I said, "You farted!" We laughed again and he said, "Oh, that was okay, Daddy. But when you were outside I farted and it sounded like a monster snoring!" And we laughed some more.

I believe I’ve now suitably prepared him for what lies ahead, and in less than four years even. I have no idea what to cover next.

We got 'em all [ Wednesday, September 15, 2004 - 10:53 AM by Glen ]
As one drunken fan said at the urinal nearby after the game last night, "The world is as it should be."

Canada is now the Olympic, World Cup, and World Champs all at the same time in hockey. In the late 90's all we ever heard about was how hockey dominance was slipping here, and when the US beat us out in the '96 World Cup there seemed to be undeniable proof. But like the fan last night, I don't have what I would call a celebratory or exuberant feeling today. More like, relief.

I do wish the US had beaten Finland in the semis as that would have made a really tough and exciting game and would have satisfied any NHL fan who will have to wait about a year for the NHL to resume, after the lockout of the players is instituted today. If they don't have an agreement by January, pinhead Bettman has said that NHL players will not be permitted to play in the 2006 Olympics either. Oh well.

Last night was awesome. Once the game was over I lined up for an over-priced hat that stated that Canada was indeed the 2004 World Cup Champion, then headed out onto Front Street to join, or at least skirt along the edges of, the party. Never in my life did it seem a good idea to climb onto one of those big tour busses and jump up and down wildly to incite the crowd; a crowd secretly waiting for you to fall so they could capture digital snapshots of your injuries. There was a lot of that, and milling about the streets with stopped commuters trying to maintain their smiles, and after a few singings of the anthem I returned home.

See, I have a long drive back up to semi-Northern Ontario today. Ten or eleven months ago I decided to pursue something I've always wanted to do and purchased tickets to all of the World Cup games in Montreal and Toronto. The tickets for the Toronto games didn't arrive until a few months ago, but about five months ago we planned a family camping trip with my wife's parents, brother, and his girlfriend, and I was stupid enough not to check the dates of the World Cup games and the start of the camping trip. I knew it was close but didn't think it overlapped. It did. For both the semi-final and championship game I had to drive back to the GTA and, the next morning, drive back up to camping. It was the only compromise I could make that allowed me to still be a selfish hockey-loving bastard. It paid off in a way, but as I realized last night again and long ago when I first got married, great events in life aren't quite as worthwhile if I don't have my wife or a close friend along for the ride, so it's been a bit anti-climatic. I'm still glad I did it though, and now I get to finish out the week making it up to the wife.

"Honey, hear that? Think that was that a bear?"

"Stop doing that."

“I swear I just saw a big shadow move through those trees…”

Oh, and... [ Wednesday, September 8, 2004 - 2:08 PM by Glen ]
The other shoe dropped, or whatever. I recently mentioned a couple other things going on that have concluded in the worst possible way:

- The cat had to be put to sleep because her lungs were full of fluid and she was struggling breathing. For any of you looking to lose weight, filling your lungs with fluid seems a lock to achieve this. Only side effect is it might kill you.

- The job I had hoped to get, really wanted to get, didn't work out. It came down to me and one other candidate and apparently I was narrowly beat out, and one of the factors was likely how far away I currently live from this company. I also didn't do my best in the second interview, which is undoubtedly the rest of the reason. In the first interview I was given an aptitude test with 40 questions and I got 37 correct. The test covers logic, math, philosophy and other general knowledge. Maybe it's a sign, but two of the three questions I got wrong had to do with writing. Sigh.

Not From Montreal [ Wednesday, September 8, 2004 - 12:25 AM by Glen ]

Air Canada Centre - September 4, 2004

The unhappiest American player began his life as a Canadian [ Sunday, September 5, 2004 - 6:20 PM by Glen ]
Maybe he wishes he had stayed with just red now. I can't say I feel bad for him, but it is a bit of a shame if it ends this way.

I have a lot to say about the World Cup and other things going on right now but I have to be going. Hoping to see the North American premier of the 1st overall pick in the 2004 draft tonight.

Everything at once [ Monday, August 30, 2004 - 2:24 AM by Glen ]
Something I've always wanted to do is to start in a few days. I'm going to end up seeing every World Cup of Hockey game in Montreal and Toronto. Can't wait. I had wanted to go to Salt Lake City for the Olympics but when I looked into ticket prices, this would be about three years ago now, it was nuts. To get into hockey games there you had to buy a ton of other tickets for other events and it made it far too expensive with hotel and flight added on. So I can settle for World Cup, especially with the NHL season not being very likely to happen.

But, at the same time, today we found out or longest serving pet is in trouble. The cat is frankly one of the most miserable animals I've ever known, but after a few years of being bit and growled at by it we came to an understanding: I would pet her when and where she wanted, and she wouldn't bite me. Truth is, she was actually the perfect pet for me, only needing a small amount of attention each day to be happy, food, and water. We always worried she would end up biting our son but somehow it's been avoided, even with our son testing her limits by taunting her at every turn as toddlers and small children tend to do to pets. I was way more upset about this cat today when I left it at the vet over night for observation than I ever would have thought possible. We phone the vet tomorrow morning to find out the results of some key tests which will determine if she has a hope in hell. It sucks.

And finally, I've got an important job interview tomorrow morning and really, I need to be asleep about an hour ago, so that's where I'm headed in a minute.

The stress from leaving for a trip the same morning you find out if your cat is going to die, right after which you go into an interview that, if you do well, could end up improving your quality of life immensely is a little much to cope with at the moment.

Oh, and... [ Wednesday, August 25, 2004 - 1:15 PM by Glen ]
Please don't tell me any Americans out there in internet land believe anything Bush says anymore (or, any politician, I suppose):

Ginsberg's acknowledgment Tuesday evening that he was providing legal advice to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth marked the second time in days that a person associated with the Bush-Cheney campaign had been connected to the group, which Kerry accuses of being a front for the Republican incumbent's re-election effort.

The Bush campaign and the veterans' group have said repeatedly that there is no coordination.

And Bush yesterday made a plea for the ad campaign to stop, as if he doesn't have all involved on speed dial.

It's the way they do it, I think, that makes it hard to watch and fathom from the outside. They treat the American people like complete morons on Iraq and now this silliness. Hopefully the US citizens show GWB what's what this election.

Bill Clinton was on the Daily Show last week and it was really entertaining/interesting. When he said that he never hated those that attacked him (viciously at times) at all, and he never had the venom that they had I was really impressed because I believed him. He summed the Republicans up as just having a different view of the world, which makes them do different things to achieve their goals. Meaning that it includes the type of dirty politics we have seen lately and so often before as well as the financial goals that spurred the Iraq invasion.

It's too bad 'Ole Bill can't have another term and a staff of interns comprised entirely of Playmates.

What have I become? [ Wednesday, August 25, 2004 - 12:18 PM by Glen ]
I went grocery shopping this morning for much needed supplies. Lately I focus as much on what I need as what's on sale and because of this I've learned to not go shopping while hungry. I came home from a recent trip to the store with five bags of Oreo cookies recently (this trans fat boycotting makes for nice sales on crap!) and five boxes of Aeroroot cookies.

And so this morning when I saw that something I needed (peanut butter) was on sale for half off, and nearby a cooler hummed with its bounty of 1 litre cartons of chocolate milk on sale for 60% off, I heard myself utter an enthused, "sweet."

Groceries on sale have become a source of happiness.

I stood there for a few seconds digesting this. It was truly a mirror on what I've become. I was tempted to have a little rampage then; knocking over every display in the store, steamrolling the Olympic display of cases of pop, plopping a steak on my head, taking off my shirt and rubbing fish guts over my torso, and sticking a pretzel stick in each year while running laps around the store and screaming at customers.

I didn't do any of that. Resigned to my fate I was next happy to see that assorted rice snacks were three for $4, Gatorade was four for $5, Pringles were...

kill me

Who, Me? [ Friday, August 13, 2004 - 12:51 PM by Glen ]
I love the headline and accompanying picture in this article. That's exactly the face he gave the various meter maids and the same look he'll give a judge.

"What are you talking about? It wasn’t me!"

But I'm tryin', Ringo. [ Wednesday, August 11, 2004 - 11:21 AM by Glen ]
I finished the first draft for a novella I've been working on for the last little while. It began with an exercise taken from a magazine or something with the goal of trying to create a good hook to start a story. What I came up with wasn't the greatest but it gave me an idea and, 22,000 words later, I have a draft of what I hope will be as good as I think it is.

I like the story (untitled, currently) a little more than anything else I've done, but...but...but I haven't yet begun proofreading. That is inevitably a depressing stage to work through for me, which is why the novel editing eventually stalled. If it doesn't work it doesn't work and I want to abandon it. Although, I suppose if I really focussed and approached things from a different angle I could improve a clunky draft, it's just really hard to do when you can move on to a new project that interests you (I have no fewer than five ideas I'd like to begin working on ASAP). But I’m uncharacteristically optimistic about this novella, proofreading be damned!

Eye Two [ Friday, August 6, 2004 - 11:37 AM by Glen ]
Loyal reader, you might remember back in March when I mentioned that a scar of some sort had been found on my right retina. You don't remember? Well here's that post. I hadn't noticed the problem in day-to-day life, but hearing that I have a "scar" in my eye wasn't reassuring. Well, apparently eye specialists (why can I never remember the actual name of eye doctors?) are very busy, as my appointment that was scheduled back on March 31st didn't take place until this morning. And as if to emphasize how over-extended they are I had to wait about an hour to see the Doc.

I had an 8:15 appointment and I should have known there was trouble when I noticed the excellent magazine rack and numerous seating options in the waiting room. But it was 8-friggin'-15, I had to be one of the first appointments of the day, right? Wrong. To make matters worse, the doctor I had the appointment with was on vacation. I think that meant the other doctor was doing double appointments.

One of the tasks they gave me to divert attention from the long wait ahead was a new patient form. In it was the old occupation question that dogs me so. I first wrote "n/a" as I have done for the last little while. I stared at it for a few seconds and changed my mind. Recently there has been a shift in my self-view thanks in part to continued fiction writing (I'm almost done a new novella I quite like), and my work at Hockey's Future (here's my most recent article), so I crossed off "n/a" and wrote "writer" beside it. It felt good, but I always feel like somewhat of a fraud considering myself a writer, since I have yet to make any money doing it. In a sick sort of way I am envious of those people you have probably come across in your lifetime who self-promote the shit out of themselves. I've seen that if they do it long enough, everyone else begins believing they are fantastic as well. I've slid off track as usual and you probably have work to do, so back to my eye...

I finally get the drops that open the pupil, which renders the excellent collection of magazines useless as everything blurs and the lights become painfully bright. I wait another half an hour before getting in to see a medical student who the doctor is mentoring. A pleasant enough guy, he inspects the eye for about ten minutes with a bright light that produces tears of pain while he pokes his finger into my eye to raise the eyelid. I start wondering if he's an eye virgin. I start feeling like my first "real" girlfriend. I didn't know exactly where to put things but it all worked out in the end (you're hoping that wasn't a play on words).

He says he sees the hypo-pigmentation and that it's normal, he thinks. The doctor finally comes in and the student begins answering his questions in a manner reminiscent of that cough syrup commercial with the medical students. Then the pro goes to work and inspects both eyes in about two minutes with minimal amount of discomfort to me. He's been doing this a while. He says a bunch of jargon I couldn't hope to remember, but it boiled down to: I have a freckle on the retina, but it's not the typical freckle that is seen on the eye. It's nothing to worry about, he says. I ask him what he was talking about when he said I had, "...lattice (sp?), but no holes." That didn't sound good. He says that I have a thinning of the retina in the eye, but that I was born with it and it's no problem, unless...

Unless what?

Unless you suddenly see constant floaters in your eye because it's ruptured, probably from injury. He says it like it's really no big deal and unlikely to happen, and I believe him. Says they don't need to see me again until that happens.

I'm fine until I get to the car and realize he said, "until that happens." Interesting choice of words.

I'm going to wear a helmet at all times now like the mentally handicapped kids I used to volunteer with. I did that in Grade 7, one of the youngest volunteers they ever had. One of the biggest kids there towered above me. His name was Glenn and he wore a white hockey helmet, and he really like trying to hug me. Those really long and uncomfortable hugs you can't break out of because you're simply not strong enough. He might have tried to hump me if not for the other volunteers who kept an eye on him and never left us alone -- after the "incident" in the gym. But that's another story for another time.

I can’t proofread this right now. The eye drops are making the monitor refresh rate very noticeable I need to get away from this contraption.

Game Overload & Overpriced [ Friday, July 23, 2004 - 1:43 AM by Glen ]
I have always bought and played a lot of computer games, starting with my Commodore Vic 20 back in the day, followed by the much superior Commodore 64. I got my first modern-era computer before my last year of University, but even before that it was Sega Genesis, especially the EA Sports hockey titles, that were my vice.

Over time I’ve come to realize that maybe one in five of the games I’ve chosen are actually worth the money. Many are an outright ripoff. I have a friend that remedies this by often downloading a full game to try, and if he likes it and keeps playing it after a little while he buys a legitimate copy, even if it’s in the bargain bin by that time, and even if he doesn’t even plan to open the box and install the game from that copy. He says it’s a combination of guilt and a feeling of obligation to the people that worked on the game, though I’m sure the money that gets to the developers is a lot less and a smaller ratio when you’re talking about games in the bargain bin. Of course, he knows it’s wrong to take games like this ever, but it just seems to be a much more fair system to he as a consumer when he does it this way. The stacks of horrible game boxes in closets built this monster.

Anyhow, for my part I finally got tired of supporting EA Sports games year after year as they took away gameplay and features one year in favour of graphics, and then re-added some things in the following year. It always seemed like they were deliberately releasing a sub-par product so that next year’s version would still sell, and why wouldn’t they? It makes good business sense to exploit loyal customers when you can, to a point, as long as you make them think it gets better every year.

I bought the NHL and Madden games last year, mostly because of the franchise mode, but have shied away from even those titles on occasion in the last five years. The NHL game, including its crappy console port for the franchise mode (low resolution and awkward interface which could have been done much better for mouse and keyboarders), and once again it failed to hold my interest past one month. So I’ve been looking into competitors. Madden is still fantastic, in my opinion, but this year I’ve given a competing football product a try because of its publishers’ kick-ass market strategy.

ESPN 2k5 football game was dropped in price a few months ago by more than half the usual retail price (in Canada it went from an expected 69.99 price tag to 29.99), and now I find that the hockey and basketball titles will probably also drop. This is excellent news for sports game fans. A real attempt at competition with EA, and ESPN is the best candidate to do this from what I’ve heard. I know that last year’s hockey edition with Jeremy Roenick on the cover was different and maybe even slightly better than the EA Sports hockey in my opinion, so I don’t feel like it’s settling to go with ESPN. Now I can try my football and hockey games at the combined price of just one of the EA titles, a bonus for my tight budget of birthday funds that can be frittered away on this type of thing. It looks like Sega and Take-Two know they have a great sports series on their hands and they want to use this low-price approach to get into every console owner’s home. Gamers benefit from that in the short term with cheap games this year, and hopefully in the long term with a better effort and pricing from EA.

Last year EA dropped all of their PC sports games and a few of their other games to 19.99 Canadian after they’d been out for at least three months and I gave NBA Live and Rugby a try at that price. When you pay $20 for a game it’s really hard to feel ripped off as compared to $70.

Jason Hall, a senior VP with Warner Brothers games division, recently announced that royalty rates based on WB properties would be formed by an amalgamated review score such as those at gamerankings.com. That’s a nice idea and all, but what if the amount gamers paid for a title was based on the average compiled review score? Incidentally, I interviewed Jason Hall back in 2000 when he was CEO of Monolith and you can read it here if you’re curious.

As I said, sometimes it feels like the game developers and publishers have are the ones doing the theft, not software pirates. I read a good little article/self-promotion & marketing piece which talks about some of the things I’ve mentioned here, and also about piracy and publishers from a developer perspective.

I mentioned brand loyalty earlier. For me, loyalty doesn’t go with the title of a game and if it’s a sequel of a good series or not, but rather I base my first-day-available purchases of games on the past history of a game developer. id Software and Valve have both made some of my favourite games, although id of course has a big edge in track record, what with Valve’s constant delays for both Half-Life, then Team Fortress 2 (which ended up getting scrapped and becoming a port of the Quake code to Half-Life, which at least was made available for free), and now Half-Life 2. HL2 was already well delayed before the infamous network infiltration and code theft, but it’s impossible to ignore how good a game Half-Life was, and I still jump in and play Counter-Strike from time to time. That was money well spent.

But now, both Doom 3 and Half-Life 2 are to hit store shelves in the next 2-4 weeks, if Valve stays on target to go gold in a few more weeks. That’s going to put a big dent in the fun money budget, but there’s no way I can resist those titles, at least Doom 3. I mean, with the many thousands of hours I’ve had playing id software games, I kind of feel like I owe them more money anyhow.

I almost want to say it’s a good time to be an unemployed geek, but that’s never the case really. And with looking after the kid full-time I’ll be squeezing in play-time when the neighborhood is asleep and then spend red-eyed days looking after the boy, starting no later than 7 a.m. when he shakes me and says he’s hungry.

Fear and a tendency on the part of an individual or group toward excessive or irrational suspiciousness and distrustfulness of others [ Thursday, July 15, 2004 - 5:44 PM by Glen ]
I haven't signed my organ donor card that comes each time I get a reissued drivers license. It's not that I don't want to help someone if I should become a vegetable, it's that I have this unyielding feeling that as soon as it's signed I'll be in a horrible accident and become a vegetable.

Silly, I know. But if you believe something, how do you ignore it no matter how flimsy the reasoning?

Same goes with flu shots. As long as the government is pushing so hard for me to take those vaccinations I won't even consider it. There'll have to be a horrible and fatal epidemic of influenza hitting the world before I would think about it. I even saw a cartoon or movie that had a government controlling its population with flu shots, so I don't need evidence for that one ;)

Fright Night [ Tuesday, June 29, 2004 - 1:47 AM by Glen ]
My wife and I are pretty much pathetic scaredy cats when it comes to movies. I usually get just (or more) freaked out than her, but I cover for that by trying to add to her fear – I’m nice like that.

Tonight we watched Gothika. Last night we watched Identity (but I’d already seen it). Both nights she wanted me on the sofa so she could clutch my arm during the scary points in the films. Gothika had some plot holes you could drive our national debt through (topical rim shot), but we both still enjoyed it just fine after much squirming, and a few blood curdling girlish screams care of…ehem, it wasn’t me. (Well, then, I don’t care if you don’t believe me…)

As we left our rec room in the dark, practically joined at the hip, I told her how I almost always see the world. Basically, it’s like a movie with assorted camera positions and movements, but usually if darkness is involved it’s a horror/suspense film. I told her that as I shut the door the camera was at the back of the dark room, behind the sofa we had sat on for the last two hours, and just as the light from the hallway was closed off by the shutting door a deep, guttural, gurgling sound emanated from behind the sofa and something, most likely slimy and bumpy, rose up from behind the sofa and stared towards the door like a statue. A determined stare. An, I’m-going-to-see-what-colour-your-intestines-are stare.

I think she punched me in the gut and called me a jerk. I got a bit hazy for a moment when the air escaped rushed out of my lungs, so she might not have called me a jerk exactly. She doesn’t react well to my attempts to frighten her after more than a decade spent together. I told her that I wasn’t trying to scare her. I was merely opening the old noggin’ up and letting her in for a peak. We went upstairs and I think I tried again to freak her out. We faced each other in our living room and she wasn’t looking too impressed. One of our dogs stood about fifteen feet behind her, near the back door, hoping for a late night tinkle. It let out an almost identical sound to the one I’d made in the basement (the deep, guttural, gurgling one). I was staring blankly at the dog over her shoulder, so I didn’t think anything of it, but when my wife jumped and swung around in the air like some sort of closet ninja, her hands slapping across my shoulders and face, it took me a few seconds to realize what had happened from her perspective. Our dog and I could not have perfected a better scare had it been able to understand English perfectly and was able to remember anything more complicated than how to lick its bung hole.

Evil is fun!

Shout Outs [ Friday, June 18, 2004 - 1:35 PM by Glen ]
Just a few personal notes for those who might know these people.
My good friends Jeff & Susi had their baby this week! Little boy named Robbie. Anyone who knows Jeff eagerly anticipates what kind of whacky parenting techniques he will employ.

And today is the birthday of my former co-worker Bev. She's old now, too old to associate with until my bones begin creaking more next week (I'm forgetting now how old I will be, honest, bad sign).

Glen! [ Monday, June 14, 2004 - 1:46 AM by Glen ]
I just realized what I need to wipe away all the bad.

Check it out (recommend switching to medium quality which still doesn't require a login).

O.J. [ Saturday, June 12, 2004 - 3:01 PM by Glen ]
Want a trip down memory lane? It's the 10 year anniversary of the Nicole Brown/Ron Goldman murders and subsequent trial. ESPN has a great article recapping it and it contained some information I didn't know or remember about the case.

Coraline [ Saturday, May 29, 2004 - 3:53 PM by Glen ]

by Neil Gaiman

Jobless, Hopeless...Tactless? [ Tuesday, May 25, 2004 - 3:41 PM by Glen ]
I’ve been out of work a long time, too long. I’ve done some things to help out a friend with a small company and really enjoyed it, but it was infrastructure stuff and not programming. But that's it, really, besides reading books to try to keep somewhat up on things, messing around with code and servers from time to time, and so on.

I’ve applied for more jobs than I could have imagined when this all started in September, 2002. I would think it’s been at least 200. And I’m trying hard not to exaggerate that figure. Many of those I was qualified for, even with the increasing rust. I’ve followed up with any I had contacts for, and some I didn’t. I’ve sent polite thank you letters after I found out I didn’t get a job after an interview, and asked them to please keep me in mind in the future if a new role comes up. And then I’ve followed up with them again. I’ve used and exhausted every contact I have who ever offered to help. I’ve answered the question, “do you have a job yet?” more times than I cared too, many more (and more on that in a moment). I’ve looked up every tech company in the town I live in and applied, even if they had no job listings. I’ve applied to jobs all across Canada and the US, including faraway towns where I’d be away from my family for years with only weekend and holiday visits to get by on. I even had a job lined up in the States and if I could have secured the paperwork to work in the US I would have had it, but their HR person didn’t want to go through the hassle of sponsoring a Canadian. I’ve stressed my mother out with talk of how I don’t think there’s a hope in hell for me any longer. I’ve swallowed the last of my pride and essentially pleaded with my old boss for a job. Why wouldn’t I? Well, on the face of it he said at the time he was confident I’d find another job with ease, and that I was a good employee, and that the firing was strictly project based. Of course, I knew this guy for a few years and knew that he has two distinct personalities, the one everyone sees and believes, and the one who is only interested in helping his own family become wealthy and to make his own business last long term and will do anything to achieve that goal. He’d already had an opportunity to hire me back when they began re-staffing last year, but he didn’t want to. I asked again, for any work. It was hard for me to do. He told me to my face that he would have some work for me, even if it was contract based, but it wouldn’t be programming. It would be documentation work. I said fine by me, and meant it. I have an interest in entering the technical writing field. And then he avoided talking to me for a few months until I directly asked him about it again. He mumbled an answer about one of my former co-workers being left with that option in his hands, and that other employee was to have contacted me. I emailed the other employee in question and he let me know that there was no chance of it happening, as well as offering me some alternative career tips which I was appreciate of and am still contemplating. The old boss just didn’t want to have to say my face what he thought of me. His opinion is very unjustified, but what can I do? Good thing I have a wife and kid, or I might have an unhealthy negative fixation…

Here are the things I have not done to get a job: I have not spent money on courses to help me bolster my resume. I have not gotten my java certification in my free time and now that I am home with my son full-time; I regret that. I have not waited in the reception area of every good company I could think of, hoping for a chance to impress an HR person or an executive (as my father in law once gently suggested I do). I have not gone to my Dad’s old company, where he was well respected, and begged for a job. I have not gone to my brother and asked for help, but if the roles had been reversed I would have long ago offered help to him. I have not taken “any old job” just yet. The reason is simple, most pay $10 an hour, and most would mean I would have to put our son into daycare, which would end up costing almost as much as my net pay from a full-time job at that pay rate. Besides this reason, taking on a job I would have done in high school would be admitting that my Honors Bachelor of Science with just a .01 grade point shy of having distinction was a complete waste of time, and that the last five years of work were also a waste of time and that, frankly, I’m an idiot. I guess I have some pride left yet to squash. And finally, I have not yet begged any of those that read this site to think of me if your company is looking for a programmer, a business analyst, a junior technical writer, or any sort of lackey if it’s a good company with room for promotion. Saying I’m hungry to work hard and move up in a company would be a huge understatement. If anyone does know of something let me know with the email at the bottom and I can forward my resume.

Back to the question: Got a job yet?

My first instinct is to say, “How about I let you know when I do, so you don’t have to keep asking?” I understand it, and most of the time it’s a good natured question. If a friend has a cast and you see it you ask them how they broke the bone. But do you ask them every time you see it? Maybe. There are some people who judge me. Most don’t, but when they do it’s obvious. Little comments, the theme of which they repeat often. Some of them I have to see, for whatever reason, but those I don’t, I avoid now, or tolerate as best I can in small doses. Although, I’ve pulled back from everyone since 2002. Others say things that are just not smart, and I hope if I’m ever up again I will think more before uttering similar comments. Like, say, boasting about a great salary increase/or other great developments from people at the company I got fired from. That doesn’t feel too good. I’ve realized that most of people’s negative traits have to deal with their own problems of insecurity, though. Even people who seem successful still have as many or more problems than I do. Imagine that!

And some people are just not nice. They are constantly trying to drag others down to make themselves feel good. And when you’re out of work you get to take the brunt of their comments often. One of my friends has a partner who is like this. This person has a lot of great qualities, but they often make comments to me or about others that just gets my head shaking. But I like my friend too much to say more than making jokes about it to their face, to hint a little and hopefully help them look in a mirror. And I’m not without my evil (in fact, I have an abundance of it!). When this person recently made a comment about someone they knew who had been out of work for a few years, they said, “It’s not like after a few years she couldn’t find SOME job. She’s milking that situation.” Then they looked at me, and I already knew they thought the same of me based on previous comments, and the expression on their face was priceless. And then they looked uncomfortable and I felt good.

The person who did daycare for my son, she was a handful, and sort of falls into that category as well. She has to know everyone’s business, and I resist sharing information with anyone like that, especially when all they do is talk bad about people from behind their backs. So it was a constant battle that got tiring. If I was dressed up she’d ask if I had an interview, and she often brought up my job prospects and sometimes I told her flat out what they were, and then I’d have to listen to her wonder aloud how that could be.

This post started with a tell all of my bleak job outlook (and after almost two years, I feel justified calling it bleak), and has turned into a rant. But it’s good to get all that off my chest. Anyhow, hopefully there was enough info in there that anyone who knows me and reads the site has all questions answered on the topic.

I started this site years ago with the strict intention of not making it a personal blog, but that’s what it’s become, really. I just write whatever I want to write here and it tends to focus on these things. Most of what I said had nothing to do with anyone that I know of who reads the site, so hopefully I didn’t alienate anyone. I do try to avoid conflict, either joking about it, or in other ways. So some might find a revelation that might sound familiar to them a little surprising. I can’t say I’m sorry for saying it, but hopefully people can understand that this is about as direct as I’ll be.

And look, anyone who supports me in any way is appreciated. If you’ve ever done anything (e.g. asking around at work about positions) and I didn’t know you did it, I thank you. And a number of you tried to find me work, or sent me links to jobs to apply for, or whatever, and I thank you again.

Some made it sound like a fait accompli that I’d get work, if I only talked to this person or that. It never was, but I thank them just the same too. Early on I believed it would be a simple matter to get another job in the field. I recently talked to a headhunter who said that a month or two ago things began picking up after two of the worst years she’d ever seen. I can vouch for that!

I considered getting my Bachelor of Education last year so I could teach full-time, but for a few reasons (including the cost of that year of education and my not being sure it was really for me and not a desperation move), I decided not to proceed. I still might eventually, but I just don’t know about that one.

I’m still going to look for a job, but I’ve essentially given up, and will see if I can better focus on writing and see if I can make that pay somehow. The second draft of the novel is about half done but I have to expend way more energy on that than I have. Fear of fucking failure rules my days sometimes. And I’ve written about a dozen pretty good articles for Hockey’s Future since February. If I could get paid to write about sports I would be quite happy (and yes, I am beginning to work towards that goal as well).

I keep thinking about the choices I’ve made, and the lack of productivity I’ve exhibited since being let go. Wondering how things would have turned out if I’d done things differently. The choices I made back in university, job choices afterwards, etc. I know if I could get in with a company I’d be a valuable employee, but it seems like doors are closed to all save for those with all the latest buzz-technologies, or more years of experience than I have, or they have an absolute need for experience with a particular application server or whatever. Do I lie on my resume, as I mentioned above? I’ve not yet, but sometimes I wonder if I should. I can learn anything quickly enough.

A month before my Dad died, I was offered a job by a company that was trying to become a direct competitor of the one I worked with. Their primary tech employee was the guy I had worked with before his contract had ended. The owner of this future competitor said, “you’ll get paid much better than with (company name). You’ll work from home with complete freedom.” I thought the right thing to do was to bring that to the attention of my employers. They did pursue things legally and ended up settling with this other company for what would amount to about less than half my salary at the time. That settlement was for code they found that was the same as code they owned, that the contractor had written. This other employee had reused some of it, which they didn’t like of course. They probably wouldn’t have found this out if I hadn’t stepped forward. I had to go to a few meetings with lawyers but in the end I didn’t have to go on the record. I saw that former employee at the meetings and we had an uncomfortable hello. I certainly burnt that bridge. My company said they were very appreciative and they offered me a dinner out for myself and my wife, anywhere I liked. I chose the place where they’d had the company Christmas Party the year before. I’d missed that party because we were bringing my son home from the hospital on the same night. My wife and I had a great meal, and I appreciated it very much. My loyalty to my company had been rewarded, although I hadn’t done it for that reason. One of the last conversations I ever had with my Dad was asking him which restaurant I should pick for the meal, and he seconded my choice, as it was one of his favorite places as well. Then, as I’ve written about before, my Dad died, I was off work for a few weeks, and my job performance plummeted for at least 5 weeks, and when I came back to the land of the living my employer no longer wanted me working there. Over the next 3 or 4 months I noticed they kept having problems of where to place me and bounced me in and out of potential projects before placing me on one that didn’t make me feel too secure as it was a free upgrade for clients. I voiced this to the boss a month before I got fired, saying to him that I wondered what kind of support a project like that would get. I know now that he already knew I was gone, come the lay off day. He got a little agitated and said it was a very important project, etc. I forced him to lie, I realize now. I’d cost the company money over those two months after my Dad died. The boss changed his entire judgment of me from one of being a good employee to one who wasn’t, and was expendable. He’d personally given me a positive review a year earlier, but when my next yearly review came up there was no cost of living raise, even. I’d had a bad few months, but ten months of good work before that and I was back on track. I was surprised and asked for a meeting to explain why there was no cost of living raise, as my manager had recommended for me as well. He brought up a single example as the main reason and it was from a project a year and a half earlier, before that positive review he gave me. It was clear he didn’t want to have to say that he was firing me because I was a useless employee for a few months after my Dad died.

Anyhow, some advice for everyone out there in internet land: In general, gambling is bad for you. Online gambling is even worse. Don’t do it.

Now, in hindsight, would it have been wrong for me to take that other job, being careful not to let any of my original companies code seep into the new one's work? That’s something I think about often. I believe my career would still be moving forwards if I’d done that, even though it would have broken my contract with the company that ended up firing me seven months later. My Dad had been impressed with my decision at the time, and he had mostly supported that one as well, but he had said to investigate the other options first before deciding. I wish I’d been more open to that at the time. (By the way, I just realized I never posted my eulogy for him here, I think I’ll do that soon).

The hardest thing through all of this has been the shame I’ve felt, and how disappointed my wife, mom and others I care about feel. How ashamed I am of myself (and maybe I just project too much). And most of all, how disappointed my Dad would have been, and disappointing him was something that always seemed to hurt most. He still would have been as supportive as possible, but I know he would have been disappointed in some way. It’s so bad that I find it difficult to go to the cemetery, as I feel like such a loser. The day before he died my life was great in almost all ways, and of course I didn’t appreciate it at the time.

Anyhow, if you made it to here and read this all you are indeed a formidable opponent. I will attempt to bore you to death another day!

I did proof this monster once, but there might still be mistakes sprinkled throughout. I apologize. Or, we could make it a game. The person who finds the most clear-cut mistakes wins a DVD from my collection that I no longer want ;)

Gassed [ Wednesday, May 19, 2004 - 12:43 PM by Glen ]
I imagine most in North America have been affected by rising gas prices lately. At first I thought it was the old trick of the group in Canada who fix the prices to break away from the 60 cent per litre permanently. That’s what they always have done in the past. People become outraged at the jump, plan boycotts via e-mail and radio, and then the "movement" loses its legs when the price drops somewhat and settles in just above the next 10 cent increment. So the latest jump didn’t alarm me too much, it was just time to accept another pump in the rear.

This price jump has lasted longer than expected though. Today I was out and saw the price at close to 93 cents per litre. Almost exactly one month ago I bought for 65 cents. Ouch. I think I’ve been complaining about it aloud enough lately. When I got back from filling up with just 10 bucks, which will last me a few days if left only to the effects of evaporation, my 3 ½ year old son said, “Dad, did they hose us?” Yes son, we got hosed.

He asked why and I explained that most people like money a lot, and everyone needs at least some of it, and when people aren’t being watched they try to take more money than they should.

Because, let’s face it, somewhere along the line someone or ones are taking more than they should, even if it’s at the source. Ever since those photos of US soldiers making naked pyramids out of Iraqis the price has been on the rise. More on that further down.

Now, I usually see the grey lining in every silver cloud, but this time I see the bright side. At least it will help alternatively fuelled cars pick up more steam (I hope). I want one of those fancy ones that take hydrogen or something and then produce ice cold beer while you drive. Yeehaw! And I’m not cheap, but this hike has even made me conscious of where I drive and if certain drives are really needed. Better for everyone if we all use less fuel, I suppose. But (here comes the inevitable grey lining), if the demand decreases, the prices will supposedly drop a bit. And because our estimation of cheap gas is always increasing in its amount, we’ll start driving more again, and we’ll forget about future cars that burn your fat cells instead of gas. It's a (Sid) vicious cycle.

And finally, back to the Iraqi prisoners. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if everything the New Yorker prints is 100% true. In fact, I expect that it is, including this. So, if it is true, then this Circus of Distraction is even more shameful. Of course the guy taking the pictures plea bargained to cooperate. Anyone would smell the hunt for a scapegoat to save Rumsfeld and Bush further headaches. But hopefully it doesn’t work. Then they’ll give nice retirement packages to the generals. Again, once Rumsfeld reveals how evil he truly is and takes his hand out of GWB’s rectum, the Empire will be all the better for it.

Note: Those Yahoo News links will expire eventually, but I'll try to replace them with CNN ones, or the saved copy of the Yahoo stories.

Burrowing Bats [ Tuesday, May 11, 2004 - 11:13 AM by Glen ]
It’s a bit of cliché for a reason.

Before I was a parent the thought of changing a poop filled diaper was right up there with cleaning a drunken friend’s vomit out of the back seat of my car. But once our son was born and the good ‘ole #2 factory opened its doors I found it to be not nearly as disgusting as I thought it would. Though, I didn’t behave like I was tossing feces salad either. Instead, I was careful to avoid getting it on me if at all possible. But even when it did, it didn’t disgust me as much as it should have. Strange, what a parental bond can do.

Anyhow, we’ve had the boy trained from doing his business in his diaper for about 4 or 5 months now, maybe even longer, and I also don’t miss having to deal with it. I wanted to train him by yelling "Dirty!", ringing a bell, and putting him in a dark closet every time he let loose in the diaper but the wife talked me into more traditional training methods. A few days ago, though, I changed a pull-up for my son (he’d slipped up and peed in the last), and when I got the fresh one on he scrunched up his face and said that it hurt, and he pointed at his testicles. I pulled down the diaper and did a quick inspection. Everything looked fine and I didn’t see a rash as I’d expected. He still said it hurt, so I got some cream and spread it around “the area”. I was almost done when I felt…something. It was deep, if you know what I mean, and brittle feeling. I immediately imagined the worst, figuring it was left over from a bad wiping. It was a little shocking, to be back in that position to have to deal with the disgusting again.

The piece was flat, so I grabbed it between my finger and thumb, unable to see what I was doing. I felt a little like an airport customs official. I pulled on it and at first I couldn’t get it free, pulling very firmly a second time I freed it, bringing it out into the light. What I saw was, well, just look at the picture. That pointy purple bat sticker was in my son’s ass.

"How did that get in there?" I asked him.

He seemed completely unsurprised and proceeded to give me a very matter of fact account of how this happened. Something to do with him dropping the sticker down the back of his shirt earlier in the day, and that is how it must have gotten there after falling into his diaper.

I got all washed up and dressed him again and then realized that it had been an ideal time for me to use one of Chad’s ten most popular lines.

"Dad, where’s my purple bat sticker?"

"I don’t know, does your bum hurt?"

Missed opportunities…

Then, this morning, he sat down to watch some cartoons and a few minutes later he looked at me in some discomfort, "Daddy, my penis hurts."

I asked him if he had another sticker in there and we both laughed. I wondered what I would find in there this time. A Hot Wheels car, perhaps, or maybe it was a piece of Lego he’d thrown down there. Then I pulled back the front of his pull up, ready for anything.

Instead of a foreign object, I found that my son had his first full erection, or at least the first one I’d ever seen.

I told him he’d be fine and quickly snapped the pull-up back into position. Was it a morning erection - at three? Or are those cartoons more suggestive than I thought?

The Evil Empire [ Monday, May 3, 2004 - 5:55 PM by Glen ]
When are they going to realize that they are evil and just go with it? Stop apologizing for their behaviour, stop trying to hide that they are occupying a nation until they can fill it with a government that will be willing to sell them oil on the cheap, and allow them military bases long into the future?

And worst of all, when are they going to realize that you don't leave a paper trail of your human rights violations that can be discovered by a reputable magazine in your own country? I mean, just admit you're badass and that you don't care what the rest of the world thinks and go all out. Reiterate that countries are either with them or against them, and then take over the world. This half-assed shit of politically correct world domination is getting really annoying.

Bumbling maroons, they could use a lesson from the newly revealed Mastermind, formerly known as Foemat. Before that I just called him "a$$".

Write [ Tuesday, April 27, 2004 - 12:35 PM by Glen ]
I'm home most days with my son to save on daycare costs. It's been interesting, rewarding, and a constant strain on the balance between patience/frustration and trying to be a good Dad. Most of the time he is requesting that I do one thing or another with him. Actually, it's all the time. Without a sibling, I have to pretty much be the main entertainment outside of television brain draining (which can come in handy, I don't care what anyone says).

However, he just said something unexpected. He grabbed a bunch of his toys and went into his room. I asked him how he was doing and he looked at me and said, "Dad (he starts every sentence that way), I want you to write."

I stared at him for a few seconds. "You want me to write?"

"Yeah. Write."

I asked him if someone told him I wrote and he said no, he just thought of it himself. I've never talked to him about it before, always saying I'm just "working" when on the computer (and that includes email, and posting comments on other web sites to irritate people).

I've had a lot of signs lately that maybe writing is the only thing I have a hope in hell of being productive in, so I'm going to take his advice and get some done now (after procrastinating a bit to write this). First I'll have to ask clarification on what he said; did he want me to work on the short story I just started (only second one in many, many months), or continue to edit the novel? Maybe I've found a manager...

Hate [ Sunday, April 25, 2004 - 5:08 PM by Glen ]
I always try to be careful with important documents/pictures of mine. Backing them up in several places, even keeping a backup disc in fire box. Last August I made a bunch of notes on my old IPAQ 3650 Pocket PC when I was away from home. When I got back I didn't sync up the files with the usual PC because it was having problems and was unavailable (until I fixed it last month finally). In the meantime I forgot to keep recharging the IPAQ every few weeks. Well, one negative of not charging the battery is that if you leave it long enough (months), the battery becomes useless (can't hold a charge). The other negative, as I found out recently, is that when you do get power to the unit again, all of your files are gone, as if the unit was formatted for a clean start. This is because the IPAQ keeps all files like that in the RAM (random access memory, which blanks out when all power is lost), and not ROM (read only memory). Or something like that. Not happy right now. I'm trying to remember my notes but it's as useless as trying to restore IPAQ RAM memory. Nothing significant is recalled…so frustrating. Most of the notes I make for stories end up being unintelligible months later, or just silly, but some turn out to be gems. I had written some character sketches and vignettes for my next big project. Ah well, you'll have to wait for a fictional account on the lifecycle of a rebellious kernel of popcorn...

Wet, the Only Way to Saw [ Thursday, April 22, 2004 - 2:00 AM by Glen ]
I was never so dedicated as to post to this site daily like some people, but I had been making an effort to post something at least partially interesting each week.

I've been slipping on that modest goal lately. I think I need someone who will follow me around all day and when I come up with a potentially worthy post idea (about once a day), this person (preferably a bard-midget who poops hundred dollar bills) could jot down my ideas and quickly log into the site and type it all in for your enjoyment.

Short of that, I'll try to remember those things I come up with. Usually they are things that will make you laugh at me, either that or they'll inform/enlighten.

Right now all I can remember is one damned thing from the past two weeks:

When I used to see the occasional episode of Home Improvement I could appreciate some of the humour, but most of the core for the show was lost on me. I've never worked with tools, really, or done anything practical in my entire life. But recently I've grown to appreciate what a power tool can do for a man. I rented a wet saw yesterday to cut some stones for a stackable wall the wife has me making for her garden. I gotta’ tell you, when I was out on the driveway using that thing I felt I could have crushed my van with just my fists, and that the women on our street were trying so very hard to stay indoors, even resorting to handcuffing themselves to heavy furniture to avoid being drawn to the repeated whurrring of the hot, wet blade through thick, granite blocks. I was the model guy in the Diet Coke commercials, with the bonus of an extra hundred pounds of heart clogging fat.

When I was finished with the job I was almost sad to have to pack that saw back in the van and return it. I'm thinking that even though I might use it only twice more in my lifetime, it might make a great father's day gift this year.

And that's it...if I had that midget this wouldn’t have been such a waste of your time.

In League With the Devil [ Wednesday, April 7, 2004 - 9:44 AM by Glen ]
More reports that IKEA was founded by the Dark Lord himself. Oh, of course they deny it. What else are they to do?

Remember who told you about this first.

I recently received this email from a disgruntled minion:

Yay! [ Thursday, April 1, 2004 - 12:44 PM by Glen ]
After a year and a half of only sporadic work, I got a full time (day) job.

Whoot!

Update: Yes, har har, April Fool's. It felt good saying it, even if it wasn't true. I hate my life...

Eye Am [ Wednesday, March 31, 2004 - 4:42 PM by Glen ]
I went to the eye doctor yesterday for a check up. What're they called again? Orthopedogynocologist?

Anyhow, it was my first one in about ten years and amazingly my eyesight has deteriorated very little in that time. Seeing distance is not as great but reading was about the same. The doctor did uncover a potential problem, however.

He had some fancy new equipment he used after giving me eye drops that opened my pupils up like a college girl at a keg party. Inside he found a scar on the back of my right eye. And he didn't reassure me very much with statements like, "gee, that's quite large." I asked how you can get a scar inside your eye and he said it could be from any injury to the area or it could just be a birth mark.

But now he is sending me to a specialist to find out exactly what it is. I don't need a specialist to tell me it's a rare form of retinal cancer and that the eye will have to be taken out. I've already picked out my eye patch (or maybe this one). I'm now keenly aware of the constant throbbing from my scarred right eye.

Maybe medical students should have a chapter devoted to giving news to patients who always imagine the worst will be true.

Stung [ Monday, March 22, 2004 - 11:48 AM by Glen ]
Had a Sting filled weekend in Toronto. My wife and I had bought tickets to see him at Massey Hall on Saturday. But when tickets had gone on sale for a Friday show as well I purchased another pair and booked a nice hotel for the night, and called it a Christmas present. I think she was happy about it, since Sting is one of favourite performers. I wouldn't have gone if it wasn't for her, but each time I see him I enjoy it a little more (and not just the Police stuff).

Having seen both performances I have some observations I wish to share:

1. Many women in attendance seem to think they have a shot at being Mrs. Sting (including my own wife) and dress with that goal in mind, perhaps hoping for a chance encounter in a quiet hall with the man.

2. Sting uses the same jokes and comments leading into each song. The first night I thought it was spontaneous or at least not rehearsed...the second night I knew better.

3. Sting really seems to enjoy what he does, often smiling while performing. After considering album sales, the price of concert tickets, fan club membership, t-shirts and other memorabilia, I know why.

4. Massey Hall was built in 1894, when people were not quite as tall or robust. When sitting I had to alternate which leg would fall asleep next.

5. If you are sitting in your seat and the short guy behind you is clapping, he should maybe be aware that every ten seconds he is brushing your hair with his hands. Turning all the way around and waiting for eye contact to give a look of pure hatred apparently doesn't get the message across. Standing up and blocking his view is the next best thing to homicide.

What once was lost is lost again [ Thursday, March 11, 2004 - 11:52 PM by Glen ]
I'm going to have to disable comments, it looks like. Oh well. I need to do a lot of things, and fixing up this web site is getting mashed around with all of the other things in the should get done staging barrel.

And Pat, I have all the stuff archiving automatically, just had it set to every 6 months before. There is a view all news button at the bottom of this page that sorta works (it's ugly and some picture links are broken). I tried installing MT about a year ago but it no worka fa me! And my host didn't have any info to help me out. This comment thing was a third party add on for newspro, and I guess all of the pages of comments was beginning to make it flakey.

I thought it was all gone! [ Monday, March 8, 2004 - 12:31 PM by Glen ]
I even bothered my web host, thinking that they must have known what happened to make all my news files go to zero bytes in the middle of the night last week when I was asleep. I wasn't sure if the internet community could recover from such a loss.

I waited patiently until they told me there was nothing they could do, and then I submitted a new news item and, viola! It's all back. Saving and archiving all now.

Hindsight [ Monday, March 1, 2004 - 2:33 PM by Glen ]
Today I learned that you don't give juice that is bright orange to a kid that isn't feeling well.

New definition of colour your world.

Next [ Friday, February 27, 2004 - 12:59 PM by Glen ]
I have a lot less time than one would imagine. Instead of having to go to an office for eight hours a day I'm taking care of our son full time with only Fridays off. It's been interesting, and I have a hell of a lot of respect for stay at home Mom's now. I haven't started watching afternoon soaps yet to complete the picture but it can't be far off.

Anyhow, with a desire to still do something productive I started writing for a hockey web site that deals with future NHL prospects. Hockey's Future is a site I've checked often being someone in a fantasy keeper pool (meaning you have a roster and it carries over year to year to simulate a franchise) and when I saw the writers wanted message I applied.

My first article has been posted there. The reaction has been positive from the people that read the page, so I'm feeling pretty good. This is the second time I've been a (air quotes)sports writer(close air quotes). When I was a co-op student in high school I was a sports editor for a local paper and got to cover a ton of curling bonspiels and high school track meets!

Crazy [ Wednesday, February 18, 2004 - 2:21 PM by Glen ]
Check this article out.

The way things are going in the NHL this year, I can see fans wishing they could do this come playoffs.

Also, not everyone enjoyed Conan in Toronto last week (in fact, it was weaker than his regular shows in my opinion, and the audience was embarrassing most of the time), but this apology was for one of the few skits I enjoyed. But I'm an insensitive bastard.

Monster [ Thursday, February 12, 2004 - 11:20 AM by Glen ]
You'll probably hear a lot about this, if you haven't already, but I saw Monster last night and it's worth seeing if only for the amazing transformation and performance by Charlize Theron. I spent some of the movie wondering how it can be the same actress/hottie of past movies, but the rest of the time I forgot it was her. I don't know if I'd think so highly of this if it was an actress I'd never seen before, but of the Best Actress Nominees, I think Theron should definitely win. I still need to see three more, but this is one of the best I've ever seen. It would have been neat for the kid from New Zealand to win, and she did a great job too. But it doesn't really compare in the end...

The Outsider [ Monday, February 9, 2004 - 5:19 PM by Glen ]

The Mountain in My Mind [ Tuesday, February 3, 2004 - 3:40 PM by Glen ]

Swishy Pants [ Friday, January 30, 2004 - 2:23 PM by Glen ]
I've had a bizarre week. Bizarre, and maybe even a little entertaining to read about. I'd like to write up all that happened but it feels like it would take forever. So here's a lowlight reel:

Life of Pi [ Thursday, January 22, 2004 - 2:40 AM by Glen ]

Space, the Final Cold Beer [ Tuesday, January 20, 2004 - 3:11 AM by Glen ]
I knew there was a reason I felt a little uneasy.

Victim of Brutal Hate Crime, or Hockey Player? [ Wednesday, January 14, 2004 - 4:44 PM by Glen ]

MOOOOON BASE [ Wednesday, January 14, 2004 - 3:18 PM by Glen ]
"I will go down in history as the president that was open minded and brought space exploration to the forefront. God Bless me, and someone get me another drink."

Go Willow, Go Willow... [ Saturday, January 10, 2004 - 3:51 AM by Glen ]
GWB and the posse that has their finger up his anus for control and comfort had pretty much tired me out. I look forward to the coming election and, although not a religious man, pray that Americans do not reelect GWB, or that his brother Jeb doesn't have the power to give him more states than just Florida this time around.

I read about the extra-power given to the FBI last week (the link to that can be found below in the wilwheaton.net link I'm posting), and within days GWB said: "Guess what, everyone seems so goshed darned distracted by this Mars rover thing, we're going to build a station on the moon. A permanent station. A MOOOON BASE. You heard me right…yeehaw! And once we have the base we will populate it with a contingent of Marines and...well they'd be space marines then like in those movies. Someone make me a jacket that says Number One Space Marine. So anyway, our Marines will give us what is our right as a free and God loving people: A Moon! Then China, Brazil and their exploding rockets, and any other nation with a space program will have to find another moon to park on."

Okay...he didn't say that exactly. But he did what is typical of all administrations and used the old distract the masses technique. Meanwhile, when Bush was first elected, one of the first things that went was space funding -- so that he could spend more on military.

I really have wanted to see this next step into space, but somehow I just know that it’s going to end up being used for evil, or as a place where the administration takes mistresses.

Anyhow, I truly digress (maybe they didn't tire me out as much as I thought). Go over to wilwheaton.net and read this. Whether you hate or love GWB.

Spam n' Crash [ Thursday, January 8, 2004 - 6:41 PM by Glen ]
Spam sucks, and so I don't check the email address sprinkled accross this site. It gets filtered straight to trash and I'm going to disable it eventually. However, if you want to get in touch with me privately the best (and almost only) way is to click on the "e-mail me" link on the bottom of all pages on the web site, including this one.

That adds "site mail" to the subject line which is the only mail I save from trash. I found a few pieces of e-mail from friends this week while sifting through my giant deleted mail folder. So do that if you want to e-mail me or you'll think I'm avoiding you.

J to the R-O-C [ Monday, January 5, 2004 - 12:59 AM by Glen ]
Fate handed me another Canadian celebrity encounter today.

About two years ago I ran into Mike Vanderjagt, kicker for the Indianapolis Colts, at a Lick's Burger store near my home. Yesterday I went to Quizno's but decided at the counter to eat there, which I don't do often, and the table out of view from the rest of the place was taken so I had to take a seat facing the main entrance and dining area. Near the end of shovelling my sub down my throat I looked up and saw a blonde guy facing my way who looked a familiar. I realized he had probably looked my way because of the sub debris flying out of my mouth (I eat like a pig, I can’t lie). Once I'd cleaned myself up a bit I took another look and realized I was staring at J-Roc from Trailer Park Boys, aka Jonathan Torrens. He was dressed all respectable like, no jersey or nuthin'. He appeared to be waiting for someone and stood by the door, probably trying not to be too noticeable.

I thought about all of my other celebrity encounters and all of the stupid things I’d said in the past, so I decided to keep this one simple.

On my way out I approached him and he looked at me again. I said hello. I'm pretty certain he wasn't sure he didn’t know what the person he was meeting for lunch looked like. He returned the greeting and not nearly as coldly as that Eric Lindros bastard was back in '93. I said I was a big fan of Trailer Park Boys and his work. He said, "Thanks, appreciate 'dat." I'm not sure if he actually said: "dat". But it sounded like he slipped into J-Roc character a little. Up until that point I had still been wondering if it was just a look alike and I was making an ass of myself once again.

It was pretty cool, as far as these things go. Short and sweet and I didn't ask him to be my best friend and let me hang with him on the set (but once I made it to my car I wished I had).

If you don't know what Trailer Park Boys is, or you've only flipped past it and wondered what that strange and cheap looking show filled with white trash characters was, give it a good shot. Rent the first disc of season one & two DVD from your video store and watch the first four episodes. Once I did that I was hooked.

Christmas Cards [ Thursday, December 18, 2003 - 3:10 PM by Glen ]
There are people out there who truly enjoy sending and receiving Christmas cards. They're called elderly shut-ins. It's the high point of their year.

Now, closet conspiracy theorists, pull in a little closer and let me tell you why many of you end up buying cards every year to send to people.

Every employee at post offices around the world have a policy that "encourages" them to send cards to all of their friends and loved ones. They're given work time to do this, and the stamps are subsidized for the employees. This is how it was in the beginning, and how it is now (saw Return of the King yesterday, ergo, a little Tolkien is on the brain). They send the cards around and set in motion the chain of guilt that continues strong today, with a yearly injection of new cards from employees to those they know aren't in the habit of exchanging cards for the holidays.

The various greeting card companies chip in with a similar program for their employees, also subsidizing stamps, leaving us all with a nearly unavoidable obligation to send cards (it's a sort of six degrees of seperation thing).

Each year my wife and I receive many more cards than we send, but each year the inbox is a little less populated. Are we going to lose these people as friends if we don't return cards to them? Perhaps, but that's the price we're willing to pay. Send cards if it's been implanted in you, but it's up to the resistance to accept the guilt and make it their own. And hopefully you don't hate those who don't reply. I do enjoy reading the cards and occasional notes within, but once I'm done we leave them out for the holiday to prove some people still like us, then file them away somewhere in a box to collect dust.

However, I am not completely innocent. Each year I send three or four cards; all to elderly family members who either live in the middle of nowhere, or in retirement homes.

And damnit, it makes me feel like less of an asshole.

Maybe there is no conspiracy after all...

Pride Ouchie [ Wednesday, December 3, 2003 - 4:21 PM by Glen ]
A local sports television station ran a contest just over a month ago for writers who wanted to be a regular contributor on their web site for one of the six Canadian teams in the NHL. They ran a contest and asked for a sample submission, and I entered. The only problem was, I found out about it on the day it was due.

I rushed to whip something up that was probably not the best topic to choose in hindsight, as it was most likely not very original.

The topic was former Leafs net minder Curtis Joseph, and his situation in Detroit where they already have a sure starter in Dominik Hasek. The news today confirms the rumours that he is being put on waivers and will most likely end up playing for Detroit's minor league team reminded me of my piece, so I've posted the document here (pdf format), if anyone is interested.

I feel bad for the guy, but a number of former Joseph supporters seem to have not forgiven him for choosing to go to Detroit and are probably enjoying this news. His 8 million salary for this year will likely be more than the cost of the entire operations budget of the Grand Rapids team.

Teim [ Monday, November 24, 2003 - 4:26 PM by Glen ]
I'm all about the team sports, and this is a post about team sports. Those of you who don't like team sports should stop reading right now and go look at pornography or Ziggy comics, or something.

While watching the Chiefs/Raiders game yesterday I was reminded of one of the biggest problems with the NFL. I love watching it, and it's become more entertaining for me than the NHL in the last few years as well, but sometimes I cannot take the egos in the game.

Kansas City was at about the Raiders' ten-yard line. Tony Gonzalez (probably in the top three receiving tight ends of all time) was in motion, so the defence would notice him, and at the snap a second tight end on the same side ran a deep out in the end zone, while Gonzalez ran the shorter swing pattern to the flat on that side. Gonzalez's least productive season was his first when he wasn't a starter. That year he had 368 yards receiving and two touchdown catches. The other tight end involved in this play (I'm sure all this tight end talk is getting someone hot), Jason Dunn, has played seven years, just as Gonzalez has, but his best year for yards was his first year (332 yards), and his best year for touchdowns is this season with three.

The two Raider defenders on that side both cheated up towards the talented Gonzalez, while Dunn snaked along the back line of the end zone and received a soft pass while wide open.

In the end zone he began to step towards the crowd with purpose. Gonzalez jogged up to him and held out his hand for a fiver, but Dunn pushed aside his arm and then, get this, wrapped his arm around Gonzalez's waist and pushed him back behind him with force before taking a few more steps towards the crowd where he held his hand up above his head like he'd just slain the dragon.

I could have made that play and catch...Warren Sapp could have too. In other words, anyone could have made the catch. The only reason it was so easy was because he had a hall of fame tight end attracting the defence's attention away from him. After Dunn pushed him aside like he was defending his position at a buffet, Gonzalez stopped and looked at him with his arms hanging at his sides. Even with a helmet on you could see what he was thinking.

The NFL has tried to reduce end zone celebrations (with an emphasis on removing group dances and fun touchdown celebration routines) and penalizes the removing of a player's helmet so they can't show off, or whatever. But over the last ten years players seem to be thinking contract on every big play they make. It's become more important than the team winning and it really bothers me. I'd love to hear the inside scoop on Gonzalez and Dunn in the dressing room after the game. Ridiculous. Soccer has it too and I don't like it there either. Maybe it's not important to celebrate a goal for a team with the team that helped you achieve it, but it is important to me.

Now maybe my clumsy attempt at humour in the title makes sense to you?

The other thing I don't like about football? When guys credit god with helping them get a touchdown. I think most stand up comedians have addressed this one already, so I'll be brief. Ray Lewis of Baltimore, when asked about the miraculous comeback in yesterday's game, credited God, for bringing the Ravens together to win (paraphrased, the interview isn't online unfortunately). Give me a break. Does God really have something against the Seahawks, or is this all part of his master plan to create the Superbowl match up he's been just dying to see?

It's harmless, but it bothers me almost as much as GWB and his general who credit their God with being the real one and defeating the "fake idol" of nations with differing beliefs.

No matter how hard I try, GWB and his posse always permeate...

Couple Things [ Friday, November 14, 2003 - 12:57 AM by Glen ]
I always bitch about movie promotions, but I just heard an ad for Master and Commander (new Crowe flick). The deep voice announced, "It's Gladiator on the high seas."

Is that supposed to get us to go see it? I mean, Gladiator is a pretty good movie, but I've seen it, and I can see it again. I'd like to see an original (non-Hollywood) movie on the high seas, not Gladiator.

Remember [ Tuesday, November 11, 2003 - 11:55 AM by Glen ]
Remember (short story).

Strike Two [ Thursday, November 6, 2003 - 6:55 PM by Glen ]
A few nights ago I told my son (last post on my kid for a while, I promise...maybe) I was going out for drinks with a friend.

"But I want to go for drinks with you and your friend too."

I laughed and told him when he was nineteen he could come.

"But I am nineteen."

Man, I'm a bad father.

And so it began again. He hasn't asked about his promised car in a few days (crossing fingers).

Promises Made to be Broken [ Tuesday, October 28, 2003 - 1:39 PM by Glen ]
Our son is almost three years old.

When he was two he went to day care with an older boy whom he idolized, and so whenever the older boy used the toilet, our kid decided he would follow up with his own bathroom visit. We were on our way to have a toilet-trained kid with almost no difficulties. However, when that boy went off to day school, our son reverted to filling his diaper and even avoiding adults so he could do his business and keep on playing until the smell betrayed his secret.

A year of trying to convince him that going in the toilet is good has done nothing. We've offered incentives like Hot Wheels cars for successful bowl deployment, and I've even opened up the reservoir after the odd successful bathroom visit and given him more love and praise. Nothing has worked, and he has become so stubborn that usually if we ask if he is pooping (while he squats, grunting, in front of the television), he barks out, "No!" That reminds me...I think I want a TV in our bathroom.

Anyhow, it's been fruitless and I'm completely sick of doing diaper changes, so I decided to raise the bar the other night.

I told him, in all earnestness, that if he never made another poop in his diaper again (read: I'm going to turn him into an anal freak), I would buy him a car when he turned sixteen. As I wiped up his liquidy feces I intended to stick to that promise (ignore all clumsy puns). I told him that if he succeeded he'd have a car he could drive around in.

He immediately said, "Okay Daddy, I no poo in my diaper again. Can I have my car now."

My lower lip tensed. He didn't understand. Of course he didn't understand, and it was damage control time.

"No, see, you have to wait until you're sixteen years old, and not poo again in your diaper until then, only in the toilet."

"But I'm sixteen now, Daddy."

"No, you're not actually."

This was just before bedtime and I had previously calmed him down, but at this point he began to cry and get frustrated.

"Yes I am sixteen."

"You have to wait until you're older."

"But I'm older now."

"Technically, you are older than when I told you this, but still not sixteen."

And on it went. Try talking reason to a kid. Lucky his mother wasn't around to roll her eyes.

I got him to bed eventually, still intending to buy him a car if he could do it. I reminded him to tell us if he had to go to the bathroom the next day so he could go in the toilet.

When he woke up the next morning he sat up in bed and looked at me for a few moments.

"Daddy, can I have my car to drive around in now?"

And with that I was reminded of why children shouldn't raise children. Five minutes later he was still crying.

Announcers [ Sunday, October 26, 2003 - 7:25 PM by Glen ]
I'm working on a short story today in between flicks on and off of the TV to check on football. A cost cutting measure this year has been no Sunday Ticket or Centre Ice sports packages, and it's killing me. The guys that pick the sparse Sunday selections for our region (three games total for early and late) apparently try to pick the most boring games possible. Maybe it's part of their master plan to boost Sunday Ticket sales. Anyhow, it's painful to be forced to watch just one game when you're used to being able to choose any game you want at any time.

Even more painful are the announcers. Some of them are hard to listen just because of their personality, but most of them, and this goes for hockey to a certain degree too, are hard to listen to because they fill dead air with inane babbling. Occasionally they point out something in the strategy of the game that I wouldn't have noticed, or talk of an interview with a player or coach that week that is interesting, but 90% of what they say is a waste of breath; even the guy calling play by play. I know I can mute it, but I like hearing the sounds of the game, and I don't mind the occasional comment. Today, in one of the games I was watching, they came back from commercial and the geek in charge of the colour man's microphone screwed up and I was treated to a minute of no talk. It was beautiful. Reminded me of the french broadcasters strike a year or two ago. The national Canadian station (CBC) french feed played NHL hockey games with nothing but the game sounds. In the short duration of the strike I didn't miss a single game they broadcast. It was more than just refreshing or a novelty. When I had a choice between the english speaking broadcast or the silent french one I chose the latter. It was fantastic.

I need to check out SAP. Maybe that's the answer I'm so desirous of.

Isn't it neat? This is a post about hating space filler audio from blowhards, and it amounts to a space filler web update from... ;)

Some Thoughts (or, Me Think Me Write) [ Tuesday, October 14, 2003 - 12:27 PM by Glen ]

Penny [ Monday, September 29, 2003 - 1:29 PM by Glen ]
If you're a geek you might like the updates at Penny Arcade.

Check out today's comic. We pay for call privacy from our phone company to avoid them, and it helps a bit. When I pick up the phone and hear silence for a few seconds I hang up immediately. Sure, I've hung up on friends a few times, but I've avoided countless auto-calls from telemarketing companies. Bastards!

Birthday [ Monday, September 22, 2003 - 1:30 PM by Glen ]
Decisions and events separate and spawn a multitude of paths for our lives. The big ones have such an impact that, had they not happened, it isn’t too difficult to see or at least imagine how life would have been without them.

I see my other life still. It’s the September 22nd, 2003. More accurately, it would have been two days ago, on Saturday night.

A night out. Dinner in downtown Oakville. Perhaps even at Jonathan’s.

Overly expensive, but almost worth it occasionally for even a fixed income. My mother and father, my brother and his wife, my wife and I dine together. I make sure to enjoy each course. I try to eat slowly but the food is too good. We laugh, talk about each other’s lives and our children. We reminisce about mine and my brother’s childhood, growing up in Winnipeg. The same stories heard many times before are heard again. My wife smiles and sips her wine, I notice her eyes sparkle. My sister in law nods her head in hopes of hurrying the story she knows too well along. My Dad, brother and I smile as my Mom speaks.

We pass birthday gifts over the table and they’re opened, talked about, and packed away under a chair. The gifts are more for the givers and are more of a sidebar on the evening. After a few imported beers I switch to the wine for the main course. Following that I enjoy a desert wine with some chocolaty creation. We all coo over our food, each sure what’s in front of them must be the best. A port after dinner for a few of us, and more conversation.

Tables have been emptying steadily and we finally accept that it’s time to go. We get the bill and my father accepts it from the waiter with an acted out and familiar presentation of disgruntlement.

Dad looks at the total and shakes his head. “You guys are going to force me back out of retirement.” The line too, is familiar, but we all bear smiles of assorted sizes.

I make an admittedly halfhearted attempt to chip in, my brother a more serious attempt at the same, and both are waved away and dismissed by Dad, pen in waving hand, glasses defying gravity and dangling near the tip of his nose.

The bill is paid and out the front door we glide, most of us inebriated by much more than just drinks. My brother and his wife point out their van across the street, and hugs and goodbyes are exchanged.

We walk to my father’s car, and after a brief debate with my Mom about how much he had to drink he slides in behind the wheel. He’s driving the four of us home tonight. I try to talk some more on the way home but I’m far too content to concentrate. The radio is turned down low but I still hear a piano faintly playing. I watch the lights along the roads and imagine I’m swinging from light post top to top. Floating more than webbing it like Spiderman.

The car stops out front of our home and I place one hand on each of my parent’s shoulders, squeezing tight. We thank them for a great night and tumble out of the car and up the driveway.

The engine revs and the rhythmic clatter grows loud before fading quickly away as they disappear from the street. My wife and I go inside and relieve our babysitter. Our dogs mill about under foot, and when we finally go to bed that night we talk much longer than usual.

I can still see a trace of that reality.

In it, everyone I love is still alive and I’m still working my former job, having avoided being one of those laid off due to a sagging performance in the months after he died. I can accept that it’s all out of reach now, but it doesn’t ease how much I miss celebrating my father’s birthday with him for the second year in a row.

Happy Birthday, Dad.

I want him to be here to hear it.

I suppose I should move on now and be grateful for those I still have before I, or they, are the latest ones being mourned.

Sea Monkeys [ Friday, September 19, 2003 - 2:56 PM by Glen ]
I’ve seen two newborn babies over the last two weeks and outside of being happy for the respective parents, it’s reaffirmed my opinion of babies: Namely, they’re unattractive to the point of being frightening, and on their own, rather boring. Even the cutest babies aren’t cute to me. This includes my own child when he was a newborn. In fact, during my first moment of seeing him I gasped and said, “Holy shit!” The reason was that never was I more convinced than at that moment that a human newborn looks like the spawn of an alien out of a horror movie. He was bluish with compressed features and flesh and was in the, you guessed it, fetal position. Luckily my wife was spared from the moment that is now burned into my memory (she had it easy). Every newborn I’ve ever seen reminds me of Kuato from Total Recall to varying degrees.

So you see, babies have never been much of a draw for me. But considering how much they go through, perhaps I’m being unfair. They spend nine or ten months squeezed into a sack filled with fluid and they inevitably float around in their with their own urine. I don’t know how good the filtration system is in the womb but even the Cleanatron 3000 couldn’t keep that clean enough for me, not that I’ve had any offers to reenter a womb lately. And as they are forced out of the opening they probably have no interest in leaving it probably feels similar to being swallowed by a giant snake. Contractions forcing you further into the unknown. Their skull plates aren’t fused because their head needs to be crushed and manipulated to make it out of the womb and their body is like a wet noodle. Good thing wombs don’t come equipped with gyms or there’d be trouble. “Been lifting weights and taking care of myself here in the drink…looking forward to whatever lies ahead.” Any muscle mass whatsoever or firm bones would doom them to a C-section, which is probably even more disturbing for them. Ripped from comfort straight into freezing cold, dry air.

Whenever I see a newborn baby it’s like the ugly baby Seinfeld episode, each and every time. I look around at everyone else, wondering when someone is going to fess up. “He looks like…you,” people always seem to say. Meanwhile, the babies never resemble either of their parents during those first few days, unless you’ve got an incredible imagination sprinkled in with some wishful thinking. I paid the most honest compliment I could this week when I told them that the newborn looked just like the older brother on the day he was born. And yet the women around the newborn are all beaming and seem to genuinely think it’s adorable, and even some guys say the same. Sure, a three or four month old baby might begin to be cute, but those first few days it looks like a raw and weathered sack of flesh that’s just been squeezed through the end of an icing tube (big surprise). And if they had to use clamps or suction to get that kid out…get ready for a circus freak show.

My son is going to be turning three years old soon and I think the stage he has been in for the last few months is by far the best so far. He’s communicating on a higher level and almost constantly saying and doing really cute things.

Everything is stacked against a man who doesn’t want to have a second child.

First, your wife’s boobs go from the size you knew when you married, up to double D’s during breast feeding, and then back down to a size smaller than when you married once the breast-feeding is gone. Your first reaction? I’ve got to get her pregnant again so we can reopen mammary play land. Once past this and here comes the next tough stage when the kid you do have is such a pleasure that you again feel the urge to release another of your hellions on the world.

The moral of the story, there’s none. I’m very happy to have a child, and I’m very happy for those I know who have children and want them, but I’m starting to see the point of view of my friend who insists that people aren’t truly human until they are three years old. He might be a bit off in the number department, but it’s unbelievable how much more fun it is having a kid you can interact with than one that is wholly dependent on you for survival. Some people need that feeling of being needed so they think having a baby is a good idea. To them I say: Get a pet. We have four pets in this house, all pre-parenthood. So the advice might be flawed. Just get a pet, and don’t get a cat. They’re low maintenance but the lifespan is way too long. I recommend Sea Monkeys.

Bringing Down The House [ Sunday, September 14, 2003 - 9:59 PM by Glen ]

by Ben Mezrich

Relieved [ Wednesday, September 10, 2003 - 11:24 PM by Glen ]
It was difficult, but I've gone a month (tomorrow) without looking at the novel draft and beginning my proofing of it. I didn't work on any other stories during that time either and it was killing me, but on the plus side I had a few good ideas for the future. I've kept busy, but the last few days were really tough. I was so restless and bored that I ended up doing things like cleaning out all of the exterior light fixtures on my house.

Now begins the next stage of misery...

Oh, and congrats to Jeremy on finding someone who can tolerate his Mac addiction ;)

Survivor [ Wednesday, September 3, 2003 - 6:46 PM by Glen ]

  by Chuck Palahniuk

The Missing Links [ Sunday, August 24, 2003 - 9:53 AM by Glen ]
Still alive, which allowed me to update the links page. It was long in need of an update that made it more meaningful. Now I have it divided into sites I check regularly and the sites I click on once in a while. The writing links are gone for now. Many were broken or near useless anyhow.

Did I miss your favourite link? Let me know...

What a Day [ Monday, August 11, 2003 - 2:55 AM by Glen ]
So close, and yet...you know the rest. I just finished the first draft of my novel Beneath, but I still want to finish the epilogue before I pat myself on the back. I've got enough of a natural buzz going that I might just be able to do it tonight, but if not then early tomorrow I must finish.

You see, I can't do it late tomorrow because I'll be on an airplane, something that's been causing nightmares/terrors regularly for the past few weeks. I've grown increasingly frightened of air travel (nothing to do with 9/11 mind you, it's been building since the late nineties), and if you never see another post from me on this web page you'll know my fear wasn't a groundless and irrational one.

Before I go I'd like to recommend a show to people. I caught tonight's episode of a reality show entitled The Restaurant. Here is a little write up explaining the premise. During Malcolm in the Middle I saw a commercial for it and laughed. "A show about a restaurant, how desperate are they?" I believe I said. Before I saw it I pictured them having competing restaurants in the typical reality game type format that seems to be so rampant still, but instead I found a sort of docudrama about chef Rocco DiSpirito's attempt to run a hot new Manhattan restaurant bearing his name. It was fantastic to see how shitty working in the restaurant business is without having to punch the clock for that job again. I can't tell you how much I hated jerks that used the waiter-needing-tip as a way to practice their misery making on. People that make stupid jokes and then watch to see if you react appropriately in their opinion, or people that love to complain, or treat you as less than human because you're serving them. No, I think I'll just watch this show and enjoy it all from afar. Most of the staff in the show seem very well aware that cameras are on them, and so they really seem to like the sound of their own voices. But then, maybe all people in trendy Manhattan areas are like that? Anyhow, tonight was the first episode of this I've seen (I think it's three or four shows in) and it was entertaining, except for the extremely artificial sounding voice-overs they have Rocco do sporadically throughout.

By the way, have you all rushed out to see the six movies in the list below?

Top 5 6 Movies You Probably Haven't Seen [ Friday, August 8, 2003 - 10:29 AM by Glen ]
This is tricky. Here are my favorite five six movies that, when I ask others if they've seen them, usually elicit blinking stares.

You might’ve heard of some or all of these and I know that there must be so many great movies I haven’t seen either, but I rarely have time to see the must-sees as it is.

The List:

1) Defending Your Life (1991) Starring Albert Brooks, Meryl Streep, Rip Torn

This is easily my favorite movie. I’m not sure exactly why that is except that I laugh out loud every time I watch it (it’s somewhere around ten viewings at this point), and the underlying message of the movie is one that I need more of in my life. Try things, don't let fear control your life, enjoy life.

2) Donnie Darko (2001) Starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Mary McDonnell, Patrick Swayze

Chances are I’ve suggested this film too late and you’ve already seen it, or at least heard a lot about it. It’s ranked #88 on imdb.com’s top 250 list and really, it’s a all around better film than my #1, but I’m too sentimental to move Defending out of #1 I suppose. You need to see this movie, and if don’t like it you’re just being stubborn or you should see a doctor about that tumour in your skull.

3) Beautiful Girls (1996) Starring Matt Dillon, Timothy Hutton, Uma Thurman

I could have listed almost the entire cast of this ensemble piece above. The film is about a young man named Willie Conway (Hutton), a piano player, who returns home to the small northern town he grew up in from the big city and meets up with the friends and drama that he left after school. It’s described as a romantic drama, but I not only found it dramatic but the writing is fantastic and funny (Including one of my favorite movie lines “Apps, you want apps?”…Don’t ask me why I like it so much.) A fifteen-year-old Natalie Portman stars as the mature-beyond-her-years girl-next-door to his father’s house who mystifies Willie (that sounds pretty dirty). I could watch this movie over and over, unless I was being forced to as a form of punishment. Then of course I’d have to hate it.

4) Once Were Warriors (1994) Starring Rena Owen, Temeura Morrison, Julian Arahanga

Have to credit Rob for reminding me about this one. I even saw it again about a year ago so I don't know where my mind was. This is one of the most powerful dramas I've ever seen. The acting is amazing and Temeura Morrison one of the most imposing on screen figures ever. (Incidentally, he ended up playing Boba Fett in the last Star Wars film, and Rena Owen played the voice of those tall slinky alien things). This is a New Zealand film about a proud culture that has basically stumbled into the modern era and lost its way. A very good movie.

5) Heathers (1989) Starring Winona Ryder, Christian Slater, Shannen Doherty

I haven’t seen this one in about ten years, but when I thought of it for this list I immediately knew which movie I will be seeing next. It’s a dark comedy about high school life and the ultimate underdog movie for the out crowd that will go to any length to get back at the cruel popular kids. Great movie with tons of great lines (“Football season is over, Veronica. Kurt and Ram had nothing left to offer the school except for date rapes and AIDS jokes,” and, “This is Ohio. If you don't have a brewski in your hand you might as well be wearing a dress.”)

6) Wonder Boys (2000) Starring Michael Douglas, Tobey Maguire, Frances McDormand

Maybe it’s because I’m a wannabe writer, but this movie about an English professor/writer suffering through a form of writer’s block after having a very successful novel seven years earlier is a favorite. Robert Downey Jr. plays the agent and Tobey Maguire is a very promising student writer that reminds our protagonist of himself at that age. One was a wonder boy, one becoming. It’s a very well acted film with lots of comedic and dramatic moments. I don’t remember how I ended up hearing about it but it never really got much press. I strongly recommend it.

I Can Hardly Believe It [ Tuesday, August 5, 2003 - 3:43 PM by Glen ]
Just a post about what I've been working on lately. Nothing funny and/or entertaining follows:

In May of 2002 I had an idea for a novel. My main source of inspiration for the idea was the loss of my Dad and at the risk of pigeon holing it it focussed on an alternative reality for this and subsequent lives we are to live through. It wasn't based on Shirley MacLaine type ideals or anything, and if I had to classify it I would call it action/adventure/sci-fi/fantasy (what's missing? Western and romance I suppose ;). I wrote a fair bit of it before August 2002 and then I began writing a quota for it every day from August until about May, 2003. It grew into an epic that I am simply too inexperienced to handle. I began to wonder what the hell the point of the story was and I was fairly certain I was going to have to rewrite large chunks of it for the second draft.

So, feeling a little lost I began work on a novella in March while still working on a daily quota for Six. That novella quickly grew into an idea I was sure could fill an appropriate sized novel for a first time author, and it has. Sometime in the next four or five days I expect to be finished the first draft. Considering how big a project it has been I'm impressed at how quickly I've finished this draft (five months), but I am also very well aware of the amount of work still left to do before it is even ready for editing from someone other than me. In case you're interested, it's a story set about three hundred years in the future when, as hard as this is to believe, the entire human population agrees in principal that something has to be done. So I suppose that makes it sci-fi fantasy (maybe I need to add corruption, in fighting and terrorism for that touch of reality). That's just the setting, not the actual story which focuses on a definite threat to the survival of our species.

Research, my own review, and rewrites, and then I hope in three or four months I'll have a suitable second draft ready for feedback. I can't wait. Once I'm done this first draft I am going to leave the document closed for an entire month as I've heard recommended by a few authors. It seems like a common sense rule so that you can clear your head and come into it with fresh eyes, perhaps more willing to cut words that you were too attached to during the first writing.

It's going to be nice to have a day off from writing for the first time since August, 2002.

Order of Events [ Tuesday, July 29, 2003 - 1:40 PM by Glen ]
First off I want to say that the Toronto media is hilarious. They keep interviewing shmos on the street to talk about this concert for Toronto today featuring the Rolling Stones. Apparently it’s going to show the world that Toronto is back in business and SARS is long gone, etc. Well, when SARS was at its worst Toronto was still completely safe unless you had to go to a hospital in the GTA (I would have gone on quite a drive to avoid that when things looked the bleakest). It never really did anything outside of hospitals and, unfortunately, hospital staff. American reports about various people coming back from Toronto and being quarantined because they had a small cough or whatever probably decreased the amount of travellers from the US. A lot of ignorance about a subject, a dash of actual fact, and viola! The average TV watching slug is convinced it looks like 28 Days Later on the streets of Toronto.

Oh well, at least the Rolling Stones are here to reverse all the damage {snicker}.

My Top 10 11 Sports Movies List [ Thursday, July 24, 2003 - 2:10 PM by Glen ]
I saw Bend it Like Beckham last week and it inspired me to want to force some of my opinions of movies on you. I intended to post two top five lists: My Top Five Sports Movies and Top Five Movies You Probably Haven’t Seen. While researching my sports movie list though I found about twenty movies I had really enjoyed, and probably about five more I really should see for it to be a genuine list (e.g. Haven’t seen Chariots of Fire or Raging Bull yet believe it or not).

So instead of two top five lists, here is a list of my favorite eleven sports movies in order with the other list to follow soon. If you're a curious sort you might wonder how I chose eleven as my list length...keep wondering.

I last saw many of these movies more than ten years ago, but when a movie leaves a strong impression on you when you saw it at a young age I think it says more than some of the more recent ones, and this was taken into account in ranking.

1) The Natural (1984) Starring Robert Redford, Robert Duval, Glenn Close.
Choosing a number one was incredibly difficult, but this is the movie that best captures the drama of sport in my opinion. It’s been a long time since I loved baseball, but I still love this movie.

2) Hoosiers (1986) Starring Gene Hackman, Barbara Hershey, Dennis Hopper.
Everybody loves a Cinderalla story, and even now I always cheer for the underdog when my team isn’t playing in a big game. Is it because I first saw Hoosiers at a young age? Who knows, but what a climax in this one.

3) Youngblood (1986) Starring Rob Lowe, Cynthia Gibb, Patrick Swayze.
Many might be surprised to see this movie on my list (and as high as it is) but, quite simply, I love it. I’ve seen it about six or seven times (but not once in the last ten years) and I enjoyed it every time. Sure it’s corny, but it tugs at my sports affiliated heartstrings just the same. Plus, seeing Neo in his first real movie role as a French Canadian goalie and a boatload of NHL players is cool too (Peter Zezel, Neil Broten, etc.). So like I said, it’s been a while since I saw it and when I see it next if I realize it had no place this high on my list then I blame it on the loose movie tastes of youth ;) "I'm gonna carve -- you -- up!"

4) Field of Dreams (1989) Starring Kevin Costner, Amy Madigan, James Earl Jones.
One thing I’ll say for American cinema, its best sports films seem to center around baseball. However, Field of Dreams is based on a novel by Canadian writer W.P. Kinsella. Of course everyone has probably seen this one and remembers one of the most memorable movie lines ever: “If you build it, he will come.” It’s a gem, and there’s no way in hell I’ve even considered watching this movie again since my own father died.

5) Rudy (1993) Starring Sean Astin, Jon Favreau, Ned Beatty.
Although I don’t have even the slightest interest in college football I loved this movie based on the true story of someone with a heart bigger than their body and ability. Working towards a dream even when it seems hopeless and having success be defined in a unique way (respect of teammates, people, fans) rather than a game saving play was great I thought. Ru-dy, Ru-dy, Ru-dy.

6) Slap Shot (1977) Starring Paul Newman, Strother Martin, Swoosie Kurtz and a bunch of near unknowns.
Classic movie comedy. Hockey was never the same after the Hansons, and Chiefs jerseys still abound.

7) Eight Men Out (1988) Starring John Cusack, Charlie Sheen, D.B. Sweeney.
The late eighties were big for baseball movies (Field of Dreams, Bull Durham, Eight Men Out, Major League). I really liked all of them, but Eight Men Out edged out Bull Durham by a narrow margin (and I couldn't justify another baseball movie on the list). The drama of it being a true story wins out over the comedy and character story that Bull Durham excels at.

8) Hoop Dreams (1994)
I saw this three hour plus documentary again recently on PBS and it sucked me right back in as it did the first time. Truly a sports movie with all the drama that no fictional tale, or recreation of an event could hope to capture.

9) Gallipoli (1981) Starring Mel Gibson.
Not a movie about sports so much as a story about an athlete who gets sent off to the Great War to fight in Turkey against a much better equipped enemy.

10) Rocky (1976) Starring Sylvester Stallone, Talia Shire, Carl Weathers.
I went back and forth between this one and Brian’s Song. I like different things about both movies but once I weighed in all of the elements of both films I had to go with Rocky. Most would probably have this one higher in their list but I just disliked the Rocky character so much it almost kept it out of the top ten for me. Not fair to lower a film based on a characterization that I found annoying, but then it’s my list damn it!

And finally, number 11) Bend it Like Beckham (2002) Starring Parminder K. Nagra, Keira Knightley (meow), Jonathan Rhys-Meyers.
I suppose I wanted to have something recent in here, and Bend It was the best sports movie I’ve seen made in a long while so that is how this became my top eleven sports movies list. It’s a highly original film (meaning it’s not from Hollywood) about two girls and their love of soccer (football), and some of the society and cultural pressures working against them. The relationship between Jes and her father solidifies this one for me. It’s not a perfect movie but I really enjoyed it and would be more prone to see it again before the rest of the titles considered below that didn’t make it to the top 11.

Not a Club I Want to Join [ Friday, July 18, 2003 - 6:31 PM by Glen ]
This story is beyond comprehension.

I mean, is this what people mean by pushing the limits for excitement these days?

"Hey, we've done the usual stuff, let's form a message board where men can meet and agree to kill and eat each other."

"Fantastic idea!"

Tee Hee [ Friday, July 18, 2003 - 4:02 PM by Glen ]
I was out earlier today and saw a copy of Managing for Dummies on someone's dashboard. There's just a little circular logic in that title.

This from a guy who'd eagerly accept a management job right now if it were offered.

What's Old Is New Again [ Wednesday, July 16, 2003 - 2:57 PM by Glen ]
One of the joys of having a child is seeing the world through his or her eyes as if it's all new again. I don't remember much before I was six or seven years old but I get to live it vicariously now through my son.

Yesterday we went to the mall and were walking around, killing time, when we came upon an escalator.

My son had been running around in circles behind me but when he saw this moving metallic staircase he stopped in his tracks so quickly he almost fell forward. He stared at it in awe and, without removing his eyes, asked me what it was that he was looking at.

"It's like stairs that move," I replied.

He continued to stare in silence and I nudged him along to keep on our walk through the mall. I know he's seen escalators in the past but I haven't taken him near them in three or four months, and kids change and are fascinated with different things almost daily.

About fifteen minutes later we were on our way to the exit when we passed by the same escalator carrying people up to the second level filled with more crappy stores. My son began alternating between short grunts, and tugging at my shirt while pointing at the escalator.

"Do you want to go on it?"

He jumped up and down and shouted yes, then did a strange sort of skipping movement towards the first step.

I gave him the ground rules (i.e. hold daddy's hand the whole time) and we embarked on our journey to the stars...closer to them anyhow...if it had been night time. He carefully stepped with me onto the first available stair and it moved quicker than he had expected, his second foot ended up one step lower and he was ecstatic. He pulled his foot up and put his free hand as high as it could reach to touch the moving railing. As we got to the top I suddenly remembered my own father's instructions from escalator riding 101 and told my son to pick one foot up off the step. He did and when we got to the top our feet landed on stationary ground together and we walked off.

"Wow!" he yelled and turned back towards the escalator. "Again."

I directed him over to the down escalator and we descended on the people in the food court, my son laughing and squealing the entire way. Once at the bottom the always familiar, "Again," came, well, again. I agreed to one more trip (it's hard to differentiate your own boredom from your kid's pure enjoyment sometimes). As we ascended again he looked at me with the biggest smile I'd seen in days and said, "This is fun!"

Others on the escalator all turned to see someone treating the boring old escalator like an amusement park ride. It was great. I told him he was a cheap date and then we went down again. Once off he squatted over the bottom where the steps disapeared and I did my best to explain to him in terms he could understand where the steps were going.

There you have it, a long-winded story of just one of the many little events that happen each week with a two and a half year old.

I Wish It Was a Dead Horse [ Sunday, July 13, 2003 - 5:00 PM by Glen ]
Did anyone, and I mean anyone believe the Bush administration claims about Iraq and WMD? Those that are surprised probably will consider it irrelevant, but this bit of news didn’t shock whatsoever. I hadn't even considered that their claims might be at all truthful. I did expect them to find some chemical weapons, at least some left over from ’91, but if they have I haven’t even heard about it (please fill me in if you know).

Good to see Rumsfeld gets to practice his skills as a spinner extraordinaire again (he calls them weapons of mass murder now. Isn’t the US the leader in terms of weapons of mass murder worldwide?) I don’t really believe in a Heaven or Hell, but when that guy speaks I keep expecting Satan to unzip the back of him and climb out. He’s probably waiting until after his speech justifying a pre-emptive nuclear attack on a third world nation for that big twist. It sure seems like GWB is Rumsfeld's and his father’s puppet.

I do love the ripples it's created though. They better remind people all that is to be feared soon so it can be put to rest.

Rumsfeld (to another top advisor): Any word on Bin Laden or Saddam yet?

Advisor: Nope.

Rumsfeld: Well, see what you can cook up then. Make it quick!

Kessler! [ Saturday, July 12, 2003 - 2:58 PM by Glen ]
I updated the currently reading page with a few new books I'm reading through. One of those is the Seinfeld scripts from seasons one and two. Here's a little trivia for all you Seinfeld fans:

Did you know that Kramer's character had a different name in the pilot episode? Do you know what that was? (A: Check the title of this post).

I don't know if people ever check on the currently reading or the writing pages. I should probably display more information on the front page as others do but I don't know if that would keep me updating them regularly either.

I Don't Need Those Organs Anymore, Do I? [ Friday, July 4, 2003 - 2:40 PM by Glen ]
I consulted my Magic 8 Ball today to find out if I will ever get another job. The answer was not encouraging. I tried a few other questions to trip it up but they were all reasonably answered. I asked again, "Will I ever get another job?"

My sources say no.

With that settled I began looking into other ways to generate revenue. Within only a few minutes I found this. My body, even my body in its current out of shape form, could be worth millions of dollars!

"There is, of course, a major catch: Many of the valuable human body parts are those a person could not live without."

Doh.

Well, moving on I went to investigate what I've always fantasized about as my dream career: Professional Lottery Player. Check out the winners page. My goal is to get my story on there.

"Yeah, I was out of work, not sure what the future held, and then I won 10 million dollars and started up my very own militia. They do anything I ask of them," says Glen Jackson of Oakville.

See this poll?

Did you know what winners of $1 000,000 or more did with their OLGC lottery prize winnings:

89% put money in the bank.
58% paid off debts.
75% shared money with family or friends.
56% took a vacation.
62% bought a new car.
47% donated to charity.
37% paid off mortgage.
28% paid for education for self/family.
34% bought a house.
15% changed their overall lifestyle.
6% bought a boat.

I think the first thing I'll do is pay off my bills (as 58% others did), then I'll go buy either a Humvee or a flashy sports car (62%) (on second thought, I'd probably get the car I've always wanted), and then I'd want to buy a nice cottage in Ontario (not listed). Then a house, then a toy for my son, and then...maybe...some money for family. But only if they belly dance on a highway for it. ;)

Questions [ Sunday, June 29, 2003 - 1:29 PM by Glen ]
I'm subscribed to an email group for writers who have research questions. Sometimes the questions seem quite harmless such as, "what is the mineral makeup of the south west United States?" But I've noticed a disturbing trend over the last few weeks and its got me wondering about my subscription.

Supposedly there are enough writers in the group that there should be an expert on almost anything you need to ask about (I'm an expert on Doritos flavours past and present and computer games...no questions on either yet). The email groups info line reads, "Draw on other members' expertise and personal experiences to give your Work in Progress plausibility and authenticity."

Here is a small sampling of the type of questions that do come up from time to time, but seem to have suddenly flooded the list lately:

Question/topic: What is the best way to commit suicide? Which was followed by a dozen emails back and forth debating the different methods...I had to stop reading. I didn't want to care what the answer was.

Question/topic: Epidemics - the best way to spread them?

Question/topic: Female serial killers.

Question/topic: How to attack someone.

Question/topic: Stripping an unconscious person.

Answer (I had to post this one):

Down With the 'Quitos! [ Thursday, June 26, 2003 - 3:54 PM by Glen ]
I went camping up north last weekend and I'm still itching away at mosquito bites from head to toe.

It makes me wonder: With our propensity to push other species to the brink of extinction and beyond, why can't we get rid of these pests next and leave a harmless South American species of bird for later?

Getting Old? [ Tuesday, June 24, 2003 - 10:02 AM by Glen ]
I was counting off the days this morning, trying to figure out the date without using a calendar, when I realized my birthday is tomorrow. This wasn't a complete shock as I'm still young enough to remember the date of my birthday, but I was amazed at how differently I regard the "big day" now compared with ten years ago.

I used to love the presents (of course) and the time and attention from family and friends. Those are still things I like but I just don't look forward to it like I used to. Someone I mentioned this to last year suggested it was because I was getting older. However, if anything, I care about getting older and taking a dirt nap less now than I did ten years ago.

I don't get it... It's the same with Christmas too. I guess that once I got old enough to buy what I wanted instead of waiting for presents the gift side lost some importance, and with everyone's lives getting so busy it's not usually possible to get together with friends and family.

I don't know. Maybe I'm just on my way to being a curmudgeon.

Show Me The Spare Change! [ Thursday, June 19, 2003 - 3:48 PM by Glen ]
I read an editorial this week which basically stated that anyone who writes a book is insane, and so the public is constantly being exposed to the work of the mad through print instead of the work of saner people who avoid nearly impossible tasks like writing and getting a novel published. I’d previously heard almost all of the points the author made and it hasn’t discouraged me yet. Call me crazy! (Look, I got a shpoon on my head, I’m crazy shpoon-head!)

But the truth is, it is sobering to know that with all the time I’ve spent working on Six (currently on hiatus) and Beneath (currently my primary project along with a graphic novel script I'm really excited about) while there is such a miniscule chance it ever gets published or even read by anyone other than friends I force it on.

I was listening to one of the bigger local radio stations today and they spoke of a new local band called Billy Talent and then played their first single. I played ball hockey with the bass player from the band about three or four years ago (the band was called Pezz back then). Now I’m not the only one who knows fancy musicians. Anyhow, it got me thinking about the business of creating in general. This guy is on the verge of making a good run with his band and yet I wonder if they’ll be able to make a good living at it. I always hear that musicians make such a small amount of money from each album sale. Authors make very little as well unless it becomes a best seller (and possibly movie rights and so on) considering it takes about three years to complete a book, which is why there are many more authors with day jobs than full-time writers out there.

Seems like the only route to making loads of money is to become an actor in movies…but then it takes a lot of hard work before you can make the big salaries.

Wait a second, hold on. The money is in sports, not art. I mean, isn’t Lebron James, an eighteen year old who plays a game really well, about to make about a gazillion dollars over the next ten years?

Oh well, hopefully I can find a job eventually and become an author with a day job one day. I’ve applied to about sixty-seventy jobs since October, 2002. Only ten of those were jobs I was remotely qualified for, and only three called for an interview. Ninety-five percent of the jobs I see in my field are for people with different skills or about five more years experience over what I have. It sure makes it difficult to get over the sting of being laid off, but last week I began the (hopefully) therapeutic process of writing a story focusing on my feelings about the whole thing starting from the day it happened. It reads like a children’s book…if your child was a convicted murderer living in hell that is.

The two good trade offs about the constant stress and worry about my job situation are that I have had a lot of time to write (and strangely, because I am not yet done either of the bigger projects it feels like I’ve accomplished nothing), and I’ve had a lot more time with my son; that, I will always be grateful for.

This morning I awoke and looked at the clock to see it was just about 6:30 a.m. and my son usually wakes up before 6 (meaning I wake up before 6). I smiled at the pleasant surprise of getting to sleep in, rolled over towards the center of the bed and almost crushed him. He had this huge smile and had been lying between my wife and I, apparently sleeping for the half hour before. Just a few seconds like that can really make your day.

(And with regards to my day job situation: Yes, I plan on upgrading my skills)

The Songs Are Sung His Way [ Thursday, June 12, 2003 - 2:11 PM by Glen ]
My son is in a phase where he likes one or two songs enough to repeatedly butcher the song. Sort of like a two year old's remix version of a song.

These particular recordings came one night when he was trying to avoid going to sleep by entertaining us.

And now, for your listening pleasure:
The Alphabet Song
and
Old MacDonald

Bushed [ Thursday, June 5, 2003 - 4:11 PM by Glen ]

"In the name of my god given right to bestow freedom on the rest of the world, I want to attack another country NOW!"

Geek Poetry [ Thursday, June 5, 2003 - 1:29 PM by Glen ]
GlenJackson.com
Argh Tuesday, May 8, 30 2003
9:38 AM by
Glen ] Comments 1
been a feather in that Saddam
what it gets
to speed through the
U.S., is the last month, that paralyses you were
on a pitiful one.
year ago, the end up.
But also means that in pleasure.


Generated here.

Argh [ Tuesday, June 3, 2003 - 5:03 PM by Glen ]
I hate when this happens. An hour ago I had an idea for a short story and it was wacky enough that I was interested in starting it today. But, I was in the middle of something else at the time. When I finished...the idea was long gone. Sometimes I picture an Idea Budda offering ideas to people and if they don't act on them immediately they're pulled back and given to someone else. Don't let the moment pass is the moral I guess.

Update (5:06 p.m.): Forgetting this idea was consuming me. Had a shower and finally remembered. And the idea wasn't really all that good. Enough for a character quirk, not a whole story. Life is fun.

Contradictions [ Friday, May 30, 2003 - 11:47 AM by Glen ]
They say some of the best fiction contains characters who experience internal conflict, or have contradictions in character.

The best villians are sometimes those that can justify their behaviours in some way. At least in serious stories/films. You can have lots of fun with villains in lighter hearted tales (e.g. Zorg from Fifth Element).

Look at people you might know in your lives. Can you think of any that contradict a firm belief they have with some behaviour?

For me, two people jump to mind.

One is a retired cop who firmly believes in letter of the law and lectures people almost endlessly when the topic comes up. But this same person also steals beer mugs he likes from pubs from time to time.

The second person is a good guy, a very religious person, who does things like travel to poor countries to rebuild an orphanage and things I can only admire. This same person, however, is one of the biggest software pirates I know. He seems to see no problem with taking software, but at the same time he probably knows the bible by heart or at least the commandments.

We all have flaws of varying sizes, but it's really interesting to me when it's something that a person would have a hard time justifying, and yet somehow, on the inside, they have.

Try thinking about some of your own contradictions. Most likely you'll come up with some minor things if any at all. But that's the whole point.

I came up with things like:
- I consider myself a good team player, but in sports when my team doesn't feel I can compete late in a close game I get really pissed off and want to quit.
- I don't like to waste money. I get so angry when I do, but I never seem to see a problem buying a book or DVD I want.

Things like that come to mind, but it's difficult coming up with the real whoppers, because in my mind I don't see things like that in black & white.

When I finally did come up with a big one (after a few days jumping in and out of this thought process), it was big enough that there was no way I would want to list it here.

No real point to this post (sorry, if you read this far), but if you're writing characters and/or trying to understand human character it could be an interesting exercise for you to think through this sort of thing.

News Trilogy [ Tuesday, May 27, 2003 - 12:35 PM by Glen ]
Three items for you today:

Make Haste, Not Waste [ Tuesday, May 20, 2003 - 9:03 AM by Glen ]
I'm going to be a scarce commodity for the next week so there will be no updates to Bart your world.

I leave you with this:
I hate when gulls who have been eating at Taco Bell fly over my house and decorate my garage door.

Drug Free Hallucinations [ Wednesday, May 14, 2003 - 9:30 AM by Glen ]
I've seen some scary things over the years.

Like the time I woke up and my bed was absolutely filled with rats that went streaming out of the bed when I threw the sheets up.

Or the time the drapes that swayed gently back and forth from a summer breeze suddenly began unravelling strands of thread that tickled my chin before wrapping tightly around my neck to strangle me.

Or the time a World War II German Soldier peered around the doorway to my bedroom then crept in low to the ground, all while I watched, terrified and silent. When I jumped out of bed and ran from the room it took me a few minutes to realize he didn't really exist.

My eyes see things like these examples quite often, and usually within thirty minutes of first falling asleep. The images are absolutely undeniable and my eyes are open and looking at the surroundings of my bedroom. It's a crossing over of images from my imagination that get to play havoc with my sanity in the real world.

I've had problems with stage 4 of sleep all my life, but only sometimes do these hallucinations take the form of a night terror. How frightening they are seems to vary with how stressed I am during the day (e.g. the rats dream happened the week before my wedding when tensions could not have been much higher).

Last night a man about one foot high floated up over the bed. He clearly had a bubble around him that appeared to be helping him fly (kind of like Buzz Lightyear near the beginning of Toy Story 2). He came to a stop about two feet above my chest and began waving a staff in a menacing fashion. I swung at him wildly and made contact, sending him barrelling into the far wall of our bedroom. This of course startled my poor wife and I went and turned on the light. See, she always gets to say things like "it was just a dream, it's not real", and when you see something that your eyes were sure existed it's frustrating to hear that. You wake up confused enough that it could be real. So last night I was pleased as I flipped on the light as it seemed I finally had proof. She said to calm down and I told her "he" was over in the corner. I looked but found nothing at first, then I found my pillow. And on the bed, my pillowcase. I'd swung my pillow by the top of the case and the pillow had been the object I'd seen hurtling through the air.

Sigh.

I've done some reading on what this might be but I haven't found an exact match. It's got elements of night terrors, and elements of a hallucinatory sleep disorder. They happen virtually every night lately (shortly after I was packaged out of my job and prospects for a new job are not great) and it's become disruptive so I'm finally going to go see a doctor about it.

It's always been clear that the part of the brain that paralyses you while you sleep (so that you don't hurt yourself while dreaming) has never worked very well for me. So it sounds like I have hallucinatory sleep paralysis without the paralysis part. Rather than post three paragraphs from that linked article, if you're interested just read the last section entitled "The Truth Is Out There".

Whatever it is, and no matter how many good story ideas have come from it, it's time to get rid of it.

Email [ Tuesday, May 13, 2003 - 9:22 AM by Glen ]
Gotta hate (or love to hate) that spam. I had my email address linked on news items for a week as an experiment and the spam on that address shot up in the last few days. So now if you want to email me you have to click the fancy anti-spam javascript link at the bottom of every page on the site.

And yes, for those that are very particular about the lingo, I know the official spelling of email is e-mail...but I don't like it that way.

Hurdles [ Thursday, May 8, 2003 - 4:18 AM by Glen ]
Salam Pax, The Baghdad Blogger seems to have gotten an update done on his page after about 6 weeks of hearing nothing from him. The update is absolutely huge with fifteen smaller updates that he had written while he couldn't get them into his blog. I only read the introduction so far. It's the type of update that you read at work when the boss isn't watching you...for an hour or so.

As for me (enough talk about victims of war, talk about me), last night at two in the morning I finished part three of Six (that sounds misleading unless you know that "Six" is the working title of a book I'm writing). I began working on that part in July 2002, and since late August I have written my quota for it every single day without fail. It was extremely challenging getting it done, and the part three alone turned out to be long enough to constitute a novel in its own right if it wasn't going to be sliced and diced come editing time. Now, with three out of four parts of that book done I'm taking a few days to a week to focus on other writing before I jump into the last part of the first draft. I tried to take today off from writing a quota altogether but I just had three hours of horribly interrupted sleep with bizarre story idea themed dreams, so I decided to get up and write my quota for Beneath (the other book I'm working on). Hopefully that will please the Sandman enough to let me sleep tonight.

By the way, for those of you who drop by this page as infrequently as I usually update it: You might want to scroll down and read some of my other updates of the last week or two. They've been pretty good as of late if I do say.

Procrastinating Can Be Good [ Tuesday, May 6, 2003 - 3:17 AM by Glen ]
A bunch of mini-updates for you all rolled into one:

Have I mentioned... [ Saturday, May 3, 2003 - 3:50 AM by Glen ]
...that I hate Ikea?

An account of my last visit there is posted.

The Core [ Saturday, April 26, 2003 - 4:03 AM by Glen ]
Oh my. I saw a movie and actually wrote a little review for it. I believe it's been over a year since I last added one of these babies and it will be immediately obvious how rusty I am.

The movie is The Core.

Care what I have to say about it? Then read.

Children of the World Unite [ Tuesday, April 22, 2003 - 5:15 PM by Glen ]
The past week has seen three strange incidents for me.

First there were the two kids trying to both get on a bicycle in the middle of a fairly busy road. As I drove by they almost rolled right into my lane. I had already slowed the car and when the kid trying to balance himself on the handlebars had fallen right into my path I practically stopped the car, then slowly drove by once they were out of the way. I looked at them like adults used to look at me when I did dangerous things like this.

"You stupid kids," is about what I thought. They looked to be a little over twelve years old and I thought they must have developed some basic survival instincts like not jumping in front of oncoming traffic. It was a nice day so my windows were down, and as I passed by with that semi-flabbergasted expression the rider of the bike said: "Yea, fuck you too."

I stopped the car (no one was behind me) about thirty feet past them. I was shocked for about a second before I had to resist the urge to get out of the car and smack them around. If I was sixteen or seventeen I probably would have done more, but the look of fear I saw on both their faces when I stopped the car (as seen through the mirror) was enough. I know it wasn't actual fear or anything. More like the "oh shit" feeling you get when you find the boundaries of acceptable behaviour. So I screamed something incoherent along the lines of, "get off the road you damn kids."

The second incident was four days ago. I made a left turn at a corner near home with my young son in the back. A boy of about nine or ten years old walking on the sidewalk caught my eye when his arm extended and he held his middle finger prominantly before him. Again, I was confused for a second. The arm was extended to its full length, the finger was straight and true, and his face like a stone as he looked right at me. I stared all the way through the turn and then as I drove past him I began to laugh. However, a few blocks later I was a little angry. Again, he was too young to actually confront even if my son wasn't with me. I felt powerless against that middle finger. Why should he have impunity? I decided that I needed some sort of resolution. Not to understand why the kid did it (didn't care), but to get my own form of revenge. A few minutes later I was back at the corner ready to give him a middle finger of my own to think about, but alas he had disapeared. Probably into the crack in the Earth that had spawned him. No matter how childish, I had looked forward to returning the favour.

Finally, a few nights ago I was at a local arena. I walked past three young boys (about seven or eight this time). As I went past one of the boys made oinking noises and they all started laughing. "Nice," was all I could say at the slight at my weight.

I'd done things like this over the course of my childhood, but to get them all returned in a seven day period seems just a bit odd. Have kids suddenly realized they hate all authority, all adults, anyone that doesn't share their age and intense admiration of sugar? Or did I do something to upset their deity? I don't get it. I'm just glad I didn't do anything (too) stupid in response.

I hope things truly do come in threes, cause I'm starting to get a complex.

U.S. Captures Another Key "Card" [ Thursday, April 17, 2003 - 4:22 PM by Glen ]
Following on the heels of the capture of Saddam Hussein's half-brother Barzan (news: photo), Pentagon officials announced today that another key member of Saddam's regime was captured.

Using information gleaned from intelligence sources, as well as tips from Baghdad residents loyal to coalition forces, Alzabang Hussein was captured alone, hiding within the grounds of one of the presidential palaces here in Baghdad. He was found in a small wooden enclosure on the grounds along the Tigris River and, according to a Special Forces spokesman, was found "diligently licking his own balls." The Jack of Clubs card, home to Alzabang's picture, has joined the rapidly growing "hand" of captured fugitives from the Saddam Hussein regime.

President Bush held an unplanned radio address to express his pleasure. "Although Alzabang was not as critical a capture as say, Chemical Ali or blood relations to Saddam, we feel that the capture of Saddam's third cousins’ family pet is a key blow to this terrorist regime, and a feather in the cap for those who strive for freedom around this great nation of ours," said President Bush. Adding, "Only the Almighty Lord or a s__tload of weaponry can bestow these freedoms upon us."

Special Forces operatives are currently interrogating Alzabang and there are high hopes that he has information that might lead to further captures of "evil, no-goodknicks," as President Bush described.

He was also pleased to remove the Jack of Clubs from the regime's deck. "That is one powerful card in Euchre. You know, depending on the called suit. I think we've sent a strong message to Saddam with this capture. I say to Saddam, what do you plan to do without the Jack of Clubs?"

Pentagon identification card for Alzabang Hussein (DOD/Reuters)

Reading and Writing [ Sunday, April 13, 2003 - 5:46 AM by Glen ]
I updated the reading page with new info, and I created more separation between the "Currently Reading..." and "I Recommended..." sections. People kept thinking I was reading five or six books concurrently.

Also updated the writing page. Recently finished a long short (or short long) story called “Cutting Hair”, as well as the steady progress on the two novels.

Every day it becomes clearer to me that Six, the one I started about a year ago, is in need of tons of work in future drafts (perhaps two to three years’ worth). I'm still going to finish this first draft before deciding on anything with it though. The other novel, Beneath, is coming along much better and is much tighter overall. I might be getting my hopes up though, because 25,000 words in I felt the same about Six. Making it from the middle third of the book to the final third has proven to be as difficult as I've heard successful authors mention in interviews.

Think [ Friday, April 11, 2003 - 2:51 AM by Glen ]
I saw an interview with the mother of a soldier at the pro-troops rally at Ground Zero in New York today. She said that her and the others were very proud of the troops for fighting in Iraq and avenging the victims of September 11th. The reporter asked her why they felt that Iraq was tied with September 11th when no clear link has ever been shown and she said, and I quote (well, paraphrase accurately I suppose):

"The missiles they (Iraq) have been using against the soldiers are ones that Saddam said they no longer had in Iraq. If he would lie about having those missiles then he is lying about having weapons of mass destruction and lying about not having Al Qaeda ties."

I thought something along the lines of "!?"

Is that all it takes to put people's minds at ease? The Bush regime makes some unfounded statements that they believe Al Qaeda might have had support from Iraq and that's enough said?

And now Rumsfeld is doing his job of picking the next target as Syria. Two weeks ago he accuses Syria of providing equipment and night goggles to the Iraqi military and no other details come out. In contrast to this was the story of the Russian company that was said to be providing equipment to Iraq and actually training the troops to use the equipment at the start of the war. There were enough details in the news that I was willing to believe that one, but the Syria one seemed to be nothing more than a weak inference.

As Baghdad appeared to suddenly be falling to the U.S. yesterday morning Rumsfeld took the podium again to say that Syria was still providing equipment and helping high level Iraqis escape. He was was so excited while he spoke he reminded me of a sixteen year old who just got a car from Mom and Dad. I heard a follow up later that Syria was accepting the families of high level Iraqis into the country. I'm sorry, but Rumsfeld and the Bush regime are so damned transparent. Instead of actually proving that Iraq even has weapons of mass destruction, the main reason they used for invading in the first place, they're already spreading the witch-hunt to the next nation. Apparently the U.N. inspectors weren't doing as bad a job looking for weapons as the U.S. was insinuating. I'm not saying they won't still find weapons, and I'm not saying that Saddam didn't deserve to be ousted, but the U.S. is once again bending every rule in the book to fit their own agenda. Incidentally, did you hear that U.S. marines endangered people south of Baghdad by bursting into a registered nuclear facility that is now leaking radiation since they did so (some distilled info on that here and more details here)? Anyhow, we will undoubtedly begin to hear about terrorist cells (specifically Al Qaeda so they can prey on American's sorrow and thirst for revenge for WTC attacks) training within Syria in the next two months. Iran also seems to be getting more play in the form of warnings from the Bush regime.

It must be so easy for the Bush regime. There is such a large portion of their population that seems prepared to believe almost anything they tell them. Then they set to work paying off or convincing as many allies as possible and discrediting and ignoring the rest. Many Americans are opposed (as evidenced by anti-war rallies), but the majority still favour Bush and war (based on opinion poll results I've seen over the last month) because of unsound arguments that the Bush regime uses to excercise their Americanize the World Plan.

The woman I mentioned earlier was a Cuban American. Near the end of her interview she said that she knew how it was to live under a dictatorship having spent much of her life in Cuba, and that Castro was a bad man just like Saddam Hussein. The question is, how long until the U.S. wants the cigar resources of Cuba ;) But seriously, Cuba should be safe until they get loosely linked to a terrorist attack by Rumsfeld and Bush.

By the way, CNN's coverage of the war has suddenly become a lot more impartial over the last few days (I saw the story about the American flag that appeared briefly on the Saddam statue several times on CNN today). Finally showing more of the Arab opinions about the war and worry about the U.S. in the rest of the world. It's a nice change, but Wolf Blitzer still promotes the war during his afternoon time like the guy at the end of the old Batman TV series:

"Will Saddam resort to using chemical weapons now that Baghdad is lost to him? Stay tuned next hour to find out."

and:

"We've seen that anything can happen during this war so make sure you stay tuned to CNN to find out what happens next."

These are almost exact quotes. It's funny, and sad. If I was born a few hours south would I really be seeing this CNN coverage that differently? I hope not. If you can see all of these problems through an American news agency, then how...ah forget it. I give up.

By the way, I'm not trying to alienate any Americans that stumble onto this web site (by accident), so I'd like to attempt an analogy that I believe sums things up fairly well. The way many Americans view Microsoft is pretty much the way the world is beginning to see the U.S., except there is no international Justice Department to keep the U.S. in check.

I just read the latest "Mike's Message" on michaelmoore.com and my faith in humanity has been partially restored. I've gotta remember that it isn't Americans that are to be feared, it's the right wing wackos that use Bush like a puppet that are the problem.

Suspicioius [ Tuesday, April 8, 2003 - 10:38 AM by Glen ]
Argh...I'm trying not to post on this topic but can't help it when I see things like this.

Read this.

Two contracts have already been awarded; Vice President Dick Cheney's old firm Halliburton said earlier this week that it was given a contract by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to put out oil fires and make emergency repairs to Iraq's oil infrastructure. Cheney was CEO from 1995 to 2000 and sold his interest in the business after the 2000 election.

Does anyone else get the feeling these contracts and this war was guaranteed while Bush was collecting funds for his election run?

Tony Blair seems to be trying to do the right thing (e.g. hiring local Iraqis to manage the UMM Qasr port, wanting the UN to manage post-war Iraq), then the Bush administration storms in and gives business to their American friends.

Also in the article:
Under international law an occupying force cannot alter, change or remake the infrastructure of the country.

It's also a war crime to attempt to kill reporters (as the US did last night in bombing). If the US ever lost its world dominance I wonder how many of its politicians and military personnel would go on trial for war crimes though.

Graphic Novel Poll [ Tuesday, April 1, 2003 - 1:40 AM by Glen ]
If you have a minute to spare, please respond to the poll below.

In case you aren't sure what a graphic novel is, I'll explain (and then you'll probably indicate the "Never!" option below). It's basically a comic book in a thicker trade paperback format. Most times it tells one story, or one part of an ongoing story, but the main thing is that it is a really large comic book. One of the more famous graphic novel series is Neil Gaiman's The Sandman.

Now Back to Regular Scheduled Programming [ Friday, March 28, 2003 - 12:30 PM by Glen ]
My apologies for any grammatical errors, I haven't the heart to proof read this one:

I caught a televised debate on television last night with a few reporters including Andrew Coyne whose position was that the U.S. is in the "fight of their life to prevent another September 11th", and that Canadians have essentially kicked them in the gut. For some reason, I'm of the opinion that the U.S. is not preventing another September 11th, but instead insuring another event like that will take place.

I think many Americans might feel that way as well. For example, three guys who'd apparently stayed up drinking all night last night and climbed a bridge in NYC caused officials to shutdown the entire area around the bridge during rush hour because the men were "Arab looking" and "might have been carrying a package". Their suspicious behaviour was a result of being hammered, but for more than 18 months Americans have been living in varying degrees of terror and worry; in fear.

If Osama or others are currently considering another operation they only have to watch some American news to see that it's simply not needed anytime soon. The administration and press are doing an excellent job at terrorizing their people. And as Lewis Lapham (Editor of Harper's Magazine) has said, the administration has produced news of new and deadly chemicals at self-serving times (e.g. needing budget approval for military).

I watch more U.S. news than Canadian, and one theme I've seen repeatedly over the last 18 months is that the media has presented numerous stories of terror "experts" who have suggested dozens of ways that terrorists could strike next to cause the most damage and death to the American population. Water reservoirs, food sources, sports stadiums, and on and on. They provide such detail on things terrorists could be doing that the terrorists themselves probably watch when they need an idea.

Anyhow, I'm going to try really hard not to comment on the war again on this page but I have one final point.

The embedded reporters have provided detailed coverage on the soldiers in the field. Many of them have reported that when giving their inspirational speeches to the soldiers or pilots, the commanders mention that they are a part of history, they are doing something noble, etc.

In both World War I & II Germany invaded other countries, committed atrocities to those and their own people, and were seen as a force of evil attempting to take over the world. The Gulf War was smaller scale but similar. Iraq had invaded Kuwait. Whatever reasons outside of coming to the aid of an invaded nation that coalition forces had for helping Kuwait, they were essentially doing a good thing in stopping one nation from invading another. I don't know all of the details of why Iraq did this besides trying to get Kuwait's oil.

This current war is a bit different in that the U.S. is the one doing the invading. The current U.S. administration has also adopted policies in which their goal is to Democratize/Americanize all governments in the world that are dictatorships or communist states (no wonder North Korea has been threatening to conduct a pre-emptive nuclear strike on the U.S. since they know they are next after Iraq). This draft of policy was rejected by the Bush Sr. administration, but after September 11th was adopted by Bush Jr. (pbs.org's Frontline show talked about this in detail, but there are other sources for this such as Lewis Lapham again). It's a lot harder for the world at large to look at this war as a noble and necessary thing when it is in fact attacking another nation rather than coming to the defence of a victim, no matter how badly Saddam treats his people.

When I hear about soldiers being told this by their superiors and risking their life for this cause I find it really sad. Sad for the families that have or will lose a loved one for this conflict. I saw the father of one of the four U.S. Marines who died on that helicopter accident along with UK soldiers in the first days of the war on the news the night after the accident. He was so angry as he held a picture of his son and shouted into the camera, "Here you go George, you took my son, you took my son from me!"

Even a retired General working for CNN don't think the case for war was made well at all. These soldiers signed up and agreed to put their life on the life if necessary, but it's just so sad that they are almost brainwashed into believing certain things. I suppose it's all perspective though, and they'd all say that they truly believe they are doing the right thing without a doubt.

The one thing Bush and his administration has done for me is shown so clearly that I am not a right wing extremist. It turns out I must be on the left, but to me it just seems like common sense and refusing to not accept lies of a government as truth. To think. To not just trust in God. It’s just my opinion, but there you have it.

When this is over I hope that, after the coalition takes the oil they want, they do help the people of Iraq. I’ve been wondering lately about another country that was “liberated” by a U.S. led coalition. I’ve found it difficult to find out much about what is going on in Afghanistan. There were many different political parties besides the Taliban that were all fighting for control of the country. Are the people there now much better off than they were a few years ago? Within 24 hours of the start of Operation: Iraqi Freedom Afghanistan was subjected to the largest U.S. led military action in over a year. I wonder how many people heard about that. The U.S. media didn’t publicize it very well, and it was interesting that it came on the heels of the start of the Iraqi campaign. Why would they want it to not get much press?

And another thing, how can Bush and Rumsfeld cry foul over Iraqi television showing dead and imprisoned American POWs? What about their own, ongoing human rights violations that never seems to get mentioned anymore? They're quick to cite broken rules by others, yet they seem to do whatever it is they feel is necessary without worrying about the rest of the world.

Many in Canada have been saying this week that there will be a new world order coming with the U.S. at the head of it. Converting nations and killing as they go until the entire world is agreeable to them. They will not tolerate having military rivals (again, specifically mentioned in that PBS special). At the risk of sounding extreme in the other direction, when do the U.S. people realize that they are not doing God's work and are in fact becoming the equivalent of the Evil Empire with Darth Bush at the helm? Sounds pretty crazy, I know, but isn't that what it boils down to?

Admittedly, I've got too much time on my hands. I'd like to switch off the part of my brain that worries and focus again on posting writing topics here again soon. I think I've got it out of my system now.

Yes, Another Comment on the War [ Wednesday, March 26, 2003 - 5:04 AM by Glen ]
Sorry to have to do this again, but I just found this one too rich.

Colin Powell announced some time last week that the American tax payers would not be alone in footing the bill for this war the Bush Administration wanted so badly. Powell said that the expenses would also be paid for by the Iraqi oil they plan to pilfer as soon as possible (okay, so he didn't say "pilfer as soon as possible").

Good thing they called this operation "Iraqi Freedom" or that might raise some eyebrows. I'm sure that once the U.S. and coalition forces take their cut of the oil there should be about the same amount of wealth left for the Iraqi people that Saddam allowed.

I've been trying to find a web link for that bit of news, but haven't been able to find it. I heard it on a report on CNN today by a White House reporter. The CNN anchor ignored that point and instead focussed on some bit of inconsequential news that the reporter had mentioned.

In looking for the link that had backed up what I heard I found this quote on CNN:

"F___ Saddam. we're taking him out." Those were the words of President George W. Bush, who had poked his head into the office of National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice.

Even in his quotes on CNN he sounds like a moron. Can't believe he forgot to capitalize "we're" ;). And no, I couldn't find that report on a number of news sites, but the reporter on CNN didn't sound at all ambiguous about it.

Lewis Lapham [ Monday, March 24, 2003 - 9:47 AM by Glen ]
Couldn't drift gracefully into sleep last night and instead flipped channels hoping to suddenly drop off.

I landed on TVO with what looked like a sure ticket to Slumberland. There was an older gentleman speaking in near monotones at some sort of lecture. Unfortunately for me the man was Lewis Lapham, editor of Harper's magazine, and he spoke very eloquently about the state of the U.S. and the world with GWB's administration in power. If I ever get in an argument with someone about the validity of the war I'd like to have this guy at my side to do the talking. He kept bringing up examples that I'd forgotten about or had only heard brief mention in the press over the last few years. The things he spoke about angered, frightened and occasionally provided a laugh.

Now, luckily for you, the lecture is available via web cast here. You owe it to yourself to listen to what he has to say, even if you don't agree. The entire lecture is 88 minutes, but the first 10 minutes are introduction (still worth seeing). His lecture begins with a story about his great grandmother's grandfather who was a Secretary of War during both Jefferson administrations and who was instructed to invade Canada with a U.S. Militia (it didn't work out, but as far as I know the U.S. has invaded Canada three times over the last two or three hundred years).

If you're at work, open this web cast in the background and listen while you work. At the very least it should keep you awake as it did for me.

Bias [ Saturday, March 22, 2003 - 1:48 AM by Glen ]
Thankfully the CBC in Canada offers a more objective view of the war than any of the American stations. At the very least the CBC coverage is different. Tonight they were showing several examples of the CNN reporters "cheerleading" for the U.S. military, then talked about a report by an organization called FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting) which sums up the current U.S. network news situation very well.

The Long Road to War [ Friday, March 21, 2003 - 5:02 PM by Glen ]
I was flipping around the channels last night trying to get away from the near identical news coverage on all of the major news networks when I stopped on a channel I don't watch nearly as often as I should.

On PBS there was a show entitled Frontline: The Long Road to War with the specific episode being The War Behind Closed Doors. It was really interesting and focussed on the internal struggle between the "hawks" and "moderates" in the White House. Colin Powell being the main moderate working to essentially keep a leash on Bush and company. I watched from Part 3 onwards (starting at September 10, 2001 on) and at the link I provided above you can watch the show online if you are so inclined.

I hadn't really considered that there are at least a few people thinking behind the scenes in Washington even if their influence goes largely unnoticed or fails.

Iraqi Blog [ Thursday, March 20, 2003 - 4:28 AM by Glen ]
I'm not sure it's 100% legit, but as far as blogs go this blog from Iraq is pretty interesting.

Vote Bob [ Tuesday, March 18, 2003 - 3:02 PM by Glen ]
I just watched Bob Roberts for the first time in about ten years and a few things amazed me about it.

1) It's set in the time of the Gulf War and it's eerie how identical the news dialogue is to this week's CNN special feature starting in a few days. George Jr. must be making his pappy so proud to finally get their Hitler version 2 out of power.

2) It was Jack Black's first acting role according to Imdb.com, and he was fantastic in it as always. There are also a number of other big names in the film as well.

If you haven't seen it before or it has been a while, do what I did and go to your local library and borrow it for free, or rent it even.

What Manner of Beast Art Thou? [ Friday, March 14, 2003 - 7:56 PM by Glen ]
I'm currently taking a night course focussing on short story writing and despite my reservations its turned out to be a great decision. The regular professor who taught the course was unable to teach this term and so a replacement was called in. Rachael Preston usually teaches creative writing and novel writing courses and she recently published her first novel entitled Tent of Blue.

Before taking the course I worried that the teacher would be some overbearing personality who felt they knew how, exactly, everyone should go about writing. Luckily Rachael takes a very open approach to writing and provides a ton of valuable insight each class. She told us one such piece of information a few weeks ago when she said that it's a little bit dangerous to start a writing project thinking that you're writing a short story, or a novella, or a novel. Once you're well into writing the work can take on a shape that you didn't intend and become more or less than you anticipated.

Over the past few weeks I've seen this first hand when I began working on what I thought would be a novella at most (Beneath is listed over on the writing projects page). Twelve days ago it was already getting to be a hefty short story at about 4,000 words and in checking today I saw that it was now at 10,623 words. I've no idea how many words it will take to tell this story but I'm starting to wonder if it has the legs to reach novel length (usually 90K - 120K words which equates to about 350-400 pages).

The other writing project that I continue to work away on has the working title of Six. It was at about 94,000 words two weeks ago and is now over the 100k mark. It's so definitely a first draft though, and even if it were written well enough to be published, at this point I could see an editor slicing away 20k words without blinking. I still have more than 1/4 of the story to tell as far as I can estimate so it's going to end up being way longer than what is marketable.

I've read many places that novels by first time authors are usually no longer than 100,000 words. Oh well. I began Six because it was a story I wanted to write. My goal wasn't to get it published, but of course that would be a huge plus if it turned out in print one day.

The point of my ramblings? If you're writing something don't worry about how it might end up. There are so many reasons and excuses to forego writing or dropping a project, but if you don't see it through you might miss out on something great. Just keep writing...at least, that's what I keep telling myself.

I've found that doing a quota for Six in the morning, then a quota for another project in the evening is what keeps me happiest. It makes me feel like I'm accomplishing something, being productive and all of that. I've even started toying with taking on a third quota for something I'm nearly positive will be a short short story, but who knows ;)

Precursor to Doing Evil? [ Wednesday, March 5, 2003 - 4:53 PM by Glen ]
My wife has been a fan of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer series probably since its inception. It has only been the last month that I've watched each episode, but prior to that I'd see a few minutes here and there. The show has great writing and performances but I could never get into it in the past.

Anyhow, to get to my point, in only four episodes I've formed a strong dislike of Buffy. For the most part I find the demons to have better personalities and to be less bitchy. Maybe it's a phase they're having her character go through, but she's really annoying. She whines about having to save her friends all the time, but if they weren't her friends their chances of falling in harms way would be much lower.

A few shows ago three wise men type guys called her to their time and were going to imbue her with enough power to save the world, but at the cost of her humanity (is she really human anymore anyhow since she's died at least twice that I know of). So she killed two of them and before she was sent back the surviving wiseguy told her about the mistake she'd just made. Once back in her own time she just says, "Oops, I think I screwed up." So that makes her human I guess, but not anymore likeable.

That's not a great example of why I don't like her. Mostly I don't like how she treats her friends on the show. Yes, I realize I'm missing out on all the shows spent on her suffering through the tough role of being a slayer, so maybe she wasn't such a jerk to begin with.

I hope the demons do win out in the eventual series finale. In the meantime I'm hooked on the show hoping for bad things to happen to Buffy. Could this show be some sort of litmus test for demon recruiting and I've proven myself worthy of joining the horde?

Perhaps...

Writing Inventory [ Sunday, March 2, 2003 - 4:25 PM by Glen ]
I decided to take inventory on my writing folder and post it on the writing page. I've read a few articles that recommend having all of your projects on a spreadsheet so you can keep track of what you've mailed out to be published, so this was a step towards that.

Numbers one through twelve were started prior to September, 2002 (a point at which my free time substantially increased). So I've gotten a lot more done as far as writing goes in the last five plus months.

Going through the list I found so many stories that I've either shown no one or shown just to my wife because they are so damned bad, but everything you complete is also practice for a future piece of work.

Sign Me Up! [ Wednesday, February 19, 2003 - 3:03 PM by Glen ]
I read today that five years ago the average writer in the U.S. earned only $7,000 per year and that only 900 people in that country made enough money from writing that they had no need to supplement their income with other work.

I know I'm not trying to do this for the money, but ouch. I need to get me some substantial lottery winnings I think ;)

On a Personal Note [ Saturday, February 15, 2003 - 1:36 PM by Glen ]
It's been almost precisely one year since my father passed away unexpectedly while babysitting my son. Lunch was still on the table when my wife arrived to pickup our son after work. She found my father curled up in a sleeping position with my son asleep against his legs.

There's no way it's been a year, but it has. It's been really hard living without him, especially for my Mom. For my part, I lost my best friend and best advisor by far and it doesn't feel like that hole can ever be filled again.

I was thinking the other day about how much I, and my life, have changed in the last year as a result of losing Dad. I'd still be employed right now for one thing, and I'd be a lot happier with family and friends, (but would still be taking it for granted as I always had before). But mainly I would just be a lot different personally. I don't think I really laughed for about four or five months afterwards, and that was something that had always been a part of my personality. I've withdrawn from almost everyone in my life outside of my son. I don't know in what ways I am different exactly, but everything just feels different.

I have some personal writing that I did for a course I'm in that I might post soon that might shed more light on it. I'm not sure how long these will be available for, but here are the In Memoriams we had listed in the Toronto Star today.

I think the main thing I'd like to say is that if you or someone you know is over fifty, they should be urged to get checked for an aortic aneurysm. The main risk factors are smoking, high blood pressure and a genetic history of aneurysms, but it can affect anyone. They often go undetected and when they burst you have no chance of survival unless you get extremely lucky with just a small rupture that can be operated on. One quote I read once said that if you were on the operating table when the rupture occurred you would only have a 5% chance of living. The key with this disorder is early detection and an operation before it gets too large.

My father had retired a few years previous with one of his main goals being to play a lot of golf. During the last year of his life he played rarely if at all. He was always hunched over with back pain but didn't really talk about it. That was about the only clue there was that something was wrong, but he'd always had back pain during his adult life. But he did smoke, did have high blood pressure, and did have a family history. He was a tough guy to get to go to the doctor or talk about his health problems. My Mom tried to get him to get checked after his brother passed away five years ago sometime after an aneurysm was detected in him as well, but he wouldn't budge. I wish I had not thought him immortal and maybe I could have helped.

Anyhow, do me a favour and think of someone whose life might be extended by looking into this. My brother was checked out this year with an ultrasound and it was a simple procedure. I'm thirty and plan to go in the next few years.

Prey [ Wednesday, February 12, 2003 - 3:34 PM by Glen ]
Since my first year of university when I read my first Michael Crichton book, I've loved each and every one he's done.

His intensive research is always evident in the books (for some people it's too much, but not me), and the details he provides add a level of realism that most authors have problems achieving. He makes almost anything sound plausible in his writing. Add to this his amazing skill at creating suspense and you have the one author who can keep me turning pages much later into the night than any other.

A few weeks ago when I completed My Father's Son (see two updates below) I began reading Prey and less than three days later I was done. I'm not a quick reader, and often spend months on a novel, so that should give you some idea about how much I enjoyed it.

Prey is not as strong as many of his other novels, but the first 150 pages were probably his best yet. The protagonist is an IT professional who was fired months earlier and had become a stay at home Dad. That was close enough to my reality that I probably enjoyed it more than most would, but my wife read it after me and had a similar opinion of the book as a whole.

The ending seemed to left something to be desired, but if you like Crichton's previous work you shouldn't be disappointed.

CNN is Evil [ Monday, February 10, 2003 - 9:46 AM by Glen ]
I just ate my breakfast while watching CNN.

They were having one of the lighter segments on their morning show where a co-host makes a brief appearance and then recaps all the strange but true stories for the weekend. It's mildly entertaining.

During one of the funnier moments while the hosts were all sharing a laugh I noticed that CNN had taken it upon themselves to permanently add a "TERROR ALERT: HIGH" message on the bottom left of the screen above their logo. Just so that it is not overlooked, the bright orange terror colour is used for a background. I think everyone in North America that follows the news at all heard last week that the terror level was raised, but CNN wants to ensure it seeps further into their viewer's psyche.

On the following segment, one of the news anchors joked about how he "can't wait to hear Belgium's response to being described as Germany and France's Mini-Me". It was in reference to a story today that those three countries vetoed the United States' bid to ready Turkey militarily.

CNN has always benefited from tragedy and war, but over the span of just ten minutes this morning I saw just how much of a partner they are (or are trying to be) in it.

In my best curmudgeonly voice I say, "Warmongers."

My Father's Son [ Thursday, February 6, 2003 - 7:35 PM by Glen ]
A few weeks ago I finally finished reading My Father's Son by Farley Mowat. Basically, it's letters between Farley and his parents when he was stationed overseas during World War II. His father served in World War I, so some of the letters are very interesting.

I'd never read anything like this before, but I enjoyed it. It wasn't exactly a page-turner, but I usually read a few of the letters each night. I think most people at all interested in war would enjoy it, but it's really the relationship between a father and his son that is the focal point, hence the name.

I haven't updated my currently reading page, but will do so ASAP.

The Chad [ Monday, February 3, 2003 - 8:35 PM by Glen ]
I just posted a very short story about Chad, who some of you might know.

We were at his cottage back in October I believe, and I asked him to give me a first line for a story. At the time he had just embarked on a new and healthier way of living. I'm not sure if he's still on it, or if my prediction about his eventual weight might be correct.

It's just a writing exercise and not a real story, but it's better than nothing right? Right?

Read it here.

If anyone would like to see me struggle with more of these, post a one or two sentence opening in the comments and I'll try my best.

Update: An anonymous reader submitted this line for me to work with:
"The hot oil he dribbled onto her already hard nipples caused her to instinctively arch her back in pleasure."

You can read what I came up with here.

I'd appreciate it if people left their name when they leave a comment so I know who is reading this rag.

Writing [ Wednesday, January 22, 2003 - 3:46 PM by Glen ]
Lately this page has regressed into something other than I had originally intended. I set out with the goal of posting my writing for others to (hopefully) read, and offer feedback. I finally set up the comments last month, and I'm going to make more of an effort to post my writing at regular intervals.

I've completed a number of stories, poems and prose, but I can't publish it on my page until I'm sure it's not going to be accepted for print or as a winner in a contest. I know it's a safe bet that that won't happen anytime soon, but I still need to be sure. Once I publish a story on my page the publishers who want first serial rights close the door, and from what I've read and seen that is most of them. That said, I will still be publishing many stories this year on the page, and in the coming weeks I'd like to also post some of the results of writing exercises I have engaged in lately.

I'll try to keep the personal posts to a minimum, and instead post items related to writing, or personal items related to my writing. You get my meaning, right?

Speaking of a personal item related to my writing: The last three days I've had the flu or food poisoning. It's been horrible, but Monday was the worst. I spent most of the first half of the day trying to sleep on the bathroom floor in between retching, and the second half of the day in bed or making trips to the bathroom. At about 10 p.m. I realized that I hadn't done my quota (in fact I hadn't even sat in a chair all day). So I got up, turned on the computer, and wrote an entire sentence for my novel before I felt queasy and had to rush back into bed.

My wife suggested I take the day off, and it was sound advice. But for some reason I just can't allow myself to miss a day. It's as if missing a day will instantly brand me as a failure. So thirty minutes later I got up again and wrote a few paragraphs, then back into bed again. I still had half of the absolute minimum quota amount to go. I ended up finishing just before midnight in a series of starts and stops, and what I wrote was almost incoherent, but I was happy that I hadn't missed a day.

Of course, feeling better yesterday it should have been relatively easy to finish the quota, but at 11:30 p.m., lying in bed for the night, I realized I'd forgotten to do it. I dragged myself out of bed and rectified the situation. So in my own mind at least, I'm not yet a failure.

Anyhow, thanks for reading, and check back early next week for a few more interesting posts.

North Korea [ Monday, January 13, 2003 - 10:22 AM by Glen ]
Politics is one of my least favourite topics of conversation, however I've been following the North Korea situation for the last week and it's really got me wondering.

ter·ror·ism
Pronunciation: 'ter-&r-"i-z&m
Function: noun
Date: 1795
Definition: the systematic use of terror especially as a means of coercion

How is what North Korea doing not defined as terrorism? Sure, it's on a much grander scale than high jacking an airplane, but they're using the threat of nuclear war in order to force the U.S. and other countries to help them out. Why does the U.S. negotiate with these terrorists, but when it comes to the Middle East they shoot first and mold ruined countries to their liking later.

It's a delicate situation, I agree, which is one of the reasons I hate politics (office or global). The world should be uniting against North Korea right now for even using the weapons as a threat like this.

Good Riddance [ Monday, January 6, 2003 - 10:04 AM by Glen ]
I'd be lying if I said that 2002 didn't kick the crap out of me.

I lost someone very important to me in February, my job in September, and nothing significant happened on the good side of things. If it wasn't for my son I would have probably been depressed most of the year (by the way, self-pity is an art form).

So I'm glad it's over, but at the same time I learned a lot about myself and other people this year as well.

It's difficult knowing exactly what motivates people, especially when money is involved, but I saw people I thought were on my side at work let me down. They never opted to explain things to me, so they aren't worth much in my book. Long before I was laid off they stopped communicating with me, and I was already deep in my own shell anyhow. I am fairly certain that I will never rise up the ranks to a position of power in a company because I'll never be willing to backstab, lie, and do things that are wrong and still be able to live with myself. But maybe with baby steps I can work towards it. And to clarify, that statement has a bit to do with my own situation at my last company, but it's also what I've seen in the first five years of office life. It seems the key to becoming wealthy is have all your friends get you a seat with the board of directors for several copmanies. Doing what is best for the company gets replaced with what will reap the greatest rewards for the share holders. Whatever.

Of course that also means that if I ever started my own company I'd probably drive the business into the ground in short order.

Enough about that stuff.

On the writing front, this has been a good year, and my work in that area has taught me a lot about my commitment. Still not published, but I spent very little time trying to make it to print, something I've been looking into rectifying lately.

I was able to initiate and stick to a daily quota of writing since about the beginning of August, and as a result I've produced a fair amount of material. For the entire year I wrote a dozen or so poems (actually, prose would be a more accurate description I suppose), five or six short stories, and 73,833 words for my novel (as of this morning). I'm not sure what the latter equates to in page count, but from what I've read, a typical novel is 100,000 words. For good or bad I feel I'm only about half way done the story, but I'm sure many words will be cut in the editing process down the road. I keep reminding myself it is only a first draft on those days in which meeting the quota is a monumental task.

I read this quote just a moment ago in trying to find the typical word count for a novel:

That's MY Name [ Friday, December 20, 2002 - 2:35 AM by Glen ]
I was trying to track down an interesting link in my referrer stats for this page, when I found this through google.

I'm not sure what women out there frequent cyberspace-inmates.com, but I thought I should give him some props and attention since we share the same name.

But seriously, I've always feared the feeling of isolation and complete loss of control that prison would bring. Just the thought of it was a good enough deterrent for me, not that I ever considered robbing a bank or anything...honest. I can wait to experience it when and if I make it to living in an old folks home.

Nice [ Thursday, December 19, 2002 - 2:57 PM by Glen ]
Read.

Lucky Me [ Monday, December 16, 2002 - 1:20 PM by Glen ]

Time [ Wednesday, December 11, 2002 - 6:50 PM by Glen ]
My son just threw up on me for the third time today. Since last night (when we shared a grilled cheese sandwich), he's clearly been sick with what appears to be the Norwalk virus. My wife has had it since 4 this morning, and somehow I haven't caught it...yet. I'm cursing the decision to share that sandwich now I tell you.

Last time we had this was in March when my son had it first again, then I had it, then my wife. I remember praying for death during that bout. It is easily the worst I have felt physically in all my life, so I'm understandably terrified of getting this thing again. I'm so in tune with every little stomach gurgle I have right now.

Anyhow, while cleaning up his vomit I got to thinking about how relative time is. I'm not even attempting to talk about the relativity of time in terms of scientific understanding. I'm talking about the perception of time passing for an individual depending on the emotional state, the activity level, the health of the individual and so on.

Last week my son turned two years old. When I think back to the moment I first saw him in his entirety and sharing the same air it seems like something that is entirely too far in the past to be just two years. My guess at the reason for this is that there has been a complete change in our lives because of him, we've watched him go through each of the stages of development, waiting anxiously for the next one at times and appreciating the hell out of special moments at others. He's gone from being a little blob to a happy little boy while we watched.

Then, if I think about when my father died in February, the point in time at which it happened doesn't seem far in the past to me. I suppose that it's one of those flashbulb moments (like when Kennedy was assassinated for the previous generation, or perhaps September 11, 2001 for ours), because almost every minute of February 15, 2002 is with me as clear as it was on the day. When I consider events between February and now, many of them seem much further in the past than that day in February does, so it seems that the tragedy of it has changed my perception of how long ago it happened.

Just short of three months ago I was laid off from my job, and to a much lesser degree it fits with the last example as something bad happening to me. I remember the moment my boss called me in to give me the news very clearly, and yet it does seem to be the appropriate amount of time in the past. Getting fired is nowhere near as emotional as the birth of my son or losing my father, but then why does my son's birth seem to be slowly fading away like other memories while the loss of my Dad does not?

Finally, a day at work at that job had begun to move as slowly as you can imagine. Along the lines of that episode of The Simpsons when Bart notices the clock begin to tick backwards (I just found is originally from Risky Business, which I don't remember). Now that I'm out of work, the days fly by. I have to make a real effort each day to be productive or before I know it it's late in the evening and not much was accomplished.

I don't know, this amounts to pointless ramblings, but I just think it's interesting how our perception of the current, and memory of events in the past, can be altered by so many things besides the actual amount of seconds that pass.

Bowling for Columbine [ Monday, December 9, 2002 - 9:41 PM by Glen ]
I saw it today and I'd give it a 9 or 9.5 out of 10. I see great movies from time to time, but never have I enjoyed a documentary movie as I enjoyed Bowling for Columbine. It was funny, disturbing and, at times, thought provoking. I didn't always agree with every statement or point that Moore made, and sometimes I got a little impatient wondering what he was getting at with some of the footage, but in the end it all paid off.

I highly recommend this film for everyone, American or not.

Comments? [ Monday, December 2, 2002 - 4:26 AM by Glen ]
I found a web site today that offered every addon I could possibly want for newspro. The makers of this news posting utility shut down about six months ago, and despite repeated failed attempts I decided to give a google search another try this morning and hit gold.

I just felt like having it there in case people ever wanted to offer feedback or comments on stories that I post in the future. It's still not working exactly right, but apparently you can register your nickname with the comments engine so no one else can post on you, and it will also hide your ip if you do that.

Still very much in testing at any rate.

The Rush [ Monday, December 2, 2002 - 4:24 AM by Glen ]

Silver Lining [ Thursday, November 28, 2002 - 2:54 AM by Glen ]
Two upsides to being out of work:

1. Playing late hockey games are no longer a problem. The guys I used to work with are probably getting to sleep around now and have to be up in the morning.

2. Tomorrow (I guess it is officially today now) is the U.S. Thanksgiving, which means I can see two afternoon football games. This was one of my favourite days of the year when I was in University :)

I'm all tapped out of a positive attitude now...

Movie Recommendations [ Tuesday, November 26, 2002 - 1:06 AM by Glen ]
I attempted to install MoveableType last night so that the news item updates could be a bit sleeker, and comments could be added with ease. But while following the installation instructions, an error popped up that I don't think I can fix. It might be up to the host for this page, if they are even willing. So I'm sticking with Newspro until I find another alternative I think.

Anyhow, I had a bunch of things in mind to post, so here is the first of those.

I've seen some movies over the last three or four months that I really liked: