Thursday already and the month of May is just clipping by.

My work week is going slow but I've got 2 days in the  bank and today is day 3/4 as I decided a short week this week because I'm going to Lodge Saturday. I haven't had a Saturday off this year. it's a long weekend and I'm entitled.

The NDP leader Tom Mulcair is bad news for Western Canada and the country as a whole as on his agenda is a National Carbon tax and it wont be anything like the GST either. Yesterday he was complaining that the oilsands is whats killing manufacturing in Eastern Canada. What's killing manufacturing in Eastern Canada Tom is Provincial taxes, like HST's and PST's. If you want to slow down the oilsands there goes your $14B/year from Alberta transfer payments to pay off your rich union buddies. Lucky for us the NDP have never formed a Federal Government and Tom is just the opposition.

So far on my Flex plan I've used  up just 280mb of data. I think I'm allowed 500mb before the Flex plan goes beyond it's initial fee. 280mb in 22 days, I can't tell if that's good or bad yet. I'm off to the bank latter this morning to see about setting up an auto payment structure to make it easier to pay for this thing.

This weekend I'm going to try and see the Avengers movie over there at Clairview movies across the street from us. The movie starts at about 8pm so if Anne might miss me when she calls. I really want to see this on the big screen. She'll be getting out of the office by the time the movie is over but it depends on how I feel. I might go Sunday afternoon instead, we'll see. Anyway, that's about all for now.

Something woke me up about 7:40am I to pee and our bedroom door was opened. Wait. Its Boot’s turn I thought. I closed the door behind me and did my stuff and checked around the apartment. Everything was in order. Where was Boots then? I checked the open upstairs closet. Not there. Then outside. Sure enough he was sitting on the patio chair looking out to the “park way” behind us. I tried going back to bed for the 2 hours I had left on the clock. I tossed and turned and I woke up to a dream.

I dreamt I was visiting mom and some of the kids still with her. We were living in Winnipeg of all places. I knew I had overstayed my time and it was time to go back home to Edmonton. Would my stuff be there because when I had left I was behind in my rent. I recall coming back home and there was Silky and Sporty rolling around play fighting with each other and my land lady and a friend of hers unceromiously handed me a Christmas stocking. That‘s when I woke up. I recall though I had a similar dream not having anything to do with the above event but with the same apartment building. I seem to recall losing a computer to theft as I had move in bags of my things scattered all over the place Kind of like when I did when I first moved from the Villa Maria 1999 and into the bigger place across the street from the West End Jasper Place Legion on 156th street.
when I came back (in the other dream) but this was the same place, two different dreams, weird.

I had half an hour on the clock and it was warm in our bedroom and I knew half an hour wouldn’t do me any good. I got 5.5 hours of sleep. I’m kind of on and off deciding if I want to go to Commercial on the weekend. I really need the hours this week as I’m trying to save some money. The only piece of software I’d like right now is Komplete 8 and Shreddage X. I also need a good condencer mc on a stand and a pop filter. LM has a Rodes kit without the stand. I also need some foam rubber to cut out backround noises. Steinberg's Wavelab is supposed to be good for that.

Anyway, I got another 8 hours ahead of me here but I'm a man with a agenda. I'm doing my bit to get the word out about these foreign funded radical groups that are trying to hijack our economy. These groups have a 10% limit on using these funds beyond chaitable means. It's time the Government cracks down on them. They should revise chaitible language as well and make it clear the differences between a gift and a donation. Charities here in Canada should not be allowed to accept foreign "gifts" or "donations" even from affiliates. Canadians know these groups are out there and these groups have deep pockets and if they don't know they're out there I'm making sure they know and how damaging they are to our economy. Even now Tides Canada is under investigation by the CRA. Anyway, that's about all for now. Sorry about spellos this morning.  
 

WHL Champions beating Portland Winterhawks 4-1at Rexall earlier this evening. Now they go onto the Memorial Cup tournament may 18th-27th. Should be a good one.

I was doing some research earlier about these foreign funded radical groups that the campaign I'm working on says are out to hijack Canada's economy and most of them are US affiliates. There's about 30 groups and they're doing the old money laundering trick. They bought off 2 first nations groups here in Canada money from Tides US into Tides Canada to have them work against the Oilsands here in Alberta. These first nations groups meanwhile are stirring up the pot creating trouble. They think that Tides Canada is giving them the grants (gifts) but in reality the funds are coming from Tides US etc. So much for their "ethics," bunch of hypocrites. So what we're doing is educating the public about these groups that are out there and that they are not helping Canada's economy. It's a complicated issue and the waters are really murky. I'd  like to see Harper pull their chairtable tax status on all these radical groups and call their activities acts of eco terrorism. They did it to Greenpeace 20 years ago, they can do it to all of these US affiliates here in Canada.

I didn't get out to FS to get the camera connection kit but they have plenty in stock so I'll get one on my way out for the afternoon shift tomorrow. Anyway, that's about all I have for today.

On Coast tonight the topic is on Nazi escapees and how thousands of nazi's escaped to remote parts of the world after WW2. I read somewhere years ago that it's aleged that the Nazi's dummped their treasure hoard into the bottom of lake Altersee or near the Werfen ice caves in Switzerland. I imagine those ice caves have been explored to death since those stories emerged. The Nazi's after the war is a facinating topic, so this should be a good show

Hard to believe that my diary/blog is 32 years old as of yesterday. My diary is 32 years old but my blog began in 2005. There are links below to my older blog posts. Anyway, that's about all I have for now.

going on recently around here. I've been just going to work and coming home.

I had a slow day on the job today barely pulling in undre $250, so it was a slow day.

I'm following the Edmonton Oil Kings (WHL). They are leading in the finale 3-2 beating Portland Winter Hawks. Last night at Rexall Place, they had their largest crowd ever and they won 4-3. Some of those players could be Oiler's soon. Game 6 could be an elimination game for the  Memorial Cup. Last year it was won by the  Saint John Sea Dogs. Game 6 I think is in Portland Saturday night.

Tonight on Coast the topic is Power of Crystals with guest Dr. John DeSalvo,a Biophysicist with an interest in the ancient worlds and the crystal skulls. I usually catch the last half hour or so but I'm getting a little tired so I might call it an early night. Next Wednesday's show looks good on Lost Civilizations.

Today is another 7.5 hour day and then 6 hours along with my pay check. Then 6 hours for Saturday and I'm off for 3 days. Other then that I don't have a lot going on. Its been pretty quiet around here. Anyway, that's about all from me.

pressing on the agenda. Just the way I like it. The only thing I have in fact this month is Commercial Lodge on next Saturday and after that “my calendar” is open.

With nothing pressing and no memory work ahead of me I can now relax and work on my music and a track. I got a percussion line going from a WAV file and after I figured out how to use buses and channels from my audio interface, it plays back my Wav files, which I’m told are the basic audio blocks in Cubase.

I’m also back on track with my reading as well as I’m back into reading Stardoc #1 but I’m not going to read the whole series in one go. I hope to finish this book this month. Next up maybe I’ll read a RJS novel.

This evening I was watching the Caps/NYR NHL game #5 and flipping back and fourth to watch wrestling. I didn’t miss much but I did see the “main event.”

On Coast tonight Amygdala/ Messages from the Dead Mon 05-07 In the first half, brain researcher Neil Slade will talk about his research into the amygdala, a part of the brain believed to cause increased creativity, intelligence, and paranormal ability. Not my area of interest but I’ll listen for a bit.

My wife was kind of hoping to see the weekends “Super moon” but then after it was explained on local news she realized the event was mostly hype and kind of a let down. Especially since we had partial cloud cover that night here in Edmonton.

I’ve got about $7 on my iTunes gift card and I’m considering some marvel comic books. I just downloaded the Marvel comic book app. I don’t know if this lets you read the comic books. Anyway, that’s about all for  now.

 

was more important to go to YOC Lodge next Saturday anyway. I’ll take next Saturday off because I like Commercial Lodge. I’m right downtown and I can go to Audrey’s before I visit the Lodge.

I was trying to figure out how I can get the “guitar sound” out from Garageband and export it as a Wav file and apparently it can be done but I need to have my apps synced to iTunes. So I got music on my iPad, my apps synced and now my photos. This gives me about 6Gb free. Eventually I’m going to upload my music to iCloud anyway. At the moment I’m downloading my photos and my download session is 240/922 files. There’s lots of cat photos.

Next cheque is when I begin saving up for Melodyne editor. I’m saving up $400 ($365) of that is for Med. I’ll be able to pick it up at LM about mid June.

This morning I watched the LA/St. Louis game and LA won the series in 4. They beat out the 2 top seeded teams in the West. Tonight I’m watching Phoenix and Nashville. There’s lots of hockey to watch. Anyway, that’s all I have for today. 
 

of the Canadian penny. Canada mint says the coins cost more to make then their value and believe they will save $11 million/year. The coin box at Tim Horton’s is full of pennies and lose change. Charities like the Salvation Army will take a hit from the absence of the penny.

I’m enjoying my morning coffee before I head out to work. Hopefully it will help my voice. It’s not soar or anything, its just raspy. Most likely a change in the weather but coffee should help.

I’m having (and I’m not alone) trouble with these black bars that keep showing up on the sides of YouTube videos. At first I thought it could be a bandwidth issue or perhaps my display like 720P etc needs to be adjusted in my YouTube settings, but this video “ghosting” is showing up even in my own videos I make on my iPad. Its really strange but I suspect its in the settings of my Ipad itself or in the Flash settings. Anyway, that’s all for today.

of thins sales wise today and about half of what my total was on card. Five minutes before 9pm, I already had my coat and stuff packed. The LRT is running only 1 side of the tracks from Churchill out from the tunnel. Here’s a video I took of the moment inside the train. The big tan yellow building with the white structures on top is tower A of Riverside Towers. Tower B is slightly to the left. There was a person sitting in the seat beside me preventing me from capturing the other building identical to this one. I used to stay I the other building in 1979. There was only me and the other guy on this part of the train. You can view the image here:

I’m in for half a day tomorrow as I’m ready for Lodge and by this time tomorrow we‘ll be winding down the festive board and I‘ll be cleaning up. Last meeting I forgot to empty the coffee pot so I‘ll see if I‘m going to get any flack about this tomorrow. Most importantly though, we have a festive board and 2 candidates and I have a significant part to play near the end of the degree. I‘m going to be busy.

On my way home, I checked my email and I got a response from Itunes. I got the full number back from my gift card I got last week. Good stuff so I‘m going to buy iPhoto and Garageband.

We were watching the NHL NYR/ Caps game and it‘s in double OT tied at 1 with 5 minutes left to go  in the 3rd OT period. Yikes. Warren and I had a bet for $2 and the Rangers just scored bringing it to 2-1. Crap! Rangers lead the series 2-1.

I had a good day today and tomorrow looks good. I just hope there‘s no snags in my vacation pay for Friday, that‘s what I‘m really worried the most here. Anyway, that‘s all for now. 

 

because Monday is normally my day off anyway, so I'm offcially back at it this afternoon for 8 hours.

I haven't got my iTunes gift card woes sorted out yet but when I do (I think this week) I'm getting iPhoto and Garrageband and a cool program called iSequence.

Not much going on for today, it's the same old routine out the door and off to the job for 8 hours.

I'm to bed and listening to Coast for about 15 minutes or so, depending on the topic and then off to the land of nodd. Anne is watching "Dancing with the stars," one of her favorite programs. Anyway, that's about all I have for today.

and tomorrow night its back on the job for 4 hours.

We're about to have our late brunch in a few minutes and this evening Anne wants to watch Mission Impossible "Ghost Protocol" the recent Tom Cruise movie. I'm all "hockeyed out" for the day. Besides I have other things to do.

Last night in checking my 6/49 numbers, I won $10 by getting 3 numbers right. I've never got 4 numbers, which would have given me $80. I usually get 3 numbers for $10 maybe 4 times/year. But I came close by 2-3 numbers out, which would have been $3.5M. The key word is "Would." But $10 bucks is $10 bucks right?

*Over the weekend down at the Agricom this weekend was the first ever "Elements" rave festival. There were about 28 drug and alcohol related incidents. Police were expecting a lot more drug offences but there were only a few. The whole festival had a huge line up of dejays.

Also at the Calgary and comic entertainment expo this weekend, Burt Ward wasn't there but Adam West and the Batmobile (original one) was and so was The entire cast of STTNG, Stan Lee Ted DiBiasie (MIllion dollar man) Gil Gerard, Richard Hatch (Battlestar Galactivca 1980) and many others. The show had 23 sponsors. In other words: Comic Con North. A 3 day pass was only $50 and they had VIP passes but I'm not sure how  much they were. I might call one of their main sponsors and ask. I'm going to make plans to go next year. On the news the other day they were saying that the event as far as tickets went there was a bit of a snag. Oh and on the topic of Stan Lee under the sites parties category, for $150 you and 199 others got a chance to talk and photo op with Stan one on one. That would have been priceless.

It seems for now my IP address conflict issues are more or less over. My provider was doind some work over the weekend. So we're ok for now. Anyway, that's about all I have for now.

But I removed most of them

Another tech issue we're having around the apartment is our wifi connection sporadic at best. There's a software/router way to do this but I don't want to go through this right now at 3am.

I'll be relieved when it's this time next week, when the Lodge EA is over and done with. I'm not a 100% with it on this part I'm doing plus I'm trying to organize the festive board. I'm using my own money for the festive board because the cash box goes along "with the bar" and the accounting program to keep track of all of the drinks bought etc. I'll be glad when I no longer have to do this chair. It's a lot of work. When I'm done as IPM, I can take any chair. I'd love to do the JS chair. Easy and simple to do.

*Also, today is International Astronomy day and a couple of days ago was Free comic book day. Just a couple of space/sf like events going on.

** The Canadian video game awards are on and seems UBI soft out of Montreal are winning a lot of hardware. 

My Computer has been crashing on me all night so I better post this while I have the chance. Anyway, that's all for now.

an end.

I'm heading into the office at noon today and over to Scotia to cash my cheque and from there over to get my reserved copy of RJS's latest and head home.

After Anne heads out I want to run over to Cash Canada to see about getting a used electric guitar to plug into my computer. Right  now I'm just window shopping. I just need the cables from the computer and into my audio interface and take it from there. The guitar is going to be just like a midi controler for all intent and purposes. It's not like I'm going to use it to play live or seriosuly "learn how to play" or anything. After that I'll get the bus back to Clareview and then home.

Hard to believe it was 32 years ago on this Friday I discovered this strange thing called Thelema and Aleister Crowley. I don't consider myself a follower of Crowley's or member of the OTO. I was once a long time ago but not anymore. The last time I attended anything they did was about 1995. Since then anything OTO here in Edmonton has been 23 years long gone. I still consider myself a Thelemite. I don't consider myself a staunch adherent or anything even though I'm sympathetic to its ideals.

Earlier yesterday while watching "Reviews on the Run" they were talking about what kinds of things one could buy with a income tax return. They talked about games and other things and what to buy if your not expecting a tax return. They listed off a bunch of free games and I downloaded free from the app store "8Bit Ninja." I haven't played it yet.

The last Canadian team that was a contender for the 2nd round of the playoffs was defeated last night 3-2 in OT. The only way any Canadian team will ever win the Stanley Cup is if there is parity in the amount of teams in the league. 16 is enough. 8 Canadian and 8 US and until such a time (I'm not holding my breath it will happen.) no Canadian team will ever win the Stanley Cup. In the last 6 years Edmonton and Vancouver have come close. As for now, I'm hoping for a Saint Louis/Washington match up. Should be a good one. Anyway, that's about all I have for today.

and 1 week 3 times a year is enough. I'm not big on traveling, I have to go downtown to the office Friday to cash my cheque and head over to Audrey's to pick up the RJS book. The furthest I went anywhere susbstantial was to the Edmonton International in January when Donna was here to drop off her rental car and we took the Airporter bus home.

Not much on my plate today. I think at 5:30pm there's the Boston/Washington game on this evening. Lets go Caps! The big news this week is Vancouver goal tender Luongo wouldn't mind being traded. We could use a goal tender like that maybe we can make a 2 for 1 trade for NK. Any takers?

The NLRT line is coming along fine. Workers are tunneling under the Epcore tower right now and are busy upgrading the escalator and preparing the break out part where the train breaks off from the main line. Phase 1 of the Churchill station begins this Sunday The line should be open for business April 2014, 2 years away.

I added another think to this site (Audrey's books) I thought I had them here before but I must have accidentally removed them. Next up is a link to my You tube page. Anyway, that's all for now.

the Presidents trophy wonners, knocked out in the first round by an 8th seed team in the playoffs. Wow! Talk about an upset.

So we're off to go vote in a Provincial election, again. I don't know who I'm going to vote for this round. All the candidates have something going for them. One thing is for sure, I wont vote NDP or Green.

I bought a $25 iTunes gift card Saturday and I thought this was going to be the answer to my Apple Apps but when I began to peal off the strip of plastic to reveal the numbers underneath, most of them were torn off simply by pealing. I lost $25! Note to self: Never buy a iTunes gift card again. Next time I'm going to by a Visa/MC gift card to buy apps. 

I'm on day 2/7 of a week off and I hope to enjoy it and watch some hockey and sleep in. Anyway, that's about all for now.

 Alan Parsons disk I have of 18 tracks. I went and ripped about 600 songs last night, mostly classic rock. I’m using a program called Free CD Ripper 3.1 and it’s awesome. Doesn’t do much for the music I have as compressed files but Windows Xp does a good job at getting those files as well. What I’m going to do with this music is to not just tag it but organize the songs and more importantly back them up.

Finally, after 4 months I’m getting some bonus money but it was nice to get that large amount, about 1/3rd of my normal weekly cheque. This means I can get the Robert J Sawyer hard cover and get a $25 ITunes gift card and still have enough for another 2 iTunes gift cards if I need them.

So when Anne came home she was surprised to see another $25 added onto the amount I give her every week to help pay the bills. So this morning I’m out of here at 9am and to for some Tim’s breakfast. Some of the guys go eat at Albert’s near the old office in the Baker Centre. I’m going to Tim’s and get my usual breakfast on a Saturday morning. After my holidays, I’m going to take every other Saturday off so I’m at least there full time to get my 37.5 hours. 
  
After work today a bunch of us are heading over to 1905. It’s a very snazzy popular pub/bar. It used to be the “7 Seas” in the 1970’s and like BP’s its just across the street. So I’m going in for a pint and check out their menu.

The other place that just opened up around here is Cora it’s breakfast/lunch menu. It used to be in the old Rogers store. I’d like to check it out one of these days, maybe after work next week. 

Last night Nashville ended up taking out Detroit in an elimination game. There wont be any hockey this afternoon and the Canucks wont be hosting LA until tomorrow. Anyways that’s all I have for now.