in BC have been making the air quality here not very good. Add having a hot spell as I mentioned in yesterdays Tweet only makes it worse. Its not like we're in surgical masks or anything and as soon as it cools off we should be back to normal air quality.

lately and I'm currently trying to rescue the contests of my desktop computer in an atempt at speeding it up a little. I don't have a cross over cable and my 500Gb external hard drive is acting up on me.

Over the past few days Boots has been favouring his front paw and its now swollen. Anne and I think he's had what she calls a "tumble and tuck" with another cat out there.

Anne's sister/my sister in law paid us a visit today and totally out of the blue, gave me a birthday card and gave me some birthday money. This means I can now get the usb midi cable I've been looking at getting for my keyboard. I've been given a copy of Cakewalk's Sonar 7 and I've been playing around with that lately as well.

I don't know why this book "Odd girl out" is taking me so long to read. I'm really enjoying it. The 4th book in the series is out now and I'm going to pop into Audrey's to place an order.

I'm currently trying to compress a folder with about 22Gb of files in it. Hopefully I can compress it down enough to email it. Well, that's the general idea anyway but the process seems to be taking me a long time. Anyway, that's about all for now. More on Saturday....

weekend and Anne is doing her thing at Walmart and I'm relaxing taking it easy. I worked the 2 shifts Friday and right back at it the Saturday morning and I did a bit better. I even got a card sale in the 2nd half. I want to go back at it tomorrow for a full 8 hours even though it's "holliday Monday."

You know summer in Edmonton is almost over when K'days is over and Heritage days is winding down. There's still the Fringe coming up and I don't recall if the Folk festival has come and gone yet.

Not the size I wanted for this image but it was in this field back home in Coquitlam that I recall at the age of 15 our countries 100th Centennial year 1967. This was at Winslow HS and here is a Google Earth shot of it today using street view.

Friday I got myself a copy Cakewalk's Sonar 7 Home Studio that I'm fooling around with. I got the audio and the metrnome to work and the TTs-1 to work, which is r eally cool but I can't hear my vocals on the sample I made. I have the track armed and I/O sellected but I'm not getting a wave form. I've barely touched the surface of this product as it is. I'd like to get Sonar 8.5 with V-Vocal.

Since lately I've been looking at the Kindle 2, recent versions now run on the G3 or with wifi. The wifi one is aboout $100 bucks. I'm really looking at getting this gadget. My eyesite the way it is lately is making reading books a difficult undertaking and ebooks are priced right. Not only that but the Kindle 2 has me feature which I like. Anyway, thats all for now.

about an hour now after a full day, the campaign from hell. The afternoon, I got all of $40 but I did get my check. In the evening shift I didn't get 1 sale! There were only a few people that had over $100. Even JT had only 1 sale for $25 but i think he managed 1 more shortly before the shift ended at 8:30pm. That speaks to how tough this campaign is when eve JT can only get 2 sales.

When I got out of the building, wow what a rain, thunder/lightning storm going on! It wasn't lie a monsoon or anything like that but it was really dark and overcast.

The Esks were hosting the BC Lions and were leading at thehalf 6-3. That's not saying much for the two lowest teams in the league. Apparently there wass ome active weather at Commonwealth. Somelightning strikes drove the fans away and the game had to be delayed by 40 minutes. Esks finally won one, 28-25. Talk about close.Anyway, that's all for now.

like these, although I could do without going to the Doctor, not that it was a bad experience. I'm glad I have my Doctor now easier to get to. My blood pressure was a bit high at 140/80 but I attributed this to lack of having anything to eat since I got there. Anne went for a blood test and encouraged me to go get one as well but all I wanted to do was to just get through this. Next month about this time I've got to go in before work and get it done. I went for the whole examination except for the rectal thing. I wasn't ready to go there just yet. All I wanted was to get a bite to eat.

After the Doctor Anne and I went to Boston Pizza and I had a prime rib bacon cheeseburger/with fries. Anne went down the block to Tim's while I waited and returned with her Tim's and donut and took the odd french fry. Since she had to work this evening and I had the night off I went to Tim's as well and got a Boston cream donut to take home. My train was a few minutes away and I got home no worse for ware and without incident. I was a bit drained so I had a bit of a nap for an hour.

After my nap, I read a bit more and took a large chunk out of reading "Odd girl out" and according to my Goodreads page I'm 70% of the way through the book. I hope to have it done before the end of the month. Ordinarily I read faster then this but June and July had a lot of things going on.

I'm off tonight because of the company I work for is holding their baseball event and in all 10 years I've worked steady for this job, I don't think they have ever suspended the 5-9 shift in the phone room for a company event we promote. Otherwise after the Doctors appointment and my burger at BP's, I would have headed the block right into work for the full 4 hours. I'd only now be just coming through the door. Tomorrow, unless things change, I tend on going in for the full day. I might post a Twitter update when I get home though. Anyway, that's all for now.
 

It’s a bit cooler out there today after having +25 and above temperatures lately. I‘m going in for my 4 hours tonight and hopefully I can go in early for 3 tomorrow because management is shutting us down at 6pm because of the baseball game tomorrow night. Anne and I have our Doctors appointment for 1:30pm and I’ll ask if I can go in for at least 3 hours early tomorrow morning and meet Anne at Tim’s at 1pm then go to our Doctors appointment. Hopefully it wont rain at the game.

After ripping my wife’s Cd’s yesterday I got inspired to Rip mine and most of our music is from Cd’s we already own and a few from Audiogalaxy from 2001. I had some trouble opening those disks but then realized all I had to do was open the folder. Back then Audiogalaxy and Napster were resources where you could get free (literally free) music and download tunes onto your computer. It was quite a party the music flowed freely and Audiogalaxy and Napster were a lot easier back then, then the torrent or peer-to-peer sites like Limewire or Kazza are now. Today thanks to DRM’s and Copyright Laws ruining the party Audiogalaxy is a streaming service. Kind of like YouTube but with your own music. I ended up ripping about 12 of my wife’s Cd’s and about the same for mine. Ive got another 12 Cd’s to rip yet and those contain music I’m not a big fan of like “The Thompson Twins.” I bought the music because I recall when I saw “The Police” here the Twins played back up to them on their 1983 tour. I think today the best (and legal) way to get audio content onto an Itouch is via Itunes. I haven‘t used an Itunes gift card yet and I‘m not against using them. I have most of the music I need anyway except for a few Cd‘s, which I can get from Ebay.

Speaking audio content, I’m considering using a audio book service that specializes in audio books. Perhaps you have heard of them: Audiable.com. It’s $7.49 for the first 3 months and then its $15 for every other month. You get a free credit/month which is 1 book and you can buy other books as well at $7.49/book. The thing with Audible is its an Amazon company bit also works with the Kindle. I’ve been looking at the Kindle 2 lately as well and I like what I see. It’s got a cool text to speech feature that will let me hear the text and if it works with PDF files, then even better. Right now the Kindle 2 is under $200. Anyway, that’s all for now.

with a mix up. My wife said she needed the use of the bus pass and she'd put some bus tickets in my pouch. I was still waking up by this time trying to wash down my toaster waffles and I took her bus pass holder out the door with me. I got to the train and then something told me to check to see if she didn't put the bus pass in here. If I hadn't checked she would have been really pissed off and I only discovered this too late as the train I needed to get off was pulling out of Clairview station. I got off at the next stop, Belvedere and doubled back making all the right connections. I was trying to avoid Anne already up and got my bus pass holder, with the apartment keys and I realized I wasn't going to make the bus because I was crossing the path of the bus back at the cross walk waiting for me to cross. I would then have to walk all the way to Clairview station and it was a hot morning but better then waiting another 20 minutes for another bus. I broke out a heavy sweat walking to Clairview station but the real train downtown I was on was the newer trains and air conditioned. I got a half liter of diet Coke at Tim's and worked my way to the office. i got in and they hadn't even opened the tap dialer's yet as I made it just in time.

I had a decent shift listening to Clarksworld magazine for most of my first hour. The featured audio story was "The Association of the dead," by Rahul Kanakia. One headphone speaker was in one ear and my headset listening to the customer in the other. I got the gist of the story in between calls and from what little I got of the audio story I enjoyed it. Not to worry there's a print copy in the latest online issue and I can always listen to the story again. I really enjoyed this piece. Good stuff.

I had a decent shift having limited sleep hours before by the time 2pm rolled around I was feeling fatigued. We had 6 of us for a late afternoon crew for the 2:30Pm-4:30pm shift and I don't think I did that badly on it. There were only a few empties to take home so I left them there. I barely made my Clairview train just in time and met with one of my wife's co workers on the connector bus to my place at Clairview. Anne had something frozen ready for me to heat up as I tried finding the Esks/Winnipeg game on TV. I had $2 riding on that and $2 on the Riders/Calgary game. The Esks lost (again) and are now 0-4. First time this has happened since 1965. Winnipeg stomped all over them 47-20. Pathetic. And I lost last night with the Argos's hosting BC. Now midway in the 4th quarter at McMahon Stadium the Riders are losing big time, 10-33. I've got the can of pop covered because one of the guys owes me a can of pop, I'll get that Monday to give to Leo. But I owe $2 that goes to Warren and $2 that goes to JT, it seems. One rule of thumb, don't bet on the CFL, especially with the Esks. I now confirmed it the Riders lost 20-40. Owe.   

At least I'll have part 2 of the season finally of Doctor Who to look forward to Sunday. This was a costly weekend for me. Its not going to break me or anything but I learned a lesson, don't bet on the CFL. Anyway, that's about all for now.