Sunday Afternoon

I went for a drive this afternoon over to Fort Amherst to see if I could get a decent photo or two of the battery to carry on my photoshopping, but it was getting too dark by the time I got turned around (after getting on the Pitt Parkway by mistake - I always do that), but I did get these nice shots of two guys having fun on a Sunday afternoon...

The Banff Mountain Sponsorship Film Festival Tour Thingy

Last night was the Banff Mountain Film Festival. H and I went, and the evening went something like this:

"Thanks for coming everyone, before we get started, I'd like to thank our sponsors....(5 minutes later)....and our first film is..."

Lights go down
Film (9 minutes)
Light go up
Pupils audibly dialate

Talk about next film

Lights go down
Film (50 minutes)
Light go up
Pupils audibly dialate

"Before we break for intermission, I've got some announcements and I'd like to thank our sponsors..."

Intermission

"Before we carry on with the second half, we've got some door prizes, and I'd like to thank our sponsors..."

Lights go down
Film (15 minutes)
Light go up
Pupils audibly dialate

Talk about next film
Lights go down
Film (9 minutes)
Light go up
Pupils audibly dialate

Talk about next film
Lights go down
Film (26 minutes)
Light go up
Pupils audibly dialate

Talk about next film
Lights go down
Film (5 minutes)
Light go up
Pupils audibly dialate

"That concludes our evening, I'd just like to thank our sponsors again..."


And just think, if you were masochistic enough, you could do it all over again tonight. Honestly if that woman had thanked her sponsors one more time, I would have....well, ok, I probably wouldn't have, but I sure wanted to!
And for a woman, who appeared to be in her sixties, speaking to a theatre of adults, at a university, she could perhaps tried to not sound as though she was addressing a nursery school. "I'm from Alberta, which is out west, and I didn't realize St. John's was as far as it is...did you know it's a 12 hour flight?" Yeah, woman, we get that we live on an island, it's not like you're telling us something new...

Winter

I went for another walk today, this time by myself as H was not feeling up to a brisk walk in the sub-zero temps. I walked down Gower street right across town to Ordnance and then through town. I stopped off at the Harvey's wharf to see if I could get some nice shots of the Battery. I got a bunch and when I got home, fired up "The GIMP" to try out my hand colourizing. I saw a shot downtown in the Weavery (for about $300), and thought I would see if I can do a fair approximation myself. This is the result of my playing. Not bad for a free program off the internet. Seriously though, for a free program, I've been pretty impressed with the range of features.

H and I are doing the merry-go-round cold thing this week. First she had a sore throat, which I picked up and that developed into a cold, which she now has picked up. As long as I can kick it and not pick it back up again, I should be ok. This was from the other night while H was giving Roo and Jericho their evening treats.

Picton Castle

I found this awesome photo of the Picton Castle somewhere on the net, might have even been on the Picton Castle site. Man, I miss those days: hot sun, wind and salt spray in your hair, bare feet on the deck, huge cockroaches in your bunk, and a 1000 miles from anywhere with nothing but the wide ocean stretching out in all directions.

Something in the Air!

There must be something in the air today. Some whiff of something that came blasting down into St. John's with the arctic air today. It's gotta be blowing about 150 kmh out there and every so often a big blast comes and shakes the house. Some whiff of something in the air, that as soon as I found out that Dana had dropped 4200, I made the decision to drop one of my distance classes and pick up another evening class. Actually, I'm pleased about my decision. Now I only have 4 MSTM left to finish my degree and I can do those anywhere! If I could scrape up the cash, I could do another 3 this spring and finish next winter.    And Cold! Holy Jeez, I just about froze getting the car started today. H and I went to the movies last night (Last Holiday for her, Underworld: Evolution for me), and the Jeep was so cold when we came out that I had to wear the huge mitts that her parents gave me for Christmas so I could hold the steering wheel.    Looking out my living room window, I can see the jeep rocking in the driveway, and out the kitchen window, (if Rupert isn't blocking my view) I can see the trees in the neighbour's backyard bending.    Whenever it snows hard, I lose my view of the oil tanks and houses on the east side of the harbour. St. John's town council really must have been having a wiggy day, when they approved that tank farm. Now I hear, thanks to Dreae's blog, they are planning to allow some Yank developer to expand the Battery hotel into some huge condo/hotel/eyesore that will block most of St. John's view of Signal Hill. I suppose for most residents, Signal Hill is a forest/trees sort of thing, they don't really notice it anymore. But for me, transplanted mainlander, I always get a thrill when I see it. The Battery is just so rugged and majestic, and so Newfoundland.    Dave and I went to the MI, last week to see about some upgrading, and when we left (and after we'd taken our useless [and incredibly expensive - if you happen to lose one, or leave it in Ontario] cable boxes back to Rogers), we went looking for a place to eat. He suggested Scampers, but I groaned and said, "No more Newfie food" at which he laughed and suggested that the bloom was off the rose of Newfoundland for me.  But it's not, I really like it here, I feel like it could be my city, or that I could make it my city and then sometimes I can't wait to leave, or at least make up my mind what to do.    H and I went for a walk on Friday, before the arctic weather arrived and walked way the hell and gone down Circular road and down Forest Road, ending up at the far end of Empire Ave down around the Hometel. Really some spectacular houses and colour schemes. St. John's is such a mélange of styles, from the Edwardian to Queen Anne to Georgian and then to the rowhousing of Rabbittown. If I had $500, 000 I could buy a house on Forest road, only a 5 minute walk from the $60,000 houses of Rabbittown. I guess it must be the Ontarian in me, but I can't see plonking down $200,000 on a rowhouse or duplex. Dana laughed when I told her this, and she said it was the Newfie in her that said, "only one side, excellent!"    

Hello Firefox, Goodbye Exploder!

I've finally made the move from Internet Explorer to Firefox. I've had Firefox on my laptop for about 6 months now, but have only used it sporadically. I guess it was that two of my favourite toolbars, Roboform and Google wouldn't work in Firefox. Then last week, I downloaded the latest update for Roboform and with it came some increased compatibility for Firefox. And I realized that with the Google Deskbar at the bottom of my screen, I didn't need the Google toolbar on my browser. So I went back to the Firefox Extensions site and downloaded everything that looked interesting. And a few that looked fun, like Ping Pong! I picked up the Firefox version of Leechget, my download manager, plus Shockwave player, Adobe, Flash, and an IRC client. I un-installed Trillian, which was getting on my nerves (and I think letting in some spyware) and re-installed MSN Messenger. And I've completely fallen in love with the browser tabs. It's so much nicer than all the windows that explorer opens up. Last night Holli and I were playing Scrabble, I opened up all the word lists in tabs and it made all the difference. I enabled all the security features on Internet Explorer and then hid the link in my Documents folder. Unfortunately I can't delete Exploder entirely, because for some reason, my router doesn't like Firefox, so I need to keep it around to help restore my internet connection which the router drops every other day or so.

Email Blogging and Chatting

I'm still trying to get email blogging figured out. I've configured blogger the way the directions say to, but nothing happens. Frustrating! It's too bad, 'cause I picked up a great Konfabulator widget the other day so I can blog straight from my desktop, if only I could get the email thing to work. Whats that you say? You don't have Konfabulator? Go get it and get some widgets! It's called Yahoo Widgets now, but it's still Konfabulator to me.
I managed to get Trillian to work for me last night on the irc channel, and spent the next hour chatting with Sheesus, Ngdawg, Amonkee and Malificent from the TFP. I don't know what I'd do if I wasn't a member of the TFP. Probably get a lot more work done!
I finally finished my assignment for Tech Communications. Now today, I'm going to get cracking on Project Management.

Procrastination Sensation!

Dana had this posted over at her blog and I thought this might be a good opportunity (as I procrastinate:

1. cleaning the bathroom
2. vaccuming the litter off the floor
3. making pasta
4. putting books on the shelves in the office
5. oh yeah, WRITING MY TECH ASSIGNMENT!!

Ten Top Trivia Tips about Peter!

1. About 100 people choke to death on peter each year!
2. Peter is the sacred animal of Thailand!
3. Never store peter at room temperature.
4. A lump of peter the size of a matchbox can be flattened into a sheet the size of a tennis court.
5. If you lie on your back with your legs stretched it is impossible to sink in peter.
6. Some birds use peter to orientate themselves during migration.
7. Europe is the only continent that lacks peter.
8. If you kiss peter for one minute you will burn six or seven calories!
9. Peter is actually a fruit, not a vegetable.
10. The Australian billygoat plum contains a hundred times more Vitamin C than peter.

I am interested in - do tell me aboutherhimitthem

So maybe this is a good an opportunity as any to post some funny stuff that has found it's way to me this week. These two were posted over at TFP:

Snape

falling sand

have fun and enjoy your proctrastinating!!

Photos

I posted some collages that I shot with my new camera on the original blog, but I thought I would add the 14 shot mega panorama that I shot of St. John's harbour before Christmas. This is the first one that shows where the photos were merged, but I think that I can be forgiven, because I was standing in about a 60 kph wind, and the windchill had to be about -25!!

Bookstores

So the MUN bookstore is sold out of the text book for one of my distance courses! Kind of strange considering I went on the second day of classes to look for it. Not only is it sold out, but they had no plans to order any in. I changed their minds for them in a hell of a hurry! The text for one of my PolySci courses was only published in December, so they haven't even arrived yet. The other PolySci course doesn't have a textbook, the prof is going to wing it using the internet. Not sure how it's going to work, but he's taught it before so I guess, he has experience on his side. Certainly cuts down on the number of $100 texts that I've got to buy, that I will only use once. Like the Business text from Rajiv's class last year, now I can't get rid of it.
Now that school has started, I'm finding myself very busy with the distance courses. 3 of them! what was I thinking? However I did pick up a book on html and CSS code so I can continue to tweak the template code on this page. So far I've managed to figure out one or two things, and hopefully I can find the time to do a little more

Rupert

Success! Rupert settled on my lap today for about 20 minutes. Neither Rupert or Jericho have shown any desire to sit on our laps until now, although Rupert likes snuggling under the blanket when Holli lays on the couch. He still won't jump up on his own, but when I pick him up, he settles in and lays down, purring loudly. Now we'll have to start work on Jericho, she'll be the real challenge.

First Day of School

First day of classes in the winter semester, and I dutifully went to one of my two actual classes. Like Holli says, "no wonder its taking you forever to complete this program, you're never at the university." I'm actually taking 5 classes this semester, it's just that three of them are distance. Kind of funny in that I came to Newfoundland to avoid doing the distance thing.
My "seminar" in International Law wasn't quite what I was expecting. Maybe the fact that there were 50-odd students. I wasn't expecting a whole whack of maritime studies people, but I thought there might have been more than me and Dana. Next class I need to sit nearer to the front, I'm not sure if my head is spinning because of the instructor's lecture or the fact that I kept straining to see over the huge head of the guy in front of me.
On a different note, Rupert has developed a fascination with my knees; he's been sitting under the desk nuzzling my knees, and occasionally taking little nips at my jeans when I'm not paying him enough attention. I guess they are a little starved after two weeks on their own. Even Jericho has warmed up a little.

New Year, New Blog

Okay, then, back in St. John's after a fun two weeks on the mainland in Ontario. The cats seem to have survived their sojourn alone here with only the sitter for company. They are both starved for attention, Rupert to the point of being annoying, but he did sit in my lap for about 5 minutes last night, while Jericho circled on the floor crying. I could see that she wanted to be up there too, but couldn't bring herself to jump up. School starts tomorrow night, I'll have to go in during the day to pick up my books. Hopefully I've got enough $$$ to make it to spring.