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Emilia Molt

When I woke up this morning, I noticed my female Brachypelma emilia had begun to molt, upright. The last time she molted, she tried to do it upright as well, but I flipped her over to try and make it easier for her. This time, she seemed too far along and I thought flipping her over would do more harm than good. So I let her be and she seemed to do just fine. It went rather quickly and she toppled over to her side once she was out of the old skin.
You might see a dead cricket in some of these pix, I guess she just killed the cricket and didn't eat it before her molt. I took it out of her cage right after the molt to avoid the dreaded mite infestation.

2004 Taxes

Just finished doing my taxes for last year. Being self-employed, I owe a bunch, as per usual. About what I expected, although I was hoping it would be less. I thought they were giving us poor people a break?? Bastards. I figure I can pay it off in 3 or 4 months, if I can continue to make what I am now. I've got to do my month-end billing as well. My weekends rock I tell you! :(

Happy Slapping? WTF?

Saw this news item while watching TV. Recording random attacks on your cell phone and uploading the video to the net? Those Brits really do have a different sense of humour! Must really suck for their victims tho.

This site has some of the video, although it's really tiny. These people are idiots, they're lucky they don't get shitkicked pulling this shit.

Guardian story.
Spiked article.

Bash.org

It was freezing cold at work today and I forgot to bring my gloves! Sucked. It was slow too, so I spent most of my day on this site. Mostly lame but the odd good one. People must think I'm insane when I burst out laughing from outta nowhere. Speaking of laughing out loud, I had some free time after making a delivery at the Petro Can tower so I sat down in the chairs by the revolving doors. Next thing I know, I hear a crunching sound and then screaming. Apparently some kid stuck his head in the revolving door while it was turning, with obvious results. Everybody was just standing there, staring at him, but what can you do? I'm sure he'll think twice about trying that again.

In another building, as I was leaving, there was an old lady just standing there inside the revolving door. The side door was locked so I had to use the revolving door. She freaked out when it started moving. So I walked out and as I was unlocking my bike, I look back and sure enough, there she is, back inside the door, just standing there. Fuck, people are stupid.

mage what should I give sister for unzipping?
Kevyn Um. Ten bucks?
mage no I mean like, WinZip?

Upgraded my modem

Rode down to the Shaw offices yesterday and exchanged my old modem for a new one [Motorola Surfboard SB5100]. It's kind of a mixed bag - web surfing seems a bit faster but usenet is slower. I was getting 800KB/s+ using my old modem on usenet, the new one maxes out at 600KB/s. Normal http stuff seems a bit faster and stabler, or maybe I'm trying to justify me getting this thing. ;) It didn't cost anything, so I didn't lose any money on it. The new modem is much smaller, which is nice, but it has this light that's constantly flashing [PC/Activity] so I've hidden it behind my monitor.

Boehmei eating a Cricket

» Click on thumbnail to download 1.36 MB AVI clip of my Brachypelma boehmei catching a cricket.

Ep's 17-18

Just watched the latest two ep's, so I'm all caught up on this show. What can I say, ep 18 was probably the worst piece of shit I've ever seen on television. The whole show was spent trying to justify torture. How fucking quaint. Oh, and the insinuation that anybody concerned about human rights is in cahoots with terrorists was just icing on the cake. How low can this show go? Pathetic.

Ep's 13 - 16

Almost caught up now, only two more ep's to go and I'll have viewed all the ep's aired so far this season. These ep's? Meh, not so good. You know when they shoot down the president's plane and your reaction is "Hey, what happened to Berooz?", then the writers on this show aren't reaching their audience. At least this audience of one. And what the hell did happen to our little terrorist wannabe? They storm the warehouse, supposedly to rescue Berooz, and we hear nothing about him being there or not. [Maybe I missed something?] Sure, getting Habib was the prime objective, but you would think rescueing the kid would be on their radar to a certain degree. Speaking of Berooz, they knew he did not likely have any pertinent information but they tortured his ass anyway. That's four [relatively] innocent people they've tortured this season, this time a kid no less. Is CTU supposed to be the "bad guy" this season? Or do the writers on this show not see how this constant torturing kinda makes CTU look like a buncha thugs? Or is this supposed to be some kind of satire on the whole war on terror thing? More political BS inserted into the storyline which I didn't care for. Chloe came back, woohoo! Scenes with Audrey and her husband were boring, as were the scenes with the prez and his spawn. Yawn. After looking like this show was getting its legs back, it stumbless again.

Ep's 11-13

Caught up on ep's 11-13 tonight. It's actually watchable at this point, with Driscoll and Sarah [?] gone. Since Sarah's gone, shouldn't they be recalling ol' potatoe-face at this point? They are running a little short-staffed with all these deaths, infiltrators and firings. So Tony was head of CTU for what, a whole five minutes? LOL, just long enough to lock horns with Curtis, then bam! Seeya, in comes Bitchelle, looking oh-so-hot, she must have been on standby at the 7-11 across the street. The death of Driscoll's daughter was pretty predictable. Loved the look Audrey gave Jack when he was torturing her husband, I think their little relationship is toast. Jack & Audrey that is. I like how Tony keeps telling Jack and Michelle "OK, you don't need me anymore, I'm just gonna leave now..." and they're all like "Noooo, Tonyyyy, we need you!!!". Buhaa, I think he's just playing them, he likes the attention. Oh, and what's with the torturing of innocent people this season? I think they're up to three so far, assuming Heller's son Richie wasn't hiding anything.

Ep 8-10

I just finished watching the next 3 episodes of 24, it's seemed to pick up a lot, finally! Most of which was due to the return of Tony Almaida. Damn, did he have some funny lines in ep 8.
"Jack, don't you think you've made me miss enough TV today?"
"Actually, I'm currently unemployed."
Buhaaa, too funny. Now if they could only bring back the rest of the cast from Season 3. The way people are dropping like flies on this show, maybe they will.

24 Seasons 3 & 4

*** may contain spoilers ***

After catching the first season of 24 on DVD [which is on sale at the Future Shop for $29.99, great deal!], I was hoping to eventually get the second season somewhere, as the first season was pretty wicked. Although I thought the whole instant amnesia part was prett lame. Supposedly it was based on director's Stephen Hopkins' real life experience, but it still seemed pretty farfetched to me. Anyhow, the Mystery channel was playing season 3 from the very start, so I thought what the hell, I'll watch that even though I haven't seen season 2 yet. Having watched the whole thing, I thought it was pretty good! There was a lot of humour in it, although I'm not sure if it was all intentional or not. There were so many soap-operish elements going on, it was kind of ridiculous. I thought Chappelle would eventually make the comment that "this place is like a goddamn soap opera!", but he never did. And it was kind of funny that hardly anybody seemed to obey Chappelle's orders, are all government agency's this dysfunctional? Over 24 hours, doesn't anybody get hungry, tired or have to go to the washroom? Not on this show. The presidential side of the show was pretty lame, but the CTU stuff more than made up for it. Had some good twists and turns in it too, they had me fooled with the Gael fake-out and the Chappelle hit. [I thought it would turn out to be fake!]

So I really liked Season 3, and I thought I'd continue on to Season 4, expecting the same kind of fun, suspensful entertainment. Ugh, am I ever disappointed, so far at least, I'm up to ep 7. All the old characters' are gone except for Jack and Chloe. Well, there's also the new president, but he ain't no David Palmer! All the new characters suck, I mean really suck. I hate Jack's new girlfriend. I hate the new head of CTU, Driscoll, not just the character but the actress who protrays her, Alberta Watson. She's horrible, seems to deliver all her lines through clenched teeth and it looks like she's reading them off a teleprompter. And I hate Heller, protrayed by William Devane, every moment he's on screen is pure torture. All the new CTU people are uninteresting. I also hate Heller's son Richard, whom CTU [and his dad!] seem to have no problem torturing for information, even though they only "think" he might be hiding something. And all the political BS they've injected into this show is just so irritating. Season 3 had a bit of this but it was easily ignored, Season 4 bangs you over the head with it so much it's impossible to ignore. This season has no suspense, no humour, it's mostly garbage so far. The terrorist family is about the only saving grace, they are so evil, they're actually a hoot to watch.

After hating this season so much, imagine my surprise when I go to the TWOP forums and everybody there seems to love it! Weird. And I hear this season is getting great ratings as well. Go figure. Oh well, I still have Season 2 to catch up on, and who knows, maybe Season 5 will be better. David Fury of Buffy fame is supposed to be a writer on next year's installment.

Happy Birfday Leonardo!

Shaw Speed Upgrade

Shaw upgraded their "basic" highspeed cable internet to 5 Mb/s this week [up from 3 Mb/s]. I have one of their old Motorola Cybersurfer Wave modems so I wasn't sure if I would get the faster speeds, as people in the BBR forum said it would only be for people with the newer modems. Shaw's speed test seem to give me close to the 5 Mb/s promised, as well as at least one "outside" speed test [Speakeasy Seattle]. I don't really want to switch modems as I bought this one from Shaw, and it would be a pain to go down there and get a new one. Plus I would probably lose my current IP, which would mean I would have to set up my webserver all over again, not fun. Anyway, it would seem that I'm getting the new speeds as advertised, although it's pretty rare that I actually run into a website that sends data anywhere near that fast.

Lime Coke

I just tried the Lime Coke. Or Coke with Lime. Whichever. Ugh! While I like the flavour [I like lime!], they made the lime taste way too STRONG! A simple hint of lime would have been fine. Mein. Oh well, Coke puts out another dud. At least it ain't as bad as that C2 crap, I can't believe they're still trying to sell that sludge, it's horrible! Horrible, I tell you!

Google Answers

Slashdot had this posting on Google's new "factual answers" integrated into its search engine results. If you ask the obvious question "What is the answer to life, the universe and everything?", it actually gives you the correct result! Amazing! I tried messing around with this on the Canadian google site, but it wasn't implemented there yet. While I was there, I thought I'd look into this page rank thing that I've heard so much about. My site ranks a 4. Not that good, I guess I should post more often and try to promote it more so I get more inbound links. Or maybe not.

Knock Three Times

They whack the pope three times in the head to see if he's still alive? LOL!
The Pope's death is officially determined by the Cardinal Chamberlain by gently tapping the late Pope's head thrice with a silver hammer and calling his birth name three times. A doctor may or may not have already determined that the Pope had passed away. The Cardinal Chamberlain then retrieves the Fisherman's Ring. Usually the ring is on the Pope's right hand. But with Paul VI, he had stopped wearing the ring during the last years of his reign, and left it in his desk. In other cases the ring might have been removed for medical reasons. The Chamberlain cuts the ring in two in the presence of the Cardinals. The deceased Pope's seals are defaced, to keep the Pope's seal from ever being used again, and his personal apartment is sealed.

Say what?

I was trolling through books on Amazon.ca and I came across this title: How to Teach Math to Black Students. I must be really tired cause that just seems silly. What next, English for really short people?