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Pictures down by the Bow River

I took some pictures a couple of weeks ago down by the Bow River, after the second flood but before the last one. [I hope it's the last one!] But before I bore you with those, it's worth noting that Calgary not only broke its June record for rainfall, but the all-time record as well! It sucks to be number one, let me tell you.

Here's a picture looking down from the 14th Street Bridge into the muddy waters of the Bow River.

This is by the Eleventh Street Bridge. You can see in the lower right the railing for the bike path, almost under water.

Here's a closed pathway going under the bridge. I like how somebody spray-painted arrows on the path showing us what to do. Nice.

Here's a closer look at the railings.

Here's the bridge. There's like a measuring thing on one of the pilings, looks close to two meters. Two meters above the normal water level maybe?

Pathway Closed due to Unsafe Conditions

Down by Prince's Island Park. There used to be a small bridge here.

Prince's Island Park is flanked by the Bow River on one side and a little canal that branches off the Bow on the other. It's usually a narrow, shallow, placid little stream, but on this day it was like a raging river. The ducks and geese seemed fine with it though.

Those light poles should not be in the water.

Here's some trees in the park. They moved the Canada Day celebrations to McMahon Stadium this year, due to the flooding in this park, where it's usually held.

This is an area between the park and the river. There is a pathway underneath all that water that people like to ride on. Not today.

That's all I got for now. Maybe I'll load up some more tomorrow. :)

You are on the Global Frequency

Just watched the Global Frequency pilot and I must say, not bad. I was prepared to be disappointed as there were so many people raving about this thing and I'm usually let down by al the hype. But all round, it was pretty decent. Good premise, good actors with the two leads having good chemistry together, decent effects, dialogue, story and tons of potential as a series. In a nutshell, it was fun to watch! So why did the WB never air it? I don't know. And their reaction to its release onto the Internets and subsequent buzz is rather disappointing.

"Whether the pilot was picked up or not, it is still the property of Warner Bros. Entertainment and we take the protection of all of our intellectual property seriously," Craig Hoffman, a company spokesman, told Wired. "While Warner Bros. Entertainment values feedback from consumers, copyright infringement is not a productive way to try to influence a corporate decision." Hoffman added that the pilot's unauthorized distribution is "unacceptable and illegal ... no matter what the underlying motives" and said the company hasn't ruled out taking legal action "when it comes to stopping the illegal distribution of our copyright material."

They should realize that every show, every fucking show, from the most popular to the most niche stuff, makes its way onto the net sooner or later. Whining about "copyright infringement" on a show that would most likely have been sitting on a dusty shelf unseen for the next fifty years if you had your way, is missing the point. The fact that most people who have seen the show [legally or not] have liked it if not loved it, means you have a potential hit on your hands. Which means you could make money on it. You could try airing the show on your network and with a little promotion, see how it does. Or you could stick your head back in the sand, whine about piracy and put it back on the shelf. I know what I would do.

Recovering...

It's been almost a week since my crash last Tuesday. I ended up taking two days off because my lips swelled up so I could hardly talk and I had a really bad headache. The worst part was going back on Thursday and discovering I had a bad pectoral muscle pull on my right side, made work sheer hell. Friday wasn't much better, I started at 7:30am and went full blast, no breaks until around 5:30pm. That kind of day is hard at the best of times, doing it banged up was torture. And I had to explain what happened like a 1,000 times. My weekend was spent mostly in bed, taking aspirin and applying various ointments to my pustulating wounds. Today wasn't so bad, most of the woundage and swelling is gone. Except for this split in my lip, which is still preventing me from doing something as simple as eating a sandwich. I also noticed my right hand was hurt in the fall, it's a bit sore lately.

The worst part is I picked up a cold or flu from somebody along the way. Been sneezing, getting a runny nose and coughing. Maybe from my dentist? Oh yeah, I also went to my dentist. He fixed my tooth by using filling material to rebuild the part that got chipped off. Hopefully it will hold. And he lightened my wallet by $250, the bastard.

[warning: graphic pictures in extended entry]

I look like I'm in a bit of shock here. My lips swelled up a hella lot more after this. You can see my nose got some road rash as well. I had a nose bleed when I bailed and later it scabbed up. I actually had a big scab running up from my chin to my nose on the right side afterwards, quite fucking disgusting.

Here you can see my chipped tooth. Yuck! The dentist fixed it pretty good, although I think it sticks out a bit more than my real one did. Maybe I should grind it down with my Dremel tool? You can see my chin was pretty raw, lucky I didn't break my jaw or I'd really be a hurting unit!

These pictures were taken not too long after the incident. I actually don't look too injured. The next day was the worst. No, I didn't take any more pictures, I basically died after this.

I got the day off!

After feeling a little under the weather yesterday, I awoke this morning feeling much better. So I made my way downtown, ready for a good day at work. The first hour was dead, but just before my 9:00 o'clock time call, I got a call for a couple deliveries. I picked them up and dropped off the first one. As I was making my way to the second location, disaster struck! I was coming out of a parking lot where the exit comes out across a sidewalk and then onto eighth avenue, which is a two way street. Being a two way street, you have to check both ways for traffic before getting onto the road. That's what I was doing as I hopped off the curb. There was a big puddle on the road right where I was hopping off the sidewalk and I guess I miscalculated how deep it was, cause I was leaning too far forward when I did and my bike simply pivoted over the front wheel. Sending me face first into the pavement with no chance for me to react as I was checking for traffic and by the time I realized what was happening, it was way too late. It felt like forever as my face slammed into the road. I got up and all this blood was gushing from my face. Some lady helped me keep a towel up to my face, some guy called an ambulance, another guy locked up my bike for me and I waved down a courier to deliver my package as at that time I didn't think I would be doing it myself. They were all quite nice and helpful! :)

The paramedics basically helped me clean all the blood off and sent me on my way. My lip was [is] split open, and I went to a clinic to get it sewn up, but they took forever and I couldn't wait anymore. It's funny, they had a sign saying that they don't help people on a "first come, first serve" basis, that the most urgent situations get dealt with first. Well, I was the only one covered in blood with obvious injuries, yet they helped a whack of people before me, none with any visible problems. Bastards.

None of this would have been a big deal for me, really. Hell, I probably have just wiped away the blood and gone back to work had that been the extent of my injuries. Unfortunately, as my face was mashed into the asphalt, it felt like my two front teeth had been knocked out. It wasn't quite that bad, but one of my front teeth had a big chunk knocked out of it. I went to the dentist, they got me in for an x-ray pretty quick. Tomorrow I go in to get some filling material put in, and hopefully that will be good enough. He said there's a chance the nerve in my tooth could die. In which case, I'll need a root canal. And maybe more? I don't know, and that's the thing I hate about this. I have no dental and dentists always seem to want to do more and more work. [$$$] Hell, today they tried to get me to do a cleaning when I get this filling thing done tomorrow. And I need a bunch of other work done as well, I'm sure they'll mention that when they get a look inside my mouth. I am poor, comprende?

So that's how I got the day off today. I don't feel too bad. My face feels a little raw, like it's been dragged across the pavement for a bit. I'm just pissed about my tooth.

Flood Pictures

Found this collection of pictures of the Calgary flood - Sherlock77's photos. Good stuff.

Tom Cruise gets Squirted with water gun

Tom Cruise got squirted with a water gun disguised as a microphone at War of the Worlds premiere in London.
"Why would you do that? What's so funny about that? It's ridiculous. Do you like making less of people? Don't run away. That's incredibly rude. I'm here giving you an interview, answering your questions and you do something nasty. You're a jerk."

Calgary Panorama

I made this panorama from four photos. At first I tried using Canon's Photostitch program but it turned out pretty blurry and some of the seams looked kinda weird. So I did it 'by hand' and it seems to have turned out pretty good. [except for an obvious seam to the right in the sky, which I think could be easily eliminated with a little tweaking] Anyway, I took a bunch of pictures out by the river today but it'll have to wait till tomorrow as it's late and I must get to sleep soon.

Down by the River

I took my camera with me to work on Thursday [while it was still sunny!] and took some pictures, although my battery went dead a little early so I didn't get very many. They're just places along the Bow River.

From the 14th Street Bridge, looking towards downtown. Looking very green. The Bow is usually not that muddy and it usually doesn't come up right against the greenery like that.


You can see how muddy the water is. Normally, it's much clearer.

The grass is sooo green! For most of the year, Calgary comes in various shades of brown.

Pedestrian/cyclist bridge over the Bow.

The 10th Street Bridge. I wonder how much higher the water is now from this view?

This is the Prince's Island pedestrian bridge going into downtown Calgary.

Memorial Drive, early in the morning. They shut this road down today because of flooding.

Another view of the Bow, looking fatter than usual.

Newsflash: More Rain

They were predicting heavy rain for yesterday, but I was pleasantly surprised when it hardly rained at all in the morning, just a light misting. It did rain for most of the afternoon, but it was only really heavy for about half an hour. Last night it rained a ton though, I think it said somewhere that Calgary got a 100mm of rain. And today was more of the same, but I don't mind, I don't have to go outside!

High River got flooded [again], there were golf-ball sized hail in Medicine Hat, tons of roads and highways were closed [if not washed out], funnel clouds touched down in Medicine Hat and Swift Current [doesn't that make them tornados?], but hey, I think today is the last day of rain for awhile.

Update: Wow, it looks like it's been pretty bad today. Many people in Calgary have had their basements flooded and some sewers have backed up. The pathways have been closed, Memorial Drive and parts of 14 Street have been shut down, the Bow River is as high as it's ever been, the Glenmore Dam is full and water is flowing over the top. The Mayor just declared a state of emergency for a bunch of communities along the Bow and about 2500 people face "mandatory evacuation". The Bow has crested at the bottom of the Centre Street bridge. [whatever that means, the bridge is huge, I can't see the river being that high up, unless it's that high near each end?] The rain is supposed to be completely over by midnight, but looking out the window, it's still coming down.

The Transcanada Highway is shut down west of the city and it looks like most roads west-southwest of Calgary are closed. I saw some pictures of Okotoks on TV, they're mega-flooded, the roads look more like rivers. Sundre is under a one-hour evacuation alert. Priddis might be evacuated because their dam can't hold the water back anymore. High River is letting people back in because the Highwood River has crested this morning already.

Freaky! I'll have to go for a bike ride tomorrow with my camera and see what this all looks like!

The doctor is in. INSANE, that is!

Tom Cruise's Medical Forum. ROTFL. My sides hurt, I need to lie down. Maybe take some vitamin pills.

Tower of the Gods

Played some Wind Waker today, just beat the Tower of the Gods level. So far I'm loving this game, probably my favorite Zelda yet and I've played most of them. I finished the first two, Zelda and Link, and I did most of Ocarina of Time [I'm still stuck in the fish; I know how to finish it, it's just a real pain], so Majora's Mask is the only one I have that I haven't played yet. I'll probably pick up the Minish Cap for the GBA someday, once I'm done Final Fantasy and Golden Sun II.

Neighbours from hell

Well, my hearing seems to be getting a little better today, but at this point I almost wish I was deaf.

There's this condo behind my building that sits empty. It has an alarm system. A very fucking loud alarm system. This alarm system has been blaring away since yesterday after work. I finally had enough and went over there to check out the situation. The front door is wired shut but you can see the alarm panel with all the lights lit up and a message indicating that it should "please power down for 5 seconds..." There is a real estate sign out front so I call the number on there. They say they'll leave a message for the agent to call me back. Half an hour later, no answer. I call again, leave another message. Half an hour later, I call back, pissed off, said I was going to call the police. Five minutes later, the agent calls me back. I explain the situation and she says she knows nothing about alarms and that it will have to wait until Monday. WTF?!! I hate people like that. I know how shut that alarm off, I'll bury an axe in that control panel and I'll bet it will STFU. She also informs me that the police had already been called about the situation earlier today. Anyway, she gives me a number of the "foreman" and says I should call him. At first I thought she was just trying to get rid of me, but there was somebody at that number and he said he would come check it out.

As I'm typing this, something is finally going on over there, as I can hear the fucking alarm twice as loud now because they opened a door or window. But it's still blaring away. Clueless bastards!

I just went out on my patio and asked the doofusses [doofi?] milling about out there what the hell was going on. They say they're waiting for somebody to come help them shut off the alarm. I can't believe how stupid some people can be. They install this alarm, it goes off and their response is to ignore it for two days. Then when they finally show up, they have no clue as to how to shut it down. This herd needs a little thinning.

It stopped!! Woohoo! It was funny, I could hear one of my neighbours screaming at them before they finally got it shut off. Fuckers deserved it, too.

Can you hear me now?

After yesterday's episode with my bike tire blowing up in my ear and my hearing still screwed up today as a result, I thought I would experiment with some sound samples to see how it looks on paper, or pixels as it were. It didn't seem to shed much light on the situation though.

I started by recording some sine waves, starting at 13 KHz and working my way up to 22 KHz in 1 KHz steps, with a modulation frequency of 10 Hz, and a duration of 2 seconds, with silent intervals of 2 seconds between waves. I recorded one for my left ear [the one that took the brunt of the exploding tire noise] and one for the right.

tones_left.mp3
tones_right.mp3

The fourth and last sine waves sounded kinda funny but after recording them twice and they came out the same way, well I guess it would have to do. Then I played them back on Winamp multiple times for each ear, deceasing the sound by 10% each time from 100% down to 10%. I was going to graph the results for comparison, but the results weren't really worth graphing.

First of all, the sound was a lot louder overall for my right ear than for my left. As I decreased the sound for my left ear, I heard all the tones relatively fine until about 40%, when I stopped hearing the tones after the sixth, yet I managed to hear the tenth! And I couldn't hear the first tone, which is very strange because that one always sounds the loudest of the bunch! Weird, I thought it would be a straight dropoff once you got above a certain frequency. Maybe my methodology is messed up though. LOL, yeah right! Anyway, at 30% I had roughly the same result except I couldn't make out the last wave like I could at 40%. At 20%, zilch, couldn't hear a damn thing. One of the problems with my recordings was that there is an audible click at the begining of some tones, which kind of gives away when a tone starts. I tried to get rid of these clicks with some filters but it didn't help much. Maybe I should persue that further. I could also try some different waves, rather than just sine waves.

I then tried the same experiment for my right ear. Not much to say. It was very loud at 100% and I heard everything fine until 30%. At 30%, I began to have a hard time hearing tone 4, one of the weird sounding ones, although I could still hear everything else. At 20%, I had problems with 4 again, as well as tone 8. At 10%, I made out the first three and the last three, but nothing in between. Just for kicks, I tried listening at 1%, but no dice, I couldn't make out anything.

So what did I learn from my little experiment? Not much, except that my left ear is messed up from that freaking noise while my right appears relatively unscathed. But I knew that already dammit! I will try this again over the weekend to see if my left ear makes any improvement. Hopefully it will eventually get close to being the same as my right. I might just flip the headphones around to test different ears rather than using seperate mp3's.

Useless details: I recorded the sounds using Adobe Audition, which was also used to generate the sine waves. My motherboard's onboard sound was used for playback, the usual Cmedia POS. My computer is hooked up to my old Sony receiver, an STR-AV650. Played back tones using an old pair of AKG "Silver"s, K-141. Sound was set to 100% in the OS [Win2K] and 50% on the receiver. The receiver puts out an earth-shattering 90 fucking-watts-per-channel at 8 ohmahas, but I guess that really doesn't matter as I was using the headphone jack. See, I told you this info was useless.

Wind Waker

Playing Zelda, just got some soup from Grandma. Just thought you should know.

Life's hard-learned lessons

* note to self: when your bike's tire explodes in the middle of the night, that means your tire is trashed and you need to go get a new one. Under no circumstances should you swap in a new tube and pump it up, cause it will just blow up again, making you pissed off and deaf.

Rain no more

Today was a good day. After raining all night, it was over by the time I went to work. It rained lightly a couple times in the morning but by the afternoon the sun was peeking through. Everybody seemed happy today with the rain finally gone. Hopefully we'll never see rain like that again. Ever.

Blind Melon - No Rain

All I can say is that my life is pretty plain
I like watchin' the puddles gather rain
And all I can do is just pour some tea for two
and speak my point of view
But it's not sane, It's not sane
I just want some one to say to me
I'll always be there when you wake
Ya know I'd like to keep my cheeks dry today
So stay with me and I'll have it made
And I don't understand why I sleep all day
And I start to complain that there's no rain
And all I can do is read a book to stay awake
And it rips my life away, but it's a great escape
escape......escape......escape......
All I can say is that my life is pretty plain
ya don't like my point of view
ya think I'm insane
Its not sane......it's not sane 

Rain-induced Insomnia

Argh, I can't sleep. I can hear the rain coming down outside, I hope it ends before I have to go back to work tomorrow. Er, today that is. Looks like the Highwood River has flooded over and communities in High River are being evacuated. Glad I live on the side of a hill, far from any body of water. On the third floor. I think I'm safe as long as it doesn't come in from the roof like last year.

It was snowing in some places towards the mountains today as well. I'm not surprised, it was pretty cold out today at times. And they have the floodgates wide open on the Glenmore dam. [Calgary's main water supply is the Glenmore reservoir] If the water rises another 1.2 meters it's going to go over the dam. [I don't think that would be good]

Rain rain go away. And die.

It was just pouring rain first thing this morning [again], but I had leftovers that needed to get done so I headed out early. Just as I got downtown, I felt my back tire go all wobbly. Checked it out, flat tire, a big chunk of glass stuck was stuck in there. I had a spare tube so it didn't take long to swap out the old one for the new one and get back on the road. But, about twenty minutes later I hopped on my bike and felt the same wobbly feeling and I was like "no way!!!", but it was true, another flat, this time a big screw was jammed right in there. I immediately headed over to MEC but they're not open till 10:00am so I was screwed till then.

My first impulse was to head over to MacDonald's and dry off and kill time till ten, but instead I decided to head over to the courthouse and get some stuff filed. I didn't want to walk in the rain all the way so I took the plus-15's where I managed to dry off a bit, from dripping wet to merely extremely damp. [Ahh, to be merely extremely damp, I shall remember that fondly] I never got much of a break. As soon as I had done my QB stuff and a late time call, it was time to journey back to MEC, although I did get a muffin on the way. Woohoo! Which was good, as I never got any lunch.

After getting my bike back on the road, it was mega busy for the rest of the day. And it rained, and rained and rained. I was soaking wet and cold. It was difficult to keep my deliveries dry. Even if you pulled out a dry envelope, all this water would drip off your arms and get everything wet. Major suckage. Anyway, I made it through the day, and I'm fully loaded for leftovers needing to be done tomorrow morning. And the forecast calls for more rain in the morning. Sounds like a fucking repeat of today. Although they promise that it will taper off as the day wears on tomorrow, so I have that to look forward to!

Average rainfall for June in Calgary is 77mm. We've had around 180mm [I think] in the past week. Average yearly rainfall is 301mm, 435mm if you include snow. A lot of rain any way you look at it, and we still have 23 days left in the month!

From the Globe and Mail:

Alberta Environment has issued flood warnings for the towns of Pincher Creek, Okotoks, Turner Valley, Black Diamond, High River and Clairsholm.

Most areas in southwestern Alberta have been experiencing anywhere from 60 to 100 millimetres of rain per day for the past week.

The subsequent flooding falls ominously on the 10th anniversary of the last major floods in the province, when roughly 250 mm of rain fell over two days between June 5 and 7, 1995.

The hardest hit areas in Alberta are Clairsholm, roughly 100 kilometres south of Calgary, and the Pincher Creek area, which both experienced more than 100 mm in the past 24 hours.

The average monthly rainfall for June in the Calgary area is nearly 80 mm in the entire month, Mr. Shannon said. Most areas in the southwest portion of the province have been experiencing those levels over the last 24 hours, he added.

The CBC has a photogallery.

Water water everywhere and yet none to take a damn shower with

It started raining today around noon and just kept getting worse and worse right till the end of the day. And of course I was mega-busy, didn't get home till around 5:30, at which time all I wanted to do was hop in a hot shower and scrape all this mud off my body. But when I got to my front door, there was a note there informing me that the City had decided to turn off our water today [of all days] without any prior fucking notice. They're digging up the road in front of my building, fixing pipes I guess. So I'm stuck with this dirt on me, I have no water set aside for drinking or brushing my teeth or anything, and I have no idea when they are going to turn the water back on. And I feel fine.

New shades

My old Oakley sunglasses were bent out of shape lately, totally unwearable after 8 years of abuse. So I had resorted to wearing these cheap, scratched-up, pieces-of-crap sunglasses. Then on Friday one of the nosepieces fell off so I had these freaking prongs that were supposed to hold the nosepiece, digging into my nose. After that experience, I broke down and bought some new Oakleys, Oakley Straight Jackets Black Gold Iridium. I like them, a bit expensive but they should do the job. Here's a picture of me wearing them. They make the world look all weird, kinda Sepia-like. It's like I'm on drugs whenever I wear them, ha ha.

Spy Marathon

Just watched another episode of "Spy", they finally got rid of the contestant that was failing all his missions. It's about time! This one was cool, they had two groups of three working on seperate missions tracking a "dead letter drop" but what made it interesting was that each team had a group of two working in an undercover mission against the third in their group. Utter betrayal, always a good thing! ;)

Looks like National Geographic Channel Canada is going to do a Spy marathon in July showing all the episodes in one run, so if you get the chance, check it out, this is a great show.

I have good news for you. July 16 and 17 is Spy Weekend on National Geographic Channel. Catch the full Spy series July 16 beginning at 12 p.m. ET (repeating at 5 pm ET) and July 17 at 12 p.m. ET (repeating at 5 pm ET). Other spy-related programming includes The Spying Game and Innovations: Spy Catchers. Please visit our schedule at www.nationalgeographic.ca/watch for more information.

Megadeth - This was my Life

Been listening to a lot of Megadeth lately, they put out a lot of catchy tunes in their day. Too bad their last album [The System has Failed] was such a POS, but I guess their last few albums weren't so great either. I love this tune from Countdown to Extinction, track 6, This was my Life [it's on my Radioblog at the bottom of this page]:

It was just another day
It was just another fight
It was words strung into sentences
It was doomed to not be right

There is something wrong with me
There is something wrong with you
There is nothing left of us
There is one thing I can do

Chorus
Lying on your bed,
Examining my head
This is the part of me that hates
Paybacks are a bitch
I throw the switch
Somewhere an electric chair awaits
Hey! This was my life
Hey! This was my fate

This was the wrong thing to do
This was the wrong one to be doing
This was the road to destiny
This was the road to my ruin

Now there's motives for the suspect
Now there's nothing left to say
Now there's method to the madness
Now there's society to pay

Chorus

In our life there's if
In our beliefs there's lie
In our business there's sin
In our bodies there's die

Solo - Dave

This was my life
This was my fate