Fungii.com

Weather

I seem to have got my weather thingy on the sidebar working again. Let's see how long it works. I had a mega headache yesterday so I got nothing done and now today I have like a million things to do » laundry, dishes, fix my road bike. Looks like its going to snow on Tuesday or Wednesday as well, something like five centimeters. That sucks! It's spring already, no more snow dammit!

Then again, today's high is 17°C. That's very warm for this time of year. Major chinook I guess, that's probably what gave me my splitting headache yesterday.

Wacko Marriage

People wouldn’t think I was so crazy if they saw who the hell you really were; that you sit around and you drink and you curse and you’re funny, and you have a bad mouth and you don’t have that high voice all the time.

As Long as It Takes

On camera, the general feeling among the crowd was sorrow at losing Saddam. Off camera, the citizens of Umm Qasr and Basra appeared genuinely exhilarated at the prospect of a brighter future, after Saddam had been removed.

Damien, look at me!

Here I am!

Ha! Just kidding. I am much uglier. This is one of my fellow couriers. I didn't catch his name but I just had to get his picture, for obvious reasons. He's been doing this for seven years, putting in progressively larger rings. I asked him if he could ever take the rings out and somehow go back to normal. He said no, not without plastic surgery. Freaky!

Propaganda

Now this is the article I was looking for, it pissed me off. I have to go to the store but I will finish that thought when I get back.

Ok, I'm back, here we go.

» The International Committee of the Red Cross has condemned the arrival of the first aid shipments into southern Iraq -- and a possible future route for Canadian aid -- as a propaganda exercise.

Ok, fair enough, but why?

» Mui'n Kassis, the head of communications for the ICRC in Jordan, said he was appalled as he watched the scene on television. "That was disgusting; that was propaganda," he said, shaking his head angrily.

So some food finally gets through to some people in need and your first response is "that's disgusting"? You know what would have been even better propaganda? If ten trucks of food got through, or a hundred. Would you still be disgusted at such propaganda, Mr. Kassis?

» He said he didn't know who co-ordinated the aid shipment, which came overland via Kuwait, although news reports said it was the Kuwait Red Crescent Society, an affiliate of the ICRC. Mr. Kassis said whoever organized it seemed more interested in appearances than in those they were supposed to be helping.

It was his own organization. Does that mean he is accusing the ICRC of propaganda?

» "We have to think about the dignity of the recipients in these situations," he said.

Ah yes, nothing like a belly full of dignity. Yum, yum.

» The politics of delivering aid to needy Iraqis is highly charged. The United States and Britain have been anxious to get humanitarian aid into Iraq as soon as possible, in order to bolster their argument that they are waging war primarily for the benefit of the Iraqi people.

So its in their own interests to get as much food to as many people as quickly as they can, right? I've got two things to say about this.

First, aid agencies should be concerned about getting food and water to the people in need, period. Getting credit for the accomplishment should be the furthest thing from their minds.

Secondly, the Americans [and Brits] have paid for the privilege of handing out this aid in blood. I think they've more than earned any propaganda bonuses.

» The Canadian government yesterday pledged $100-million in emergency aid for Iraqi civilians, but said it hoped the food, water and medicine would be delivered by neutral international organizations rather than by the U.S.-led military coalition.

See above, I think they've deserve some credit for making it possible to get the aid to the people who really need it and not into Saddam's coffers.

» But the aid dilemma grew more complicated yesterday when United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan made it clear he thinks the United States and Britain are legally responsible for delivering assistance to those affected by the war.

"The primary responsibility for meeting these needs falls on the belligerents who control the territory," Mr. Annan told a meeting of the UN Security Council.

» Aid has thus far been slow to arrive because of unexpectedly stiff resistance from Iraqi units in the south, especially around the southern centre of Basra, where fighting continues unabated and water supplies have been disrupted.

Aid can't get through because of Iraqi disruptions, yet you hold the US and Britain responsible? Kofi Annan, you are an ass.

» The packages that were thrown to the crowd reportedly contained water, flour, oil, tea and bread.

That's disgusting!

» Another shipment of seven truckloads arrived at the Persian Gulf port of Umm Qasr -- until recently, the scene of fierce Iraqi resistance -- escorted again by American soldiers.

Damn Americans! How dare they!

» "We planned for 30 trucks, but we only got seven loaded because of the severe sandstorm," said E.J. Russell of the Humanitarian Operations Center, a joint U.S.-Kuwaiti agency. Most of the country has been enveloped in a blinding sandstorm for several days.

As it turns out, the reason so little food got through was because of the weather. You would think aide agencies would be glad a little food managed to get through rather than critisize Americans for handing it out.

This whole article left a bad taste in my mouth.

Blitzkrieg

Another Globe and Mail article, this one looking at the coalition's blitzkrieg strategy. Interesting. I think Bush played too much Red Alert. [tank rush]

Note to Bush: Encourage an uprising

Globe and Mail article on Kurdish leader assesing coalition strategy in Iraq. Sums it up well.

Strange Nova

Here is a story on a nova [or nova-like] occurance where huge concentric shells of dust were blown off, revealed via 'light echoes' and the star remained cool through the entire event. [2000°C] Very strange.

FYI The sun is about 15,000,000° C at its core and around 6,000° C on the surface. The corona is around 1,000,000° C.

And there was great rejoicing

Bye bye Connie Chung. Effective immediately, halfway through her contract. Sorry, I'm trying not to laugh. That no doubt pleases CNN founder Ted Turner, who was recently quoted as saying that Chung's show was "just awful." Hehahhah. Ok, I feel better now.

CNN Pulls the Plug on Connie Chung (washingtonpost.com)

I'm Still Alive

Sorry I haven't been blogging lately, been sucked into watching the war thing on TV and on the web. Need.. to get... away... Been using GoogleNews quite a bit [its great] and of course, CNN. On TV, I've been switching between CNN, BBCnews and CBC Newsworld. Its interesting to see the differences in the way they report things. CNN is very much pro-war and has a positive spin [usually] on most developments ['cept casualties and POW's] while the BBC seems very much anti-war and goes to great pains to report everything negatively. Quite the contrast. Depending on which channel you're watching, you would think the war is either going great with victory just around the corner or terribly, the sky is falling, another Vietnam. So much for objectivity. Newsworld is on the anti-war side, but not as blatently rabid about it as the BBC. CBC radio, at least in Calgary, is most definately bent-out-of-shape against the war, so much so I have to turn it off in the morning. It's really, really bad, I think even people who are against the war would cringe.

• Generals' analysis of the coalition strategy.
  
  
• The coalition is bending over backwards to minimize civilian casualties. This is making it harder for them to carry out their missions, but they hope in the long run it will pay dividends by winning over the civilian population. But will it? Will the Iraqi population appreciate the effort they've made? I have my doubts, but it is quite an amazing accomplishment, at least so far. They could make things so much easier for themselves by just carpet bombing the whole country, but they haven't. Here's an article on this angle.
  
  
  
  Contrast this war, if you will, with even those America has fought before — the civilian toll in Vietnam or, at its apogee of horror, the firebombing of Tokyo, Dresden or Hamburg during World War II and the finale of atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Once, we made almost no distinction between military and civilian targets. Now — at the apparent cost of American lives — we do.
  
  
  
• They've dropped more than 26 million leaflets on Iraq's 25 million people. We give up, no more leaflets!
  
  
• And speaking of psychological warfare, here's a thing on psyops via CBC. [warning: uses Flash] They show some of the leaflets being dropped on Iraq. Take an offensive posture and you will be destroyed.
  
  
• We will liberate you back to the stone age, you bastards!
  
  
  
  In an incident after the US Air Force had carpet-bombed a south Vietnamese town to clear out Viet Cong guerrillas, an American officer famously commented: "We had to destroy the town to save it".
  
  
  

Canada vs. Iraq

Reading about Iraq, I find out Iraq only became a country in 1920. Canada became a country in 1867, therefore Canada has been a country longer than Iraq. Doing the dance of joy.

[Of course, Iraq is home to Mesopotamia, the cradle of civilization where Assyria, Babylonia, and Sumer once stood.]

Then again, Iraq only has 19 miles of coastline, we have more than 36,350 miles. Neener, neener.

Brachypelma emilia

Here's my Mexican redleg male. He's still not mature, apparently. Hopefully he'll be mature after his next molt and I'll be able to breed him with my female emilia.

Where is Raed?

I've read this blog before, but it seems surreal that somebody could be blogging in the midst of a war. Strange but cool. Good luck dude!

War is Declared

The dog walk is cancelled, the war is awwwwn.

TIME on Assignment - Iraq

Flash presentation of a photo essay on Iraq. Cool, although the use of flash is rather irritating. So, are they smoking tobacco in those hookahs or something stronger?

This War sucks

We've been waiting for this war for almost a year now and this is what we get? BORING. I'm going to go watch Star Wars. Now that war rocked. "Come to the Dark Side, Puke"

All quiet on the Iraqi front

It's been fifteen minutes already! C'mon, start bombing already you lamers or I'm gonna change the channel. Fucking slowpokes.

Countdown to Destruction

Eighteen minutes to go. Checking the live from Baghdad shot on CNN, waiting for the fireworks to begin. It's funny, I'm more concerned with what North Korea is going to do in the next few days than what Iraq might do. Iraq probably doesn't have any weapons of mass destruction. Their army will likely be overwhelmed by massive arial bombardment. Mass surrender will be the order of the day, at least outside Baghdad. In Baghdad they might put up some resistance, but I don't see why the US couldn't just lay siege and whittle them down bit by bit. They ain't got a chance man.

On the other hand, North Korea has a million man army ready to invade South Korea at the drop of a hat. Something like seventeen thousand pieces of artillery within range of the south. Possible nuclear capabilities, almost certainly chemical and biological capabilities. And a crazy motherfucker of a leader very likely to use them. They know the US is occupied with Iraq right now but will almost certainly turn their attention to North Korea once they are done with Iraq. In their sick, twisted view of the world, North Korea might see this as their golden opportunity to invade the south.

Or China could try to retake Taiwan. Or Quebec might try to take Labrador! Ah, maybe not, they are kinda French aren't they?

Just another day, man

I did laundry today! Woohoo!

Got some new shoes, too. Installed the cleats and now I'm ready to ride the beast tomorrow. Can't wait, it's gonna feel so much better than my road bike, which is on its last legs I'm afraid. The rear end is all over the place and I noticed the BB has come loose as well. It served me well for 17 years but now I might have to put it out to pasture. Or bury it in the back yard.

I've been thinking of putting together a winter bike for next winter. I can get a cheap frame for $170. Although, it ain't shit, I think it's aluminum or something. I'd like to keep it simple as possible with a single speed on the back and a single chainring on the front. Rigid forks. Run cable housing all the way from the lever to the brakes to keep out crud. Fenders. Platform pedals. Maybe a cute little pink basket in the front and hockey cards in the spokes to make that cool ratatattat sound.

And a bell. Did you know you are legally obligated to have a bell mounted on your bike in Calgary? A cop gave me a $25 fine once for not having a bell. What a dick. That was about 7 years ago and I still don't have a bell.

Mean Machine

Here's my bike, ready for action but I don't want to take it to work tomorrow because it will just get all messed up after the snow today. Mud and salt tend to ruin my nice, new parts PDQ. Maybe Tuesday if the snow melts tomorrow. I still need a front derailler and a rear brake as you can see. Soon I hope. Check out that disc, its huge!

Hell is White

I spent most of the weekend putting my mountain bike together. It warmed up on Wednesday and most of the streets had dried out so I thought it would be safe to ride my shiny new machine on Monday. Well, today I took a nap at about one o'clock and then woke up at around two to find a bright white light shining through my window. More fucking snow! Argh, I hate this it never ends. It was a lot of snow too, like around 5 cm or so. I guess I'll be riding my road bike for at least one more day. And that sucks as my road bike is all screwed up, the back end is wobbling real bad. The back wheel is not that warped, I can't find anything wrong with the frame and the axle doesn't seem bent. I can't figure out where the problem is. Bleh, this sucks in every way.

My new front disc brake looks pretty sweet tho.

Too bad I can't get my rear v-brakes happening. When I first got this new Azonic Evolution frame, the guy at the bike shop said I would have to get special oversized brake bosses for the rear brakes. They did not have any but he said I should try this other shop.

When I went to the second shop, the guy there said that was bullshit and that I could use regular sized brake bosses. He said he could order some for $40.00. That seemed like way too much so I declined.

Then when I got my disc brake, I thought I could just transfer the brake bosses from my forks to the rear dropouts. But when I tried to screw them in, they were way too small! Argh, the first guy was right. What a pain. At this point, I think I'll stick with just the front disc until can pick up another disc for the rear. Forty bucks just for a couple pegs is just too much. And it would be really cool to have another disc on the back.

Free stuff

After work today, I went to MEC to get some stuff for my bike.

First, I tried to pick up some new shoes but the only reasonably priced shoes they had were way too narrow. I have like webbed feet, very wide.

So I asked the sales dude to give me some brake and shifter cable housing, a couple meters each. I grabbed a bunch of metal cable ends and he said I could have them for free as I was buying the cable housing. Cool, saved two or three bucks right there. The cable housing was supposed to be $6.00 a meter but he accidentally attached the wrong tag, so the shifter cable housing would only be $3.00 a meter.

At the checkout, the girl rings up all the stuff I bought and it came to $16.59. After I leave the store, I think to myself "That seems awefully cheap!" so I check the receipt and the cable housing isn't even on there! Score! Four meters at $6.00 a meter would have been $24.00 plus the free cable ends, total savings; about $30.00. She double charged on my shifter cables, so my net savings was only about $25.00. Still, not bad.

Then on my way home, I popped into Wendy's to get some dinner. There was a line-up and the guy in front of me orders, then the cashier says something to him and he gets upset and leaves. Weird. So I go up and order a double classic meal, biggie sized, to go. The cashier tells me their Interac isn't working but no worries, I have cash. So I see the guy put a couple burgers in a bag and then he puts another one in and I'm thinking that must be someone elses order. But then he looks at me and says "Your lucky day!" and hands me the bag. Score! I guess they had the extra burgers from the aborted Interac orders so they just dumped them on me. So I had abortions for dinner. Ha.

Anyway, it just seemed weird to get all that free stuff all at once at the end of the day, nice way to start the weekend. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go lie down for a few days while I try to digest about 50 pounds of mad-cow infested dogmeat.

Sicko

Then on my way home, I popped into Wendy's to get some dinner. There was a line-up and the guy in front of me orders, then the cashier says something to him and he gets upset and leaves. Weird. So I go up and order a double classic meal, biggie sized, to go. The cashier tells me their Interac isn't working but no worries, I have cash. So I see the guy put a couple burgers in a bag and then he puts another one in and I'm thinking that must be someone elses order. But then he looks at me and says "Your lucky day!" and hands me the bag. Score! I guess they had the extra burgers from the aborted Interac orders so they just dumped them on me. So I had abortions for dinner. Ha.

Anyway, it just seemed weird to get all that free stuff all at once at the end of the day, nice way to start the weekend. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go lie down for a few days while I try to digest about 50 pounds of mad-cow infested dogmeat.

Sicko

I've been sick lately, ebola methinks. Feeling a bit better today, thanks.

ROTFL

Found this via Metafilter. Here's a couple funny ones. Yes, I have a sick sense of humour. [Warning: some people will find this offensive]

I'D GO DOWN ON YOU BUT YOUR PUSSY FUCKING STINKS.

The Great White show has already begun. Pull off the road, and find something else to do.

Weather

I've fixed the weather, it will be sunny and warm for the rest of the year.

Ha! Just kidding. I seem to have fixed the problem with the current conditions thingy on my sidebar, but the forecast is all messed up still. Its an ugly hack so I'll fix the forecast bit later when I feel more energetic. Speaking of the weather, it was not bad when I got downtown today, around -2°, calm and just slightly overcast. I went into a building, came out and began to ride to my next stop. By the time I arrived at my destination, less than 5 minutes, the temperature had dropped a bunch, there was a howling wind and icy snow was being pelted into my cranium! Shit, the weather really can change in 5 minutes in this city! Tomorrow's weather calls for more snow and temps holding steady at around -25°. I am so fucking excited.

Misplaced Malice

Are you ever really pissed off about something and you're obsessing over it and shit, but then you get distracted by something and you forget what the hell you were all pissed off about? Well I'm pissed off about something, believe you me, and if I could just remember what it was, I would unleash a geyser of verbal diarrhea like this world has never seen. Uhm. Nevermind.

al Qaeda Arrest

So they arrested Osama bin Laden's number two man Khalid Shaikh Mohammed.

Cold Snowy Weather All Week

I'm so depressed! This sucks, where's our chinook?

Forecast

Cold Snowy Weather All Week

« February 2003 |

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March 29, 2003

I seem to have got my weather thingy on the sidebar working again. Let's see how long it works. I had a mega headache yesterday so I got nothing done and now today I have like a million things to do » laundry, dishes, fix my road bike. Looks like its going to snow on Tuesday or Wednesday as well, something like five centimeters. That sucks! It's spring already, no more snow dammit!

Then again, today's high is 17°C. That's very warm for this time of year. Major chinook I guess, that's probably what gave me my splitting headache yesterday.

Posted by Fungii at 11:38 PM

March 27, 2003

People wouldn’t think I was so crazy if they saw who the hell you really were; that you sit around and you drink and you curse and you’re funny, and you have a bad mouth and you don’t have that high voice all the time.

Presley on Jackson

Posted by Fungii at 09:14 AM

On camera, the general feeling among the crowd was sorrow at losing Saddam. Off camera, the citizens of Umm Qasr and Basra appeared genuinely exhilarated at the prospect of a brighter future, after Saddam had been removed.

ArabNews

Posted by Fungii at 08:42 AM

Those who foretold it are dead. Those who can stop it are in grave danger. †

I always wondered what happened to that litle boy from The Omen.

Posted by Fungii at 08:02 AM

Ha! Just kidding. I am much uglier. This is one of my fellow couriers. I didn't catch his name but I just had to get his picture, for obvious reasons. He's been doing this for seven years, putting in progressively larger rings. I asked him if he could ever take the rings out and somehow go back to normal. He said no, not without plastic surgery. Freaky!

Posted by Fungii at 07:55 AM

Now this is the article I was looking for, it pissed me off. I have to go to the store but I will finish that thought when I get back.

Ok, I'm back, here we go.

» The International Committee of the Red Cross has condemned the arrival of the first aid shipments into southern Iraq -- and a possible future route for Canadian aid -- as a propaganda exercise.

Ok, fair enough, but why?

» Mui'n Kassis, the head of communications for the ICRC in Jordan, said he was appalled as he watched the scene on television. "That was disgusting; that was propaganda," he said, shaking his head angrily.

So some food finally gets through to some people in need and your first response is "that's disgusting"? You know what would have been even better propaganda? If ten trucks of food got through, or a hundred. Would you still be disgusted at such propaganda, Mr. Kassis?

» He said he didn't know who co-ordinated the aid shipment, which came overland via Kuwait, although news reports said it was the Kuwait Red Crescent Society, an affiliate of the ICRC. Mr. Kassis said whoever organized it seemed more interested in appearances than in those they were supposed to be helping.

It was his own organization. Does that mean he is accusing the ICRC of propaganda?

» "We have to think about the dignity of the recipients in these situations," he said.

Ah yes, nothing like a belly full of dignity. Yum, yum.

» The politics of delivering aid to needy Iraqis is highly charged. The United States and Britain have been anxious to get humanitarian aid into Iraq as soon as possible, in order to bolster their argument that they are waging war primarily for the benefit of the Iraqi people.

So its in their own interests to get as much food to as many people as quickly as they can, right? I've got two things to say about this.

First, aid agencies should be concerned about getting food and water to the people in need, period. Getting credit for the accomplishment should be the furthest thing from their minds.

Secondly, the Americans [and Brits] have paid for the privilege of handing out this aid in blood. I think they've more than earned any propaganda bonuses.

» The Canadian government yesterday pledged $100-million in emergency aid for Iraqi civilians, but said it hoped the food, water and medicine would be delivered by neutral international organizations rather than by the U.S.-led military coalition.

See above, I think they've deserve some credit for making it possible to get the aid to the people who really need it and not into Saddam's coffers.

» But the aid dilemma grew more complicated yesterday when United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan made it clear he thinks the United States and Britain are legally responsible for delivering assistance to those affected by the war.

"The primary responsibility for meeting these needs falls on the belligerents who control the territory," Mr. Annan told a meeting of the UN Security Council.

» Aid has thus far been slow to arrive because of unexpectedly stiff resistance from Iraqi units in the south, especially around the southern centre of Basra, where fighting continues unabated and water supplies have been disrupted.

Aid can't get through because of Iraqi disruptions, yet you hold the US and Britain responsible? Kofi Annan, you are an ass.

» The packages that were thrown to the crowd reportedly contained water, flour, oil, tea and bread.

That's disgusting!

» Another shipment of seven truckloads arrived at the Persian Gulf port of Umm Qasr -- until recently, the scene of fierce Iraqi resistance -- escorted again by American soldiers.

Damn Americans! How dare they!

» "We planned for 30 trucks, but we only got seven loaded because of the severe sandstorm," said E.J. Russell of the Humanitarian Operations Center, a joint U.S.-Kuwaiti agency. Most of the country has been enveloped in a blinding sandstorm for several days.

As it turns out, the reason so little food got through was because of the weather. You would think aide agencies would be glad a little food managed to get through rather than critisize Americans for handing it out.

This whole article left a bad taste in my mouth.

Posted by Fungii at 05:32 AM

Another Globe and Mail article, this one looking at the coalition's blitzkrieg strategy. Interesting. I think Bush played too much Red Alert. [tank rush]

Posted by Fungii at 05:29 AM

Globe and Mail article on Kurdish leader assesing coalition strategy in Iraq. Sums it up well.

Posted by Fungii at 05:23 AM

March 26, 2003

Here is a story on a nova [or nova-like] occurance where huge concentric shells of dust were blown off, revealed via 'light echoes' and the star remained cool through the entire event. [2000°C] Very strange.

FYI The sun is about 15,000,000° C at its core and around 6,000° C on the surface. The corona is around 1,000,000° C.

Posted by Fungii at 09:58 AM

March 25, 2003

Bye bye Connie Chung. Effective immediately, halfway through her contract. Sorry, I'm trying not to laugh. That no doubt pleases CNN founder Ted Turner, who was recently quoted as saying that Chung's show was "just awful." Hehahhah. Ok, I feel better now.

CNN Pulls the Plug on Connie Chung (washingtonpost.com)

Posted by Fungii at 08:05 PM

Sorry I haven't been blogging lately, been sucked into watching the war thing on TV and on the web. Need.. to get... away... Been using GoogleNews quite a bit [its great] and of course, CNN. On TV, I've been switching between CNN, BBCnews and CBC Newsworld. Its interesting to see the differences in the way they report things. CNN is very much pro-war and has a positive spin [usually] on most developments ['cept casualties and POW's] while the BBC seems very much anti-war and goes to great pains to report everything negatively. Quite the contrast. Depending on which channel you're watching, you would think the war is either going great with victory just around the corner or terribly, the sky is falling, another Vietnam. So much for objectivity. Newsworld is on the anti-war side, but not as blatently rabid about it as the BBC. CBC radio, at least in Calgary, is most definately bent-out-of-shape against the war, so much so I have to turn it off in the morning. It's really, really bad, I think even people who are against the war would cringe.

• Generals' analysis of the coalition strategy.
  
  
• The coalition is bending over backwards to minimize civilian casualties. This is making it harder for them to carry out their missions, but they hope in the long run it will pay dividends by winning over the civilian population. But will it? Will the Iraqi population appreciate the effort they've made? I have my doubts, but it is quite an amazing accomplishment, at least so far. They could make things so much easier for themselves by just carpet bombing the whole country, but they haven't. Here's an article on this angle.
  
  
  
  Contrast this war, if you will, with even those America has fought before — the civilian toll in Vietnam or, at its apogee of horror, the firebombing of Tokyo, Dresden or Hamburg during World War II and the finale of atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Once, we made almost no distinction between military and civilian targets. Now — at the apparent cost of American lives — we do.
  
  
  
• They've dropped more than 26 million leaflets on Iraq's 25 million people. We give up, no more leaflets!
  
  
• And speaking of psychological warfare, here's a thing on psyops via CBC. [warning: uses Flash] They show some of the leaflets being dropped on Iraq. Take an offensive posture and you will be destroyed.
  
  
• We will liberate you back to the stone age, you bastards!
  
  
  
  In an incident after the US Air Force had carpet-bombed a south Vietnamese town to clear out Viet Cong guerrillas, an American officer famously commented: "We had to destroy the town to save it".
  
  
  

Posted by Fungii at 05:21 AM

March 21, 2003

Reading about Iraq, I find out Iraq only became a country in 1920. Canada became a country in 1867, therefore Canada has been a country longer than Iraq. Doing the dance of joy.

[Of course, Iraq is home to Mesopotamia, the cradle of civilization where Assyria, Babylonia, and Sumer once stood.]

Then again, Iraq only has 19 miles of coastline, we have more than 36,350 miles. Neener, neener.

Posted by Fungii at 09:39 AM

March 19, 2003

Here's my Mexican redleg male. He's still not mature, apparently. Hopefully he'll be mature after his next molt and I'll be able to breed him with my female emilia.

Posted by Fungii at 10:03 AM

I've read this blog before, but it seems surreal that somebody could be blogging in the midst of a war. Strange but cool. Good luck dude!

The radio plays war songs from the 80’s non-stop. We know them all by heart. Driving thru Baghdad now singing along to songs saying things like “we will be with you till the day we die Saddam” was suddenly a bit too heavy, no one gave that line too much thought but somehow these days it is sounds sinister.

Posted by Fungii at 08:21 AM

The dog walk is cancelled, the war is awwwwn.

Posted by Fungii at 07:53 AM

Flash presentation of a photo essay on Iraq. Cool, although the use of flash is rather irritating. So, are they smoking tobacco in those hookahs or something stronger?

Posted by Fungii at 07:15 AM

We've been waiting for this war for almost a year now and this is what we get? BORING. I'm going to go watch Star Wars. Now that war rocked. "Come to the Dark Side, Puke"

Posted by Fungii at 06:23 AM

It's been fifteen minutes already! C'mon, start bombing already you lamers or I'm gonna change the channel. Fucking slowpokes.

Posted by Fungii at 06:13 AM

Eighteen minutes to go. Checking the live from Baghdad shot on CNN, waiting for the fireworks to begin. It's funny, I'm more concerned with what North Korea is going to do in the next few days than what Iraq might do. Iraq probably doesn't have any weapons of mass destruction. Their army will likely be overwhelmed by massive arial bombardment. Mass surrender will be the order of the day, at least outside Baghdad. In Baghdad they might put up some resistance, but I don't see why the US couldn't just lay siege and whittle them down bit by bit. They ain't got a chance man.

On the other hand, North Korea has a million man army ready to invade South Korea at the drop of a hat. Something like seventeen thousand pieces of artillery within range of the south. Possible nuclear capabilities, almost certainly chemical and biological capabilities. And a crazy motherfucker of a leader very likely to use them. They know the US is occupied with Iraq right now but will almost certainly turn their attention to North Korea once they are done with Iraq. In their sick, twisted view of the world, North Korea might see this as their golden opportunity to invade the south.

Or China could try to retake Taiwan. Or Quebec might try to take Labrador! Ah, maybe not, they are kinda French aren't they?

Posted by Fungii at 06:00 AM

March 17, 2003

I did laundry today! Woohoo!

Got some new shoes, too. Installed the cleats and now I'm ready to ride the beast tomorrow. Can't wait, it's gonna feel so much better than my road bike, which is on its last legs I'm afraid. The rear end is all over the place and I noticed the BB has come loose as well. It served me well for 17 years but now I might have to put it out to pasture. Or bury it in the back yard.

I've been thinking of putting together a winter bike for next winter. I can get a cheap frame for $170. Although, it ain't shit, I think it's aluminum or something. I'd like to keep it simple as possible with a single speed on the back and a single chainring on the front. Rigid forks. Run cable housing all the way from the lever to the brakes to keep out crud. Fenders. Platform pedals. Maybe a cute little pink basket in the front and hockey cards in the spokes to make that cool ratatattat sound.

And a bell. Did you know you are legally obligated to have a bell mounted on your bike in Calgary? A cop gave me a $25 fine once for not having a bell. What a dick. That was about 7 years ago and I still don't have a bell.

Posted by Fungii at 09:20 AM

March 16, 2003

Here's my bike, ready for action but I don't want to take it to work tomorrow because it will just get all messed up after the snow today. Mud and salt tend to ruin my nice, new parts PDQ. Maybe Tuesday if the snow melts tomorrow. I still need a front derailler and a rear brake as you can see. Soon I hope. Check out that disc, its huge!

Posted by Fungii at 10:23 AM

I spent most of the weekend putting my mountain bike together. It warmed up on Wednesday and most of the streets had dried out so I thought it would be safe to ride my shiny new machine on Monday. Well, today I took a nap at about one o'clock and then woke up at around two to find a bright white light shining through my window. More fucking snow! Argh, I hate this it never ends. It was a lot of snow too, like around 5 cm or so. I guess I'll be riding my road bike for at least one more day. And that sucks as my road bike is all screwed up, the back end is wobbling real bad. The back wheel is not that warped, I can't find anything wrong with the frame and the axle doesn't seem bent. I can't figure out where the problem is. Bleh, this sucks in every way.

My new front disc brake looks pretty sweet tho.

Too bad I can't get my rear v-brakes happening. When I first got this new Azonic Evolution frame, the guy at the bike shop said I would have to get special oversized brake bosses for the rear brakes. They did not have any but he said I should try this other shop.

When I went to the second shop, the guy there said that was bullshit and that I could use regular sized brake bosses. He said he could order some for $40.00. That seemed like way too much so I declined.

Then when I got my disc brake, I thought I could just transfer the brake bosses from my forks to the rear dropouts. But when I tried to screw them in, they were way too small! Argh, the first guy was right. What a pain. At this point, I think I'll stick with just the front disc until can pick up another disc for the rear. Forty bucks just for a couple pegs is just too much. And it would be really cool to have another disc on the back.

Posted by Fungii at 03:14 AM

March 15, 2003

After work today, I went to MEC to get some stuff for my bike.

First, I tried to pick up some new shoes but the only reasonably priced shoes they had were way too narrow. I have like webbed feet, very wide.

So I asked the sales dude to give me some brake and shifter cable housing, a couple meters each. I grabbed a bunch of metal cable ends and he said I could have them for free as I was buying the cable housing. Cool, saved two or three bucks right there. The cable housing was supposed to be $6.00 a meter but he accidentally attached the wrong tag, so the shifter cable housing would only be $3.00 a meter.

At the checkout, the girl rings up all the stuff I bought and it came to $16.59. After I leave the store, I think to myself "That seems awefully cheap!" so I check the receipt and the cable housing isn't even on there! Score! Four meters at $6.00 a meter would have been $24.00 plus the free cable ends, total savings; about $30.00. She double charged on my shifter cables, so my net savings was only about $25.00. Still, not bad.

Then on my way home, I popped into Wendy's to get some dinner. There was a line-up and the guy in front of me orders, then the cashier says something to him and he gets upset and leaves. Weird. So I go up and order a double classic meal, biggie sized, to go. The cashier tells me their Interac isn't working but no worries, I have cash. So I see the guy put a couple burgers in a bag and then he puts another one in and I'm thinking that must be someone elses order. But then he looks at me and says "Your lucky day!" and hands me the bag. Score! I guess they had the extra burgers from the aborted Interac orders so they just dumped them on me. So I had abortions for dinner. Ha.

Anyway, it just seemed weird to get all that free stuff all at once at the end of the day, nice way to start the weekend. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go lie down for a few days while I try to digest about 50 pounds of mad-cow infested dogmeat.

Posted by Fungii at 10:14 AM

March 11, 2003

I've been sick lately, ebola methinks. Feeling a bit better today, thanks.

Posted by Fungii at 06:30 AM

March 07, 2003

Found this via Metafilter. Here's a couple funny ones. Yes, I have a sick sense of humour. [Warning: some people will find this offensive]

The US government put together a website to prepare people in case of an attack on the country. The site is http://www.ready.gov/. However, the graphics they use are pretty ambiguous, and don't really make a lot of sense on their own, so caption some!!

I'D GO DOWN ON YOU BUT YOUR PUSSY FUCKING STINKS.

The Great White show has already begun. Pull off the road, and find something else to do.

Posted by Fungii at 10:56 AM

March 06, 2003

I've fixed the weather, it will be sunny and warm for the rest of the year.

Ha! Just kidding. I seem to have fixed the problem with the current conditions thingy on my sidebar, but the forecast is all messed up still. Its an ugly hack so I'll fix the forecast bit later when I feel more energetic. Speaking of the weather, it was not bad when I got downtown today, around -2°, calm and just slightly overcast. I went into a building, came out and began to ride to my next stop. By the time I arrived at my destination, less than 5 minutes, the temperature had dropped a bunch, there was a howling wind and icy snow was being pelted into my cranium! Shit, the weather really can change in 5 minutes in this city! Tomorrow's weather calls for more snow and temps holding steady at around -25°. I am so fucking excited.

Posted by Fungii at 08:03 AM

Are you ever really pissed off about something and you're obsessing over it and shit, but then you get distracted by something and you forget what the hell you were all pissed off about? Well I'm pissed off about something, believe you me, and if I could just remember what it was, I would unleash a geyser of verbal diarrhea like this world has never seen. Uhm. Nevermind.

Posted by Fungii at 06:17 AM

March 03, 2003

So they arrested Osama bin Laden's number two man Khalid Shaikh Mohammed.

But when will they capture his number one man? Only then will I sleep at night!

Posted by Fungii at 07:34 AM

I'm so depressed! This sucks, where's our chinook?

Forecast

Posted by Fungii at 07:23 AM

Silence that man, now

First they used zip ties to handcuff suspects, now a Judge duct tapes defendant's mouth. What next, trade in the electric chair for a whoopee cushion? Sheesh!

The Cookie Project

Started bad, got worse

It was so quiet this morning, I only did 2 deliveries the whole morning! And if that wasn't bad enough, just as I'm grabbing some lunch, my pager starts to go off. So I wolf down my lunch, go pick up this rush and its going to a place that's closed for lunch. Bah! It doesn't really matter to me, I'm just the courier, but it is kind of irritating. Then it snowed. I've had enough snow for this year, thank you very much. And I really couldn't give a damn if the farmers really need it. Ain't no farmers in the concrete jungle, baby.

Burrow

I transfered most of my spiders to new cages last week. Well not new cages but I did replace the substrate and added clay pots and water dishes. My Haplopelma lividum's enclosure was filled up more than halfway with potting soil to encourage burrowing. And sure enough, she's begun to dig a burrow, straight down so far, but she's almost hit the bottom so she might branch off soon. Its funny how she freezes as soon as I turn on the light to check her out. Very shy spider.

Fatty

My Aphonopelma seemanni was already pretty chubby before I fed her a pinky last night. Now she's definately on the heavy side. I like how she's crossing her spinnerets, like she has to take a leak or something.

And here she is before eating the pinky.

While she was consuming the pinky, I noticed its tail had fallen off near the spot where she had first caught him. Not wanting to disturb her meal, I figured I would retrieve it later. [to prevent it from rotting and spreading mold or disease] Looking in later, she was over the spot where the tail was, so I would have to try again later. Then she moved away, and guess what? The tail was gone! The greedy little bastard had gone back and consumed the tail!

Another View

Freshly Molted Emilia

Here is my juvenile [?] Brachypelma emilia.

And just for camparison, here's my adult emilia. Much duller colours, yes? [and a fatter belly!]

X-Men 2 Trailer

Here's the X2 trailer. Looks good.

Can I stay home today?

It's -22°C right now, -32°C with the wind chill and the high for today is forecast at -19°C. Man, I hate my job on days like today.

[I don't know what's the matter with my weather script, it doesn't seem to be working. Here's the forecast for Calgary.]

We're born crying, and when we've cried enough, we die

Yikes, now I have to post something, anything, to try to bump Tyson's ugly mug off my page. He does look like he could eat somebody's children, doesn't he?

Anyway, I just finished watching Akira Kurosawa's Ran. Awesome flick. I think it was based on Shakespeare's Norman Lear or something. The best part was when Kurogane lops off Lady Kaede's melon. Whoa, I haven't seen that much spray since Braindead [Dead Alive]! All kidding aside, it was a really good movie, check it out. [sorry about the spoiler!]

OH GOD NO

Reality bites? Tyson may get own TV show.

Gateshead Millennium Bridge

This bridge is so cool, they should get the people who designed this to design replacements for the WTC towers. It rotates to let boats get past.

Avid 203mm cable disc brake

I got my disc brake today! Hurray! This thing's huge. I had no idea it was going to be so big. Oh well, the disc should last longer due to the larger surface area. I can't wait, no more rim wear! I usually ride my rims till the sidewall gets so thin that it blows out, usually quite explosively. Although my last rim got all warped and no matter how many times I tightened the spokes, it would go back out of true again. Anyways, my new rim should last much, much longer than usual with this new brake. I just hope my forks last. I can see a lot of corrosion on the bottom sleeves. My last set of forks were so corroded, the inner rod poked right through the outer sleeve. Not good. I wish they would put some kind of anti-corrosion coating on them to prevent this. But if they did that, they couldn't sell us new forks every two years! Yeah, what was I thinking.

Haplopelma lividum

Here is my Cobalt blue sub-adult. The blue colour in its legs shows up much better in pictures than in viewing with the naked eye. Guess the flash helps a lot. She's stopped eating lately so I'm hoping she's about to molt. She killed the last cricket I threw in there, but she didn't eat it. I need to change the substrate in all these cages, but it's too cold out today to go to the store. The substrate they have now has tree bark in it, probably cedar. Tarantulas hate cedar.

You can see her little claws at the end of her legs in the pic below.

Brachypelma emilia

Here's my Mexican redleg sub-adult. You can see its abdomen has turned black, signifying a molt is in the offing. Hopefully I'll be around to take pictures. [and not delete them. Doh!]

Grammostola grossa

Here's my Pampas tawnyred male. He's all legs and hair. I tried picking him up but he was all nervous and jittery so I let him be. He seems to eat all the crickets I throw at him, so I'm hoping he'll be around for awhile. [males don't live nearly as long as females and all the previous males I've had have stopped eating and slowly starved themselves to death]

More Pictures

New Spider

This tarantula came out of its molt much darker than before. It will probably fade back to its old colour over time, but it does look damn good the way it is now. Its pretty well jet black with green highlights on its carapace and the first leg segments, although you can't really see the green on its legs in these pictures. The pictures I took during its molt showed the green on its legs quite clearly, but of course, those pictures are gone. [grumble, grumble] And there's the orange stripes on its knees. Here's a couple before and after pictures.

Old Skin

Here's the old skin from my spider that just molted.

I Hate this World

After taking a shitload of pictures of my tarantula molting last night, I went to check them out this morning. I downloaded them to my computer and deleted them from the camera. Then I looked at them with this stupid, fucked-up software that came with my camera. [ZoomBrowserEX] This piece of shit software puts a bunch of fucking thumbnails on your computer every time you download pictures from your camera. Then, even after you've moved the files, it displays all these thumbnails every time you start the program. So I was deleting all these thumbnails so it wouldn't bog down every time I downloaded pictures from my camera, but not the pictures I just downloaded of course. There were some thumbnails in the main directory for pictures that I had moved a long time ago, so I chose to delete those. And what did the program do? It deleted the subdirectory with all my freshly downloaded pictures of my T molting! Motherfucker! So, to make a long story short, I spent the whole fucking day today trying to recover these files either from my hard drive or camera. No luck, they're gone for good. I am so pissed off. I spent all last night taking those pictures and all today on trying to recover them for nothing. Fuck! I wish comapnies wouldn't include such fucked-up, shitty programs with their hardware, they just fuck things up. I guess that's why we get them for free.

Molt Update #2

It's 9:40pm, over 4 hours since I got home and saw her flipped over, and she just started moving her legs around. Hopefully she'll start to pull out soon.

Well, it's 11:00pm and she's pretty well finished her molt. I took like a ton of pictures, but I'm too tired to post them right now. I'll put them up in the morning. Goodnight.

Molt Update

She's still on her back, no movement. I got home at about 5:30pm and its now almost 7:30pm, so she's been at it for at least 2 hours. She should start doing her stretching exercises pretty soon. Get on with it already, dammit!

Tarantula Molting

This is my Lasiodora subcanens¹ on its back, about to shed its skin [molt]. I hope it goes ok, its abdomen looks like it's twisted to one side a bit. Oh well, nothing I can do but watch and keep my fingers crossed.

I'll try to do updates live, with fresh pictures as she goes through her molt.

¹ I think it's a Lasiodora subcanens, this picture was the closest to the way it looks.

Grammostola rosea

Here's my Chilean Rose tarantula. Common and cheap, but not bad looking and easy to take care of. She was my first tarantula, I think I bought her about 7 years ago but it could be longer. She was already an adult when I bought her so she could be quite old. She won't eat pinkies but she'll eat crickets till her belly's huge. And then she'll stop eating, I think she fasted once for a couple years. Yes, she went for a couple years without any food, I guess if they have a full belly and water, they can last for a very long time between meals. Then she molted and now she's back to eating like a pig again.

Just to update this post, I said this spider was about 7 years old because I knew I had her for at least 7 years and I didn't want to make any unsubstantiated claims about her being older. Well, I was digging through some old videotapes the other day, and I came across some footage of her, timestamped 1990. So I've had her for around fourteen years, and since I bought her as an adult, I'm sure she's at least 15 years old. Cool, she looks good for a granny!

Hump Day

The late people paid their bill. Cool. I thought I might have bounced a cheque, but then I checked my account and the money is there. Yea. My credit card got charged for my new disc brake so I should be getting that soon. Woohoo. The weather was good [warm & sunny], it was busy at work but not crazy and I don't think anybody pissed me off. Holy shit, I think I actually had a good day. Weird. I have an uneasy feeling I'm going to pay for this unexpected good fortune...

How the Mighty have Fallen

Hey, dude, you're getting a cell!

After the snow melted

More Snow

It snowed some more today. Shit. I guess I wont be riding my mountain bike with its new parts on Monday. I started putting it together today, but the rear derailler pulleys were in pretty rough shape so I ran to MEC to pick up some new ones, among other things. They only had pulleys for 7 speed chains and I'm putting together a 9 speed drivetrain. [9 speed chains are thinner than 7 speed chains] So I ride over to the bike shop one block over to get some there. The guy there doesn't even ask me what speed the drivetrain is and he comes out with the same pulleys as the ones at MEC. Not only that, but they want $6.00 each, whereas MEC was only asking $2.00 a pair. Yikes! So I went back to MEC and bought a pair from there. Hopefully they'll work ok until I can get some proper ones.



I also picked up a new u-lock for $15.00, my old one was driving me crazy. The key would get stuck halfway through unlocking and I would have to reef on it to get it to turn. Pain in the ass. Got a couple pairs of brake pads as well, although I might not need them both as I ordered a disk brake for the front. I should get it sometime this week. I hope. Its a Avid 203mm mech disk brake. Woohoo! Should be good. I just hope it comes with the correct mounting adapter for my forks. [RockShox T2]

No Lunch Today

It was so busy today, I never got to go for lunch. Now that's busy! My feet are sore. I got some food from Wendy's on the way home. Now I need a stiff drink. Some asshole opened his truck door right in front of me today. I managed to swerve out his way and gave him a "you fucking idiot!" as I rode by. Friday always seems to bring out the low-IQ mouth-breathers, driving their Jeep Cherokees, chatting on the phone, looking one way & driving the other way, opening their fucking doors right in front of you. And earlier in the day, some dick decided to make an unsignaled left turn in the middle of the intersection from the far lane, nearly running over the bike commuter riding in front of me. Fridays are the worst.

And then there's the people who haven't paid their bill for a long time. [3 months] Now I'm a patient guy, but this is getting ridiculous. I was going to cut them off on Monday, but I know they do a cheque run in the middle of the month so I might just wait till then. This is really pissing me off, I'm a one-man operation so if people don't pay their bills, it can really throw out my financial planning. And its just plain ignorant. I try to be patient and cut people some slack, but obviously, some people take this as an invitation to be dicks. Well its not. And I've just about reached the end of my rope in this matter.

Anyway, its the weekend, time to relax. And work on my bike and shit. Oh yeah, and drink. A lot.

One Tower

Ready to Molt

Another Day in Hell

It snowed a lot last night. When I arrived downtown, I hit an ice patch and suddenly there was no bike under me. The pavement reached up and smacked me in the knee. Now I have an owie.

And my bike was running like the POS that it is. The drivetrain is totally shot. So when I put the least bit of torque to the pedals, the chain skips badly, when it doesn't fly right off the chainring. Fucker. I have the parts to replace the drivetrain, but I don't want to do it till the weekend. Yes, I am lazy. So I will probably use my road bike tomorrow. Too bad the brakes squeal like banshees.

And if all that wasn't bad enough, my Blackberry stopped working for the last few hours of the day. Luckily, it was slow at the end of the day so I didn't really miss anything.

It was really muddy today, too. I got totally coated in this corrosive mud/salt concoction. Its eating the skin off my ass. Ow.

Michael Jackson Interview

This Friday, 20/20 is airing a special two hour show on Michael Jackson.

Apparently he speaks of sharing his bed with children during sleep-overs, insisting its perfectly natural and wonderful and shit. And how, when his son [daughter?] was born, he grabbed the baby, placenta and all, and raced home with him/her. Yes, Mikey, we're laughing at you, not with you.

Joe Millionaire

Watching Joe Millionaire tonight, Joe said "Me and Sarah have really found a bond between us". Funny, I wonder if he chose those words on his own, or if he was coached by the producers who most likely know of her past and thought it would make a good 'in joke'.

Pokie Bite

Found an interesting account of being bit by a Poecilitheria species and its after effects. [via SpiderTalk Forum] Does not sound particularily pleasant. I had a Poecilitheria ornata once, but would never think of actually handling it.

Special Characters in MT

I made a button for my MT New Entry screen to insert special characters via a pop-up window. Let's see if it works, shall we?

¢ £ © ® « » ² ³ ° · < > ~ ∴ ¶ † ¹

Yep it works! Woohoo! I thought the angle brackets might not work as advertised, but it seems fine. Now I just need to add more chars.

Columbia Space Shuttle breaks up over Texas

I am just so depressed. CNN.com - Columbia shuttle breaks up over Texas - Feb. 1, 2003

Columbia Space Shuttle breaks up over Texas

« January 2003 |

Main
| March 2003 »

February 26, 2003

First they used zip ties to handcuff suspects, now a Judge duct tapes defendant's mouth. What next, trade in the electric chair for a whoopee cushion? Sheesh!

Posted by Fungii at 10:13 PM

I've started reading The Lord of the Rings again, starting with The Fellowship of the Ring of course. Actually, I just finished reading The Hobbit first, a very cool prequel to LOTR and a lot less dense. Its weird how a lot of the story still feels familiar to me even though I last read it like a thousand years ago. Anyways, I came across this cool poem during today's reading session. Tolkien sure had a way with words. I think he was Marilyn Manson's dad, in spirit at least.

Cold be hand and heart and bone,

and cold be sleep under stone:

never more to wake on stony bed,

never, till the Sun fails and the Moon is dead.

In the black wind the stars shall die,

and still on gold here let them lie,

till the dark lord lifts his hand

over dead sea and withered land.

Posted by Fungii at 09:34 PM

Posted by Fungii at 09:17 PM

It was so quiet this morning, I only did 2 deliveries the whole morning! And if that wasn't bad enough, just as I'm grabbing some lunch, my pager starts to go off. So I wolf down my lunch, go pick up this rush and its going to a place that's closed for lunch. Bah! It doesn't really matter to me, I'm just the courier, but it is kind of irritating. Then it snowed. I've had enough snow for this year, thank you very much. And I really couldn't give a damn if the farmers really need it. Ain't no farmers in the concrete jungle, baby.

Posted by Fungii at 09:11 PM

February 24, 2003

I transfered most of my spiders to new cages last week. Well not new cages but I did replace the substrate and added clay pots and water dishes. My Haplopelma lividum's enclosure was filled up more than halfway with potting soil to encourage burrowing. And sure enough, she's begun to dig a burrow, straight down so far, but she's almost hit the bottom so she might branch off soon. Its funny how she freezes as soon as I turn on the light to check her out. Very shy spider.

Posted by Fungii at 11:00 PM

My Aphonopelma seemanni was already pretty chubby before I fed her a pinky last night. Now she's definately on the heavy side. I like how she's crossing her spinnerets, like she has to take a leak or something.

And here she is before eating the pinky.

While she was consuming the pinky, I noticed its tail had fallen off near the spot where she had first caught him. Not wanting to disturb her meal, I figured I would retrieve it later. [to prevent it from rotting and spreading mold or disease] Looking in later, she was over the spot where the tail was, so I would have to try again later. Then she moved away, and guess what? The tail was gone! The greedy little bastard had gone back and consumed the tail!

Posted by Fungii at 10:48 PM

Posted by Fungii at 10:36 PM

Here is my juvenile [?] Brachypelma emilia.

And just for camparison, here's my adult emilia. Much duller colours, yes? [and a fatter belly!]

Posted by Fungii at 10:29 PM

February 23, 2003

Here's the X2 trailer. Looks good.

Posted by Fungii at 07:37 PM

February 21, 2003

It's -22°C right now, -32°C with the wind chill and the high for today is forecast at -19°C. Man, I hate my job on days like today.

[I don't know what's the matter with my weather script, it doesn't seem to be working. Here's the forecast for Calgary.]

Posted by Fungii at 07:21 AM

February 20, 2003

Yikes, now I have to post something, anything, to try to bump Tyson's ugly mug off my page. He does look like he could eat somebody's children, doesn't he?

Anyway, I just finished watching Akira Kurosawa's Ran. Awesome flick. I think it was based on Shakespeare's Norman Lear or something. The best part was when Kurogane lops off Lady Kaede's melon. Whoa, I haven't seen that much spray since Braindead [Dead Alive]! All kidding aside, it was a really good movie, check it out. [sorry about the spoiler!]

Posted by Fungii at 11:06 PM

Reality bites? Tyson may get own TV show.

Posted by Fungii at 10:26 PM

February 19, 2003

This bridge is so cool, they should get the people who designed this to design replacements for the WTC towers. It rotates to let boats get past.

via Daily Planet

Posted by Fungii at 09:31 PM

I got my disc brake today! Hurray! This thing's huge. I had no idea it was going to be so big. Oh well, the disc should last longer due to the larger surface area. I can't wait, no more rim wear! I usually ride my rims till the sidewall gets so thin that it blows out, usually quite explosively. Although my last rim got all warped and no matter how many times I tightened the spokes, it would go back out of true again. Anyways, my new rim should last much, much longer than usual with this new brake. I just hope my forks last. I can see a lot of corrosion on the bottom sleeves. My last set of forks were so corroded, the inner rod poked right through the outer sleeve. Not good. I wish they would put some kind of anti-corrosion coating on them to prevent this. But if they did that, they couldn't sell us new forks every two years! Yeah, what was I thinking.

Posted by Fungii at 07:56 PM

February 16, 2003

Here is my Cobalt blue sub-adult. The blue colour in its legs shows up much better in pictures than in viewing with the naked eye. Guess the flash helps a lot. She's stopped eating lately so I'm hoping she's about to molt. She killed the last cricket I threw in there, but she didn't eat it. I need to change the substrate in all these cages, but it's too cold out today to go to the store. The substrate they have now has tree bark in it, probably cedar. Tarantulas hate cedar.

You can see her little claws at the end of her legs in the pic below.

Posted by Fungii at 02:54 PM

Here's my Mexican redleg sub-adult. You can see its abdomen has turned black, signifying a molt is in the offing. Hopefully I'll be around to take pictures. [and not delete them. Doh!]

Posted by Fungii at 02:45 PM

Here's my Pampas tawnyred male. He's all legs and hair. I tried picking him up but he was all nervous and jittery so I let him be. He seems to eat all the crickets I throw at him, so I'm hoping he'll be around for awhile. [males don't live nearly as long as females and all the previous males I've had have stopped eating and slowly starved themselves to death]

Posted by Fungii at 01:59 PM

Posted by Fungii at 11:16 AM

This tarantula came out of its molt much darker than before. It will probably fade back to its old colour over time, but it does look damn good the way it is now. Its pretty well jet black with green highlights on its carapace and the first leg segments, although you can't really see the green on its legs in these pictures. The pictures I took during its molt showed the green on its legs quite clearly, but of course, those pictures are gone. [grumble, grumble] And there's the orange stripes on its knees. Here's a couple before and after pictures.

Posted by Fungii at 11:10 AM

Here's the old skin from my spider that just molted.

Posted by Fungii at 10:57 AM

February 15, 2003

After taking a shitload of pictures of my tarantula molting last night, I went to check them out this morning. I downloaded them to my computer and deleted them from the camera. Then I looked at them with this stupid, fucked-up software that came with my camera. [ZoomBrowserEX] This piece of shit software puts a bunch of fucking thumbnails on your computer every time you download pictures from your camera. Then, even after you've moved the files, it displays all these thumbnails every time you start the program. So I was deleting all these thumbnails so it wouldn't bog down every time I downloaded pictures from my camera, but not the pictures I just downloaded of course. There were some thumbnails in the main directory for pictures that I had moved a long time ago, so I chose to delete those. And what did the program do? It deleted the subdirectory with all my freshly downloaded pictures of my T molting! Motherfucker! So, to make a long story short, I spent the whole fucking day today trying to recover these files either from my hard drive or camera. No luck, they're gone for good. I am so pissed off. I spent all last night taking those pictures and all today on trying to recover them for nothing. Fuck! I wish comapnies wouldn't include such fucked-up, shitty programs with their hardware, they just fuck things up. I guess that's why we get them for free.

Posted by Fungii at 06:40 PM

February 14, 2003

It's 9:40pm, over 4 hours since I got home and saw her flipped over, and she just started moving her legs around. Hopefully she'll start to pull out soon.

Well, it's 11:00pm and she's pretty well finished her molt. I took like a ton of pictures, but I'm too tired to post them right now. I'll put them up in the morning. Goodnight.

Posted by Fungii at 09:54 PM

She's still on her back, no movement. I got home at about 5:30pm and its now almost 7:30pm, so she's been at it for at least 2 hours. She should start doing her stretching exercises pretty soon. Get on with it already, dammit!

Posted by Fungii at 07:38 PM

This is my Lasiodora subcanens¹ on its back, about to shed its skin [molt]. I hope it goes ok, its abdomen looks like it's twisted to one side a bit. Oh well, nothing I can do but watch and keep my fingers crossed.

I'll try to do updates live, with fresh pictures as she goes through her molt.

¹ I think it's a Lasiodora subcanens, this picture was the closest to the way it looks.

Posted by Fungii at 06:38 PM

February 12, 2003

Here's my Chilean Rose tarantula. Common and cheap, but not bad looking and easy to take care of. She was my first tarantula, I think I bought her about 7 years ago but it could be longer. She was already an adult when I bought her so she could be quite old. She won't eat pinkies but she'll eat crickets till her belly's huge. And then she'll stop eating, I think she fasted once for a couple years. Yes, she went for a couple years without any food, I guess if they have a full belly and water, they can last for a very long time between meals. Then she molted and now she's back to eating like a pig again.

Posted by Fungii at 07:55 PM

The late people paid their bill. Cool. I thought I might have bounced a cheque, but then I checked my account and the money is there. Yea. My credit card got charged for my new disc brake so I should be getting that soon. Woohoo. The weather was good [warm & sunny], it was busy at work but not crazy and I don't think anybody pissed me off. Holy shit, I think I actually had a good day. Weird. I have an uneasy feeling I'm going to pay for this unexpected good fortune...

Posted by Fungii at 06:43 PM

February 11, 2003

Hey, dude, you're getting a cell!

Posted by Fungii at 08:12 AM

February 10, 2003

Posted by Fungii at 09:28 PM

February 08, 2003

It snowed some more today. Shit. I guess I wont be riding my mountain bike with its new parts on Monday. I started putting it together today, but the rear derailler pulleys were in pretty rough shape so I ran to MEC to pick up some new ones, among other things. They only had pulleys for 7 speed chains and I'm putting together a 9 speed drivetrain. [9 speed chains are thinner than 7 speed chains] So I ride over to the bike shop one block over to get some there. The guy there doesn't even ask me what speed the drivetrain is and he comes out with the same pulleys as the ones at MEC. Not only that, but they want $6.00 each, whereas MEC was only asking $2.00 a pair. Yikes! So I went back to MEC and bought a pair from there. Hopefully they'll work ok until I can get some proper ones.



I also picked up a new u-lock for $15.00, my old one was driving me crazy. The key would get stuck halfway through unlocking and I would have to reef on it to get it to turn. Pain in the ass. Got a couple pairs of brake pads as well, although I might not need them both as I ordered a disk brake for the front. I should get it sometime this week. I hope. Its a Avid 203mm mech disk brake. Woohoo! Should be good. I just hope it comes with the correct mounting adapter for my forks. [RockShox T2]

203mm (biggest) rotor on the new 2003 Avid Disk Brake. Everything included - rotor, caliper, mounting hardware and instructions.

Posted by Fungii at 10:23 PM

February 07, 2003

It was so busy today, I never got to go for lunch. Now that's busy! My feet are sore. I got some food from Wendy's on the way home. Now I need a stiff drink. Some asshole opened his truck door right in front of me today. I managed to swerve out his way and gave him a "you fucking idiot!" as I rode by. Friday always seems to bring out the low-IQ mouth-breathers, driving their Jeep Cherokees, chatting on the phone, looking one way & driving the other way, opening their fucking doors right in front of you. And earlier in the day, some dick decided to make an unsignaled left turn in the middle of the intersection from the far lane, nearly running over the bike commuter riding in front of me. Fridays are the worst.

And then there's the people who haven't paid their bill for a long time. [3 months] Now I'm a patient guy, but this is getting ridiculous. I was going to cut them off on Monday, but I know they do a cheque run in the middle of the month so I might just wait till then. This is really pissing me off, I'm a one-man operation so if people don't pay their bills, it can really throw out my financial planning. And its just plain ignorant. I try to be patient and cut people some slack, but obviously, some people take this as an invitation to be dicks. Well its not. And I've just about reached the end of my rope in this matter.

Anyway, its the weekend, time to relax. And work on my bike and shit. Oh yeah, and drink. A lot.

Posted by Fungii at 06:06 PM

February 05, 2003

Posted by Fungii at 07:39 PM

This spider is ready to molt soon. You can tell by its black abdomen. [its usually a light beige colour] It stopped eating crickets a few days ago, so it should molt anyday now. Wonder if that bald patch will have hair on it this time?

Posted by Fungii at 07:22 PM

It snowed a lot last night. When I arrived downtown, I hit an ice patch and suddenly there was no bike under me. The pavement reached up and smacked me in the knee. Now I have an owie.

And my bike was running like the POS that it is. The drivetrain is totally shot. So when I put the least bit of torque to the pedals, the chain skips badly, when it doesn't fly right off the chainring. Fucker. I have the parts to replace the drivetrain, but I don't want to do it till the weekend. Yes, I am lazy. So I will probably use my road bike tomorrow. Too bad the brakes squeal like banshees.

And if all that wasn't bad enough, my Blackberry stopped working for the last few hours of the day. Luckily, it was slow at the end of the day so I didn't really miss anything.

It was really muddy today, too. I got totally coated in this corrosive mud/salt concoction. Its eating the skin off my ass. Ow.

Posted by Fungii at 06:48 PM

February 04, 2003

This Friday, 20/20 is airing a special two hour show on Michael Jackson.

A special two-hour documentary on the extraordinary, and sometimes bizarre, life of reclusive pop icon Michael Jackson.

Apparently he speaks of sharing his bed with children during sleep-overs, insisting its perfectly natural and wonderful and shit. And how, when his son [daughter?] was born, he grabbed the baby, placenta and all, and raced home with him/her. Yes, Mikey, we're laughing at you, not with you.

Posted by Fungii at 08:07 AM

February 03, 2003

Watching Joe Millionaire tonight, Joe said "Me and Sarah have really found a bond between us". Funny, I wonder if he chose those words on his own, or if he was coached by the producers who most likely know of her past and thought it would make a good 'in joke'.

Posted by Fungii at 08:13 PM

February 02, 2003

Found an interesting account of being bit by a Poecilitheria species and its after effects. [via SpiderTalk Forum] Does not sound particularily pleasant. I had a Poecilitheria ornata once, but would never think of actually handling it.

Posted by Fungii at 05:53 PM

I made a button for my MT New Entry screen to insert special characters via a pop-up window. Let's see if it works, shall we?

¢ £ © ® « » ² ³ ° · < > ~ ∴ ¶ † ¹

Yep it works! Woohoo! I thought the angle brackets might not work as advertised, but it seems fine. Now I just need to add more chars.

Posted by Fungii at 12:18 PM

February 01, 2003

I am just so depressed. CNN.com - Columbia shuttle breaks up over Texas - Feb. 1, 2003

Posted by Fungii at 10:14 AM

Perl/Forms Problem

I was trying to write a perl program that creates a pop-up window [web browser, this is a cgi thing] with a form in it and then processes the form data. What stuck in my brain is: how do I get the form data to go back to the original perl script that called it? I knew this could be done, I've seen it in action before. And I know its a common question for perl newbies like me. Then I came upon this:

It seems like the harder the problem, the simpler the solution. Doh! I'll try this later and see if it works as advertised.

MT Hacking

I hacked the edit_entry.tmpl in Movable Type to add a few more buttons. I added an image button for adding images to an entry, a quote button for quote boxes, a div button for creating divs, a center button and a small button. I guess I could add a break button and a paragraph button, but that might be overdoing it. [ha] I also figured out to use perl for ftp services. Probably use that to automatically upload image files to my isp's server when I add an image to an entry. That way their server can handle the load from image files, making it a little easier on my machine. Probably faster, too.

Frozen Wasteland

Snow

It was nice yesterday, but it looks like it snowed overnight. Boo. I hate working in the snow. I can handle the cold ok, but the snow really gets on my nerves. Will it never end?

Superbowl Trailers

The Incredible Hulk [June 20] trailer looked way cool. Can't wait for this one.

The Daredevil [Feb. 14] trailer looked good as well, too bad Ben Afleck is in it. Based on the Marvel comic of course.

Then there's the Matrix movies Reloaded [May 15] & Revolutions [Nov. 7] [great], Terminator 3 [July 2][?] and Bad Boys II [July 18] [yuck!].

Well, the football game sure is sucking. [34-3 Bucs]

More trailers:

• The Recruit [Jan. 31] with Al Pacino, looks OK, wait for the DVD for me.
  
  
• Charlie's Angels 2 Full Throttle [Summer] the first one sucked, this one looks even worse.
  
  
• Bruce Almighty [May 23] with Jim Carrey, does not look terribly good. Website sucks.
  
  
• Anger Management [April 11] with Adam Sandler and Jack Nicholson. Shrug, could be good I guess.
  
  
  

These People Must Die

I like to start my day with a newspaper and a Coke at the food court in Bow Valley Square. Its usually pretty deserted and I get a little quiet time before the day begins.

So today there's this lady sitting there and she's like "snort". Snooooort. Geez lady, if you have a head full of snot, go blow your goddamn nose already, I'll get you the Kleenex myself if it'll shut you the hell up. Snooort. And she's drinking a cofee or something through a straw, but she can't seem to get her lips fully around it, or she has a hairlip or something. Slurp. Snorrrt. Slurrrp. I was on the verge of getting up and leaving [or decking her] but she mercifully got up and left.

Thank fucking god. Now I can read my paper.

Then a guy sits down by me with a breakfast, McMuffin or something. Smack, smack, smack. WTF? The guy is eating his food with his yap fucking wide open so I can plainly see and hear him masticating his food. Smack, smack, smack. Didn't your crack whore excuse of a mother teach you any godamn manners you filthy bovine?

I had enough, I left.

Later in the day, I had a big lunch. It was a bit much, chicken primavera with stir-fry pasta. Very good, but I was so full I just felt like crawling into a corner and taking a nap. Anyway, I had to talk to somebody about something, and as soon as she opened her mouth, I just about vomitted my whole lunch right back up again. Holy halitosis batman, get that woman a tictac or something. Mouthwash, lysol, anything. It wasn't cigarettes and coffee, which is the usual combo that causes really bad breath, but something else. Food? I don't know, not sure if anybody would eat something that rank. Maybe she forgot to brush her teeth [for a few weeks] or maybe it was some strange, exotic form of BO. Don't know, but I kept my distance for the rest of our conversation, lest I share my stomach contents with her pumps.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention Screaming Man! He wasn't in the food court this morning, but he can usually be found there during the week. This dude can't speak at a normal conversational volume, he always feels the need to SHOUT everything he says. Totally fucking irritating. He must surely die. That would be one scream I would actually enjoy.

Four Down & One To Go

Forecast Hi: +3°

Actual Hi: -19°

Damn weatherman! Slow day at work, and my pager started taking half an hour at a time to forward my messages. Really irritating. Can't wait till this week is over.

Craig Kelly

Holy shit, Craig Kelly was one of the people who died in that avalanche in BC! For people who don't snowboard, Kelly was one of the first "stars" of the snowboarding world. My snowboard is a Burton Kelly Air, named after him. That sucks.

Life in Hell

Work all day in cold weather. Come home, eat, head gets wobbly, fall asleep. Wake up, get ready, go to work.

Repeat.

Die.

Treed Murray

Missed the first few minutes of this movie, but it kinda sucked me in after awhile. Not bad. What I liked most was the way it showed the good and bad in each character, there were no real heroes or villains. Although it ended rather predictably, there were a couple twists in the plot to keep you interested.

Well I'm not coming down, its that simple.

Bad Day in Courierland

It was cold. It snowed. My back tire had a slow leak and I had to keep pumping it up. My Blackberry couldn't handle the cold and silently shut itself off at the busiest time of the day, causing me to miss two bank deposits and various pick-ups. Just as I was paying for a slice of pizza and a Coke, my pager went off for a rush. I wolfed down my food and ran to get the rush, but it was cancelled [out of my area]. On and on and on.

I hate this world.

Hurt

I don't know how long Bill will have this Quicktime file of Johnny Cash covering the Nine Inch Nails song Hurt [its 42 MB!], but wow! What an awesome video, I haven't seen a music video that cool in a long time, I had to watch it twice. Very eerie. Found it via Michele, thanks for the link!

Trackback

Just doing a trackback thing for Team Murder. I still don't fully understand how trackback works either. Good luck!

<Sunday>

I'm writing a perl script that:

1. updates the form in an html file
   
2. updates the perl script that processes the form
   
3. updates the html file that ultimately gets displayed [my links page]
   

Dirty Bike

Sinner

Hey Chris, nice pants!

Andre the crazy man

It Snowed

Trying to get extended entries to dynamically extend [and retract]. First bit of code kept crashing my browser. This latest code seems stable, lets see if it actually works!

This entry is extended. Isn't it?

Haha! It works! Cool, here's where I got it from if you're interested. I tried this bit of code but it did not work, and made my page crash my browser. Not good. YMMV.

Holy Colorama Batman!

Yeah, I know, there's too many different colours and shit on my page. I'm sick of messing with it today, I'll try to make it a little more discrete at a later time. Until them, ingest large quantities of illegal substances and enjoy the purty colours, eh.

Messing With CSS

Experimenting with the design a bit. If my site looks really fucked up, well, it is! I'll figure this out eventually.

And you thought that was lame...

OK, that was lame. Go look at some belly buttons then.

Top Ten Reasons to invade Iraq

10 The food! You know, all the sand which is there! Hahhahaha!

9 OK, it is about the oil. You got a problem with that?

8 "Canada or Iraq?" "Canada? You crazy, its cold up there!" "Ok, Iraq it is!"

7 If we let Iraq have a nuke, then everybody will want one!

6 Oil? What oil? We're after Saddam's DVD collection!

5 Jeff Tice forgot his keys there and he wants them back, dammit!

4 Removing all Saddam murals solves unemployment crisis.

3 Lame "Axis of Evil" becomes ultra-cool "Devilish Dynamic Duo of Destruction".

2 Sean Penn is still there, right?

1 Anti-war babes get naked!

Top Ten Reasons to invade Iraq

I've started reading The Lord of the Rings again, starting with The Fellowship of the Ring of course. Actually, I just finished reading The Hobbit first, a very cool prequel to LOTR and a lot less dense. Its weird how a lot of the story still feels familiar to me even though I last read it like a thousand years ago. Anyways, I came across this cool poem during today's reading session. Tolkien sure had a way with words. I think he was Marilyn Manson's dad, in spirit at least.

no work for me

I've done 5 deliveries this morning! Yikes, I really have to get more accounts, this is not good. How can I support my lavish lifestyle on this pittance? *snicker*

Cold & Snowy

Its -17° and there's a bunch of that white crap on the ground. How depressing. I suddenly feel sick and am not sure if I can make it to work. Yeah right, I haven't missed a day of work for two years now. Well, except for that one day where I took the day off to... work doing something else! My bike only has front brakes right now, not good in this kind of weather. My fault, too lazy to get the mounting pegs for the back. Ok, lets get this over with.

Another One Bites the dust

Has every premier in British Columbia's history ended their term in scandal and disgrace? The latest is Gordon Campbell who has been charged with drinking and driving. I will try to trace how far back this tradition goes. Man, I used to live in BC and I know there is a lot of crime and corruption there, and it seems to extend to the highest levels of government. Well, at least stupidity does. Wonder if this will be enough to bring him down. I think the last premier went down because he made some kind of deal with a construction company to build an addition to his house?

In his statement, Campbell admits to a serious mistake, saying he will not fight the driving under the influence charge.

Ok, according to the article linked above, Campbell would be the fifth BC premier in a row to have to deal with a scandal.

• Former New Democratic Party premier Glen Clark was recently acquitted of criminal charges connected with the granting of a casino licence.
  
  
• Mike Harcourt, who resigned in 1995, was cleared of having a conflict of interest in connection with the granting of advertising contracts.
  
  
• Bill Vander Zalm was acquitted of criminal charges of breach of trust, but was found guilty of violating his own conflict guidelines in the sale of his Fantasy Gardens theme park in Richmond.
  
  
• Bill Bennett was acquitted of a criminal charge of violating securities regulations.
  
  

Then again, he doesn't look as bad as Nick Nolte did when he was arrested for the same thing.

Saddam: The Early Years

Found this interesting article on somebody who knew Saddam Hussein when he was young and lived to tell the story: NATIONAL POST.

There are few who remember the young Saddam Hussein, in part, according to Mr. Zobedi, because most have been killed, often under mysterious circumstances.

Headache

I was invited to a party tonight, the wrap party for the movie "A Problem with Fear" but I have a huge headache and I ain't going nowhere. Bummer. I think it has something to do with the weather, it got really warm today, +9°, and now its -7° heading for -18° and snow. I guess the weatherdude isn't such an idiot, my bad. I've taken 3 tylenols so far, I hope that's enough to deal with this thing. [ha! what a wimp I am!]

The Weatherman is an idiot

All week the weatherman [or weatherwoman] has been calling for really low temperatures [like -19] and the possibility of snow somewhere down the line. Well it did get down to -16° Celsius yesterday, but then I wake up today and the temperature is + 8° Celsius. Woohoo! Wicked. Funny thing is, they are still calling for a low of -19° tonight. Not likely. I love it when the weatherpeople are wrong, at least in this way.

War is Hell

Just finished watching Blackhawk Down. What an amazing movie. Don't know how real it was on a technical level, but it sure gives you that you are there adrenaline rush. Makes you think if this war in Iraq goes ahead and they have to go into Baghdad, well it might be a lot like this. Shitty. I would hope they would be a bit more prepared for resistance than they were in this movie. And I wouldn't even try to distinguish friendlies from foes, fuck I would mow down whatever moved in front of me till I ran out of ammo. And I would pack a lot of rpgs, and mortars, and bazookas and shit. But hey, that's just me, maybe I played too much Quake III.

Oh yeah, I just had to add, the soundtrack to this movie rocked! [literally] It was mostly hard rock stuff that 1) I really like and 2) fit the theme of the movie. Like Faith No More's "Falling to Pieces", very appropriate.

About Me

I added the about link to the sidebar for anyone who wants to know who I am, although its not finished, I'll add more when I make parole. The Me link is a really lame picture of me, as it would be since I am in it. By definition. Shit, I need to go to sleep. Goodnight.

Game Boy Advance SP

Nintendo is putting out a new Game Boy, Game Boy Advance SP. I have an old Game Boy with the monochrome screen, which has developed irritating lines across the screen rendering it unplayable. This little baby looks pretty cool, I'll be tempted to pick one up. Too bad the games cost almost as much as games for their full-sized systems.

Picture Yourself

When I saw this site ->Picture Yourself I thought it would have a lot of boring, useless pictures of people, but it actually has a lot of cool, inventive ones. Pretty addictive. This one made me laugh. I think somebody pissed Jeff off.

Blogroll Thing

Added the blogroll thing to the sidebar. Yeah, there's only one link there so far, I'll add more once I figure it all out. The way to add links is a little funky, there must be a way to do the bookmarklet thing with it somehow...

[update] Got the bookmarklet thing to work and added the blogroll me! link. Boy, I'm good!

Comments

Added the last 5 comments thing on the sidebar. Doesn't look quite right, need to tweak it in some way...

Geo-url

Added the GeoURL link to my sidebar. It shows links that are geographically nearby. [Calgary] Of course, only links that registered with the GeoURL website actually show up. Could be a cool tool if enough people participate. I was actually trying to check out web pages in Mission City, BC [my old hometown, shithole] the other night using google, but all I found were links to religious institutions and tips for Grand Theft Auto III. Methinks this will be more useful.

Spies That Fly

Just watched the NOVA episode Spies That Fly. Pretty cool, guess we'll see all these babies in action soon enough.

Checked out GlobalSecurity.org since they seem to have provided a lot of the data for the NOVA episode. A lot of interesting shit, I wonder if they get harassed by the military for providing so much "sensitive" information? This picture of North and South Korea is pretty revealing, must suck to be north of that border.

Aphonopelma Seemanni

Here's some pics of my Costa Rican Zebra. She was eating a few crickets when I took these pictures, that's why she's on her tippy-toes. They tend to do that when they eat. Weirdos.

More Sunset Pictures

You guys must think I'm obsessed with sunsets or something, but I took some more pictures of the sunset today. Couldn't resist, it looked really cool, all pinky and shit. We're having a wicked chinook right now, +15 degrees Celsius. Normal temperatures would be around the -30 degree range, so this is rather unusual. The first picture shows the chinook arch quite well.

This link will take you to a panorama shot of a chinook. Cool.

Cool Flash Movie

A promo for the Edinburgh Film Festival.

Scream is gone!

So I went to watch Scream today, and it was gone! I don't mean they made it a pay channel now [it was on free preview since October] but they removed it completely. I punch in the numbers [1-2-7] but nothing happens, its gone. I am so bummed. Apparently, it has something to do with CRTC regulations regarding digital channels. Whatever, Shaw should just do what it needs to do to get this channel in their lineup, it is by far the best channel they [don't] offer. Man, they play some really cool old movies [you know, the old B&W ones like the Mummy and the Raven and shit], newer horror movies [Halloween et al], some foreign stuff [Italian giallo, some weird Brazilian and Spanish shit] and a few thrillers [52 Pick-up, Taking of Pelham 1-2-3]. Although they focus on movies [as they should], they also show some TV series like Millenium [which ain't half bad] and they were going to start running an old Karloff series called Thriller, which I've never seen but it looked pretty cool.

This channel is everything Space should have been, but wasn't. I was so excited about Space when it first came out, but 90% of the stuff they show is crap, mostly TV series, when what I was really interested in were the movies. Then they got ahold of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and things went downhill fast. Buffy, Buffy, Buffy that's all they ever showed! I'm sure its a fine show, but too much is too much, and I pretty well gave up on that channel.

Anyway, I hope Shaw finds a way to get Scream back, it so totally rules its not even funny. [yes, I have no life, got a problem with that?]

European Copyrights Expiring

In this NY Times article, we find out european copyrights are expiring on recordings from the 1950's. Cool. The RIAA's reaction? ``The import of those products would be an act of piracy,'' said Neil Turkewitz, the executive vice president international of the Recording Industry Association of America, which has strongly advocated for copyright protections. ``The industry is regretful that these absolutely piratical products are being released.'' And they wonder why everybody hates them. Wasn't the whole idea of copyright supposed to be a temporary protection of the originator's work so they could make money before it falls into public domain where everybody benefits from their work? Now its seems to benefit large corporations who can rip off artists and buy politicians to change laws so they can make money in perpetuity for doing sweet fuck all. The bastards. Defenders of extended copyright terms, like Mr. Turkewitz, argue that, if anything, American laws are still too lax and that the European laws are woefully inadequate. They don't want copyrights to ever expire do they? Long after the original author of the work is dead, they want to keep raking in the dough for doing what, exactly? Nothing. And they have the nerve to claim this promotes creativity. ``The public sees icons like Mickey Mouse and thinks that the companies must by now have made their money,'' he said. But, he added, 9 out of 10 sound recordings lose money. ``Very few materials wind up generating the revenues that sustain an entire system,'' he said. ``The amount of money put back into production by the record companies is enormous. It's extremely risk-intensive.'' Yeah, well if 9 out of 10 recordings get pirated, then that should save you from losing money on them, eh? [its a joke]

Hapee New Year!

Slept in till noon, did next to nothing 'cept my billing for December, took forever. Boy, I started this year off with a bang! Ah well, shit happens. Gonna try to play some more Warcraft III, I'm halfway thru the Elf episode, which I think is the last one. Its weird having a day off in the middle of the week. I'm not sure how enthused I will be about going to work after only one measly day off. Its gonna be busy tomorrow, I am getting stressed just thinking about it. [Egads man! Pull yourself together!]

Coke is for Jews, Pepsi is for Arabs

Holy shit, I think I'm Jewish!

Funny Ads

Jill send me a bunch of these ads. Maybe I'm just easily amused but I thought they were really funny.

Glad I didn't race to work today...

Its 9:30 am and nobody's called me yet! So I'm still at home waiting for my first call, trying not to get too comfortable in case I do get that first call soon. Not looking forward to it, there is about 5 cm of snow on the ground and its about -13° Celsius out. Brrr!

K, fuck 'em all, I'm gonna fire up Warcraft III. Don't send a search party...

Garbage Pull

Its legal in some states for people to examine your trash, so some reporters in Portland decided to go through the mayor's [amongst others] garbage to see what they could find. Hilarious. Reminds me of some crook I used to know who would do dumpster dives behind stores to get credit card carbons and then order stuff to greyhound stations using the pilfered credit card numbers. And people worry about the internet...

Mini-cows

This guy breeds mini-cows. Mmmm, now I just need to get an apartment that allows pets and I'll never have to buy milk again!

Another mini-cow story.

My Second Emilia

Damn Snow

I was going to head out and get some crickets, when this happened.

Guess the kids will have to starve, no way I'm going out in that!

The Toys of War

U.S. ready to unleash weapons -- The Washington Times They should start a war channel, with live video feeds from various weapons as they hone in on their targets. I can just see Saddam sitting there in his bunker watching TV. "Hey that looks like my house..." KABOOM!

Boxing Day

Went to get crickets for my spiders, but the pet store was closed. Damn thing is way down by Heritage as well. Then I went to Future Shop to get a couple of DVDs that were supposedly on sale. They only had 50 each of the ones on sale and they were long gone by the time I got there. Just couldn't bring myself to buy them at a more reasonable, normal sale price so I got none. But I did get 100 blank CDRs for $40, which was a good deal. If the new tax comes in Jan. 1, the levy on 100 CDRs will be 59 cents each, so the tax alone will be $59.00! So the blanks I bought today for $40 will be over $100 in 2003! Ridiculous.

Anyway, I came home, did dishes, washed floors, did laundry and I will get to the washroom eventually I suppose. Boy, I have so much fun! Eww, they just had a cat that was de-clawed on TV. There's something just not right about that. What's the point of being a cat if you can't claw somebody's eyes out? Well I'm off to waste some forest dwellers in WCIII. [I'm almost done!]

Merry Christmas

I spent the day making pizza [and eating it. burp!], playing Warcraft III [yawn], and I watched Millenium [a repeat, unfortunately, and I hardly ever even watch the show!]. All in all, a pretty relaxing, layed-back holiday. And its warm, sunny and dry, glad I don't live in the east. Some chick was on CNN saying they had just received 7 inches of snow in the last hour. Maybe she was exagerrating, but still, it looks pretty darn ugly for those folks. Oh well, I'm sure we'll get our turn eventually, although the forecast calls for +8 degrees Celsius for tomorrow. Woohoo! Wicked, I can ride my bike out for some boxing day shopping.

Merry Christmas everybody!

Now I'm pissed off

Yesterday I had to meet somebody in front of McDonald's to drop off an envelope. So I drop off the envelope no problem, go to my next stop and go to lock up my bike, and there was ketchup all over my back rim, frame, crank-arms and my shoes and pants! Argh! I guess I ran over a ketchup packet when I pulled into the Ronnie's parking lot. Now I need to hose down my bike dammit! Or I could just lick it off, I guess...

ITs Over!

It's Friday! Yeah! What a long week, very busy. Spent half my time at the courthouse [thanks Michelle!] and by the time I got out, I would have a bunch of deliveries getting old. Very hectic and stressful, but hey, I made it and its the weekend. Time to relax, but not too much, I think I slept through most of last weekend, don't want to do that again! Plan on playing some games, I haven't done that in weeks! Let see, what do I have...

Bush: wake up, time to die

"It's so important for Americans to know that the traffic in drugs finances the work of terror, sustaining terrorists, that terrorists use drug profits to fund their cells to commit acts of murder. If you quit drugs, you join the fight against terror in America."

President George W. Bush

Watching the Survivor finale tonight, I was repeatedly assaulted with the most fucking assinine commercials by some group called the antidrug. I wanted to tell these assholes how goddamn irritating their ads were that I was tempted to start a heavy morphine habit, but for some reason, there is no way to leave feedback for these dimwits. Their website is all one way. We tell you, you listen. Well fuck you too. Their insistance that there is a link between terrorism and drugs is ridiculous. We also know there are many groups that rely on money from charities, should we also stop giving money to charities? And of course, terrorists get money from oil, yet you don't hear Bush asking us to stop buying oil to put a stop to terrorism, do you? Fucking moron.

Peace Love & Greed

I can't say I like Yoko Ono very much, but I will have to say I agree with her on this issue. Paul McCartney wants to change the writing credits on a bunch of Beatles songs from Lenon-McCartney to Paul McCartney and John Lennon. What a dick! Like we care that you wrote a wee bit more than John on a handful of songs. In case you haven't noticed, John is dead and is in no position to defend himself. This is, in Yoko's words, ridiculous, absurd and petty, and I would have to agree with the skank. Just let it be, Paul, let it be.

New WTC Plans

CNN has revealed seven new plans to replace the World Trade Center towers. None of them are that good, IMNSHO, but at least they aren't as hideous as the first batch. And four of them would be the tallest buildings in the world. At least they seem to get the idea that the replacements for the originals should be something remarkable, groundbreaking, unlike the pedestrian offerings from the first proposals. I think the real memorial to the victims of this tragedy will be the replacement buildings themselves, not some park or museum they dump on the site.

The Two Towers

The reviews are in, and it looks like the new Lord of the Rings installment is a winner. Rotten Tomatoes is giving it a 99%, 94 positive reviews and 1 bad one. I don't want to read the reviews just in case they have spoilers, which is kind of ironic as I have read the books but that was like a million years ago and I've forgotten most of the details. I figure maybe Christmas Eve would be a good time to go, the crowds should have died down and I can catch a matinee because I'll only be working a half-day that day, I hope.

Eat me!

I can't believe this story I read over at Metafilter about a German cannibal who advertised on 80 different websites looking for somebody to partake in his perversion. He actually found somebody stupid enough to take him up on his offer, they cut off the man's penis, cooked it up and ate it. He then tortured him to death, cut him up and threw him in the freezer. This was all recorded on videotape for posterity. Most of the idiot was eaten over the following months, the bones being buried around the yard. You just can't make this shit up!

Mmmmm, cut off my own penis, cook it up and eat it, or hit Rotten Ronnies for a burger... Life is full of difficult choices, ain't it?

More on this story. Police say the suspect is not mentally disturbed. I beg to differ!

New Old Account

My old account, BLG, contacted me today and said they might still use me for couriers, as their regular courier, Andre, is a little swamped right now. This would be so cool, I haven't been able to do much canvassing for new accounts lately and I really need a big account to keep me busy. Woohoo! [keeping my fingers crossed]

Lasiodora subcanens

I think that's what this is, it looks like this one on Rick West's site.

Mexican Redleg

Took some photos of my Mexican Redleg. [Brachypelma emilia] Most turned out blurry, I guess I'll have to try to use a manual focus next time as the auto-focus doesn't seem to work very well in macro mode for some reason. Oh well, click on the picture if you want to see more pics in a pop-up window.

Calgary Sunrise

Live From Baghdad

This HBO movie was pretty good, telling the story of those CNN reporters who got caught in Baghdad when coalition forces began to bomb the city at the begining of the Gulf War and in the process scooped all the other networks by reporting the story live. Michael Keaton was good, but boy he spent the whole movie lighting cigarettes, fucking aqualung. Helena Bonham Carter was in it as well, looking really hot and smoking a lot of cigarettes. [but not as many as iron-lung Mike] The relationship between Robert Wiener [Keaton] and Naji Al-Hadithi, the Iraqi information officer, was particularily interesting. Naji Al-Hadithi was/is part of the evil Iraqi government, yet still has a human relationship with this American news producer. Hard to reconcile the two.

I can remember when the bombing started, I was delivering a package to some office at the end of the day and there was no receptionist so I went to the back and there was some suit there watching TV. He just glanced over at me and said 'They've started bombing Baghdad' and went back to watching the show. My jaw dropped and I just stood there watching the green night-vision pictures of the bombing. After awhile he offered me a seat and I sat there for a some time, trying to figure out what it all meant. Then I thanked him and left, he was still sitting there in shock watching the TV. It was weird back then, I think it was the first major military action involving the west for a long time and we really didn't know if it would remain contained or spread like wildfire into a world war. Luckily, it turned out to be a short and relatively painless war, at least from a western perspective. Too bad our current war on terrorism couldn't be resolved as quickly. *sigh*

Calgary Sunset

Tarantula

I cleaned my tarantula cages on the weekend, switching from astro-turf to potting soil for substrate. I had them on astro-turf for the longest time but I don't think they liked it very much and soil just looks better. But the soil was moist and it steamed up their tanks, so I took the lids off a few to let the excess moisture evaporate. Well, the spider pictured below saw this as an opportunity to escape, bastard. Luckily she didn't go very far, just sat there on the carpet beside her cage. With a little gentle prodding [well not so gentle, the bitch clamped onto the carpet pretty good!] I got her into a scooper and back into her cage. Lids on tight, all the kids in bed. Goodnight!

My So-called Life

It was really slow today at work, I really need to get some new accounts! Tomorrow I go to the dentist first thing in the morning. Not sure what kind of sick torture they have in mind for me now, but I have to quit going there, they are killing me financially. Watching hockey, Flames are winning 2 - 1 against Vancouver third period. Haven't watched a hockey game in ages, don't know who anybody is, except Jarome Iginla, and he ain't playing tonight. Go figure.

Vanilla Sky

Just finished watching Vanilla Sky. Ugh, what a lousy movie! The original Spanish version [Abre Los Ojos] was so much better. Bad casting, Cruise was just so wrong for the part, much too old and he smirked and laughed his way through the film, very irritating. And the way music was used in this film was really distracting, as if there wasn't enough going on in this movie, having top 40 songs blare onto the screen, as it were, at the most inappropriate times, just horrible. If you haven't seen this movie, don't bother, track down the vastly superior original.

First Pictures

Canada's Supreme Court rejects Patent for the Harvard Mouse

The supreme court rejected the patent for the Harvard mouse.

I'm all for genetically modifying life forms, I think a lot of cool things could be done with this technology. But actually patenting the life form itself rather than the process that created it, well I think that's fraught with problems and not a good idea. They should just try and maximize their profits while its fresh and new, and then move on to the next project. Instead they try to patent everything under the sun and then sue anybody who even remotely infringes upon one of their millions of patents, its ridiculous. And then there's the games drug companies are playing to shut out generic drugs and the patented canola that pollinated some poor farmer's field so he had to pay some big agricultural firm for use of their patent. This whole patent thing has got out of control, dammit!

UPS Sues Canada Post

This article in the National Post describes how UPS is sueing Canada Post for unfair competition because they use their postal monopoly to subsidize their courier services. Not sure how this would affect me if they [UPS] won, but I do know there is some regulation that forbids couriers from charging less than 4X the postage rate, which works out to somewhere around $2.00. I can just imagine how the hyper-competetive courier business would react if this regulation wasn't in effect, we would probably see prices drop and hence make less money. Maybe I'm just a pessimist. As long as we don't have to wear those dreary brown uniforms UPS couriers wear. Yuck!

Mega busy lately!

« November 2002 |

Main
| January 2003 »

December 31, 2002

Holy shit, I think I'm Jewish!

Posted by Fungii at 07:52 PM

December 30, 2002

Jill send me a bunch of these ads. Maybe I'm just easily amused but I thought they were really funny.

Posted by Fungii at 06:18 PM

Its 9:30 am and nobody's called me yet! So I'm still at home waiting for my first call, trying not to get too comfortable in case I do get that first call soon. Not looking forward to it, there is about 5 cm of snow on the ground and its about -13° Celsius out. Brrr!

K, fuck 'em all, I'm gonna fire up Warcraft III. Don't send a search party...

Posted by Fungii at 09:37 AM

December 29, 2002

Its legal in some states for people to examine your trash, so some reporters in Portland decided to go through the mayor's [amongst others] garbage to see what they could find. Hilarious. Reminds me of some crook I used to know who would do dumpster dives behind stores to get credit card carbons and then order stuff to greyhound stations using the pilfered credit card numbers. And people worry about the internet...

Each, in his or her own way, has endorsed the notion that you abandon your privacy when you set your trash out on the curb. So we figured they wouldn't mind too much if we took a peek at theirs. Boy, were we wrong.

Posted by Fungii at 10:08 PM

This guy breeds mini-cows. Mmmm, now I just need to get an apartment that allows pets and I'll never have to buy milk again!

Another mini-cow story.

And if the relationship doesn't work out, there's always a very practical out: Miniature cows make nice, juicy 8 oz. steaks.

Posted by Fungii at 01:28 AM

December 27, 2002

Here's my Mexican Redleg sub-adult. I got her a couple weeks ago and I tried to feed her but she refused to eat. Maybe in 2003 if I ever make it to the pet shop again!

Posted by Fungii at 03:55 PM

I was going to head out and get some crickets, when this happened.

Guess the kids will have to starve, no way I'm going out in that!

Posted by Fungii at 03:42 PM

U.S. ready to unleash weapons -- The Washington Times They should start a war channel, with live video feeds from various weapons as they hone in on their targets. I can just see Saddam sitting there in his bunker watching TV. "Hey that looks like my house..." KABOOM!

Posted by Fungii at 02:57 PM

December 26, 2002

Went to get crickets for my spiders, but the pet store was closed. Damn thing is way down by Heritage as well. Then I went to Future Shop to get a couple of DVDs that were supposedly on sale. They only had 50 each of the ones on sale and they were long gone by the time I got there. Just couldn't bring myself to buy them at a more reasonable, normal sale price so I got none. But I did get 100 blank CDRs for $40, which was a good deal. If the new tax comes in Jan. 1, the levy on 100 CDRs will be 59 cents each, so the tax alone will be $59.00! So the blanks I bought today for $40 will be over $100 in 2003! Ridiculous.

Anyway, I came home, did dishes, washed floors, did laundry and I will get to the washroom eventually I suppose. Boy, I have so much fun! Eww, they just had a cat that was de-clawed on TV. There's something just not right about that. What's the point of being a cat if you can't claw somebody's eyes out? Well I'm off to waste some forest dwellers in WCIII. [I'm almost done!]

Posted by Fungii at 07:14 PM

December 25, 2002

I spent the day making pizza [and eating it. burp!], playing Warcraft III [yawn], and I watched Millenium [a repeat, unfortunately, and I hardly ever even watch the show!]. All in all, a pretty relaxing, layed-back holiday. And its warm, sunny and dry, glad I don't live in the east. Some chick was on CNN saying they had just received 7 inches of snow in the last hour. Maybe she was exagerrating, but still, it looks pretty darn ugly for those folks. Oh well, I'm sure we'll get our turn eventually, although the forecast calls for +8 degrees Celsius for tomorrow. Woohoo! Wicked, I can ride my bike out for some boxing day shopping.

Merry Christmas everybody!

Posted by Fungii at 04:21 PM

December 21, 2002

Yesterday I had to meet somebody in front of McDonald's to drop off an envelope. So I drop off the envelope no problem, go to my next stop and go to lock up my bike, and there was ketchup all over my back rim, frame, crank-arms and my shoes and pants! Argh! I guess I ran over a ketchup packet when I pulled into the Ronnie's parking lot. Now I need to hose down my bike dammit! Or I could just lick it off, I guess...

Posted by Fungii at 02:32 PM

December 20, 2002

It's Friday! Yeah! What a long week, very busy. Spent half my time at the courthouse [thanks Michelle!] and by the time I got out, I would have a bunch of deliveries getting old. Very hectic and stressful, but hey, I made it and its the weekend. Time to relax, but not too much, I think I slept through most of last weekend, don't want to do that again! Plan on playing some games, I haven't done that in weeks! Let see, what do I have...

Posted by Fungii at 05:59 PM

"It's so important for Americans to know that the traffic in drugs finances the work of terror, sustaining terrorists, that terrorists use drug profits to fund their cells to commit acts of murder. If you quit drugs, you join the fight against terror in America."

President George W. Bush

Watching the Survivor finale tonight, I was repeatedly assaulted with the most fucking assinine commercials by some group called the antidrug. I wanted to tell these assholes how goddamn irritating their ads were that I was tempted to start a heavy morphine habit, but for some reason, there is no way to leave feedback for these dimwits. Their website is all one way. We tell you, you listen. Well fuck you too. Their insistance that there is a link between terrorism and drugs is ridiculous. We also know there are many groups that rely on money from charities, should we also stop giving money to charities? And of course, terrorists get money from oil, yet you don't hear Bush asking us to stop buying oil to put a stop to terrorism, do you? Fucking moron.

Posted by Fungii at 12:05 AM

December 18, 2002

I can't say I like Yoko Ono very much, but I will have to say I agree with her on this issue. Paul McCartney wants to change the writing credits on a bunch of Beatles songs from Lenon-McCartney to Paul McCartney and John Lennon. What a dick! Like we care that you wrote a wee bit more than John on a handful of songs. In case you haven't noticed, John is dead and is in no position to defend himself. This is, in Yoko's words, ridiculous, absurd and petty, and I would have to agree with the skank. Just let it be, Paul, let it be.

Posted by Fungii at 09:47 PM

CNN has revealed seven new plans to replace the World Trade Center towers. None of them are that good, IMNSHO, but at least they aren't as hideous as the first batch. And four of them would be the tallest buildings in the world. At least they seem to get the idea that the replacements for the originals should be something remarkable, groundbreaking, unlike the pedestrian offerings from the first proposals. I think the real memorial to the victims of this tragedy will be the replacement buildings themselves, not some park or museum they dump on the site.

We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.

Posted by Fungii at 08:02 PM

The reviews are in, and it looks like the new Lord of the Rings installment is a winner. Rotten Tomatoes is giving it a 99%, 94 positive reviews and 1 bad one. I don't want to read the reviews just in case they have spoilers, which is kind of ironic as I have read the books but that was like a million years ago and I've forgotten most of the details. I figure maybe Christmas Eve would be a good time to go, the crowds should have died down and I can catch a matinee because I'll only be working a half-day that day, I hope.

Posted by Fungii at 06:43 PM

I can't believe this story I read over at Metafilter about a German cannibal who advertised on 80 different websites looking for somebody to partake in his perversion. He actually found somebody stupid enough to take him up on his offer, they cut off the man's penis, cooked it up and ate it. He then tortured him to death, cut him up and threw him in the freezer. This was all recorded on videotape for posterity. Most of the idiot was eaten over the following months, the bones being buried around the yard. You just can't make this shit up!

Mmmmm, cut off my own penis, cook it up and eat it, or hit Rotten Ronnies for a burger... Life is full of difficult choices, ain't it?

More on this story. Police say the suspect is not mentally disturbed. I beg to differ!

Posted by Fungii at 06:23 PM

My old account, BLG, contacted me today and said they might still use me for couriers, as their regular courier, Andre, is a little swamped right now. This would be so cool, I haven't been able to do much canvassing for new accounts lately and I really need a big account to keep me busy. Woohoo! [keeping my fingers crossed]

Posted by Fungii at 05:21 PM

December 16, 2002

I think that's what this is, it looks like this one on Rick West's site.

Posted by Fungii at 10:04 PM

December 15, 2002

Took some photos of my Mexican Redleg. [Brachypelma emilia] Most turned out blurry, I guess I'll have to try to use a manual focus next time as the auto-focus doesn't seem to work very well in macro mode for some reason. Oh well, click on the picture if you want to see more pics in a pop-up window.

Posted by Fungii at 10:02 PM

Posted by Fungii at 08:53 PM

December 13, 2002

This HBO movie was pretty good, telling the story of those CNN reporters who got caught in Baghdad when coalition forces began to bomb the city at the begining of the Gulf War and in the process scooped all the other networks by reporting the story live. Michael Keaton was good, but boy he spent the whole movie lighting cigarettes, fucking aqualung. Helena Bonham Carter was in it as well, looking really hot and smoking a lot of cigarettes. [but not as many as iron-lung Mike] The relationship between Robert Wiener [Keaton] and Naji Al-Hadithi, the Iraqi information officer, was particularily interesting. Naji Al-Hadithi was/is part of the evil Iraqi government, yet still has a human relationship with this American news producer. Hard to reconcile the two.

I can remember when the bombing started, I was delivering a package to some office at the end of the day and there was no receptionist so I went to the back and there was some suit there watching TV. He just glanced over at me and said 'They've started bombing Baghdad' and went back to watching the show. My jaw dropped and I just stood there watching the green night-vision pictures of the bombing. After awhile he offered me a seat and I sat there for a some time, trying to figure out what it all meant. Then I thanked him and left, he was still sitting there in shock watching the TV. It was weird back then, I think it was the first major military action involving the west for a long time and we really didn't know if it would remain contained or spread like wildfire into a world war. Luckily, it turned out to be a short and relatively painless war, at least from a western perspective. Too bad our current war on terrorism couldn't be resolved as quickly. *sigh*

Posted by Fungii at 08:34 PM

December 10, 2002

Posted by Fungii at 08:03 PM

December 09, 2002

I cleaned my tarantula cages on the weekend, switching from astro-turf to potting soil for substrate. I had them on astro-turf for the longest time but I don't think they liked it very much and soil just looks better. But the soil was moist and it steamed up their tanks, so I took the lids off a few to let the excess moisture evaporate. Well, the spider pictured below saw this as an opportunity to escape, bastard. Luckily she didn't go very far, just sat there on the carpet beside her cage. With a little gentle prodding [well not so gentle, the bitch clamped onto the carpet pretty good!] I got her into a scooper and back into her cage. Lids on tight, all the kids in bed. Goodnight!

Posted by Fungii at 11:37 PM

It was really slow today at work, I really need to get some new accounts! Tomorrow I go to the dentist first thing in the morning. Not sure what kind of sick torture they have in mind for me now, but I have to quit going there, they are killing me financially. Watching hockey, Flames are winning 2 - 1 against Vancouver third period. Haven't watched a hockey game in ages, don't know who anybody is, except Jarome Iginla, and he ain't playing tonight. Go figure.

Posted by Fungii at 10:30 PM

December 07, 2002

Just finished watching Vanilla Sky. Ugh, what a lousy movie! The original Spanish version [Abre Los Ojos] was so much better. Bad casting, Cruise was just so wrong for the part, much too old and he smirked and laughed his way through the film, very irritating. And the way music was used in this film was really distracting, as if there wasn't enough going on in this movie, having top 40 songs blare onto the screen, as it were, at the most inappropriate times, just horrible. If you haven't seen this movie, don't bother, track down the vastly superior original.

Posted by Fungii at 08:00 PM

December 05, 2002

Here's a couple pictures I took with my camera. I've just been playing around with it mostly so far. Took some pictures of buildings that I'm planning on using for a database of downtown businesses. Should have something up in that regard this weekend. Hopefully get some macro shots of my tarantulas as well.

Posted by Fungii at 08:49 PM

The supreme court rejected the patent for the Harvard mouse.

By manipulating its genes they produced a mouse whose descendants would be more susceptible to tumours, facilitating clinical work and producing faster experimental results.

I'm all for genetically modifying life forms, I think a lot of cool things could be done with this technology. But actually patenting the life form itself rather than the process that created it, well I think that's fraught with problems and not a good idea. They should just try and maximize their profits while its fresh and new, and then move on to the next project. Instead they try to patent everything under the sun and then sue anybody who even remotely infringes upon one of their millions of patents, its ridiculous. And then there's the games drug companies are playing to shut out generic drugs and the patented canola that pollinated some poor farmer's field so he had to pay some big agricultural firm for use of their patent. This whole patent thing has got out of control, dammit!

Posted by Fungii at 07:35 PM

This article in the National Post describes how UPS is sueing Canada Post for unfair competition because they use their postal monopoly to subsidize their courier services. Not sure how this would affect me if they [UPS] won, but I do know there is some regulation that forbids couriers from charging less than 4X the postage rate, which works out to somewhere around $2.00. I can just imagine how the hyper-competetive courier business would react if this regulation wasn't in effect, we would probably see prices drop and hence make less money. Maybe I'm just a pessimist. As long as we don't have to wear those dreary brown uniforms UPS couriers wear. Yuck!

Posted by Fungii at 06:59 PM

December 02, 2002

Been too busy to do any blogging lately, or much of anything else for that matter! Helped the BLG people get packed for their big move, courier biz has been crazy last two weeks, had to see the movie people for my cheque and today I had the wonderful experience of a root canal first thing in the morning. Went well but was rather expensive, plus I have another two appointments next week. Bleh! But now that my friends at BLG have moved [bye! *sniff, sniff*] and I wont see them as much, if at all, and my other account Best Pacific is also gone, I will be much less busy. Unfortunately that means less money for me and do I ever need more money with this damn dentistry vampire sucking my wallet dry, I really need to pick up more accounts and fast! I did get one new account today [hi Krystal!], but I really need a big account to replace BLG. Not that anybody could ever replace the awesome group of people that worked there. They rocked! I will miss them all so much.

Posted by Fungii at 09:18 PM

Mega busy lately!

Been too busy to do any blogging lately, or much of anything else for that matter! Helped the BLG people get packed for their big move, courier biz has been crazy last two weeks, had to see the movie people for my cheque and today I had the wonderful experience of a root canal first thing in the morning. Went well but was rather expensive, plus I have another two appointments next week. Bleh! But now that my friends at BLG have moved [bye! *sniff, sniff*] and I wont see them as much, if at all, and my other account Best Pacific is also gone, I will be much less busy. Unfortunately that means less money for me and do I ever need more money with this damn dentistry vampire sucking my wallet dry, I really need to pick up more accounts and fast! I did get one new account today [hi Krystal!], but I really need a big account to replace BLG. Not that anybody could ever replace the awesome group of people that worked there. They rocked! I will miss them all so much.

New Digital Camera

I bought a new digital camera, a Canon Powershot S200 Digital Elph. Its seems pretty damn cool, its small and has 2.0 megapixels. I spent the night going through the user's manual, trying to figure out all its features, and it has quite a few considering its small size. Doesn't seem to have any defects so I wont be returning it, at least not yet. Did a couple test shots and they turned out pretty good. Must sleep soon, but I'll be packing this baby to work tomorrow so I can take a few shots while I'm downtown. Oh yeah, I also picked up a 128 meg memory card [it only comes with an 8 meg card] so I have tons of room. Woohoo!

Evil Bike

Never got to fix my bike last night, I tried to use a spoke from an old wheel that I had sitting on my balcony, but the damn thing was so rusted I was unable to salvage even a single spoke. So I rode around with a wobbly wheel again today. But now I have a spoke, just need to install it.

It was not supposed to rain today. I washed my bike. It rained. I am surely accursed.

Bad Day

Bad Day

Paid my cargo bond [again] this morning. They charged me an extra $25 for the bounced cheque. So the total damage from my mathematical misadventure came to $45. I hate this world. As if that wasn't bad enough, my back wheel had a spoke break today, rendering it all warped and wobbly. Oh the humanity!

Five Last

Created a last five thing in the banner. Those aren't the last five books and movies I watched, just placeholders. The music is what winamp last played. The DoSomething plugin does the automatic updating whenever I play something in Winamp, pretty cool.

I bounced a cheque!

I paid my cargo bond bond last week. Its a requirement that the city needs to license me as a courier. I kept checking my bank account but it seemed that they never cashed the cheque. Then today I noticed a $20 presentment charge. The cheque bounced! Apparently I had miscalculated by a few dollars! So now it cost me $20 and the insurance company is probably going to charge me at least another $20. And the policy was supposed to begin tomorrow, which is a Sunday but with this bounced cheque they might cancel my policy, and notify city hall who might cancel my courier license. Their offices are closed today, I can't even contact them until Monday. All because of a simple miscalculation on my part! I am so bummed. This will probably screw up my credit rating too. Fuck, fuck, FUCK!!!

Winamp Plugin

I think I got the Winamp plugin DoSomething to work. It updates the latest songs I'm playing onto my webpage.

Is it safe?

Went to see the dentist this morning and he uttered the two vile words that I so did not want to hear: root canal. Damn! Its not so much the procedure as the cost involved. I have no dental coverage and its very expensive. He told me I have two options; have the tooth pulled or have the dreaded root canal. Well, I'd like to keep my teeth if at all possible so I made an appointment for December 2. He also mentioned having two teeth capped, teeth cleaning and replacement of my silver fillings. Yeah, I'll get that done on my way to pick up my new GT-40. Bloodsucking bastards.

Just Another Day

I feel so tired today, I came home after work and pretty well crashed out for about four hours. Guess it might be because I helped Borden Ladner pack stuff for their big move last night and didn't get home till around 10 pm. Not that late, but it was a long day. Then I had a horrible thing happen to me, my tooth that lost its filling the other day, broke. A piece of it came off, leaving a huge gaping hole between my teeth, very disgusting. So I went to the dentist, but they can't get me in till Friday, so I have to live with this deformity for awhile. Its really bugging me, its like I'm obsessing over it. The edge where it broke off is razor sharp and is cutting into the inside of my cheek. Hope they can fix it on Friday, and that its not too expensive, I am not rich dammit. I think its because I made fun of Michael Jackson the other day, bad karma coming back to bite me in the ass, or tooth as it were. Sorry Mikey, I'll never say another bad word about you, so help me God. Really.

And today was my birthday. Whoopee fuck.

Winamp

Found this Winamp plugin, sounds useful. I'm too tired to mess with it right now tho. Lazy bastard that I am.

Movie Day!

Actually, I spent most of the day cleaning up and doing work related crap, but I did have the TV on and kinda half watched a few movies. Most were on Scream, what has to be the best cable TV station ever. [Nancy's a hoot!]

First up was Who Slew Auntie Roo? Shelley Winters stars in this movie as Auntie Roo, who's daughter is dead and she kidnaps a couple of children to replace her. The young boy is a little demented and believes Antie Roo is like the witch in Hansel & Gretel and wants to cook them up for dinner. But the kid is not alone, Auntie Roo is quite insane, keeping her daughter's corpse hidden away in a secret nursery, the butler is a sadistic little bastard and her spritualist is a fraud and a drunk. Its a fun little movie, mostly due to Ms. Winters acting so sweet and nice one moment and totally psychotic the next.

The next movie was Horror Hotel, also known as The City of the Dead. It shared the same cinematographer [Desmond Dickinson] as Antie Roo, strangely enough. It involves a tale of witchcraft as told by a fairly young Christopher Lee, with him ending the tale with "Burn, witch, burn. Burn, witch, burn." A witch is burned at the stake, and she and her cohorts apeal to Lucifer to save her in return for their souls. Three hundred years later, she's still alive and running a hotel in the same little town she was burned in, Whitewood. Christopher Lee is a professor teaching, of all things, the history of witchcraft and sends an eager-beaver student off to Whitewood to do a little research. She disappears, and soon half the city is off to Whitewood to look for her, most following in her ill-fated footsteps. Not a bad little flick, particularily Chris Lee being deliciously evil and Patricia Jessel likewise as the witch/inkeeper. The end with the whole "shadow of the cross" smiting down the Luciferians was a bit over the top.

Third on the slate was, deja-vu, Burn Witch Burn also known as Night of the Eagle. Now this is a really cool movie, the best of the three. It has great atmosphere, great story. Its about this university professor who's wife is practicing witchcraft. The hubby is a staunch non-believer in such nonsense, so when he finds out about her shenanigans, he insists that she give it all up and throw away all her charms and talismen. That's when the fun begins, as his life begins to fall apart without her safeguards. Aside from the silly "Do you believe?" at the very end, this is a suspenseful, intense little thriller. Like "Bewitched!", only deadly serious. Peter Wyngarde makes it all work, with a little help from Janet Blair as his witchy wife and Margaret Johnston as well, another faculty member and wife.

Michael Jackson's Face

How can somebody with so much money manage to ruin their face like this? You would think he could have hired a good plastic surgeon to do competent work, or better yet, just leave it the fuck alone in the first place! Its not like he was that bad looking before he began this mania. Then again, maybe he ran into complications that we know nothing about. Kinda sad. But if someone as rich as him can't get proper plastic surgery, no way a poor guy like me is ever going try it! [Not that I would anyway] I'll just stay really ugly.

Five Day Forecast

Added a five day forecast link to the bottom of the page. Needs to be cleaned up, but it works.

Movie Details

I found this news article on the movie "A Problem with Fear".

• Laurie - Paulo Costanzo
  
  
• Dot - Emily Hampshire
  
  
• Director - Gary Burns
  
  
• Co-producer - Shirley Vercruyesse
  
  

Memorial Ride

There was a memorial ride last night for Terry Tuck, a bike courier who died last week after being hit by a van, also a courier. This was the first death of a bike courier while on the job in Calgary. It seems like most of the bike couriers in Calgary showed up for this, myself included, which was nice as its pretty hard to get couriers to come together for anything. There was a wreath laid, somebody made a speech [ Terry was a courier for only a short time, but he was one of us], we had a moment of silence in his memory and then we lit sparklers and went on our ride. We kept to one lane of traffic going down 4 Street, turning on 5 Avenue and back up 1 Street to the Castle pub. Most drivers were cool about it, some courier drivers honked their horns to show their support and some non-courier bikers joined the ride.

At the Castle, I decided to go in for one beer, but I ended up staying for a few hours. West Direct bought us all a beer so we could have a toast to Terry. We watched the news item A-channel did on the ride, with Domenique hogging all the air time. LOL Then they had stationary bike races, which I didn't enter, but the people who did sure torqued out racing each other! Crazy bastards, after riding a bike all day, they go to a bar to do this... Saw Mike [hi! sleepingeagle], Roy, and a bunch of other couriers I haven't seen in awhile, which was cool. Then I bailed and rode home.

King for a day...

After sitting around for a couple more hours, we went outside at 635-8 Avenue SW to shoot another scene. In this one I actually got to ride my bike! Woohoo! As the two leads walked towards the camera, I swung in front of them, around a pillar and over to a bike rack. The scene ended with the camera pointing straight at me, which was kinda weird, but I'm sure they'll just edit that out. After that we went back to the staging area to have lunch and wait. Lunch was great, prime rib roast and stuff. Then we waited almost till sunset.

The last scene was back at the same place, this time a driver whips his door open in front of a bike courier. I was not the courier in this scene, that was Andrew. I was across the street with a bunch of other extras playing background.

Overall, I had a great time. It was easy and the crew was really nice. Sometimes it was tedious just waiting around but it was cool to see the film-making in progress, it really gives you an appreciation of all the work and preparation that goes into the process. And I feel sorry for those actors who have to wear that greasy make-up day after day. Icky.

I couldn't find an entry for this movie in IMDB but this is what I gathered from people talking and watching the takes:

• It just started filming today.
  
  
• Its a small Canadian independant film, with a quirky, dark comic feel to it. Sounds like your typical Canadian film, eh?
  
  
• The story involves a near-future society where fear is monitored with electronic bracelets and if your fear level goes too high, the police come after you? [I'm a little unsure of what the consequences of that is] There's this chick who has these fears that she somehow projects onto other people, like the elevator plunging to the ground, somebody getting run over etc. There is also this thing where she wants to kill dogs that keep yipping at her.
  
  
• Not sure who the chick is who plays the lead, but she's a funky young lady with braces and kinda strange voice, I think I've seen her in movies before. We did a scene, then right after, we did another with a girl who looked just like her but with totally different clothes and no braces, so I don't know if it was her or a chick who looks just like her.
  
  
• Then there was a guy who was the other lead, he was young and really skinny, really hyped about his part in that he was wandering around nervously, reciting his lines aloud. At first I thought he was some wacko that had just wandered onto the set.
  
  
• Its not X-Men2, dammit.
  
  
• The director was some guy from Montreal.
  
  
• There's at least three bike couriers in it!
  
  

Well that's about it! Back to my mundane, ho-hum life tomorrow!

Boy, these peanuts sure are salty!

Correction: the director [Gary Burns] is from Calgary not Montreal. I guess it was the cameraman that was from Montreal. My bad.

IMDB entry.

A Problem with Fear

So I'm here on the set of A Problem with Fear. We spent the morning in a +15 doing 2 or 3 scenes. I was part of the background, just strolling by as people talked. The movie is more of a dark comedy than a horror movie, although some people die in an elevator, get run over by a car and other mayhem. So far I think they filmed like 30 seconds worth.

Movie Extra

I was going into a building today and there were these notices for a movie that would be shooting in the area tomorrow, some kinda horror movie I think as it had the word fear in the title. Strangely enough, a courier approached me later on and asked if I would be interested in being in a movie. It involved taking the day off, which kind of made me hesitate as I can't really afford to take time off work right now, but then I thought what the hell, I'm game. Now I must go to bed as I have to be downtown at 6:45 am to do this thing. I must act as a courier. Now thats a stretch, lol. I just hope I don't have any dialog. Or I hope they don't expect me to do any stunts or shit. *groan* OH well, should be fun!

RIM Super Mario

Downloaded RimMario for my Blackberry 950. Finally, a decent game for my BB!

Calgary Weather

Added the current weather for Calgary at the bottom of this page. Its a perl script that grabs the info from the Enviroment Canada Calgary weather page and loads it in an i-frame. Guess I should add the five day forcast as well when I get the chance.

Links Page

Updated my links page, mostly the news and media section.

Zone Alarm

Am I the only one getting like a thousand blocked accesses with Zone Alarm everyday, usually on ports ~1025-1030? Anyway, I decided to patch my copy of ZA to the latest version today and it caused all kinds of problems. [a dll was missing that I had to find and move over to ...windows/system manually] The only way to get ZA up and running properly was to uninstall the old version and do a clean install of the newest version. Bleh!

After ZA was up and working, my desktop was all messed up so I had to spend time getting everything back to normal. The last thing that I noticed screwed up was the system tray, the icons were oversized and ugly. So I went Googling looking for a way to fix them as there did not seem to be an option in the desktop settings. In my quest, I came upon Litestep which looks like a cool replacement shell for windows. Might check it out sometime if I have the time.

Checking my system tray after surfing awhile, I noticed my icons had magically transformed themselves back to normal, small and pretty. Doh! The moral of the story? Contrary to popular belief, ignore your troubles and they will go away!

Got a new phone-bone!

After putting up with my old, decrepit Nokia 5120 for the past few months with it acting strange and dying on me all the time, I finally broke down and bought a new phone, a Motorola 280. It has a lot of features, like conference calling and voice-activated dialing [I tried it, it works!], GPRS [although I don't have any data stuff activated except receiving e-mails] and a whole bunch of other crap that's gonna take me forever to figure out. I like it so far, much nicer than my old one, smaller, prettier, more features.

MovableType Upgrade 2.51

Upgraded from 2.21 to 2.51, then had to fix all the perl shebangs and flock() errors. Tested everything and seems to work fine. Now to find out if there's any new goodies in this version.

Marijuana - The Growing Debate

Found this series on the Montreal Gazette website:Marijuana. I don't smoke the evil weed anymore, but I am totally for legalization. Its just so ridiculous to ostracize people and label them criminals because they choose to use the illegal drug marijuana rather than the legal drugs of alcohol or tobacco, even though the legal drugs are arguably more damaging. I could go on [and on] but I just hope our MPs are brave enough to make some long overdue progress on this issue rather than cave in to the hysteria and threats emanating from south of the border. God help us if the Alliance ever gets in power, we'll probably have an Americanesque War on Drugs. Yuck!

Funny, the link to Canada's Drug Strategy gives you this message:

We're sorry, we're not able to find the page you requested. It has either moved or no longer exists.

Too Funny

Juan Gato's Bucket o' Rants

I don't know what this blog is about, but the description of it had me spewing coke all over my keyboard. ROTFLMAO!

-- A Bunch of Crap From a Moron --

I'm on the Highway to Hell!

Like, you're surprised?

I am 68% evil. Take the test :: koolplace.com

Links

Added a links page to my site. The link is the first one under Internal Links. Pretty sparse right now but I will add more when I get the chance.

Weblogs.com

I read something about weblogs.com while at work today, but I was using my Blackberry which wouldn't work with the site, so I checked it out when I got home and its like this vortex that sucks you in and you waste all your life there. So, don't go there. Dude.

Law & Order: Criminal Intent

Caught tonight's episode MALIGNANT about a pharmacist who dilutes cancer drugs so he can fund his church project to build a basketball court [?]. This show can be a hit-and-miss affair, but sometimes its really good, like this one. I can remember reading about this case in the news not so long ago, what a horrible thing to do. But what I wanted to say is Vincent D'Onofrio is the one who really makes this show worth watching. The way he tilts his head at people when he asks some sarcastic, rhetorical questions cracks me up. And he's always pulling these wacky stunts, like buying a lighter in the pharmacy and trying to set off the sprinklers. Or jumping in the wrestling ring and trying to get the young kid to go a couple rounds. [he's a big boy] Hilarious, not sure how legal that shit would be in real life but it is pretty funny on the show. Sometimes I think they rely on him too much to carry the show, but when they put together a good script, it makes for some very entertaining television. The best part on this show was at the end, when they confront the pharmacist in front of his fellow churchgoers and Goren says "...who knows, maybe they'll [pause] forgive you!". Just dripping with sarcasm, totally humiliating this poor schmuck in front of his peers, although he deserved it, the bastard. Good stuff.

My Saturday

Spent the day doing laundry, cleaning the floors [which sounds easy but you should see the entranceway where I keep my bike after it snows for a few days!] and other household chores. My CD storage unit has been like the leaning tower of Piza lately and I was about to give up on it but I thought I'd take another shot at fixing it before giving it the heave-ho. I removed all the cd's and dismanteled the thing, re-assembled it by glueing all the pieces together and then used some metal brackets at the base for extra strength. One of the shelves was missing its pegs that hold it up, so I improvised by using plastic presta valve caps, of all things, but hey, they worked. I reloaded all the cd's and it seems to be holding up pretty well, I might just keep the POS yet. Can't help but look over every few minutes to see if its begun leaning over once again.

In my quest to fix the cd unit, I came upon what apeared to be some kind of firecracker, it said "screech-e-roo" on the side. So I thought "what the heck" and went onto the balcony to light 'er up. Well the fuse burned down and then I thought for a minute it had gone out, but then it emitted this ear-shattering screeeeech as it shot off a bright red flame and a cloud of noxious, blue smoke. Yikes, I guess that's why it was called a "screech-e-roo"!

And tomorrow I do my billing. Not sure if my heart can handle all this excitement.

I'm getting sick