31 December 2009

And, btw, Happy New Year!

Whenever I see a digital time/temperature display show the temperature in Fahrenheit, my first thought is usually "Hmm, the sensor's broken." My first thought should be, "Fahrenheit is an effed up system and why the hell is it still even an option in Canada?!" Because I don't like Fahrenheit. It's fun to spell, but other than that I find it confusing and useless. It's so nonintuitive. Freezing is 32 and boiling is 212 (and I didn't know that by the way - because I DON'T LIKE IT - I had to look it up), how did that ever made sense? I mean, why choose a number like 32 to represent the temperature at which a liquid becomes a solid? 0 is such a more logical starting point. I know they're arbitrary scales, but even arbitray things can be logically arbitrary. This shouldn't be bothering me as much as it is. But, honestly, when was the last time you heard someone preface a question with "On a scale of 32 to 212......."?

24 December 2009

Having myself a merry little Christmas


Happy Birthday Jesus! And other Seasonal Sentiments. This is my first Christmas sans my family. Luckily I've got a roommate who was similarily abandoned by her family, so we'll be opening our massive pile of presents together tomorrow.  My mom sent me a huge box via Amazon, so I'm especially excited about that.

There are two of my Christmas decorations you can't see in the picure above that I want to share with you. The first is a horribly tacky decoration that I bought recently:


The picure isn't that great, but it's Santa riding a salmon, and the fish is wearing antlers. There are just so many things wrong with this idea, I don't know where to start. Maybe I should make a rule that all ornaments on my tree have to be illogical.

The second decoration is my Darwin doll. I've made him festive with a little hat.

I think I might start dressing him up for all the major holidays. Would that be sacrilegous?

I hope everyone has a great holiday!

23 December 2009

More cookie dough

This McSweeny’s column is really funny.

I totally respect what Al Gore is trying to do, but there’s something about this title card that bothers me and I can’t place my finger on what it is exactly.

Four acronyms I encountered today that basically mean the same thing:
AIS – Aquatic Invasive Species
NIS – Non-indigenous Species
NIZ – Non-indigenous Zooplankton
ANS – Aquatic non-native Species

18 December 2009

My thoughts are cookie dough. They aren't done baking.

Generally, in the course of my day, I’ll have a number of thoughts that I’ll think about putting here. Sometimes I send myself an email with those thoughts, or links to the article or website that spawned them. Lately, I’ve just been keeping them in a word file on my computer. Often these little thoughts aren’t really enough for a post of their own, unless I were to add a bunch of stuff to them, and as you’ll see, my thoughts are often only half-formed.

I think I have enough notes saved up to take up some of your time and distract you from whatever it is you try to escape from when you read this. Here, in no particular order, are a bunch of things:

12 December 2009

Pump Up/Your Boots

The most recognizable half of U2 was on Elvis Costello's Spectacle last night. It started with Elvis Costello performing Mysterious Ways (that was...different), then Bono came out and did his chicken dance (which I think has replaced his infamous elbow dance. That boy just can't dance). There was lots of banter and reminiscing between all the musical icons. Edge was succinct and witty. Bono gave long, rambling answers that only kind of made sense in the most abstract way. Really, I couldn't love him more.

Anyway, the whole point of this entry was to post video from some of the songs they performed, specifically: the best version of One Shot of Happy Two Shots of Sad I've ever heard, and the Costello/U2 mashup of Pump It Up and Get on Your Boots. Sadly, nothing is available on the CTV site, or on other sites (yet).

On a related note, is anyone else concerned that Elvis Costello is turning into Bob Dylan?





07 December 2009

Il fait froid

Mais not as froid as Edmonton. As I write this, it's -22 in Eddy, but only -3 here. However, winter has deffinitely arrived in the HRM. I say that not just because we've had our first stuck-around snowfall, but because you can just feel it in the air.

The cold weather made me think of a post I wrote a while ago that I still like. It went like this: "If Winter and Edmonton were in prison together, Edmonton would be Winter's bitch." I wrote that in October '06. I often marvel that I lived for almost 4 years in a place where Winter comes in October.

I tend to write a lot about the weather. I think because it's so inescapable, and it's just always there. If you're interested, all my weather-related posts can be read here (newest-oldest).

02 December 2009

Presyncope or, I had a really bad reaction to giving blood

I wrote the following an hour or so after the event (a blood drive clinic in a building at my work). In hindsight, I suppose this will sound pretty bad. When I told Monica about this, she said “you can't go alone anymore!” It’s not as if I’m driving there, or anything. It’s just down the elevator, across the court yard, and up a few floors. I think my bad reaction is a good thing. I mean, this is how my body is supposed to react to blood loss, right? I could consider my experience to be a test of sorts. Or even a “dry” run for the day I loose my arm in a tragic dissecting scope accident.