Friday, March 16, 2012

Wow where have I been right? Just busy. You know how it goes. Just bought a new dishwasher, which is one of those purchases that you need to do but it doesn't stop you from crying anyways. Hopefully this one lasts the 18 years the salesman suggested it would. The other one only lasted 6.
In other news, turns out Mike Daisey was fudging a few details in his "The Agony and Ecstasy of Steve Jobs". Shame, because the issue (of shitty working conditions at Foxconn in China) is still more or less valid I think, but now no one will pay any more attention to it. When you're a writer, or a journalist, or a performer or whatever Daisey is, the only thing you have is integrity. Why you would throw it away is beyond me.
You know who does have integrity? George Clooney. And his dad. And Martin luther King III. Good for them.
Update- here's a thoughtful response to the Mike Daisey thing from a Macworld writer.

Oh yeah and before I forget, last week I switched the car seats for the girls from the 5 to the CX-5 so I could go out while Michelle was working. Such a pain, switching those around. Naia is still too little to be technically front-facing, I dunno why, it's just the law, but she's so close I thought about turning it around to save time. Then a little voice in my head told me not to take shortcuts when it comes to my daughters' safety, so I made it rear-facing. So off we went on our first adventure in daddy's new car! Pallas was pretty impressed. I think Naia was crying, but I can quite easily tune that out to concentrate on the road. Pallas says, "Daddy, Naia's upside down." Which I interpreted to mean that she was facing the opposite way that Pallas was used to seeing her. So I said, "Yup." A little later that little voice returned and told me that actually she was still facing the normal way, so I looked all the way up in the rear-view mirror and discovered that in fact Naia was upside down, or very nearly so, as her car seat had fallen over somehow. Some strap or other obviously hadn't gotten attached. She was pretty mad.
Incidentally, you might conclude from this photo that she is now front-facing anyways. That's just . . . mirrors. And photoshop. You know, photos really can't be trusted nowadays.

2:19 PM link Poosted by Homie Bear

Tuesday, March 06, 2012

You probably already heard that Ralph McQuarrie passed away the other day. Sad. Obviously starwars.com and every major Star Wars site has tributes, and here's a nice simple one from JimSmash.

Labels: star wars

3:57 PM link Poosted by Homie Bear

Saturday, March 03, 2012

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Friday, March 02, 2012

There it is! Pretty sweet. Fun to drive. Michelle took some photos with her iPhone, so there will be some mroe later but for now this is the only one she sent me. By the time I got it home I was running out of time and daylight. Sadly, since it doesn't have winter tires yet I will not drive it to Hinton tomorrow.
Weirdly enough, I just saw that one of my favourite blogs has a post about CX-5s. And the Lorax. And a picture of a CG CX-5. Apparently my car is Lorax approved. Though I dunno if The Lorax movie would be Seuss approved. And I, a coal miner, wouldn't be Lorax-approved, even though the Lorax book, if not the movie, is defintely Homie Bear approved.

10:57 PM link Poosted by Homie Bear

Wednesday, February 29, 2012

So February's totals are 43.99 miles, or 70.8 kms. A little less than January but that's alright, today I made up for it a bit by running 8.16 miles. 2000 pushups, though, that's not too bad (for the whole month, not today).
So far my new Mazda has 0 miles on it, since it hasn't arrived yet.
The old Saturn had 233,333 kms on it earlier this week. Which, coincidentally, is exactly the diameter of Saturn the planet. Actually Saturn's diameter is 120,536 km so really I should just drive the Ion another 7000 kms to make two Saturn diameters. Then I can sell it more easily on kijiji- For Sale: 2004 Saturn Ion, black, comes with winter tires. No body damage unless you count the missing passenger mirror. Only two Saturn diameters on the odometer! $29,878 OBO.
Since a car with two Saturnian diameters isn't actually worth much on trade I am just going to keep it for driving back and forth from Hinton to the mine, which is about 70kms one way, ie the distance I ran in February.
Happy leap day!

10:50 PM link Poosted by Homie Bear

Thursday, February 23, 2012

Well looks like I bought a new car today- it's not here yet because the paint is still drying, basically. A 2013 Mazda CX-5, so new the first one (for demo purposes only) just arrived in Edmonton yesterday. Mine should be ready for pickup next week. Here it is. In the gray mica color, if I recall correctly. Should be right for me, fun to drive the monotonous miles week after week to Hinton and back, with a little more room than our Mazda 5 to take the kids to Calgary or whatever. Yeah, we have two Mazdas now.

3:57 PM link Poosted by Homie Bear

Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Though I wish there were photos of the actual forest, this is still pretty cool- an intact 300-million-yo forest found underneath a coal mine. At our coal mine we think it's pretty neat when we find an intact 50-yo coke bottle or something (from the undergrounders who were there before us).
I am kinda sorta thinking about getting a new car. Something like this would be perfect, though I might also get a Mazda 3 or whatever.
And at the risk of just reblogging everything Gizmodo does, here is an animation of building a virtual Lego Millenium Falcon

4:43 PM link Poosted by Homie Bear

Wednesday, February 15, 2012

I didn't make any new year's resolutions this year, since, you know, not trying to boast here but I got it covered. At least as far as physical fitness goes. So instead I decided to start keeping track of my workouts to see how I do month to month and see where I can improve and whatnot. Made a spreadsheet and everything. I just summed the total miles I did for January and came up with 49.84. Which is pretty good but damn! I didn't know I was like 25 feet short of making it an even 50 miles. Anyways I'm a Canadian and miles don't actually mean anything to me. Let's do a quick conversion here- 80.2 kms! There we go. That sounds better.
I bring it up because Michelle went to a see a speaker at her Teacher's Convention and it was this ultra-runner who ran across the Sahara Desert. Basically for the hell of it. Him and two friends- they made a documentary about it which we watched, called Running the Sahara. Pretty amazing show. If you read any of the reviews or comments about it, the thing that will jump out at you is what one viewer called the "complete assholery" of one of the runners. It's definitely true he could be assholish. But as I remarked to Michelle, I've read a lot of books about extreme expeditions- like climbing Everest or kayaking the Arctic Circle and such, and these kinds of Type A heavy duty driven bully-tending people are often right there in the middle, because these are the types that actually finish extreme expeditions. Not to defend the behavioural flaws that come along with that. Just saying. Me, I'm much more laid back but then again I've never climbed Everest have I? I hitch-hiked across Canada and stuff like that, but that's not quite on the same level.
Hell, I think running 80 kms in a month is pretty good.

Anyways. Heading off for nightshift again tomorrow, so I might as well make the most of this post since I hardly ever have time to blog when I'm on nights.
Finished a bunch of books lately. We readA Prayer for Owen Meany for book club. I dunno, John Irving is pretty highly respected, and certainly his writing skillz are fine, I just had a hard time with the idea of using a miracle to explore ideas of faith and destiny and all that. Because you can write any miracle you want when you're the writer. Generated good discussion though.
I just finished Neal Stephenson's Reamde. You probably know Stephenson is my favourite writer ever- well, him and Dan Simmons, and he didn't disappoint. Just a lot of fun, this one. There was a story about China on the news while I was reading it and for a second I was sure it was gonna be about the explosion in Xiamen.
Also, at work, I read the entire Soldier Son Trilogy by Robin Hobb. It took me a loooong time to get through those books with the limited time I have to read at work lately, but I'm glad I read them. Quite a unique book, a fantasy more or less, set in a world that is roughly equivalent to Victorian England but with an American frontier sensibility, but just as a reference point. I dunno, hard to describe, I liked how it was kind of the Avatar/ Dances With Wolves story but with waaaay more shades of grey than you usually get with those types of stories.

11:56 PM link Poosted by Homie Bear

Sunday, February 12, 2012

Here's a thought- why not let Pallas decide for herself if she wants to go see The Phantom Menace? So I tried an experiment today where I let her watch the DVD, thinking she would quickly lose interest and that would be that. Turns out she loves loves loves the lightsaber duel between Darth Maul, Obi-wan and Qui Gonn. As well she should, that's easily the best lightsaber duel in the whole saga. (Some of the CG Clone Wars episodes have fights that rival it, actually.) She watched it many times. "I want he to fight!" she said at the part where Darth Maul is looking through his monoculars on Tatooine.
Also, she likes that "Beauvio princess" (Queen Amidala). So maybe we'll go see it. Too bad there aren't fast forward and rewind buttons in movie theatres, though, her patience might wear thin on all the Jarjar parts. I know mine will.

7:52 PM link Poosted by Homie Bear

Monday, February 06, 2012

So The Phantom Menace is being released in 3D this Friday. I knew it was coming but I didn't know it was so soon. I'm kinda torn about what to do, as far as taking Pallas goes. Pallas and I went to see Beauty and the Beast in 3D last week and she did really good, so that's not the issue. I was her age the first time I saw Star Wars, lo almost 35 years ago now. But that was Star Wars. The one where Luke Skywalker and Han Solo and Princess Leia are the good guys and Darth Vader is the bad guy. In The Phantom Menace Darth Vader is the good guy and he's a little boy. BUt Pallas has no idea that's who he'll be. I think I want her to experience it the same way I did- watching Star Wars first and then Empire, and then all the others. She's already been exposed to Star Wars, obviously- when the art teacher at her birthday party asked if anyone had a robot, she said "Boba Fett and Clonetrooper!" Who aren't robots at all but that's okay. Took me forever to realize stormtroopers weren't robots and that that backpacky thing doesn't say OIL. (What IS that thing, though? Does anyone know?)
Still. I want her to feel that shock when Vader tells Luke that if Luke moved to Russia he could call himself Luke Vaderovich. I don't want her to think Jarjar is better than Boba Fett.
And you know, there's another thing that as a parent I'm kinda questioning. In Revenge of the Sith, when Anakin turns to the dark side, he goes and kills a bunch of kids. Younglings, if I recall- so like 4, 5 yos. You watch it as an adult fanboy and you think, geeze, that's taking it a bit far, Lucas, but whatever. But how do you let your youngling watch that and then when he turns back to a good guy in Jedi, everything is ok? Personally I don't think you get to come back from that. Who knew Star Wars would bring such moral quandaries?
Well, there's one thing- it might not matter too much. Yesterday we were watching the CG Astroboy movie, and there's a part where a robot is given a negative energy core- he takes it in and says, all roboty voice, "Core accepted." Pallas turned to me and said; "Did you hear that? He said, "Hot summer." So even though we're watching the same thing, we're not necessarily seeing the same movie...

Labels: star wars

10:40 PM link Poosted by Homie Bear

Sunday, February 05, 2012

We've really been the beneficiary of our local hospitals- when Pallas was born she had to be immediately whisked to the then-one day-old Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at the Grey Nuns, where she was tooken care of very well. Then I didn't even hear that the Stollery Children's Hospital (part of the University of Alberta's network of hospitals) has a brand new emergency room for kids. How great is that? Just opened on Thursday, apparently, and last night Michelle and my Mom took Naia Peanut there. And she was looked after almost immediately- on a Saturday night no less. Wow.
She was fine, mostly. She's been sick for like ten days or something, but nothing to really be concerned about, but last night she started coughing so hard she threw up, and never really stopped coughing. And the scary part was she wasn't even crying, just coughing and coughing. Also she had some issues breathing- not that she couldn't, but that she was obviously working at it. Hence the trip to the hospital. So yeah, she's good, home and on the mend, looks like.
As for myself, I was home, though just returned from night shift hence not really qualified to make rational decisions,so I stayed to look after Pallas while my Mom went with Michelle to the hospital. So that was huge.
Anyways, just wanted to expand on the story a bit from my Facebook status and give the shout out to the hospitals who have done so much for us, and my Mom of course.
Cheers!

9:27 PM link Poosted by Homie Bear

Monday, January 30, 2012

Perhaps you heard the biggish news in the geek world that the principle cast members of Star Trek: The Next Generation are reuniting at the Calgary Comic and Entertainment Expo. Kind of a coup for the Calgary Con, which is slowly growing into a respectable convention. For some reason they always seem able to nab big Star Trek actors- last year it was William Shatner himself.
Hmm. Just some random reason? I think it has to do with the proximity to Vulcan, Alberta, a small town not too different than all the other rural Alberta towns except they have a big homage to Star Trek in the form of a large model Enterprise and a tourist info centre done up to look like a space station. Anyways over the years they have gone all out, even getting Leonard Nimoy there for Spock Days once. So, you know. Calgary being the biggest city nearby, they get all the Trek stuff. That's my theory anyways. I'm more of a Star Wars guy myself but I have dabbled in the Trek world from time to time for sure.

10:52 PM link Poosted by Homie Bear

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Don't be fooled, it turned into another miserable windy day. But the sunrise was nice!

9:25 PM link Poosted by Homie Bear

Sunday, January 22, 2012

Here's a dirty word for you: verschmutzt. According to Google Translate, it's German for dirty. Earlier today I had no idea what it meant, and it was stressing me out a little. I worked overtime today, Sunday you know, twice the pay and all that, but I came in to run shovel which I haven't done for quite a while. They threw me on shovel 11, which is the rental shovel we got to replace shovel 8 and is identical to shovel 9. More or less. A few key differences, such as shovel 11 only comes in German for some reason. So the komputerschmitzen was telling me my somethingsomething was verschmutzt. What are you supposed to do with that? "Uh, dispatch, this is shovel 11. Can you send up a mechanic with a deverschmutzter? Yeah my luftwaffens are reading a little high on the verschmutzty scale. Ach du lieber!"
But thanks to Google Translate I know it was just telling me my air filters were dirty. Which is the coal mining equivalent of saying your battleship is wet.

Labels: work

8:47 PM link Poosted by Homie Bear

Older Posts Home www.flickr.com All material, unless otherwise noted, is © 2002-2011 Nathan Waddell. nwaddell at gmail (dot) com to contact me. The Origin of Homie Bear. Bear art by Sarah How, © 2005. Unless it's the pirate bear, which was drawn for me by Karen Ellis. Robot bear created by Shane Cheffins