Night shift! Except, that should read Night shift! with one of those upside down exclamation points the Spanish language has which means the opposite of ascited. I'm sure in Spanish it means something else but only being half-Mexican I can only be half sure about such things. Tomorrow night, New Year's Eve, is not a statutory holiday so I am required to go to work! All night long! Think of me when you're having some bubbly! (where the !s are all understood to be upside down)

I keep meaning to do this experiment, but for logistical and lazinal reasons I haven't yet- I want to turn on my two iMacs at the same time and see which one gets on the internet faster. I truly suspect my circa 2007 17" 512 MB of RAM clunker that's still working off of whatever came before Snow Leopard (Housecat?) would win the race over my brand new 27 incher with 8 gigs of RAM running Lyin. I mean, Lion.
I know, there's me with the anti-Apple negativity again, right? But I love Apple, as much as I can say I love any corporation. You should see all the Apple hardware I have in this house. That ancient iMac I mentioned? Pallas uses it as her personal DVD player and it works great for that. My getting-to-be-ancient iPod Touch still works great, though it is too old to accept iOS 5.
It's because the expectations are that much higher. Apples aren't supposed to suck! So when they kind of do first you have a bit of defensive denial and then you're kind of gobsmacked. Each update comes and you think it'll get better. Not so far though. Wouldn't bother me if these updates weren't more or less forced down your throat if you want to keep updated with all your iOS stuff. (But I showed them- my iPad is still running iOS 3! Heehee!)
Is it too soon to joke about praying to Steve? Maybe, eh?
Well, here's a wish list for the next round of bug fixes and whatever:
Faster please.
You know that little icon that shows you when your iPod is done charging in your iTunes sidebar? Bring it back! Why you would take that away is a little baffling. It was there just last week.
That "fix" that was supposed to take care of webpages flashing white every now and then? Didn't work.
Is there any way to make the computer itself run cooler just by tweaking software? I doubt it but if so, make it so.
Make google stop changing gmail. Oh, right, enemies now, I forgot. Sorry.

8 Skeins of Danger tagged me and seeing as how he was instrumental in getting that meme I started going (ie he recognized the memetic potential and turned it into one) I thought I should play along. I did a similar one some years ago with Metallica so I thought I would do my other favorite band, The PIxies. Back in 1991, a bemulleted Homie Bear sat next to this really cute proto-goth in grade 11 English. We talked bands and though she didn't care for Sepultura and Death and Obituary as I did, she managed to turn me onto this cool band called The Pixies. Possibly on the very day they broke up, who knows. Though to be fair I think they broke up in 1993. The ticket stub held up by FX-7s is for one of their first shows after reforming. And I saw them again earlier this year performing Doolittle start to finish! Anyways:

Using only song names from ONE ARTIST, cleverly answer these questions.
Try not to repeat a song title.

Are you a male or female:
Here Comes Your Man

Describe yourself:
Gigantic

How do you feel:
Where is My Mind?

Describe where you currently live:
Planet of Sound

If you could go anywhere, where would you go:
Isla de Encanta

Your favorite form of transportation:
Levitate Me

Your best friend is:
Crackity Jones

You and your best friends are:
Dancing the Manta Ray

What's the weather like:
Stormy Weather

Favorite time of day:
Bird Dream of the Olympus Mons (so like, 6:35)

If your life was a TV show, what would it be called:
Debaser

What is life to you:
Blown Away

Your relationship:
Monkey Gone to Heaven

Your fear:
Break My Body

What is the best advice you have to give:
Distance Equals Rate Times Time

Thought for the Day:
La La Love You

How I would like to die:
All Over the World

My soul's present condition:
Oh My Golly!

My motto:
I'm Amazed

I'm gonna be ascited!!!!! That's how Pallas says she's eagerly anticipating Xmas. And this year has been absolutely magical watching her truly get into the spirit for the first time. She sprinted to sit on Santa's lap when it was finally her turn. And what did she ask him for? Presents!
I tried explaining to her the naughty/nice concept as a subtle way of hopefully influencing her behavior for the next few days. She listened solemnly and when I asked her if she thought she had been naughty or nice, she without hesitation asked, "But how Santa can come out from our chimney?" This is her biggest concern, of course, since our fireplace is one of those sealed gas ones that doesn't have an actual chimney. Even at not quite 3yo, Pallas can plainly see there's no way for the fat guy to pull that one off.
"Well, you know, Santa Magic."
And that's the heartbreaking aspect of all this Santa magic- that we are telling her these egregious lies, all in good fun, that she is wholeheartedly believing. I always thought I would be the parent who wouldn't teach his kids about Santa and all that, but somehow we just did almost by osmosis. Yeah, it's magical and soooo cute, but part of me really feels actually guilty.
I wish there was actual magic in this world that I could give you, little girl. I do.
At least I have something even better to give you- love.

Tobogganing!
Tobogganogganing!
Tobogganogganogganogganogganogganing!

Yesterday was Naia's first birthday. It's crazy how fast the time goes. We had a small family gathering in her honor. Though for Pallas's first birthday we made bookmarks and magnets and graven invitaitons . . . well, Naia doesn't care, she liked her cupcake just fine.

Speaking of babies, earlier this week my sister gave birth to a cute little boy so I have a nephew now. He came over yesterday for the birthday party and he's pretty stinking cute.

Been a busy week, just got back from Calgary for the weekend and now I'm in Hinton for dayshift starting tomorrow. How was nightshift? It was alright. I got to drive an ambulance (in a blizzard) for a guy who wasn't hurt or anything, just off food and meds for a bit too long. And here's a video I took of a loader loading a kress truck, basically the two jobs I do the most at the moment. Dark cause you know, night shift. But looks kind of cool in that post-apocalyptic way that pretty much defines my work environment.

Our big digger is down for a month getting some renovations done. New hairdo. Air up the tires, that sorta thing. I don't know if I ever mentioned here, but our more littler digger is no more. Retired unexpectedly. I was the second last guy to operate it. They asked me if I noticed a strange vibration, and I was like, you mean, stranger than all the other vibrations?

Our even more smaller digger is also slated to get two new engines (it's a diesel/hydraulic shovel, unlike the electric shovel pictured here which has no engines) right away.

Now might be a good time to invest in a company that makes handheld shovels, because pretty soon they're just gonna hand each one of us one and tell us to start digging.

If this doesn't make your selfsoul happy, I dunno what will. I just read the first two TPBs of the new New Mutants comic, and that makes selfsoul happy too. The first volume is a Legion story, it was alright though I've never been a fan of Legion and his dumb hair. If he's so omipotent maybe he can get a better haircut. But the second volume is where writer Zeb Wells' lifeglow really starts to shine.

Digression. The New Mutants book of the 80s was one of the best for sure. Younger, more inexperienced, not-quite-ready-for-the-majors students of Xavier's, it was consistently well written by X-Men legend Chris Claremont and had a sizeable run by surreal artist Bill Sienkiewicz. Warlock was one of my favorites, though they all were, except maybe for Doug Ramsey, whose mutant power was understanding languages. Anyways, he met a violent end in a comic book that I missed, so I dunno how he died but he did. Warlock might have, too. They were best friends.

Okay. So Zeb Wells, in volume 2, decided to bring both Warlock and Doug back to the fold. Fair enough, happens all the time, with mixed results. But Zeb does it right. Not only does Doug come back in a convincing and kinda unique way, but his language power is revealed to be way more kick ass than Claremont or anyone in the world ever imagined.

Like I said, it made my selfsoul happy. Definitely going to read Volume 3: Fall of the New Mutants

These are not the droids you're looking for.

About 15 years ago now I took a science fiction class at University. It was a 3rd year English course, not Science Fiction 101 or anything like that. It was a great class, but now I don't recall much of it. Two books stuck with me though- Neal Stephenson's Diamond Age, of which i have blogged about plenty since it's pretty much my favourite book ever, and the other one made less of an impact but I never forgot it, either. Iain M. Banks' Player of Games, a Culture novel.

I just finished reading Matter, also set in the Culture universe. Now I have a mission- to read all the Culture novels. If you like high concept sic-fi, and who doesn't, you should do the same. Did you ever read Ringworld? Or play Halo? In both of those the central environment is a huge artificial ring encircling a star. Pretty cool concept- never having played Halo I dunno if they do much with it, but Larry Niven does with his Ringworld novels (which I loved the first two when I was a kid, read the third a few years back and found it kind of terrible). Anyways, Matter is set on a similarly creative planet- a Shellworld, an artificially constructed hollow planet with layers in it. Cool.

Gotta acknowledge 11/11/11 right? And it seems wrong to not at least give a nod to Remembrance Day.

Other than that, though, not too much to say. Well, a photo is always worth a thousand pixels. Here's two:

Some random silliness and/or awesomeness. See if you can tell which is which:

YodaHulk!

Ahsoka Tano Halloween Costume!

I got my DVDs of Clone Wars Season 3 finally so it's time for a Clone Wars motif. Even just a spacey motif in general since I have been enjoying Peter Schilling's Error in the System, which was my second ever tape I ever got. William Shatner recently did a cover of Major Tom (Coming Home) and though it is, uh, Shatnerrific, uh, I love the original. Interestingly, on the same album (entitled Seeking Major Tom) Shat includes Mrs. Major Tom, sung by Sheryl Crow and without any accompaniment from the man. It's quite lovely.

Took a couple days off after that marathon blogging sprint in October- I blogged every day in October, a feat only accomplished two times before in the previous nine years right here. Yup. Some days it was pretty weak, and in all honesty I count it a bit of a failure since I never did get around to writing any sort of Halloween poem or story or anything. Two kids is a Harrison Bergeron effect if there ever was one.

You know what's awesome? The Wire. Finally got around to watching Season 1.
You know what's less awesome? Metallica and Lou Reed's collaboration, Lulu. Master of Puppets and Lou Reed's New York are easily the two albums I could have on a dessert island stuck with some sort of infinitely rechargeable iPod that also somehow only had room for two albums. So put them together and it should be instant head asplode awesomeness right? Well, not at first. But you know what, I'ma go against the flow here and give it more chances. Lou and Jaymz together at last? A pairing not even Cthulhu could have conceived of? How can I say nay? I can't. It's awesome just for trying! Yup, I'm declaring it awesome!

Therefore what must bear the brunt of my anti-awesome venom is OSX Lion. Sorry Apple, I love you and have one of everything you sell (except an Apple TV which isn't even a TV at all! ) but Lion really sucks. Srsly. Safari never crashed on me once with Snow Leopard, but with Lion, about a hundred billion times so far. Since yesterday.

Happy Halloween!
I was really looking forward to carving pumpkins with Pallas, I even got her her own little set of carving knives, but Michelle convinced me it might be better if she just painted her pumpkin. I made her a Tinkerbell pumpkin, and a Green Lantern one too, which on the back I drew a Red Lantern symbol but never got around to carving it. Too much tricking and treating to do!

  

I think one of life's greatest pleasures is trick or treating with a toddler. Trick or treat! She said it so clear at every house, and thanked everyone, even wishing one lady "Happy Halloween, okay!" Maleficent answered the door at one house and was shocked that I knew her name. But Pallas really impressed her by telling her she was the bad guy from Sleeping Beauty. Her middle name IS Aurora, dont'cha know. Naia didn't come out with us this year. But she was a pretty cute Elmo, even if the costume was several sizes too large.

 

 

I'm supposed to be at work right now but I took an extra day off for Halloween. But Homie Bear, it's not Halloween yet. I know, but right now I've been awake for 28 hours or so, which I didn't want to be the case tomorrow for trick or treating with the girls. How do you do that tense, anyways? The future implausible? I didn't want to have been yet that froop. Yeah that's another thing, the day after nightshift makes you a little loopy. Like, I went to buy Naia a Halloween costume today and for some reason it seemed eminently logical that she should have a Toddler 2T size despite the fact she's only ten months old and in the 25th percentile for size.
We got three pumpkins to carve tomorrow!  Hopefully they will be as awesome as last year's:

Hey look I accidentally started a meme. After years of trying to get the "Everyone give Homie Bear ten dollars" campaign to go viral, what finally sticks is the "What 5 action figfures would  you keep if the devil threatened to destroy the world unless you threw all your toys away but he still let you keep five because he's really a nice guy." And I have to credit my Flickr friend 8, who really got the ball rolling.
It started here, and continues here and then here and here, here, here, here , here, here, . . .

The Edmonton Examiner is one of those small, free community newspapers that mainly focus on neighbourhood feelgood stories. My buddy emailed me and said Pallas was on the cover of the newest one, undoubtedly that same photo from the Sun, unless she did a photoshoot she didn't tell us about, but ours didn't have it. It boggles the mind but apparently there are completely different versions printed up for different regions of the city. Anyways, if yours has my daughter on the cover could you save it for us? Cheers.
In other news, Glen Weldon asks Who's the Spookiest Super Villain? He makes a good point about lab coats.
I'll say this about my little qwerty Samsung phone- you can drop it down a flight of stairs, watch it bounce, hit the floor, skid several feet and it will still work. Pretty sure my wife's new iPhone 4S that I got her for early Christmas wouldn't survive the experience. Though to be sure, Pallas once dunked my Mom's iPhone in coffee and it was able to be saved with some professional CPU CPR. My reason for brining this up, though, other than to brag about the fact I got my wife a 4S for Christmas, is to express surprise that Samsung is currently outselling Apple in the Smartphone war.

Ironically, for a guy who calls himself Homie Bear, given that bears have the best sense of smell in the animal kingdom, I am anosmic. Doesn't bother me too much. I don't play it up but I don't hide it either (which is why, after 9 years, this is the first I mentioned it). What happens is, at work, after I mention to the guys that I don't have a sense of smell, I'll find myself in a truck and there will alla sudden be all this snickering, and I'll ask what? and they'll be like, we was just testing you man, we been letting 'er rip all day and you ain't said nothing, I guess you really can't smell! Just the other day my good buddy Jay was fueling me up and he mentioned how gross it was, every now and then he caught a whiff of the shitter. Hmm, I said. Oh sorry, he says, I keep forgetting you can't smell. That's okay, it's not like I was just thinking I wish I could smell that shitter.
Really, it's kind of a super power, especially when it comes to changing diapers. But it means food has always been kind of utilitarian to me, a bit. Our latest book club book was Ruth Reichl's Garlic And Sapphires all about when she was the food critic for the New York Times. On the one hand, it was fascinating that she could write about food in such a rich way- the fricassaise has an oceanic flavor but the sensual succulence of the truffles held a note of a hidden brook etc etc. For me it's kinda "It was yummy" or "It was yucky." On the other hand, there's only so much food writing I can take before I need to go read some comics. Snobbery doesn't sit well with me. Recihl is not the snob, though she falls into the trap of it a bit as she dresses up in disguise to avoid being recognized as the pre-eminent food critic in the world. I liked the book- I just didn't like the world it described. Sommeliers? Not part of my world. And Maitre d's that have no time for you? Come to my world for five minutes we'll see how you make out in a coal mine buddy. Yeah. I visited New York about nine years ago, my buddy Jon who grew up in the same small town as me moved there. So there we were in the East Village just outside a liquor store or something, we had just bought a bottle of wine (undoubtedly something cheap) and were just hanging out on the sidewalk when a rich new York lady all into fashion with her little pocket dog walks by, and she did the classic snobby thing where she sniffed and said "Excuse me" in those icy tones reserved for the editors of fashion magazines and the like and I just couldn't resist- I said, "Why, did you fart?" You can't take us provincial small town Albertans anywhere.

Apparently I had stashed a box of Groo comics at my sister's house lo these past ten years or so. Do you remember Groo?

Sergio Aragones, Mark Evanier and Stan Sakai are to blame. Just teasing. I love Groo. Did, anyways. He still has a place in the nostalgic rooms of my geeky heart. Most issues were kind of the same, with a lot of running jokes, like someone says to Groo, "I know you are slow of mind" and he eventually, with a longer gap every time, says "Hey what did he mean I was slow of mind?" And there was a hidden message in each issue ("This is the hidden message" it always said if you were clever enough to find it). I pulled a couple out today to read- issue 11 of the Marvel series, in which a handsome Adonis named Arcadio takes the credit for all of Groo's accomplishments, managing to fool everyone, even Groo. And also #2 of the original Pacific Comics series, something I didn't even know I had. The price tag on the sleeve said $4 but that was crossed out and in its place it said $200. Which would make it the most expensive comic I own! I certainly don't remember paying $200 for it but you know, you can have it for a mere hundred if you want. That is a great deal, as any fool can plainly see.

She was in the paper!  Of course this really didn't impress her much as she's on the internet every day. She has no time for old media.

Tried to work overtime today but was stymied so instead we took the girls to West Edmonton Mall for a Halloween thing at Galaxyland. It was fun. Usually we avoid WEM but it wasn't so bad. There's a small possibility Pallas will be in the Sun tomorrow as a photographer took some photos of her since she was one of the only ones dressed up.

 

 

Pooing in the Woods is 9 years old today!  Which in blog years is pretty much a century. One more year for an even ten, then it might be time to shut er down. Or not, I don't know.
Here's nine random highlights culled from the previous nine years of archives:
The Case of the Missing Purple Gasoline
Terminus
Me vs all the haul trucks
Again, the abomination
I just love warehouses
Black heart scarring darker still
E=mc2
The Frog Store
Ode to Nemicolopterus crypticus

Although I didn't attend Comic-Con this year, I feel like I almost got more out of it in some ways by following the Twitter feeds of those who did, panelists and artists and such. Last year when we went, I hadn't yet fully resubmerged into the comics world, going mainly because of my long association with deviantArtists and the Star Wars community. And after all, it was Michelle's idea to go, for which I can thank Edward James Olmos since he gave her chills at a Calgary convention by saying "So say we all!" That was pretty great. Anyways, going in 2010 was the catalyst for me to jump back into comic fandom.
Thanks to the aforementioned Twitter feeds, I heard about yesterday's rather unexpected layoff of 15 Marvel employees. You certainly didn't hear about from Marvel's Facebook feed. The newspapers wouldn't really pick up on it, except for maybe a side paragraph in the business section where it would probably just speculate on how the move would impact Disney's share value or something. Here's a fairly informative article, maybe a little speculative as well but certainly more savvy than what I know. I'm just a guy who's loved the Hulk and Spider-man et al for over 30 years now. It's be nice if the custodians of these characters, the keepers of the legacy so to speak, were treated with a little more respect.

After being so wordy yesterday, today I just have some photos. Here we have 35 truck, looking like it is auditioning for a part in a children's show about mining:



And just a quick shot out my window as the small snow storm we had today started to clear up and melt away.

I'm glad I decided to give Malcolm Gladwell another chance. I read Blink a few years ago and though it was a fun read I was left a little unsatisfied- the thesis was (I may be a little off now a few years on) essentially that you can really trust your snap judgments except for when you can't. But this past week or so I've been reading What the Dog Saw and loving it. I keep turning to Michelle and saying "Even if you don't read this book you should just read this one essay," but I say it about all the essays so really she should just read the whole thing. The essays vary widely by topic but they definitely have some commonality- they tend to point out a new way of thinking about something familiar, giving you new insight on a wider world. Gladwell is really really good at pointing out things you might never have noticed but once you're shown, they almost seem obvious. Once I figured out that that was what he did, I learned to adjust my expectations accordingly. So with Blink, I kept waiting to be given some tools to figure out when my first impressions are trustworthy and when not. BUt he never promised to do that, I just assumed he would. Same with many of these essays, and here's an example I spent some time pondering today at work: In the essay The Art of Failure he discussed the subtle but fundamental differences between choking and panicking. I don't want to just repeat what he said but I was completely engaged because it seems to me that having understanding of what's going on in your head when you either choke or panic can be useful for the next time it happens. Again, Gladwell is content to point out that this is what happens without really going into how to prevent it from happening to you. Which is fine because I have 12 hours at work to mull things over. It kind of has a personal stake for me because of my recent motorcycle crash- by Gladwell's definitions I panicked rather than choked in that situation.



Now- I have always prided myself on my coolness under pressure and I honestly can say I don't panic, at least in the sense of getting all excited and doing the chicken-just-met-an-axe thing. But when I realized, going into that corner on my bike, that I was going too fast, I grabbed my brake, and that was my undoing. As my dad pointed out, braking while cornering causes a bike to stand up which is the opposite of what you want. With more experience, that situation woulda been took in stride. But as a newbie, in that moment without tons of experience to draw on, I just did the only thing I could think of- grab the brake. textbook panic, according to Gladwell, because in the stress of panic you lose short term memory. So even though I was totally calm as I flew through the air, I have to say I panicked. At least I didn't choke! But choking is reserved for those who really know what they are doing. So some day I hope to be good enough to choke.

Edward James Olmos follows me on Twitter. He's not hanging on my every word though - he follows pretty much everyone who follows him.  Not that I tweet much anyways, I have a hard enough time blogging every day which so far in October I have been able to do. But in honour of Eddie Adama, we watched one of his classic movies last night- Stand and Deliver. It was kind of fascinating from an anthropological/historical point of view- set in the mid 80s much like part of my own life was. So thinking about this gentleman who was hired to teach computers at a school that had no computers (so he teaches them calculus instead) who in real life goes on to be active on Twitter . . . the world has changed a lot in the past 25 or so years, which is not a brilliant thing to say but it's an easy thing to forget. Of course, you could reach the same conclusion by watching original Battlestar and then the new one.

Spoiler alert! If you still want to see Green Lantern, don't read this.
Even after I downgraded my expectations for the Green Lantern movie (based on all the negative reviews, though I still held out some hope as a comic book geek that maybe it was too comic booky for everyone else) I still found myself disappointed. Often when a comic book movie disappoints, it's because the director seems to be completely ignorant of its source material. Elektra, for example. But that's not the problem here- save some minor tweaks for streamlining and simplicity's sake, the comic books, and specifically Geoff Johns' excellent version, are more or less faithfully transferred to the big screen. Maybe that's the problem- Hector Hammond with his oversized brain looks silly in "real life" and as a villain he fails because the poor guy was an innocent victim of circumstances he never asked to be involved in. He's quite a sympathetic character, actually (in the comics he has no redeeming features). Hal Jordan isn't even as sympathetic as poor old Hector. Hal's kind of an ass, actually. Not a charming ass like Tony Stark, just a kid who never grew up and doesn't know how to clean up the messes he makes. Maybe ass is too harsh, since I did like him, and I liked Ryan Reynolds fine.
 Parallax? Well, kind of lame. Better than Fantastic Four 2's Galactus in that he was more than a giant cloud- but not much more. And of course it stretches credulity that the entire Green Lantern Corps would be "He's too tough let's let him win" and then when Hal is like, "I'll fight him all by myself even though I am the greenest of Green Lanterns. Everything will be okay, you guys just chill on Oa!" I did like that he basically punched Parallax in the face, though. Nice.
Sinestro was the best part of the movie, I thought. The actor classed up the joint with his performance. Unfortunately, the final scene where he puts on the yellow ring doesn't really work because there is absolutely no reason for him to do so. In the comics he has a very complicated and nuanced reason for creating the Sinestro Corps and going to war with the Green Lanterns. Here it looks like he did it for the hell of it. I stilll hope they make a sequel, though. A war between the Corps would be pretty cool on the big screen. Maybe.

Last week I put up the Halloween decorations, and realized they were kind of sad. Styrofoam chunks missing, ancient curses nullified, that kind of thing. So I went and got some more. It looked like a billion things in the shopping cart but then when set up, less so. Oh well. I can always get more.

 

 

Back from another round of night shifts. Not much to say about that week- just a nice easy week, three parts Kress truck one part loader. Podcasts!
What's that band that has some American expats in it that are based out of Montreal and they're really good? Ar something? No, not Ar. . . hmmm . . . Barr. .  yeah-  Barr Brothers! They were on Q and played a couple of live songs. Wow. I was using the finger-swipey scrub motion to find the spots in the podcast to replay those songs. I can't find a link to it but all these are from iTunes anyways. CBC Q.
Speaking of music via podcast, Tegan and Sara have an entire folk festival concert available from NPR music which was nice and Tegan and Sara-y.
As It Happens had a pair of interviews with a Welsh gentleman whose giant vegetables caught the attention of Snoop Dogg who then posted a video to YouTube inviting him to a concert and backstage to discuss horticultural techniques.
Stephen Tobolowsky entertained, as always. And Freakonomics had an episode on hitch-hiking which I found interesting because of all my hitch-hiking adventures.

This pretty much says it all.

UPDATE: Pallas announced to us out of the blue that Cinderella was on her Facebook. Neither of us remembers ever mentioning Facebook in conversation but who knows, she had to have picked it up from somewhere!

I'm sure I've mentioned this sometime in the past 9 years, but Halloween is my favourite time of year. But horror movies and books are probably my least favorite of the genres of movies and books that I like- which is to say, horror is on the list of stuff I like, but it's at the bottom. Below sci-fi, fantasy, superherody, drama, comedy  and western. Science fiction and fantasy head the list because the emotions those evince, at least when done well, is a sense of wonder. Like, you want to go there and do that. Middle-Earth, an asteroid field, Hogwart's. Being a superhero would be pretty great, right?
Horror just tries to scare you. It's right there in the name. Some people really enjoy that feeling, but for me, not as much. And most movies don't really achieve that goal anyways. Then there's the sub-genres like slasher and all that stuff which I've never been into.
Nightmare Befote Christmas and Corpse Bride? Yes please.Sweeney Todd? No thank you. Well, that was alright but the Saw movies and me need never intersect ever again.
But after saying all that, I still love Halloween because the horror trappings, the ghosts and goblins and pumpkins and everything, is fun in a way that horror movies are not.

Have you ever heard of High Dynamic Range photography? The first couple of times I saw an HDR photo I was kind of blown away without really knowing why. Then they got to be kind of all the same, a bit. Maybe a little fake. Plus I am not really a big believer in heavily editing photos with software, I like to see what I can achieve in-camera. Although I am marginally open to the idea in the future, for now it is a photography blindspot for me. Here's a Flickr group devoted to HDR to give you an idea of what it is. Gizmodo posted a pretty cool HDR motion capture video, though. I used to have a little 3 megapixel FujiFilm camera, a Finepix, and that camera took some amazing shots for whatever reason. None of these photos were altered in any way by me- they came out of the camera like that:



I suppose the foregrounds would be a little better exposed if I edited them for HDR, but I like them fine. Spooky, Halloweenish. I took them at work one day many years ago now.

Then there's what I am going to call the Unapologetic Pop Culture Hellyeahs for those things that all the hipsters and everyone else but you turn their noses up at but you love. I got tons of those. Tons! Exhibit A: Load and ReLoad by Metallica. In fact, Metallica in general. No longer the cutting edge of cool that they were a mere 20 years ago, but I will never give up on Jaymz and the boys. Hellyeah! In fact I still listen to all those 90s thrash and death metal bands almost every day...
Exhibit B: Star Wars. Even the prequels, mostly. Childhood nostalgia goes a long way.
ElfQuest, and other 80s comics. Again, nostalgia trumps goodness! I'd mention modern comics too but no one really turns their noses up at them anymore. Not like in the good old days...
So You Think You Can Dance- most reality or competition shows fly under my radar but Michelle got me into the SYTYCD- some years I watch, some I don't, but there's some amazing dancing going on. The Canadian version was recently cancelled and all I can say about that is I hope Tre Armstrong lands on her feet.

Plus: Avengers Trailer!

James Bond came up at dinner last night and once again I was forced to admit that I have never been much for James Bond. It's what the Pop Culture Happy Hour folks would call a pop culture blind spot, except when they discuss blind spots, they mean they're open to them, just that they've never really gotten around to them before. Me, no real desire to get into Bond, James Bond. Shaken, not stirred and all that. Maybe the Daniel Craig ones but they're hardly new so if it was important to me I would have done it before now. In high school I had many a geeky argument over why I just wasn't into Bond, preferring guys like Indiana Jones. Bond was sophisticated, rich and cultured- probably the type to use an Oxford comma like I just didn't. Indy wasn't any of those things and I sure as hell wasn't either! If not shaving's good enough for Indy it's good enough for me goddammit. And so forth.
Other Pop Culture Blind Spots- Twilight. No surprise there, and I'm not the target demographic so no one gets hurt over that one.
Arcade Fire- Michelle and I both are marginally open to them, supporting Canadian (mostly) music and all, but so far we don't really get it.
Dexter was one but we just started watching the first season and are suitably hooked so cross that one off the list.
If I had a reliable commenting system I would invite you to share yours but for some reason comments only show up in Safari. Or Firefox? Oh yeah Safari.

Happy Thanksgiving!  Right now I'm feeling thankful that the Oilers have a perfect record, and hopeful that we'll still be able to say that for a week or so.
This morning we ran a 5 km Turkey Trot down the road by the rec center. Pretty good run, one killer hill at the end but we did alright. I think my time was in the 28:30 range, not bad for pushing a stroller with both girls. I know I was the first stroller roller to cross the line, anyways, for which I won a DQ gift card. Truthfully the gift card was a random draw I think but I choose to see it as the First Prize for my category of Old Guys Pushing Young Kids. Me and Pallas even had a cheer we made up for us:
Run so fast!
Kick some ass!
Come in last!

We went for a walk in the river valley today, and I didn't bring my camera which is a shame since it was a beautiful day. Pallas loves the forest, she is forever saying she's going to the forest to find her father, which apparently she learned from Beauty and the Beast. But here's a good photo of Naia:

There was an article in a Sports Illustrated, circa 1994, in which the writer related an anecdote about a guy named Joe Schitz. Seems Mr. Schitz got so tired of his name that he legally changed it. To Frank. Now no one would ask him "Whaddyaknow Joe?"
Last night at supper with some friends we were reading an article about Steve Jobs, seven things you never knew about him or something, and I impressed them by knowing stuff like his Syrian dad and who Joan Baez was and how to say Wozniak. It's not like I explained how transistors and resistors circuitly electrify with ohms to make an iPad work or anything like that, since obviously I can't. Anyways this got me thinking. What do I know?

Here's what I know about what I know.

Some of what I know is wrong. Too bad I don't know what. My wrong knowledge can come to me from an erroneous source- ie what I was taught was wrong to begin with. Or the knowledge changes over time- we were taught Pluto was a planet but now they teach us it is a dwarf planet (though we know better don't we precious?) Or our brain can fail us and "save" the info incorrectly. I was so sure Crockett's car in Miami Vice was a Testarossa- I could even recall the cheese grating in the opening credits, but my Dad, who knows cars but his pop culture fu is spotty at best, told me it was a Ferrari Daytona 365. No way!  Way! We argued and bet and then I owed him money. Though just now as a I googled it I see he DID drive a Testarossa after the Spyder was blown up in Season 3. I want my money back!

Much of what I know I've forgotten. At one time I used to know calculus and crystallography and what all the guts of a shark were, among other things, but now I don't.

None of what I know is not already known by google. Unless it's personal experiences and stuff like that I suppose. And the internet has been known to be wrong on occasion... So what's the point in acquiring knowledge when all the known knowledge of the entire world is at our fingertips (or Siri query)? I don't know!  Google it. Nah. I just like being smrt, even if all my knowledge is thoroughly useless. Like the fact that there was a joke in a magazine 17 years ago that would make an excellent intro to this little minimeditation. That's something google can't do for you- associate and correlate and bring it on home, from the top!

Sometimes you just need to go to Cracked.com and read some of their lists- like this one- 5 Absurd Ways Comic Books Have Resurrected Dead Superheroes.

Here's a video from the cab of my loader I took at work today, I just taped the camera to the dash while I loaded. So not all that riveting, but you get an idea what my day is like. Except it's more so. Oh yreah, nothing much happens for the first 1:30, and then nothing too much happens after that but at least it's different nothing than the first minute of nothing.

New Feist today! Sweet. Does anyone buy physical CDs anymore? Do you? Why or why not? I pretty much go with iTunes now, phased out on the discs without even really noticing I was doing it. It's the convenience mostly, and the price. If the disc was 9.99 I'd get it, then you'd have a copy for the car or if your computer and Airport Extreme get stolen/melted in a fire or whatever. I still buy books even though I intend to go with iPad versions one of these days. Once I clear my pile. That I keep adding to.

That's more like it- back on my truck today with my regular crew. Easy day, had some minor issues with my truck so I helped the mechanic out a bit and took some pictures from inside the box, somewhere I'd never been. Trippy, see?



Also here is what you see when I pass you.

Oh right I hate pumps! But I like getting paid double, so I went to work today on overtime as a pumpman. I figured it wouldn't be too bad, but it was rianing/snowing all day and there was mud and flooding and all that stuff I hate. One road was so flooded the water was up over the exhaust pipe and the truck made a funny gurgling sound and then died shortly after. Then a backhoe dropped a Godwin pump three times. But it still ran. They're tough, what the hell.  Nice thing? I was the third banana on the pump crew today, plus there's a contractor outfit taking care of one pit, so it wasn't all on me like in the old days. And now that it's over, it wasn't so bad. The paycheck will take away the sting anyways.

October already? Sweet! Too bad there's a pumpkin shortage in Alberta this year, I have some pretty good ideas for jack o' lanterns this time around.

It was an astronomical week at work this time around. Not because of anything work-related, though. Just lots of Northern Lights. Little spears of green light thrown by Pallas Athena from her perch up on Olympus. And one night there was the craziest meteor, a lot of us thought it was leftover debris from that satellite that fell to Earth- it was super-bright and gave off sparks, and about halfway through its arc, it turned green. I know Alberta doesn't have much credibility after that Okotoks Twitter Hoax but that's what I saw.
Otherwise work was nice and quiet, I just drove my truck and listened to many podcasts. If you have time, definitely check out this episode of DNTO, at least for the stories told by Jack Tueller, a WWII pilot and trumpet player. They also post to a YouTubeo of him, very very cool.
Thanks to my new friends at NPR's Monkeysee (and the related podcast Pop Culture Happy Hour), I checked out The Tobolowsky Files. Everyone knows Stephen Tobolowsky but you just didn't know his name. He's that guy from that show you like. Seriously. Turns out he's also a fantastic story-teller. Sorry about the obnoxious ads on that website, I just get all my podcasts from iTunes but I dunno how to hyperlink there. One last amazing podcast- the most recent episode of This American Life. If you get them the week they're posted they're free (and you can listen online for free too) so just go listen right now- it's this crazy (true) story about a P.I. agency staffed by soccer moms headed by a guy who starts to dabble in some extracurricular activities...
My drive home from Hinton this morning featured not strange astronomical phenomenon, but strange roadkill- a fox and a cougar, though not together. I've only ever seen one live cougar in the wild and it's sad that now I've seen an equal amount of dead ones.

My friend JimSmash sent me some Hulk comics! Sweet! Me like Hulk. One of them was this classic from 1977. Spoiler alert- the unexpected super-villain is none other than Bi-Beast! Yup, the clone robot thing with the dual nature (plus he has two faces on his head) that was made by some bird-people on a floating island somewhere. I was a little hesitant to google him but it turns out he isn't as obscure as I might have thought, and even cameoed on a relatively recent episode of Avengers:Earth's Mightiest Heroes. It says so  on his Wikipedia page.

My dad and I went for another ride yesterday, possibly the last of the season but hopefully not. We decided to go to the Brazeau Dam, just to see. Why not? When I was a kid we went to see the Grand Coulee Dam in Washington. That one was a little more impressive.

It's the late Jim Henson's 75th birthday! Lots of love for him all over the net, from the Googlelogo to announcemnts of Henson-related graphic novels (Dark Crystal!  Yeah!) and this video of the Muppet song by OK Go (to be fair it wasn't strictly for his 75th but whatever). Pallas liked it as much as I did.

 Happy Hobbit Day! Hobbit Day, of course, being the birthdays of both Bilbo and Frodo Baggins, who were born on September 22, 2890 and 2968 (Third Age) respectively.
Did you know Alberta's own Evangeline Lilly is appearing in The Hobbit as the Elf Tauriel, a role created for the film. She was my favorite thing about Lost, well her, and that hobbit.

I owe Pallas five bucks. We were upstairs playing while Michelle was making supper. Then there was a vacuum sound and Pallas asked what it was. "Mommy's vacuuming." "No. That's not!" "Yes, sweety, that's the vacuum cleaner." "Mommy's not vacuuming! She's not!" And we then had a protracted argument, which I thought I would end by saying, "Yes it is, I'll bet you five bucks." She answered by saying something about 6:35 which is her favourite number for some reason and then we went downstairs for supper. And Michelle was not vacuuming anything, it was our neighbour doing something outside. So I guess I owe her $6.35.

Anyways. Always with the tinkering. Facebook. George Lucas. Even Blogger. Why? To make something better? Not if you ask all 8 billion Facebook users, or the remaining 8 Star Wars fans. George Lucas has never held the Star Wars universe in the same esteem as his fans- for him it's always been about developing new technology to do cool things and making money while doing it. That's not even a cynical criticism by me- I love Star Wars and always will because he can't go back and tinker with my childhood- it's just a widely-accepted reading of the ample history available on how Star Wars came to be. It's also pretty commonly held that Lucas's strengths aren't in the "people skills" category. He makes neat stuff but doesn't always understand or seem to care why others like it or dislike it.
Mark Zuckerberg has never held Facebook in the same esteem as its users- for him it's always been about developing new technology to do cool things and making money while doing it. A common reaction to the howls of rage that accompanied the new(est) Facebook was along the lines of "no one's forcing you to use this free service that you enjoy". True enough, though I would argue that Facebook isn't free- just the costs are hidden and indirect. It's a $50 billion company for a reason, and that reason is not to give you more enjoyment. Does Zuckerberg and co care that you dislike the new Facebook? I doubt it, they never cared before all the times they changed it. Zuckerberg's strengths aren't in the "people skills" category. He makes neat stuff but doesn't always understand or seem to care why others like it or dislike it- and there still isn't a "dislike" button on Facebook.
Though you can always, like Vader, scream "Nooooooooo!"

Vacation over. My only regret is that I didn't take more. And that I didn't discover any perfectly preserved dinosaur feathers like these guys did. I hardly ever discover any dinosaur bones of any kind, and I live in a province chock full of dino bones. Every now and then we find some clam-type fossils at work, not even brachiopods which are supercool, just normal old clams. Is it too much to ask for a trilobite every now and then? Yes I understand the basics of biostratigraphy and all that. Still. Look at this crazy guy. It's like a long wormy trilobite.

There's so many calories in that cake that it may spontaneously explode. Your computer. But it's so yummy! So yeah, I had a pretty good birthday. Actually it was pretty quiet, all rainy outside so we stayed in and watched movies and read. X-Men First Class was fantastic.
The girls picked me out some gifts, and then Pallas told me, "Thanks for the birthday presents daddy!"

Here you go.

So I'm an uncle now! I have a niece. Yay!
Other than that, still on holidays. Weather's great. Alberta Beach isn't. Reading lots. Watching some shows. True Blood is goofy as ever but still a lot of fun. Rewtching BSG a bit, that first miniseries is good but the acting and filming aren't as great yet as they will be. Started watching LOTR during my workouts- the first time since I got back from New Zealand almost 7 years ago. Crazy. It's cool to recognize some of the scenery from having been there, and also I have a guidebook with coordinates so I can look up other places on Google Earth if I want to. First I would have to download Google Earth I suppose. Remember this place?


Pretty sure they reused it for The Hobbit.
Also, I have a niece!