Johnathan Nightingale

Moving sale, everything must go!

Tue, 19 Jul 2005 10:45:58 GMT

Because ownership and configurability are the milk in my cornflakes, my blog is moving to its own site, to become one with the rest of my web persona. And yes, there are actually posts there. Well, post. Please direct future inquiries to:

http://blog.johnath.com/

Hugs and Kisses, and of course I'll still be reading my friends page

--J

PS - For those who refuse to leave their LJ friends page, I'm told that this will replicate my presence: http://syndicated.livejournal.com/johnath_rss/

Hmm. Meme, you say.

Mon, 27 Jun 2005 02:14:47 GMT

See the thing with LJ memes is, I generally don't partake. I am not trying to be a sourpuss or anything, I just know in my heart of hearts that that way lies madness, since they are a) designed to self-propagate, b) infinite in supply. By definition then, they are agents of our own demise; an unending viral cycle which, once entered into, inescapably consumes its hosts like some brain-specific ebola variant. So when I choose then to stand up and say, "No. Not this man. This line shall not be crossed." it is not out of disdain for those already afflicted so much as it is my attempt at unselfish defense of humankind. Having said all of that though, I got tapped for this one twice, so what's a boy to do? I compromise as follows: I will comply, rend myself asunder that the germ might enter and infuse my unguarded mind, but I will name as victims only those already tapped by others. We can be like a leper colony, immune to eachother but isolated from the greater masses for their own protection.

List 5 reasons why you are a dork. And make them good reasons. Justify them. Explain them. Be loud and proud about how big of a dork you are! Then pick the 5 biggest dorks you know and have them do the meme.

I recently finished a project in the garage involving the gross disassembly and butchery of a common household toaster. I used Dremel cutting wheels to cut the metal. I de-soldered and re-soldered. I converted the electronics to run off a 9V battery. I cut, sanded, stained and poly'd a wooden casing for the new frankenstein apparatus. I documented my progress assiduously, and now I've written a magazine article to describe the process. I did all this so that the machine would make my tea for me. And it does.

I read with great aplomb and usually have several books on the go. Not dorky enough, you say? Some of the more recent titles then: Freakonomics, A Theory of Fun, Sibley's Field Guide to Birds of Eastern North America and The Secret Life of Lobsters.

I just finished a 5 day course through work titled "Ethical Hacking and Advanced Penetration Testing." By day 3 I was co-teaching it.

To my left when I sit in the office is the "Tech books" bookshelf -- 4 shelves of tech books and text books. That's not the geeky part. On top of that shelf are a basically random assortment of things that required a place to rest. They include, in no particular order: A Brother label maker, a Garmin eTrex Legend handheld GPS unit with data cable, an 8-bulb LED flashlight with the new Luxeon super-bright white LEDs, a pair of 2-way GMRS radios on their charger, a homemade cutaway-view Schlage lock cylinder (with mushroom pins!) and my set of homemade lockpicks and torsion wrenches. To my right is the clock, which has the numbers printed in the opposite order, and runs in reverse.

I can't write a 5th one right now, because I have to go watch MythBusters

As promised, I hereby tag only: heathen, smallstar, serennig and kelayrel

80s Canadian kids' TV themesongs

Sat, 25 Jun 2005 02:34:20 GMT

Amy and I are singing along with all of these. Those are neurons I'm not getting back.

http://billymasters.com/music/canadiantv.html

I *totally* forgot about The Edison Twins.

Thu, 16 Jun 2005 12:51:07 GMT

Cool: being published
Cooler: being published while using the phrase "I found my salvation in a toaster."

Non-fiction, of course.

Two things

Fri, 10 Jun 2005 15:25:03 GMT

Thing the First

How many people here RSS aggregate? I've been thinking for a while that my blog should live on johnath.com, and be movable type or something else equally fun to tinker with, instead of LJ. However I recognize that to whatever extent I write in here to reach friends instead of just record thoughts for my own re-reading, that purpose will not be served if I take my journal off into the wide open web. UNLESS, that is, my friends are all grooving on the RSS tip, in which case those who care can just agg. me and problem solved.

Thing the Second (and far more important)

DJ Format -- pretty cool guy, and hangs with other cool guys and produces cool stuff. But by FAR the coolest is this independently-made music video -- DDR fans in particular take note. This is just awesome stuff in general though, I must share it on the off chance someone here has not seen it:

http://www.keithschofield.com/djformat-video/

Fri, 04 Mar 2005 18:38:32 GMT

If you haven't read it you should -- Lloyd Axworthy just fucking DESTROYING Condi Rice... it's just, it's awe inspiring, whether one agrees with him or not:

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/westview/story/2610442p-3026695c.html

HHG2G

Wed, 16 Feb 2005 19:45:47 GMT

I assume everyone has seen this, but in case you have been under a rock as of late, it bears repeating. The Hitchhiker's trailer is available now:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/subst/home/home.html/102-0680710-4355336

Fri, 24 Dec 2004 03:38:55 GMT

I confess I enjoyed this more than I should have, given the poor lackey's exploitation; but then again, what a turd he is.

http://www.bobfromaccounting.com/shizzypage40.html

Why don't people want free money?

Tue, 30 Nov 2004 03:23:05 GMT

I am continually amazed at how hard it is to convince people to take free money. I mean, I understand that a certain skepticism is healthy, that in fact if you simply knee-jerk reject any good-sounding offer then you are less likely to get conned in life. Fine, but you also miss out on some decidedly nice little opportunities if you don't at least think before rejecting. I've got like, $500 in free money and a free xbox either in my hand or on the way, and the whole thing took about 6 hours spread across a couple otherwise uneventful evenings.

In a paragraph then, the deal is: online casinos are in a state of cutthroat competition for eyeballs, so they offer huge bonuses, like $200 bonus when you deposit $200. The catch is that you are forced to play a certain amount of casino gaming to "unlock" the bonus, and while casino games are normally a no-brainer money-loser, this is not the case when you're playing with $200 of their money. Indeed, if you play optimal blackjack (for which a chart is freely available), you stand to complete the requirements and cash out your original $200, plus somewhere between $120-$250 in bonus, depending on how your cards came down. Even more, I've offered to guarantee people their original $200 when they sign up through me since I get an affiliate kickback -- so there is officially zero risk, and about 3 hours invested, and STILL it's like pulling teeth to convince friends to take free money.

Very very strange, I tells ya. If anyone wants free money, email me or reply and I'll happily send deets, the whole situation is just so odd.

Home again

Tue, 19 Oct 2004 19:53:33 GMT

We're back and everything's fine -- here's a minor-edit version of the note I sent the family when we got back.

-- SNIP --
So we are back home and Amy is resting in bed.

Dr. Pham came out to talk to me just after 10 to say that everything went as planned and Amy is now exactly one gallbladder lighter. No complications, laparascopic, hoorah. You can't visit recovery at Peel Memorial/William Osler so I was told it would be an hour before she was wheeled into the day surgery beds. In actual fact, an hour become 3 because day surgery was backed up and because they weren't in any particular rush to boot people out the door anyhow.

They paged me just before 1 to come see her, and she was already awake, though pretty sleepy. She was not foggy or anything though, she was aware and everything, just tired. Them Lush/Nightingale women can handle their general anesthetic! The nurses wrote up her paperwork, kept her on IV fluids to get her blood volume back up, and basically just waited until her blood pressure was back to normal and her dizzyness went away -- both of which, I was repeatedly assured, are perfectly normal side effects from her surgery.

She's a trooper -- walked up the stairs at home all by her lonesome, got in the door, and found gift baskets from family -- sneaky! She's opened those in bed and is now alternating between napping and grape juice. She sends her thanks to everyone and says she'll talk to you herself once she's slept off a little more of the anesthetic. Doc says she should be back on solid food tomorrow and she reports that her stomach feels fine, stability-wise so it's pizza and chicken wings for breakfast tomorrow (kidding. Honestly people, what do you think of me? :)

Hope the suspense didn't damage anyone, and thanks everyone for their kind words and thoughts.

-- END SNIP --

Amy surgery, 9am tomorrow

Tue, 19 Oct 2004 01:26:46 GMT

Tomorrow, as the topic indicates, Amy's going in for gall bladder surgery at 9am. If I get a chance, I will post updates here while at the hospital (they seem to have a delightful wireless network) as the day progresses, otherwise I will post a synopsis ASAP. Wish her luck!

Tue, 28 Sep 2004 13:43:20 GMT

I have so many cuts and scrapes and mosquito bites but it was worth it:

45°N by 75°W

When looking at the map of our trip to Ottawa, Jeff and I were struck by just how closely we would be passing to a HUGE confluence (intersection of lat. and long. lines). Not some piddly thing like 41°N by 76°W or whatever - this was fourty-five by seventy five! Exactly half way to the north pole and exactly 75° off the meridian. We couldn't NOT go, really.

We drove as close as we could to the confluence, about a kilometer away and parked in an abandoned motel parking lot. The girls had a baffling lack of interest in confluences and preferred to stay around and crochet or something, so Jeff and I set out on foot with minimal provisions and an erstwhile flaky GPS.

I'd like to think, in retrospect, that this picture has Jeff hanging his head in a display of foreshadowed forebearance at the ordeal we were about to undertake, but I'm guessing he was actually just trying to get the GPS to turn on. The road ended at this woodlot and our trek began relatively well -- climbing over logs, ogling big machinery, spirits were high.

The woodlot ended at the forest's edge. In retrospect, we probably should have listened to that headless ghost wailing that to go further was madness, but at the time we shrugged it off and in we went.

This was basically the last time we saw the sun. If this looks dense to you, understand that it was WIDE OPEN SPACE. I took this picture to document the fact that we had reached a sort of oasis amongst the mountainous pain of the rest of the forest -- if this doesn't look like an oasis to you, then you are a person who has not been attacked by The Thorn Swamp for half an hour. Allow me to digress...

The universe, in its attempt at Karmic balance, tends to make great things difficult, so that you will understand and appreciate their value and rarity once you attain them. Being that this confluence is so thoroughly fantastic, a certain amount of balance vis a vis pain is to be expected. What this forest represented, however, would have been more appropriate to a confluence populated with nubile virgins that use gold leaf as fucking toilet paper. I'm talking mud of the kind that devours lesser men and the thorns, oh, the thorns. At one point we passed a full grown dragon carcass, impaled on a single thorn so large that enough point was exposed through its magical breast to slay us if we strayed to close. I believe even the universe, upon creating this chasm of horror, felt remorse at the evil it had wrought, and by way of apology endowed us with superhuman strength. Every tree we leaned on collapsed, in fact for a while I was using a tree as a hiking stick, until the log I was traversing (to avoid the mud of lost souls) splintered, rotten beneath my feet, at which point I shifted my weight to my Bunyanesque staff, only to have it collapse in a crumpled mess as well. My shoes may never recover.

Note: we have logged the location of the mushrooms.

Approximately 2 pints of blood later we arrived. We took about 400 pictures of the GPS mostly because we were giddy with malaria thanks to the mosquitoes which approached a density of approximately 500,000 per everywhere. Thanks to the mystical beings which had now infested the GPS, the same precise location entertained slightly varying notions of its position in the world, but clearly we are, to within an appropriate margin of error, Gods among men.

If you look very closely (the original, bigger picture helps for this) you can *just* make out that I need a shave.

If you look very closely (the original, bigger picture helps for this) you can *just* make out ABSOLUTELY NOTHING about the GPS. In fact Jeff is actually holding a frog.

The GPS tracked our route and looking at it showed us that we had made a sort of demi-circle despite following its directions faithfully, so we decided to take the straight line back to the car, whose occupants had probably decided to just go home anyhow. The thorns were much much denser this direction, but if we were the type to let certain death frighten us, we would have stayed back with the knitting circle, wouldn't we? After a while, we saw a heavenly vision...

Power lines mean the ground has been cleared, right? We can just walk betwixt the power lines until we hit the road, right? If you think this, you are a giant idiot. Because apparently, seconds after the land was cleared for power lines, the ThornSwamp began regrouping. The ground was covered, to a height of a few feet, with vines of... wait for it...

...thorns. Naturally. And because of their viny nature, these ones were ever so much more inescapable than the trees. It was about then that we heard a young child shout "What are you doing back there? You know there are bears back there?" The notion is laughable, of course, no bear could survive that shit, and if it COULD, wouldn't it have been hanging around the confluence too? Anyhow, after some negotiation, the child summoned a parent who confirmed that we could indeed cut through their backyard to get to the road (Yes, their yard backed on to the thorn swamp. I can only assume they are demons). He asked us what we were doing back there, which became more and more difficult to explain as we continued, but eventually he just allowed us passage and his darling wifedemon told us to avoid the doggie landmines left by Poopsie.

We returned to the car to find the women slightly annoyed that our trek had lasted long enough to prevent the visiting of a cheese place in Belleville on the way back. One can only assume that this is how Moses felt when he led the Israelites out of the desert to find his wife talking about how supper was probably cold by now. Still, we felt bad for it and the cheese outing will happen at a later date. Now all that is left is to grow new skin. We RULE!

Mon, 31 May 2004 02:52:40 GMT

A little while ago I got married

I haven't written about it because I don't know what to say. It was perfect - as far as I am concerned, it was perfect. The day was everything we had hoped it would be, and we think everyone had a good time, which was our goal. When we started on this whole thing, we agreed that we both wanted to throw a good party, and I think we really did.

What can I say? I can tell you my bride looked radiant (she did), or that the cake was great (it was) or that people were right about how quickly the day flies by (very). The thing is, it's such an emotional day, such a charged, personal, spectacular day that I don't know how well it can be conveyed.

One thing, one thing that touched me much deeper than I would have anticipated, is how generous, how positive people are about marriage. I'm not just talking gifts, though I very nearly cried as we opened gifts and realised how much people gave that had no business doing so. I'm talking honking horns as they drive by, mimosas for Amy and the girls at the hair salon, co-worker after co-worker from random other departments not just firing off an email but coming over to visit and chat and tell me it is the best decision of my life. The positivity surrounding marriage is so encompassing, it is so human and social, it affected me more than I would have thought. I told Amy the night of the wedding - I want to be those people. The ones who make it an extra-big deal. And even though we already try to be those people, I want to try harder. It was such a warm, community feeling to be surrounded with. Amazing.

And after that to Mexico, which floored me. The Dominican Republic when we went back in 2002 was my first trip off N.A. believe it or not, and my first all-inclusive and when I returned I couldn't say enough good things about it. I have been deliberate in my attempts to avoid comparing the D.R. and Mexico because they are different and enjoying them need not be a zero-sum comparison. So while I don't want to take anything away from the dominican, I will say that from a service point of view, from a how-am-I-treated point of view, Mexico was outstanding. There's a sort of relaxed happiness there that is infectious. The happiness, no, contentment, is infectious, and the relaxed, let's-sit-by-the-pool, no, let's-siesta is very infectious. We went on a day trip to an Eco-park (Xel-Ha) where we snorkeled in a bay off the ocean in the morning. Amy and I were so floored by the experience, so in love with it, we nearly forgot that we still had the afternoon leg of the trip. The afternoon took us to the Mayan Ruins of Tulum. No words.

I discovered something else during the wedding process. I get uncomfortable when focus is placed on me for too long. Not stage fright, not fear of speaking to crowds, I don't mind that. That is measured in hours. What I find uncomfortable is attention measured in weeks. Conversations at work centered on wedding planning. I had not 1, not 2, but 3 bachelor parties. I had a lot of people come to a church to watch me get married, and then once I got home, I had people giving me things for my birthday. I was surprised at how antsy that experience made me -- grateful, but ever more desiring to hide for a while. My co-worker is buying a house next month and I'm so happy that we get to talk about him now -- except now I have wedding photos that people at work demand to see. I dunno if this discomfort is fleeting or not - I suspect not though. Our invitees shouldn't kid themselves -- Amy and I are aware of what accepting a wedding invitation can cost. We are very aware of what agreeing to be in a wedding party can cost too - and I feel uneasy at times thinking about the burden we put on people. But as I said to Amy as we opened envelopes -- the way out of that feeling is not to return their money -- the way out is to make sure we give all the more freely when we're honoured with such an invite in the future.

Don't get to this point and feel like I'm being overly ponderous and plodding. The thing is, I feel ecstatic. Not only do I have a ring on my finger to fidget with, but I have a wife sitting next to me (talking to her computer, as it happens). The thing is that I didn't know how effective it would be to have a journal entry that just says

happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy .

Maybe I'm wrong - in which case now I've included that too. It's just that the whole thing did make me think about a lot of things -- did make me *feel* about a lot of things too. I figured it wouldn't be an accurate re-telling without some of those. But then, it wouldn't be an accurate re-telling without the happy happy happy either.

Also I kissed a fish.

wtf?

Mon, 29 Mar 2004 19:59:23 GMT

I did not expect to be in atlantic city this weekend.

lethie has already mentioned the trip, but for those who missed it, here is the quick summary:

I did not expect to be in atlantic city this weekend.

The guys (Kevin, Chris, Rob, Matt, and Brian) surprised me friday morning with a van, and a duffel packed by my sneaky fiancée, and instructions to shower, pack some deodorant, and prepare myself to hit atlantic city in an unofficial pre-bachelor-party bachelor party.

Totally snowed. I had not a whiff of a hint this was going on. Truly truly stumped. They rock! :)

We are not on the road ten minutes before problem one strikes: my bank has locked all my accounts. This creates a problem when seeking to play poker for something other than potato chips. I route around difficulty by using a dormant (and empty!) line of credit at another bank, then get back on the road and then start sorting that out. Turns out an affiliate cheque Barnes and Noble sent me bounced, and in my cleverness I cashed it through the one account without overdraft - so my account was overdrawn and locked. Solid. Fixed now though.

Cross border, driving down the 476 through Pennsylvania, van dies. Quarter of a tank of gas left, and after 10 minutes it's rolling again, sort of, so we figure probably the gas gauge is crappy, and vow to keep it topped up above half for rest of trip. About a minute later it dies again and is less willing to restart. Out comes CAA card, which is then chained to AAA, which is chained to some other people and 15 minutes later a nice man comes and gives us some gas. We drive to the next station, fill up, back on the road.

Hit motel around 9:30, hit the Tropicana around 10:30. I'm playing fucking poker in atlantic city, and the first thought that runs through my head is:

I did not expect to be in atlantic city this weekend.

The trop's poker room is huge, though the tables, chairs, and dealers are not as nice as Rama, but the size, coupled with the concomitant improvement in speed getting through the waiting list makes me quite happy to be playing there. I make a couple questionable bets and am down $8 when we head to hooters for "dinner" around 12:30am. Fabulous sauce on the wings, but I've never had wings so greasy that grease quite literally squirts out of them as you bite them. "3 mile island" is also less spicy than the name might suggest, but very tasty. We keep playing at the trop till about three then back to sleep. Total sleep, 4 hours.

Saturday we decide to check out the Borgata, a new casino off of the main strips (Atlantic and Pacific avenue -- monopoly streets everywhere, so fabulous!). Best decision we made the entire trip. Their breakfast buffet made me weep - strawberries the size of peaches and tasty as all get out - waffles with choclate chips and pre-warmed maple syrup, and country gravy for the hash browns and scrambled eggs. And their poker room is where God goes whenever he plays poker, I think. Fabulous surroundings (no smoking, natch), fabulous dealers, even the seats were top notch. The waitresses were such thoroughly successful eye candy that I almost looked right at them, despite being an almost-married man. We sat at 12pm and got up at 3am, basically. After that breakfast I wasn't really hungry till at least 12-14 hours later anyhow.

Some of us sat the entire session, but Brian and I took a breather around 5 and went for the nickel tour of AC. We went to the Taj Mahal (big poker room, but cramped -- many old people) and the Sands (a hole, not to put too fine a point on it), walked the boardwalk to get there (like a permanent CNE), and drove on at least half the monopoly streets in the process (Never did get to Park Place, but we covered the greens and yellows, I think, plus some oranges and reds.) Came back to the Borgata even more impressed with it, having seen more of the competition. Also won myself back into positive territory.

After a whirlwind 3am tour to collect a souvenir $1 chip from each of the poker casinos, we were back to the the motel. Total sleep, 4 hours.

We're driving back and Kevin decides to get himself dropped off in Kingston to visit Tracey, so we reroute to cross the border through Kingston instead of buffalo/niagara. What this means is that when the van broke down again, and much more thoroughly, we were dead on the 401 instead of a US interstate, which, if one is looking for silver lining, is a nice thing. This time van's got 3/4 of a tank, and more importantly, it's simply not interested in starting at all. The other nice thing is that Kevin is not in the car anymore, so we have no real proxy representative of the *owners* of this vehicle. He's also not answering cell phone.

I call CAA (again - loving that card more and more) and get the details on what they can do for me (turns out, a great deal). I call Amy who looks up Kevin's parents. I call Kevin's parents and explain situation -- my card'll cover 200km of towing, but we are more than 300km from their house or their car dealer. I suggest we tow it as close as we can without paying any extra fees, and they can take it from there. They are rather distraught, but agree this is more sensible than the other options. I call CAA (again) and chitchat with Marnie, who is a fabulous human being, but whom, despite it, tells us that there is not likely to be any way 5 of us can ride with the van 200kms. That's bad news.

But Marnie is just getting started being fabulous, she puts me on hold and talks with her dispatchers, then rushes through explaining to me that if we get this order in RIGHT FUCKING NOW there is one (ONE) truck with an extended cab that can take us, all five of us. We rush. We get the truck. I tell Marnie that she is welcome to at least one of my kidneys. I call the Kevin's parents, tell them we're taking it somewhere in Pickering. I call amy and have her find somewhere in pickering to go, and she calls her dad to get minivan to pick our sorry asses up from pickering. Not 10 minutes later the truck is there (I'm still on the phone) and Charlie, Marnie's tow truck driver from heaven is loading us in and taking us home(-ish). I chat with Charlie most of the way about the towing business, the truck, the quality of various cars, and his boss' fight with alcoholism. We thank Charlie profusely at the other end, and then I caress my CAA card fondly for saving us what would otherwise have been a $500 tow (not to mention the $50 gas up service in the states). I will keep that membership till the day I die.

Amy picks us up - and we ride home in a non-broken-down van, dropping people off along the way like sleepy little paratroopers, each of them falling asleep against their front door as we drive away.

So to make the very long story short, it was an awesome weekend. Car troubles are par for the course on a car trip and give us something else to talk about - the big story - visiting atlantic city and having an absolute blast playing poker all weekend with the guys -- that was fabulous. And they rock for organizing it right under my nose without me seeing a thing.

I did not expect to be in atlantic city this weekend.

Wed, 25 Feb 2004 21:03:07 GMT

That's right... blame Martha. She's the *real* crook here. That's why people elect these guys -- to protect us from Martha.

As seen on a pixelboard highway sign

Sun, 08 Feb 2004 05:35:08 GMT

PLEASE DO NOT TAILGATE

EMERGENCY VEHICLES

People rock.

IM

Thu, 22 Jan 2004 17:06:31 GMT

I have been out of the IM scene for too long. They are indisputably handy things to have, and I use the IBM internal one at work all the time, but it has been quite a while since I've had one up and running at home.

For some reason, this deprivation bothers me in a way it has not previously.

So.

I need to know where my peeps are at on the IM front. My brother is on MSN, so clearly that is the current lead contender, but I will entertain other suggestions. Note that this is not a poll because I'm am not a member of the LJ aristocracy that seeks to oppress the non-paying plebes who mooch off the site and exist at its pleasure alone. If you prefer polls, think of this as a poll with lots of openings for write-in candidates.

If MSN is indeed your poison, you can consider including your IDs here too, that I may message and harass you.

Tue, 20 Jan 2004 03:14:38 GMT

Such is the ridiculousness of my life:

I just received email from the US military.

About beep.

wtf?

To all ma peeps living the low budget life

Mon, 12 Jan 2004 14:47:47 GMT

When I saw this, it reminded me of smallstar's plight, and while she's since had the microwave fairy visit her, if there are others of you out there looking for a microwave (people for whom I feel a deep and personal sympathy) know that HBC.com has a couple 0.7cf models on sale for $50 (Goldstar) and $70 (sharp).

I just can't stand to imagine people not having one of these.

Mon, 15 Dec 2003 19:14:24 GMT

as I look at the assorted spills on the kitchenette floor

coffee
tea
hot chocolate
milk
a couple grains of sugar
maybe even some cup-a-soup

I think

that must be the best drink
EVER

Fri, 12 Dec 2003 03:45:22 GMT

Stats Canada 1999 Data. Average and median RRSP by age*

                RRSP                 Median          Average 
                Ownership(%)         value ($)**      value($)**
Total           55                  20,000           51,200
Under25         24                   2,200            9,000
25-34           59                   8,000           19,100
35-44           66                  17,000           35,800
45-54           71                  30,000           65,200
55-64           67                  50,000           97,000
65 and older    20                  37,600           83,500

* for families, relates to major income recipient
** of those with RRSPs

Fully a third of people in the decade before retirement don't have RRSPs, and of those that do, the median value is a whopping 1 year of retirement income, maybe 2. Fucking boomers.

Shit

Thu, 11 Dec 2003 18:40:24 GMT

NOW what am I supposed to do with 10,000 chickens?

http://www.avma.org/onlnews/javma/jun03/030601d.asp

I think that wins for most callously awful idea I've heard today.

Tue, 21 Oct 2003 13:10:25 GMT

You drive to work, you drive home, and you watch them. They don't even realise that their cars have transparent bits. They are at their most genuine, because they are alone, or alone together.

they laugh,
they sing along with the radio,
they talk on the phone, using body language which is patently ineffective
they sing along with the radio LOUD, with their eyes squeezed shut and their heads tilted back,
they talk to the other drivers through closed windows, through windshields,
they cry,
they scream and scream at their spouses,
they drum on the steering wheel and dash,
they shake their heads in disbelief at the other drivers,
they - every single one - think they are an above average driver,
and some of them, a few of them, a very very few of them,
they look back.

They are honest.

People told me I would hate the commute. What a ridiculous thing to say.

Avarice

Fri, 26 Sep 2003 14:16:05 GMT

I have never been one to hate humans. I know a lot of humans are, that their rocks are most thoroughly gotten off by writing about how abhorrent we are in every aspect of our being. A popular frame for these arguments is the "we are the only creature in nature that X" where X can be any number of cardinal sins. I've heard we're the only animal that murders for pleasure, that we are the only animal that rapes, and often that we are the only animal with greed. That other animals take only what they need, they don't over-reproduce, they don't overextend the environment, and they recycle ALL their paper and plastics.

The other day I sat at the train station waiting for Amy's train to come in, when I noticed a small seagull approaching a large peach. I swear that peach must have been half the seagull's mass, it was at very least of size comparable to the seagull's torso. Far too much food for a single seagull, is what I'm getting at. He seemed pretty speculative at first, but I guess once he decided he was not above eating fruit with hair, he dug in. As is generally the case in this universe, other seagulls started to materialize, and I watched this seagull alternately jump around and scream and gobble down bites of that peach surrounded by 4 or 5 others.

Gobbled the whole damned thing.

And when there was nothing left but the pit, when he had taken several pulls at the pit and then spit it out because there was nothing left to get off it, he kept screaming at them, and jumping at them, and flew away with the pit only to drop it over the tracks a couple seconds later.

I recycle paper, plastic, shopping bags, glass and cardboard. I take my used motor oil and oil filters and batteries to approved safe disposal sites. I take pride in owning an ULEV (ultra low emission vehicle) and keep it in good repair. I shook my fists at the republicans when they dropped out of Kyoto and at least once a month I complain about the fact that Ontario Hydro is so difficult to work with if a person wants to use solar to cut down their energy needs. I try, in general, not to take too much, and not to destroy the commons. Still I laughed for 5 minutes watching that little seagull, he was fabulous.

This thing on?

Mon, 25 Aug 2003 01:44:36 GMT

hmm. Been a while since my last entry, I suppose. Going to have to get on that soon, lest people start thinking I've died, and begin hitting on Amy.

The reasons for my absence are myriad and complex, but it would not be over-simplifying too greatly to say that a combination of forgetting and other stuff happening was chief among them. I will be back. In the meantime, I've redone the facade at johnath.com in an effort to appear less ridiculously dated. Comments will be appreciated or ignored, as always. :)