Archive for the ‘goatee-stroking musing, or something’ Category

naughty LCBO!

Monday, June 30th, 2008

irish in the scotch aisle
Note to the LCBO: neither Bushmills nor Jameson could ever be described as Scotch.

husky gets the milk bone

Sunday, June 22nd, 2008


at Pages Books on Queen W.

not the chocolate truck

Wednesday, June 18th, 2008

mississauga smogrise

Tuesday, June 17th, 2008

I love the way the smog rises over Mississauga in the morning.

wordpress can’t count: my 2000th blog posting

Sunday, June 15th, 2008

I was all exited about my 2000th post, because the dashboard is showing:

wordpress can\'t count

So I decided to tabulate my entries by number, and discovered that I really have 2261 (well, 2262 now) blog entries. This is the real story:

Post # Title Date
1 is this thing on, eh? (2003/06/04)
2 Happy Birthday (2003/06/04)
3 mmm (2003/06/05)
4 A century later, worse economy (2003/06/05)
5 Christian Anderson Smith, where were you in our hour of need? (2003/06/06)
6 fishepiphany (2003/06/07)
7 “What a Life!” lives! (2003/06/08)
8 pinholes (2003/06/09)
9 they don’t make ‘em like they used to (2003/06/12)
10 what’s this ear? (2003/06/19)
16 the wisdom of chairman ralph (2003/07/08)
20 Phew … (2003/07/29)
30 Canada supporting copy-controlled CDs (2003/10/09)
32 so long, emusic (2003/11/05)
40 how the blog got its name (2003/11/24)
50 do me a favour (2003/12/01)
60 malicious deomnibusation of maternal relative’s maternal relative strictly forbidden (2003/12/09)
64 DNX-1000 Hardware /dev/null Accelerator (2003/12/10)
70 Enoch, the Money Mart ad guy (2003/12/15)
80 Mozilla Mail Went Nuts (2003/12/21)
90 A helpful error message (2003/12/31)
100 very small, but not cheap (2004/01/06)
128 Attack of the Dodgy Duracells (2004/02/03)
200 first groundhog (2004/04/03)
250 freecache doesn’t (2004/06/13)
256 Getting (Not Very) Political (2004/06/23)
300 UofT Solar Car (2004/08/13)
400 let’s get confused (2004/10/13)
500 Good Activism Guide, from an unexpected source (2004/12/07)
512 and this makes news in Scotland: Krankie hurt in beanstalk tumble (2004/12/15)
600 The Passing of The Grammarian (2005/02/22)
700 get yer fives on! (2005/05/05)
750 Lego, ergo sum (2005/06/05)
800 StimpyFest: the time is now (2005/07/14)
900 no cheers for VIA Rail (2005/09/27)
1000 Meet Mr Random (2005/12/26)
1024 my letter to etymotic (2006/01/24)
1100 1656 days from PR application to Canadian Citizenship (2006/03/25)
1200 View from the nacelle of a 2.3MW wind turbine (2006/05/22)
1250 old taters (2006/06/18)
1300 when chitin isn’t enough (2006/07/20)
1400 confused (2006/10/03)
1500 alan_walsh-carter_arter_blues.mp3 (2006/12/21)
1600 all atwitter (2007/03/06)
1700 messing with cars makes you bad at spelling (2007/04/26)
1750 curious_orange-roncesvalles.jpg (2007/06/01)
1800 take your … (2007/07/21)
1900 serene detachment (2007/09/20)
2000 not very walkable here (2007/12/13)
2048 recursive headline (2008/01/22)
2100 glacial (2008/02/25)
2200 the most hateful coining in the language (2008/05/05)
2250 outlook_gone_all_big (2008/06/02)
2261 wind turbine data - we are generating! (2008/06/13)

The numbering seems to have gone sideways in the last 1000 entries; entry #1000 is, as they say, what it is.

Found Art: Jimmy’s Writing Folder

Thursday, May 29th, 2008


Found next to our recycling bin when I arrived home tonight.

failballoon

Tuesday, May 27th, 2008


Whoops! Runaway balloon leaves parachutist grounded

Tasty noms with Kyle MacNeill

Wednesday, May 21st, 2008

at The Urban Element, Ottawa

Meena Peruvemba (CanWEA), Kyle MacNeill and Derek Lim Soo (GE) prepare the veggies at The Urban Element

The CanWEA board, and as many staff who could make it, went to The Urban Element last night for a team-building dinner. I usually shy away from team building things (I’ve have too many There is no I in team sessions, to which I usually respond, “Yes, but there is me, and also meat, so I think that says something”) but this one was good.

The Urban Element isn’t your average resto. You prepare and cook your own dinner, with the direct supervision of chef Kyle MacNeill and his assistants. Now it helps a lot that they’ve chosen very fine ingredients, and measured them out just so, and also have a properly set up kitchen and utensils, but we had to do the mixing, marinading and cooking.

What we made:

  • Grilled romain caesar salad
  • Kerr Farms flatiron steaks with asparagus and Yukon gold potatoes with rosemary butter
  • Toasted saffron couscous with chick peas, cashews, tomatoes and sweet peppers
  • Crispy fennel flatbread
  • Chocolate praline tart with frangelico sauce

It was good; very good. Really amazingly good. Great atmosphere and a very pleasant evening.

80, maybe 100, milliseegers

Monday, May 19th, 2008

We watched “Shut Up and Sing” last night. Pretty remarkable the amount of ire that was directed towards The Dixie Chicks for one comment.

Still, if we define 1 seeger to be the unit of persecution suffered by Pete Seeger for his words and beliefs, the meter barely flickers by comparison.

Ema Tei

Friday, May 16th, 2008

I reckon for more than half the time I’ve worked in Toronto, I’ve been within a block of Ema Tei. Yesterday was the first time I went there. I wonder what took me so long?

Kenn Cutts enjoys the wasabi at Ema Tei

Kenn, my former colleague from EPCOR, took me to lunch there. I was impressed; tasty food, great prices, huge portions and a great atmosphere. There was a good amount of wasabi sneakily hidden under the fish in the sushi, so we both ended up suitably decongested.

(and yes, the Technoid Balloon Gimp Script strikes again. While it does work nicely under Gimp 2.4, it’s hidden away in the very unhelpful Xtns/Script-Fu/Text/Balloon menu.)

beautiful drone

Monday, May 12th, 2008

The chill units in the new Loblaws Superstore in Scarborough make the most harnonious drone. I might just come here to listen.

farewell to the 13th floor

Thursday, May 8th, 2008

Well, this was my last day at EPCOR. The last two and a bit years have been fun.

It’s strange to think that I can fit my entire desk contents into one file box:

all my desk stuff in one box

I also made sure I didn’t break with tradition:

the customary lone paperclip

you are what you eat… and you have obviously eaten something very stupid

Thursday, May 8th, 2008

I got the Absolutely Everything box set yesterday; all four series of Absolutely. I hadn’t seen this for more than ten years, and it was absolutely (ha!) my favourite comedy show.

The first season took a little while to get into stride. I don’t think I saw it ever, as I only caught it from series two in 1990. It is, in the words of Callum Gilhooley, “brilliant”.

the most hateful coining in the language

Monday, May 5th, 2008

… Is probably “snackinar”.

this is what I’m talkin’ about, yeah

Thursday, April 24th, 2008

The Global Antigolf Movement.

i could do that

Wednesday, April 23rd, 2008

They are demolishing the show home at the corner of Nelson and Simcoe. They are bashing at it with a big excavator, trying to smoosh down the pile of drywall and plywood.

goes up to 13, at least

Saturday, April 19th, 2008

Got a mailing from The War Amps yesterday. Isn’t war loud enough for them already?

tat, too

Thursday, April 17th, 2008

Props to the older gent in the Tim’s at New Hamburg. “What’s the tattoo on your arm? I can’t make it out”, asks the server. “It’s supposed to be a panther’s head, but it’s not finished”, he replied. “I was meant to go back the next day, but I sobered up.”

the cure for hockey

Thursday, April 10th, 2008

• • • •

• • •

• • • •

The above is a pictorial representation of the 11 additional pucks required so that they wouldn’t need to fight over one. Please donate generously, and you can help Canada become a world-class country with a proper sport …

someplace no place

Tuesday, April 8th, 2008

In Calgary, and walked (likely illegal here) from the hotel up to a restaurant that Kenn had recommended. It’s called Oriental Phoenix, and it’s just off Barlow by Sunridge mall. (It’s really good, incidentally.)

Walking through the colossal mall parking lots, I had a real sense of ‘no place’ - this could be Lebovic Dr in Scarborough, or Liberty, MO, or Richmond, BC, or Napierville (a town with better backs of necks). What makes is what to create identical beige industrial buildings with colossal setbacks? I’ll leave this to smarter folks like Byrne or Kunstler; me, I’ve got my pho to walk off.