We Saw a Chicken …

Category: goatee-stroking musing, or something

  • cheesepiphany

    The age I am, I thought I was a one cheese sort of a guy. Give me a good mature cheddar — none of your vac-packed rubbish, but something with a bit of history to it, like from Alex Farm Products — and I was in cheese heaven.

    Or so I thought. I occasionally like a piece of blue cheese on a steak, so I asked them at Alex's on the Danforth what they’d recommend. They came up with Fourme D’ambert. As Alex say, Its flavour is assertive piquant with a mellow buttery finish.. I’m already looking forward to it on oatcakes for lunch.

    In a different kind of cheesey news, my Sympatico DSL modem is on its last legs. They’re sending me a new one, but this one’s currently pegged at some ridiculously low speed so I can even connect at all. The tech at the (third stage) support centre says they’re really pushing for VoIP, with expected rollout in two years. That would be nice.

  • ebay.ca “page not responding” with mozilla

    ebay.ca seems to have great difficulty generating pages for Mozilla. I can have ebay.ca open on both Mozilla and Internet Explorer, and feed them the same URL. Internet Explorer loads it fine; Mozilla comes up with Page Not Responding.

    This appears to be entirely repeatable, certainly on my Windows box. Try it for yourself; here’s a sample URL for camera tripods.

  • a lyttle sladek, perhaps?

    I’m just wondering if Jason Lyttle of Grandaddy has read a lot of John Sladek. His songs of angsty machinery remind me of Sladek’s “Roderick” books.

    I’d recommend listening to one or reading the other. Or both. In either order.

  • don cherry

    21/5/04 15:31 – Don Cherry in a taupe linen suit @ YYZ. He’s smaller than I thought he’d be (I blame big-screen sports bars), and he really does wear those high collars in RL.

  • Putting the rant back into intolerant

    What’s with Canada’s eminently sensible newspaper The Globe and Mail carrying ads for far-right Colorado-based Focus on the Family? Are we getting so tolerant that we tolerate intolerance?

    The words far-right Colorado-based, aren’t mine, by the way. They’re from an article by the Globe‘s Leah McLaren where Focus on the Family … claim homosexuality is both preventable and treatable.

    Some of my best friends are from Colorado, and in a perfect world I’d hope that FOTF would take massive umbrage at Leah‘s article, and withdraw their ads from my paper. As is, I wish I had a subscription to the Globe, so I could cancel it in disgust.

  • How to make Windows suck 10000 fewer times

    In the same spirit of Marvin’s comment about Arthur Dent’s brain (It amazes me how you manage to live in anything that small.), it amazes me that anyone can actually get work done on a Windows box without having virtual workspaces …

    But I found DESKWIN, which does all I need; four virtual desktops, with hotkeys between them. Not much else. Perfect. Well, okay, Windows has still got about seven orders of magnitude of improvement to go before it’s even mildly usable, but it’s a start.

  • illicit substance: Caffeinated Scots Tablet

    I make Scots Tablet; in fact, I’m almost famous for it. I also roast my own coffee, which I get from Merchants of Green Coffee. What harm could come from combining the two, I thought?

    Plenty, is the answer. By adding ¼ cup (measured before grinding) of finely-ground coffee beans to a half batch of tablet has resulted in almost black tarry lumps that combined sugar, butterfat and caffeine into a mallet-to-the-back-of-the-head rush.

    Next time, I might use just a smidge less coffee. At the moment, it’s like a cross between full-on Rademaker’s Haagsche Hopjes and Uncle Ump’s Umpty Candy. I suspect that the RCMP will come knocking soon.

  • composed entirely of bananas

    acrobatguy.jpg
    Does anyone else think that the Adobe Acrobatâ„¢ logo guy looks more than a bit musaceous?

  • bunny

    tiny_bunny.jpg
    We found a baby bunny by the side of the road. He seems a bit stunned, but otherwise okay.

    Zoë has veterinarian training, so she’s looking after him.

    He fits in the palm of your hand, and is unbearably cute.

    Here’s a better picture (thumbnail links to larger image):

    Dave’s picture of the bunny

    Both pictures by Dave.

  • Temporary hearing impairment for pleasure

    (or, life without midrange)

    The Apples in Stereo rocked The Horseshoe last night; Robert, Hilarie, John and Eric always give a great show, and they gave everything they had last night. It was especially cool, as Hilarie had just played a set as guitarist for her other band, High Water Marks.

    Is it me, but on HWM’s song “Good I Feel Bad” do they really sing “She always keeps me open source”?

  • we’re going; are you?

    shore_to_shore_poster.jpg

  • CD Thinning annoyances

    Don’t you hate it when you have two copies of a CD, prune your CD collection, then discover that you’ve got rid of both copies?

    I’ve found I’ve done that with The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan — even if it has the most cringe-making liner notes ever published.

  • Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day, 2004


    Hardly the perfect weather for it, but I did my best for Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day. Photo above links to my gallery of today’s efforts.

    I think I’ll be using Ilford Delta 3200 again. I love the soft grain you get in Microphen.

  • Happy Earth Day

    Even though you couldn’t tell by what was(n’t) going on in Toronto, Happy Earth Day, folks!

  • What I sound like

    My voice is now on the GMU Accent Archive. Yeah, I really sound like this, minus the earth loop hum, of course.

    Oh, and my first day at my new job was great.

  • radio silence

    Breaking radio silence to say that I’ve finally got a semblance of Gentoo running on the ThinkPad. I’ve had more fun.

    Gnome installation is currently broken under Gentoo. That stalled it for a couple of days, at least.

  • Improving America’s Electrical Efficiency at a stroke

    Electrical switch manufacturer Leviton should change their name to Turnitoff.

  • oddly disturbing

    go to kimberg.tv, then “Movies”, then “Pee Pee”.

  • an ending and a hangover

    It’s my last day in this job. My head feels several sizes too small after last night’s leaving do.

    My desk is almost clear. Much fresh-roasted coffee has been drunk. I have unsubscribed from mailing lists. My cron jobs have been stopped. Mail aliases will soon be changed. And so it goes.

  • lyrical donuts, apologies to Basho

    In Old Scarborough,
    We have a new donut shop.
    A new Scarborough!

    Yes, the Coffee Time donut shop just north of us on Eglinton East opened today. I usually rage and fulminate over the opening of yet another fast food store, but this one has a bit of history.

    A couple of years back, the building was there, but clearly had never been used. There were new, but dusty work surfaces, and unused chairs stacked up inside. There was a city work permit stuck to the window which would indicate that it had been built in 2000. Here is how it looked last summer:

    abandoned coffee time
    (please ignore weird pinhole dreamscape)

    Late last year, the place started to get vandalized, with a few broken windows. These were quickly repaired, and then work started on the drive-thru. For the last couple of weeks, it has looked finished, and last night the lights were on, and people were inside.

    I went in this morning, and was one of their first customers. No-one quite knew where everything was, and the till wasn’t charging tax correctly, but I wish them success. I bought a dozen donuts for the office, and they were good.

    Update, 2017: The store lasted a little under a year, then was boarded up. While it occasionally had some nice murals on it, it was never used again. It was finally demolished in early 2017 as part of the Eglinton Crosstown construction.