The Blog-Files

Too Cool For Words

I've just tried my first long distance voice conference using iChat AV. I got to talk briefly with my brother, who lives in Vancouver, and it was so cool. My long distance phone bills are now gone because he is the only person I ever phone long distance to. Ten cents a minute after 6:00pm? How about free. As Homer Simpson said, "Yeah, Marge, nothing a month? I think we can afford that!!".

Invasion!!!

While checking on my in-law's house, my wife noticed a few ants milling about. Then she noticed a few more. Then a few more. Then she noticed that they were everywhere! Well, after a phone call to me, it was decided that I would drop the boy off at his Grandma's house after work and head over there to wage war with the little invaders!

I stopped in a Canadian Tire to pick up some ant bait and thought that I would follow the United States with a "shock and awe" approach to ant control. So I bought several different kinds of bait to try and nip this problem in the bud, as it were. When I arrived at the scene, I first inspected the perimeter to see if I could see the enemies' POE, or Point Of Entry. There was no activity outside so I moved inside to do a little reconnaissance, first inspecting the kitchen, then setting up an observation post in the TV area. There I waited for troop movement. After a few minutes, I noticed a few stray soldiers marching north toward the kitchen I slowly followed them until I found their target. The in-laws had left a crock containing,of all things, honey! So, I removed the crock and looked inside to see what looked like a mass grave. There was at least 100 dead bodies in there, apparently a suicide mission! After cleaning out the crock and other potential targets, I took to leaving the bait traps everywhere. I deployed 2 by the door, one where the honey was, and one on the counter just before the final climb to the honey, where they seemed to congregate. I also used the soapy cloth I had left over from cleaning the honey container to wipe some of the counter and the floor, hopefully removing the pheromone trail. I observed a little later that the ants seemed to get confused when they reached these "clean" parts, so I grabbed the soap container and heavily soaped the suspected entry point by the front door, to slow down, if not eliminate the enemies entrance. I left the battle and will check back tomorrow....

A Pleasant Surprise!

For those of you who don't know, our son, Alexei, now just over two years of age, was brought up thinking that anything flat and round is a coaster. This would include CDs and DVDs, plates, and of course actual coasters. He was also raised to think that coasters are fun things to play with. This would include spinning them on coffee tables (making a fun, wobbly sound as it slowly comes to a stop) and throwing them on to a non-carpeted surfaces (thus providing a loud sound in addition to the aforementioned wobbly sound).

Not long ago, Alexei managed to figure out how to eject the DVDs from the DVD player. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that we now have several scratched DVDs, mostly the ones we leave him to watch while we are trying to get some housework done. His favorite, Monsters Inc., has become so scratched that our DVD player would freeze up. So, I decided that I would try to use some of this high priced technology we have in our house to remedy the situation. I was informed of a piece of software for the Mac called Forty-Two. It is a DVD ripper and encoder that can turn your DVDs into Video CDs, among other things. I did a test and made a Video CD out of our newly acquired Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets DVD and burned it on to a CD-R. I tried it on our DVD player but it couldn't read CD-R media and gave me a "No Disc" error. We have encountered this problem before and I was a getting a little annoyed with having a DVD player that can't play anything other that store-bought DVDs and CDs. So I took the plunge and bought a new DVD player.

I haven't made a decision that good in a long time. I could not be happier. I strayed from my standard Sony brand loyalty and purchased a JVC XV-N44S model from Sears. Here is a description of the player from the JVC website:

This new JVC XV-N44SL introduces a new slim and stylish design for a "all-in-one" player that people are looking for. Not only does it play DVD & CD; it also plays the new CD-R/RW recordable CD formats,DVD-R, DVD+RW, DVD-RW SVCD, VCD, JPEG and MP3 formats. Don't let the slim design fool you, the XV-N44SL is packed with many exciting features such as Express Play Start, New high-resolution GUI (Graphical User Interface), 3-D Phonic sound, variable and slow search,6-Step zoom play, digest and strobe play, angle list and resume function. Optical and Coaxial digital audio outputs with Dolby Digital & DTS pass-through are provided for easy connection to any system.

I tested all the important features and they all work. MP3 CDs, JPEG CDs, Video CDs, all play fine. I still need to try SVCD but I am assuming that it will work too.

The real beauty of the situation, the one thing that made it all worthwhile, is that the heavily scratched Monsters Inc. DVD now plays without skipping, so I don't have to replace it, saving us $25.59. I haven't tried all the other "scratched" DVDs but if the all work as well, I will be one happy camper. At $25 per disc, this machine will have already paid for itself.

A Movie Worth Seeing

We went to see Finding Nemo today, a Father's Day gift, a few days early, and I am happy to report that the people at Pixar have done it again. Finding Nemo is a very well made and very funny film. I was eagerly awaiting the arrival of this movie and was glad to hear that it was quite good. Usually, however, when someone tells me how funny a movie is before I go see it, it always seems to disappoint, not being able to live up to the expectations placed upon it, however unfairly, by me. This movie is the first in a long time to not fall into this trap. I don't often laugh out loud in movie theatres but there were times during this film where I had tears actually streaming out of my eyes as I gafaawed into my fist trying not to laugh so hard that I missed some dialogue. The only drawback that I can think of is that, being used to seeing Pixar animations on DVD on a smaller TV with a very nice picture, the film enlarged to movie screen size seems to lose a bit of the crispness of computer animation. Of course, once it is available on DVD it will be part of our collection and certainly will be seen in all it's glory, over and over again. I highly recommend this picture.

Kung-Log Rocks!!

Wow, this app makes blogging sooo much easier. The uploads are a piece of cake, editing is a snap, the automatic insertion of html for images is cool, the preview leaves something to be desired, but on the whole it is totally usable. I am always amazed that cool stuff like this gets written and actually works, as advertised. I'll be making my donation soon..

Worst Movie Ever?

Well, I just finished watching Soldier, starring Kurt Russell, for the second time in two days. I assumed that the second viewing would be as painful as the first, but boy was I wrong. During the second viewing I actually felt sorry for the actors, many of which I'm sure don't include Soldier on their resume. Although the acting was horrible, the special effects laughable, the set design ridiculous, and the direction somewhat non-existant, it was all overshadowed by the tragic writing. Whoever was responsible for the plot of this movie should never again be allowed to set pen to paper, nor have access to any word processing environment. They shouldn't even be allowed to speak their ideas to anyone else, who, might inadvertantly write them down. The writing was, for lack of a better term, toxic.

I know that by panning this movie in such a forceful manner, some of you out there are going to be tempted to rent it, just to see if it is as bad as I say. Don't. Live your lives to the fullest, don't waste one minute, let alone 98 of them. I did. Twice.

Game Seven

Well folks, it has come down to this. One game for the Stanley Cup. As we all know the New Jersey Devils are playing the Anaheim Mighty Ducks in what has turned out to be a great series. Almost like it was scripted by Walt Disney himself. In game six Scott Stevens crushes Anaheim's Paul Kariya with a brutal open ice body check, knocking him unconscious for about a minute. He gets up, is helped to the bench to shake out the cobwebs, and five minutes later scores a goal giving his team a four goal lead. Hollywood stuff. Even Emilio Estevez was there.

Kung-Log Test

Hello, I just downloaded Kung-Log and am trying it out to see if it will make blogging any easier, or just perhaps faster. It allows me to upload images a lot easier than MT but I'm not sure if it works, yet.

Too Damn HOT!!!

Well, it's about 8:30PM on the 5th of June and I should be trying to get some sleep. Unfortunately, it is still around 29°C outiside and on the upper floor of our little townhome it is substantially hotter. It is also very stagnant inside, we are too close to a busy street to leave the windows open. Not for security reasons, however, more for the noise. We are on a major route for the ambulances to travel and only a few blocks from the hospital, so we hear at least one a night. I don't normally like complaining about things like the weather, since it does absolutely no good, but I'm awake and sweating, so what the hell. It's not really the heat itself that bothers me, it is the dramatic shift between cool and unbearably hot. I went to Mexico one October and remember it being somewhat cool in Victoria when I left and ridiculously hot in Puerto Vallarta when I arrived. I couldn't sleep at night there, either, the first couple of nights, but by the end of my stay I was even using blankets. The only difference here is that as soon as I get used to the heat the weather will change to cold again.