"I hate you!!"

An analogy for Canada's current political climate

mom: stop drinking so much of that koolaid, you'll get sick
kid: but it's soooo good
mom: seriously. stop. if you get sick, i'll be stuck cleaning it up
kid: [glug glug glug]
mom: you've got exactly 5 seconds to stop
kid: [glug]
mom: 1
kid: [pouts]
mom: 2
kid: if you're going to treat me like that, i'm running away!
mom: 3
kid: i hate you!!
mom: 4
kid: [puts koolaid down][burps]
mom: i'll get you some nice healthy milk
kid: [calls bff] i don't feel so good
bff: what's wrong
kid: i don't know. but it's all my mom's fault!

Small things 29 Nov

• There will come a day when people listen in amazement when you tell stories of how we used to have to plug the USB cable one way only.
• Being an adult is repeatedly saying "Wow, things were pretty crazy lately, but things should settle down next week...."
• Just think, if paper was black, we'd have white toner.
• Two things define you: Your patience when you don't have something, and your attitude when you do.
• When was the last time you did something for the first time?
• Apologizing doesn't mean you're wrong and they're right. It just means that you value your relationship more than your ego.
• I was going to talk about sodium and hydrogen. But NaH....
• "Multipass!!"

Coffee now?

Give me steam

I had a friend say to me the other day, "I don't play many video games for computer anymore because the video game stores don't stock much now. It's all for game consoles." So I explained game portals like 'Steam' to them. I figured that if you have no idea what I'm talking about, but you'd like to get back into playing games on PC again, this post is for you.

So, it's true, you're not going to find much in the way of physical copies of video games for PC in physical stores anymore. That's mostly because the money is in selling games for the big gaming consoles. But there are a lot of PC games out there. Like, thousands. But your new store is going to be online. Except that there is more than one store. I'll talk about Steam, but the other online game portals are basically the same, except in how they look. If you're an Office 365 subscriber, you might know about the Office portal web site, where you log in with your Microsoft credentials. Once logged into that site, Microsoft gives you an option to download and install Office on your PC.

Well, with Steam, it's very similar. You create a Steam account (joining the 150 million other users), then you look through their 'store' and browse or search for game titles. The thing about Steam is that it installs a 'client' program or 'engine' on your computer. So you open the client app rather than visit a web site. So, it acts like a game manager. Like most games in general, if you want the latest, greatest, then you're going to pay top dollar, typically in the arena of $50-$70 each. If you're patient and willing to wait for the glamour to die down or wait for a holiday or summer sale, you can get the games you want much cheaper. Like Spotify, if you show Steam what games you like, it will help you discover similar ones you might like as well. You can even manage a wish list. Once you find and buy the games you want, you download them to your computer, for now or forever. I say for now, because once you buy a game, you own it, even if it's not installed. So for example, I have uninstalled some games that I haven't played in a while, knowing that I can download and reinstall them anytime I want to.

You're not going to find every game you might be interested in in one store though. Origin has its own portal, which you would create an account for, etc. There are others, but these two will likely give you access to 90% of what's out there. What serious gamers like about Steam and Origin, is that it's not just for buying game titles. If the maker of a game also sells or gives away downloadable extra content (DLC), you'll find that on the portal as well. For example, I play a game called Surviving Mars, where you build a colony on the red planet and see if you can sustain it. The game now has extras you can buy to give it new capabilities or missions. These are found under DLC list for the game. Aside from the game creator's DLC content, a game may also have a Steam Workshop (known as a 'modding platform'), where other players / content creators can share add-ons (mods) they've made for the game. Some of this user created stuff is free, some costs. Each game also has its own resources available to read as well, so if you're looking for tips and how-tos, you'll find them here. You can play collaboratively through Steam (in multiplayer games). You can even watch others play their games if they are streaming live. There's text and voice chat and community forums too.

One thing I love about game portals like Steam is how nicely things get updated. If you buy a game when it's released, and they start creating fixes and updates, you should get them installed automatically, as long as the Steam engine is running in the background. Family sharing is a nice touch. If I have that enabled in my account, other family members or friends with Steam accounts can play my games (once installed), just not at the same time as me. You can also install your Steam library on up to 10 computers (I'm assuming on the same network) - don't know for sure - never used it.

Some folks are concerned about buying stuff online and I understand that. I have added a layer of protection by paying for content through PayPal. That way, Steam doesn't have my credit card number and I have an intermediary if things go wrong. Steam has a decent refund policy, where as long as you've played less than 2 hours in the game and haven't owned it more than 2 weeks, you can get your money back and the game will be removed from your library. In fact, some folks do this when they discover that a game they just bought at full price went on sale today.

When there's a fork in the road........

Things I learned lately 29 Nov

• There's a calendar called 'dad bod and rescue dog'. It's real.
• Lack of pipelines is not the only reason Canada's fossil fuel industry has a slimmer profit margin than the same industry in other countries. Cold weather, isolated extraction sites and less efficient refining (again due to cold weather) are also significant factors.
• In a Bloomberg survey of 5,000 Tesla Model 3 owners, 99% said they would recommend their car to family or friends, an 98% would buy the car again. 98% also said the Model 3 surpassed their expectations.
• If Bernie Sanders' revised wealth tax had been around since 1982, Walmart heir Jim Walton's net worth would be $5 billion versus the $45 billion he was worth in 2018. Sergey Brin and Larry Page (Google co-founders) would each have a net worth of $19 billion versus $52 or so billion. Mark Zuckerberg: $28b versus $61b. Warren Buffet: $8b versus $88b. Bill Gates: $10b versus $97b. Jeff Bezos: $43b versus $160b. Having said that, the money would have provided free education and health care and probably a green economy as a result.
• Albert Einstein did not fail mathematics classes (never "flunked a math exam") in school. 
• The forbidden fruit mentioned in the book of Genesis is never identified as an apple. The original Hebrew texts mention only 'tree' and 'fruit'. Early Latin translations use the word 'mali', which can be taken to both mean 'evil' and 'apple'. In early Germanic languages the word 'apple' and its cognates usually meant simply 'fruit'.

Das not good

"I pulled into Nazareth........"

Playing For Change is a movement created to inspire and connect the world through music, born from the shared belief that music has the power to break down boundaries and overcome distances between people. Here's an example, with Robbie Robertson and musicians from around the world celebrating the 50th anniversary of The Band's iconic "The Weight".

Ukranian breakfast

Small things 22 Nov

• How did we keep doctors away before there were apples? Oh right. There were no doctors back then......
• Don't tell dad jokes before you're a father. That's a faux pa. (Yes, I am a dad. Well, a step-dad)
• Helping one person might not change the whole world, but it could change the world for one person.
• Does anyone use onion soup mix to make soup, versus using it to make dip, roasts, or whatever?
• The sign on my front lawn would say "beware emotional support dog"
• I'd go to a gender reveal party just to act supremely disappointed at the revealed gender.
• No, you're not supposed to show up naked to a gender reveal party......
• I truly believe that unless and until our government members can demonstrate that they are pure of heart and mind and soul and commit no crimes or sins that they should not be allowed to legislate us on how to live our lives. It's one thing to govern a people, it's quite another to morally dictate to them.
• On my bus route, we'd stop wherever the hell you want to.
• I feel sad for people who get plastic surgery on their face and think they look better than before.
• Auto-correct is my worst enema.

Imagine you woke up from a 10 year coma and read this headline

Things I learned lately 22 Nov

• TicketMaster's anti-scalping online sales measures don't hurt scalpers, they help them, while screwing regular folks. 
• Desert sand is largely useless to us. The overwhelming bulk of the sand we harvest goes to make concrete, and for that purpose, desert sand grains are the wrong shape. Eroded by wind rather than water, they are too smooth and rounded to lock together to form stable concrete. The sand we need is the more angular stuff found in the beds, banks, and floodplains of rivers, as well as in lakes and on the seashore. 
• Almost 22% of Canadian residents were not born in Canada, but not all of these people are immigrants. Some are people living here on student, spousal and working visas.
• For the most part, skilled worker visas are given to people in professions that are severely under-filled in our work force.
• Foreign students help fund our schools, as they pay a lot more than a Canadian would. 
• Foreign students are also typically funded by their wealthy parents back in their home countries, meaning they're unlikely to be taking any of our jobs while in school.
• From an economic point of view, post-secondary education is a Canadian export.
• The down side to foreign students is that their wealthy parents typically buy a residence for their student children which drives the real estate market up as seen in Vancouver.

"You look like a cat that sat on a leaf blower..."

"Do I like therapy? I don't know. It's just another room with bad art and tissues."

Ze Frank is making funny videos. Still. These two in particular had me snorting up a storm.

Dogs in therapy


Cats in therapy

Small things 16 Nov

• There was a time when you had to separate clothes before washing them. Like, you couldn't wash colours and whites together, the colour would permanently bleed onto the whites. I kid you not people under 25.
• "If you want a living wage, get a better job" is just another way of saying "Anyone who does your job deserves to be in poverty."
• Remember when, before the internet, we thought that in many cases stupidity was just lack of access to information? Yeah, it wasn't that........
• The world is our mirror. What we love in others is a reflection of what we love about ourselves. What upsets us about others is a strong indication of what we need to look at more closely within ourselves.
• Perfectionism is an illusion.
• Forgiveness is not so much about the other person. It's about you and for you, so that you can gain the peace and freedom you deserve.
• For much of our lives, we are told what do, how to think, what success is. You don't have to buy into any of it. Think for yourself. Break the mould. When you start following your own instincts, you will be ridiculously happy.
• Department store with a sense of humour: Puts the men's washroom in the lingerie department.
• When I select a cheque design from my bank, I'm not seeing those giant sized novelty cheques like the kind lottery winners get. What gives?

"I'm sorry"

There's a woman (not pictured at left), I'm guessing in her 50s or 60s, who works at a McDonalds in a smaller city outside of Calgary. McDonalds (and they're definitely not the only ones) seems to have a habit of hiring people who are kind, capable people but just aren't as quick and efficient as people in their teens or 20s.

Since drive thru orders always take priority in fast food outlets, she serves counter, not drive thru. But she serves counter alone. At least, she's alone when I visit, which is usually around 6:30am. As I said before, this is neither the only outlet that does this nor the only fast food chain.

Anyway, whenever I am there getting some food, this woman struggles to keep up. If she tries to rush, she gets frustrated and sometimes gets the order wrong. She is always apologizing. I hear the words "I'm sorry" from her at least twice every time I go to this store. I think about this and I wonder how many times she has to say "I'm sorry" during the course of her shift. Every shift. Every week. Every month of every year that she has worked there. How many more times will she have to say it?

I can't imagine having to work in an environment where I'm struggling so much to keep up that I have to apologize to everyone I meet. I can only imagine that this job is slowly eating away at her soul. And the company that hired her will probably never know. And yet they earned $21 billion in revenue (about $10 billion net)  in 2018. Partly because they refuse to hire enough staff to be able to do the job without having to constantly apologize.

What a role model......

Things I learned lately 16 Nov

• Rick Moranis, of SCTV fame, used to be a disc jockey on CHUM-FM (and 2 other radio stations) in the mid 70s. He went by the name Rick Allen.
• Although redheads and blonds may become more rare, they will not die out unless everyone who carries those genes (strictly speaking, alleles) dies or fails to reproduce.
• There was no widespread outbreak of panic across the US in response to Orson Welles's 1938 radio adaptation of H.g. Wells's The War Of The Worlds. Only a very small share of the radio audience was even listening to it, and isolated reports of scattered incidents and increased call volume to emergency services were played up the next day by newspapers, eager to discredit radio as a competitor for advertising. Both Welles and CBS, which had initially reacted apologetically, later came to realize that the myth benefited them and actively embraced it in later years.
• Double-blind trials have shown no difference in behaviour between children given sugar-full or sugar-free diets, even in studies specifically looking at children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder or those considered sensitive to sugar. Surprise! Your kids are naturally hyperactive! Yaaay!
• Hair care products can't actually 'repair' split ends. They just kind of glue the ends together to look better.
• Acne is mostly caused by genetics, not diet.

Small things 8 Nov

• Serotonin and dopamine. The only two things you truly enjoy.
• There are basically three classes of people now. Those who get their ice cubes delivered in a metal ice bucket by the help. Those who get their ice cubes from the door of their fridge. And those who try to carry a tray of water to the freezer without spilling half of it on the floor.
• Thank goodness thoughts don't appear in speech bubbles above our heads.......
• "Intellectual property has the shelf life of a banana." ~Bill Gates
• Have you thanked anyone today? If not, why not?
• "Worry is the misuse of imagination." ~Dan Zadra
• "God loves you just the way you are." ~Fred Rogers

But he did let her down....

It sure sounds like a guitar

You've never seen anyone play Hendrix on guitar like this, because it's not even a guitar he's playing!

Marco Parisi wows the audience at Musikmesse 2016 with this amazing performance of Jimi Hendrix's classic "Little Wing" on the Seaboard Rise instrument.

Back in the day vaping had a different meaning

Things I learned lately 8 Nov

• McDonald's CEO will get at least $675,000 in severance pay after being fired for having a relationship with an employee.
• Microsoft's Japan subsidiary closed every Friday in August 2019 as part of a "Work-Life Choice Challenge" experiment. It noted a 40% productivity increase over this period.
• Tesloop, a shuttle service in southern California, has Tesla cars that rack up about 17,000 miles per month and have to fully recharge roughly twice per day. Some of these Tesla cars have almost 500,000 miles on them, still going strong.
• AMG now makes a 2.0 litre 4 cylinder engine that produces 421 horsepower. Those German engine makers I tell ya......
• As soon as Spotify bought all those podcast companies, their paid membership grew 39% in 3 months.
• Babies raised on farms grow up to have stronger immune systems because of their exposure to more types of bacteria (various animal fecal matter).
• teamtrees.org is trying to plant 20 million trees in places around the world by 1/1/2020. Elon Musk donated enough money to plant 1,000,000 trees at $1 per tree.

How do I count them?

Whinese

Small things 1 Nov

Cat therapist: What seems to be the problem?
Patient: I'm really stressed.
Cat therapist: Have you tried pushing stuff off the table?

• Never let your computer overhear that you're in a hurry.......
• I wonder what would happen if the federal government sold the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project to Alberta for $1. Would it get built in the next 4 years? If I were a betting man, my money would be on 'no'. Because the obstacles to getting it built are bigger in scope than what is being declared.
• You can't press flowers in an e-book.....
• After the game, the king and the pawn go back into the same box.
• "The grumpier you are, the more ass-holes you meet..." ~Banksy
• Play is not relief from learning, it's a better form of learning.
• "Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power." ~Abraham Lincoln 

A meme as old as time

I don't even know how this meme got started, but I see it everywhere.

The bottom half of the pic is the meme and the top half just made it doubly funny.

Best friends

Things I learned lately 1 Nov

• After Tesla, Nissan sells the most electric vehicles globally, if you don't count the many Chinese brands also making electric cars.
• Electric vehicles now command a 46% market share in Norway.
• The Vatican created a $110 e-rosary phone app to motivate young Catholics to pray more.
• If you make more than $500,000 annually in the US, you are part of the 1%.
• In the federal election on 21 October, the Green party elected (on average) one MP per 387,000 votes for Green, while the Liberals elected (on average) one MP per 38,000 votes for Liberal.

I have started colouring to manage my stress

Who should sit at the table?

Rumour has it that since western Canadians from Alberta and Saskatchewan decided to vote for a party that didn't get elected nationally, the federal government wants there to be at least one person to represent this region at the Cabinet table.

Who do you think they should pick to represent AB and SK? Bearing in mind that it would likely have to be a non-Conservative rep. Or would it have to? Who knows, this is new territory.

[Please, no anti-Liberal, anti-Trudeau rants and insults. I'm serious. Just pick someone to sit at the table.]