R2D2 love

 

Small things 29 Mar

• You can't outrun your problems, but you can jog in front of them and pretend you can't hear them because you have your headphones on.
• Hearing Republicans say, “Look, massacres of kids are very sad but we just can't limit people's basic freedoms to own guns.” is weird if you're a trans person who's been listening to a years-long debate about whether you need to be banned from a public bathroom to keep children safe.
• Airports go on and on about not leaving your luggage alone for a second over the PA, but they won’t tell you that your gate has changed unless you’re sitting in a precise group of seats.
• We don’t want to be that couple who announces at a party “Well, we’ve got to head out.” to break the seal and set the stage for the other people to do the same. So we just sneak out.
• Outlook lets you schedule an email to be sent in the future. So write, “I’m taking off early”, schedule it for one hour before the workday ends, and leave at noon.
• I’ve been invited to a Teams meeting, but the only other attendees are HR and my boss….
• Some people like their coffee so strong that it would show up on a drug test.
• Life is not one damned thing after another. They overlap.
• How to instantly stop stressing about tasks. Complete them.
• Alchemy. Yes it used to exist, but it still kind of does: “I’d like a chocolate cookie crumble crème frappuccino made with heavy cream, and with 6 pumps of white mocha instead of regular mocha. Oh and whipped cream on top.”

A: If you win the lottery, all I want is a new Tesla.

B: That’s all?

A: Yeah.

B: I think I can manage that.

Later

A: Holy crap! I won the lottery!

B: I’ll take a model Y please.

A: What are you even talking about right now?

Blade Runner Peanuts characters

 

The 1970s albums

This video, titled ‘Most Iconic Album Released Every Month of the ‘70s’ is an example of just how amazing music was in that decade.

Common peephole

Remember that song Common People? 

William Shatner covered it. 

Well…. I give you the rewrite.

Drake Landing Solar Community update

Drake Landing, a development in Okotoks AB, which was built to use an included district heating system, is having to consider new plans as the aging, custom built system is breaking down and may be too expensive or difficult to fix. Many system components were built specifically for Drake Landing, so finding replacement parts is tough. It may have to be decommissioned if repairs aren’t feasible.

This district heating system was a groundbreaking technology in 2006 that attracted the attention of people around the world who wanted to see a district heating system in action. Hot summer sun was collected and stored underground, then released over the winter to heat the development's houses. The system was capable of supplying over 90% of the heating requirements and in some cases reached 100%. 

Some residents have already pulled the plug on the district system to heat their homes and have switched to natural gas furnaces. Because the 52 homes were built to a higher standard, with higher than code insulation values, an air-tight envelope and energy efficient windows, the project isn’t a complete loss. There are many options that could be used in this development to get back to a more efficient posture again.

Possibly one of the easiest upgrades would be to abandon the idea of storing heat underground, and replacing the 800 solar collectors with newer, cheaper solar electric panels. All that electricity could accumulate in battery packs in each home. Whatever the homes weren’t using in real time, once the batteries were fully charged, could be sold to the grid to offset any power taken from the grid when solar output is low. The furnaces could be converted to electric furnaces, something Albertans might not be familiar with, but are commonplace in Quebec, where electricity rates are lower. 

Needless to say, the naysayers came out of the woodwork to cut the plan down, but the only real problem with the plan was the lack of securing sustainable maintenance and parts lifecycle into the future. It didn’t help that no other neighbourhood adopted the system for themselves, because had the system been more widely adopted across the province or country, it would have created an industry of support and supplies to keep the system going longer.

Democracy dad

 

Things I learned lately 29 Mar

• Lava is three times denser than water, twice as dense as concrete. Imagine trying to divert the flow of that at 1000 degrees C. That’s what’s happening in Iceland.
• Texas now has more wind power than any other US state and will soon have the most solar generation, even more than California. Texas. So I wonder why we can’t do this in Alberta? It appears that all of the excuses Alberta came up with have been completely ignored by Texas. They even use massive amounts of battery storage, another thing Alberta said is impractical and too expensive. I guess not hey?
• The average new bachelor's degree graduate in Alberta owes $38,000 in student loans.
• North-central Alberta has a wild boar problem and now there’s a program to trap as many as possible.
• Mirabel Airport, north of Montreal, was intended to occupy 97,000 acres. That’s how much land was expropriated. That’s bigger than the actual city of Montreal. It would have been the world’s largest by area.
• Mirabel Airport was supposed to have 6 terminals and 6 runways. It ended up with 1 terminal and 2 runways, only using 19% of the total available expropriated land.
• What finally was located in Mirabel, the new airport to replace Dorval was preferred to go in Vaudreuil, because it could also serve Ottawa and was already served by highways and rail. Premier Bourassa said no.

Small things 22 Mar

• I never quite understood why we care about a newborn’s weight and especially length. Are they a fish?
• Your challenge: Convince ChatGPT that Pluto is a planet.
• Do overthinkers overthink about their overthinking?
• Donald Trump is a reminder that you should just apply for that job you want even if you don't have experience. And even if you get fired, you’ll still get another job, maybe even the original job.
• Imagine what clouds thought the first time they saw planes flying.
• If friends start bragging about their jobs, just tell them you’re the coach of an imaginary hockey team that you assembled for the next hockey season.
• HR: Morale is low. Management: I bet they like pizza.
• By the time you get to your second rodeo, you’re just supposed to know everything?
• When you look at a Toblerone chocolate bar for the first time, you might think, “There’s no way it’s that shape.” Then you open it and find out you’re right, but it’s an even weirder shape than you thought.
• Here's a game you can play with your friends at a party or get-together: "Don't get me started." Here’s how to play: Someone gives another person a random topic and they have to go on an angry rant about it. Try it on long car rides too.

I can adapt

 

An EV for filthy rich people

The 2024 Mercedes-Maybach EQS 680 Night Series, as reviewed by the only person I’d ever get to do it - Doug DeMuro in San Diego.

He’s the king of quirks as you’ll see in the video.

What? It’s only USD$205,000. 

Can I turn or not?

 

Songs that turn 50 this year (2024)

Bad Company - Can't get enough

Eric Clapton - I shot the sheriff

Genesis - The lamb lies down on Broadway

Joni Mitchell - Help me / Free man in Paris

Kraftwerk - Autobahn

Neil Young - On the beach / Walk on

Queen - Killer queen

Steely Dan - Rikki don't lose that number

Stevie Wonder - Boogie on reggae woman

Supertramp - School / Dreamer / Bloody well right

George McCrae - Rock your baby

The Hollies - The air that I breathe

Wings - Band on the run

Ace - How long

Andy Kim - Rock me gently

Terry Jacks - Seasons in the sun

Gordon Lightfoot - Sundown

America - Tin man

Harry Chapin - Cat's in the Cradle

Nazareth - Love Hurts

Elton John - Don't let the sun go down on me / Lucy in the sky with diamonds

How fear becomes hate

 

Things I learned lately 22 Mar

• I just saw the teaser trailer for the new BeetleJuice movie. Big smile on my face.
• Shell has announced that by the end of 2025 they will be shutting down 500 gas stations in the UK to make way for new charging stations.
• William Wrigley, Jr. founded the company in 1891 with the goal of selling soap and baking powder. He offered chewing gum as an enticement to his customers, and eventually the customers didn't care about the baking powder; they only wanted the gum.
• The ICE vehicle manufacturing industry in China is collapsing and factories are being sold at huge discounts or are dormant. Only EV production is still growing.
• Samsung was founded in 1938 by Lee Byung-Chul as a Grocery Trading Company.
• What do Gene Simmons; Sting; J.K. Rowling; Sylvester Stallone; Alexander Graham Bell; Hugh Jackman; John Krasinski; Stephen King; Billy Crystal; and Lin-Manuel Miranda have in common? They all used to be teachers of some kind.
• Next year, 2025, the web will be 40 years old.
• More people go through London’s Heathrow airport every year than live in all of Canada.
• Neural networks, not video games, is what made nVidia most of its revenue.
• Aimee Mann is the only guest vocalist Rush ever put on one of their albums.
• Geddy Lee is the only guest vocalist Bob & Doug McKenzie ever put on their album.
• Bruce Power, located just north of Kincardine Ontario, is the largest nuclear generating station in North America and planned for expansion.

OSHA boots

 

Small things 15 Mar

• This is the point in the seasons when the cyclists are wishing the snow and ice would disappear and the skiers are wishing the snow would stay.
• If you make a pie chart of how much of a butt is cheeks and how much is crack, make the cheeks part white and the crack part black, and then rotate the diagram to point the crack downward well, just use your damned imagination.
• The song ‘Mambo No 5’ but instead of girls' names, it’s varieties of cheese.
• How is it that "fat chance" and "slim chance" mean exactly the same thing?
• There would only be one ‘take your cat to work day.’
• "To know how good you are at something, requires exactly the same skills as it does to be good at that thing in the first place. Which means - and this is terribly funny - that if you're absolutely no good at something, at all, then you lack exactly the skills that you need to know that you're absolutely no good at it." ~John Cleese
• Never attack the person, only their argument.
• What do you call a woman who was cremated? Ashley.
• Drink water in front of your plants to remind them who’s boss.
• Next time you’re going to roast some marshmallows over a fire, just bring a rake. It has lots of tips. You’ll figure it out.
• Errogant: adj. When you’re completely wrong, but very sure of yourself.
• In interview: “What’s your biggest flaw?” “Oh. It’s that I’m too shy to speak about my biggest flaw.”
• There’s a chance that on career day at school, some dad is going to come in and talk about his crypto investments.

Name all the things wrong with this album cover

 I'm sorry that I chose to make the picture so damned big, but who needs retinas anyway?

Don’t fear the nuclear

Are you one of those people who believe that nuclear power can’t solve our energy generation problem because of its danger?

Then you seriously need to watch this video. She is not a politician, or a journalist. Science.

If you want to skip the dull costs statistics portion, skip ahead from the 10:11 mark to 19:39. 

Before and after mural

 

Songs that turn 40 this year (2024)

Thompson twins - Hold me now

Prince - When Doves Cry

Van Halen - Jump

Yes - Owner of a Lonely Heart

Bruce Springsteen - Dancing in the Dark

Cyndi Lauper - Girls Just Want to Have Fun

Steve Perry - Oh Sherrie

Corey Hart - Sunglasses at Night

Billy Idol - Eyes Without a Face

Eurythmics - Here Comes the Rain Again

Billy Joel - Uptown Girl

ZZ Top - Legs

Madonna - Lucky Star

Wang Chung - Dance Hall Days

Michael Jackson - Thriller

Culture Club - Church of the Poison Mind

The Police - Wrapped Around Your Finger

John Cougar Mellencamp - Pink Houses

The Go-Go's - Head over Heels

Called it

 

Things I learned lately 15 Mar

• There is a new AI player on the block that has been designed to have a more human-like conversational experience with us named Pi.ai.
• Subway restaurants actually discontinued yellow mustard as an available condiment to put on sandwiches, apparently because not many ask for it. Green Goddess Dressing is a big mover though, huh?
• Salt & Brick, a restaurant in downtown Calgary, has a secret speakeasy at the back called Charlie’s Watch Repair. You have to book an ‘appointment’, not a reservation, and ask for Charlie to get in. Folks say it’s a cocktail lover’s dream.
• Lene Hau experimented with the speed of light and managed to slow light down to 61 km/h, then in another experiment, down to 0 km/h. This was done by freezing a cloud of sodium atoms to just above 0 Kelvin. The light moved again once the matter was warmed again.
• Montreal smoked meat is made from brisket, whereas pastrami is made from navel. The former is lean, the latter is not.
• The top 5 coffee producing countries are Brazil; Vietnam; Columbia; Indonesia; and Ethiopia.
• In the early 1930s, white Americans toyed with Nazi-ism and the concept of a white, Christian nation. The time was rife with racism, anti-semitism, and a belief that Jews were taking over the world at the expense of non-Jewish people. There were even children’s summer camps indoctrinating white children with the virtues of Nazi beliefs. Nazi flags were flown alongside American flags at these camps and at adult gatherings of the German American Bund.
• David H. McConnell started Avon in 1886 as a bookseller. He offered little gifts of perfume to lure in female customers. The perfume became more popular than the books he was selling, so he shifted focus and founded the California Perfume Company, which later became Avon.

Hockey explained

 

Small things 8 Mar

• Myth: We only use 10% of our brain. William James, a psychologist in the 1800s, once metaphorically used the idea of 10% of the brain being all that was used at one time. This grew into the rumour that we only use 10% of the brain overall and most of the rest was not understood or used as far as we knew. Actually, the inactive neurons are just as important at any given moment as the ones actively firing at a point in time, and the 10% comes from varying areas at different times. We do use all of our brain.
• Never tell the salesperson that you don’t know anything about the product you’re shopping for.
• When you walked by a gas station as a kid, did you stomp on the hose on the ground that sounded the bell to alert the attendant?
• Remember that song, “We’re not gonna take it”? We seem to be still taking it.
• If every neighbourhood had a truck share program for a very reasonable price, would you trade in your truck for a smaller vehicle?
• “Some cool, clear night, drive to a country place where city lights don’t block your view. Turn off the car lights. Get out and look up. And see our real neighbourhood.” ~C.J. Cherryh
• Fifty percent of people who buy tickets to see The Cure actually end up watching the band Placebo, and they enjoy it just as much.
• If you’re going to call in sick for a ‘snow day’, at least have the decency to build a snowman in your front yard.
• Have you ever seen a peeled lemon?

Tidal drama

 

How wages are influenced by immigration

In light of the fact that immigration controls are a big part of today’s discussion again, I thought it would be good to repost this quote from a respected economist.

"Wages in rich countries are determined more by immigration control than anything else, including any minimum wage legislation. How is the immigration maximum determined? Not by the 'free' labor market, which, if left alone, will end up replacing 80 – 90 percent of native workers with cheaper, and often more productive, immigrants. Immigration is largely settled by politics. If the same market can be perceived to have varying degrees of freedom by different people, there is really no objective way to define how free that market is. In other words, the free market is an illusion. If some markets look free, it is only because we so totally accept the regulations that are propping them up that they become invisible."

~Cambridge economist Ha-Joon Chang

Where all of Canada's energy goes (2017 data)

 

Click to enlarge.

Never before

Things my current car has that I’ve never experienced before (2024 edition)

Apple Carplay

Heated steering wheel

Powered liftgate

All-wheel drive

Dynamic radar cruise control

Cross traffic alert

The captains of the 2 Montreal pro hockey teams trade sweaters

 

Things I learned lately 8 Mar

• In the Google Chrome web browser, if you right click an image on a web page and press the ‘s’ key, it does a reverse Google image search on that picture using Google Lens.
• India now has an office building complex in Surat consisting of 4,700 offices, for 67,000 workers.
• The BBC’s annual budget is CAD$10b. The CBC’s annual budget is a mere CAD$1.2b.
• Nabisco Oreo cookies are a copycat of the Hydrox cookie from the Sunshine Biscuits company, When they competed at a lower price, Hydrox was the clear winner. But once Nabisco relaunched the Oreo at a higher price, the public perceived it as a superior product and it sold the most compared to Hydrox.
• Scientists have discovered that human cells have a resonant frequency, in other words they vibrate! It turns out that different cells have different frequencies. This opens the door to using sound to identify cells that are unhealthy, and possibly destroy cells that are interfering with the body's normal function. It may even be possible to use sound to trigger medication delivery to specific cells, or perhaps even activate the immune system in specific ways. Needless to say, this is a very exciting discovery. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEQNj6Xiewo
• Geddy Lee (Rush) and Rick Moranis (SCTV) went to elementary school together.
• The New York City subway system has 472 stations.
• The ‘74-’75 Stanley Cup finals were the first modern NHL finals not to feature an original six team. It was Philadelphia against Buffalo.

Small things 1 Mar

• Claiming that someone else's marriage is against your religion is like being angry at someone for eating a cupcake because you're on a diet.
• New Jersey has more than 600 diners, more than any other state.
• Me at the grocery store picking an item behind the one in the front.
• Behind every great man is a woman rolling her eyes.
• What will we call Glacier National Park after the glaciers are gone?
• Your earlobes are lined up vertically with your nipples. You just checked, didn’t you?
• Newfoundland was discovered 5000 years ago. Poor name choice maybe?
• Would you let your kids eat cake for breakfast? No? Then why would you let them eat fried cake served with butter and maple syrup on top?
• Remember when most department stores had their own restaurants?
• I said to myself, “Self” (and I knew it was me because I recognized my voice and I was wearing my underwear) “Today is going to be a great day.” [stolen from dave skripka]
• Technically the glass is always full. What portion of it isn’t filled with water is filled with air.
• From now on, when I get a cold call from a service company, I’m just going to say whatever equates to “You can’t help me.” So if it’s duct cleaning, I’ll say, “I don’t have a furnace, so no ducts.” If it’s ‘Microsoft’ suggesting I have a Windows issue, I’ll say “I don’t use Windows. I use Linux.” If they claim I owe taxes, I’ll say, “Of course I owe taxes. I’ve never submitted a tax return in my life.”

He'll be Bach

 

Learn the first steps in generative AI

You’ve likely heard about ChatGPT, Copilot and Gemini. 

They are the latest offerings in the world of generative AI tools. 

Some are free and some require a subscription, but they all are revolutionizing how we learn, do and create stuff. 

And now there’s a 3 hour course for that. 

It’s called an introduction to generative AI and it is offered in Calgary by Chinook Learning Services. 

You’ll never guess who is teaching this course. 

Yeah. Me.

The next one is in May.

Anyone who’s seen 2001 and has interacted with chatGPT will know

 

The seasons in Alberta

• Winter
  
  
  
• Fool's Spring
• Second Winter
• Spring of Deception
• Third Winter
• The Pollening
• Actual Spring
• Winter’s revenge
• Spring’s convalescence
• Summer
• Hell's Front Porch
• False Fall
• Second Summer
• Actual Fall
• Mild winter
• Return of the vortex

Rough neighbourhood

 

Things I learned lately 1 Mar

• The Alberta government plans to charge a $200 annual tax on electric cars. Because of course they do.
• The Alberta government, before even seeing it, says they’re opting out of the planned federal pharmacare plan. “Just give us the money” they said, “And we’ll use it to fund diabetes meds.” No mention of contraceptives also included in the fed plan.
• Tesla has finally opened their supercharger network to Fords. I watched a Ford Lightning get a DC fast charge from a US Tesla supercharger (adapter required and provided).
• Tesla's fleet of vehicles equipped with the Full Self-Driving (FSD) Beta system has surpassed a significant milestone by autonomously driving well over 100 million miles. Tesla's FSD software is now actively driving on average 1 million miles per day.
• Percentage of all new car sales in 2023 that were EVs in the US: 7.6%. California alone: 21%. China: 24%. Norway: 82%.
• The man who appears on Canadian Tire money is a fictional character named Sandy McTire. He was designed to represent the hardworking everyman of the 1950s. Sandy McTire has been featured on Canadian Tire money since 1961.
• Elaine, a character from Seinfeld, got kicked out of their apartment for (among other things) putting Canadian quarters in the washing machine.