Category: life

In honour of my trip with Norm and Rich last night to see Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life, I present you MSN’s 10 worst movies of all time, and The Wave’s Ten Eightiest Movies.

TR2 does get a bonus point in my book for having the bad guys carry around H&K G36 assault rifles, however.

I was in downtown Toronto. I was chatting with a coworker when the power went out.

Or should I say, the primary lights went out. Emergency lights flipped on, and the racks of Opteras and other Nortel equipment continued running, on uninterruptable power supplies.

Looked outside. It looked like this part of the building had a brownout. Walked outside. Wow, the whole block.

Oh well, I have some time to make some calls. I decided to call Silverlotus, to see if she had V’s work phone number. The guy wanted to have dinner when I was in town, but lost his cellphone, didn’t know the number of his loaner, and neglected to tell me what his work number was. :rollseyes:: “I’d love to help,” Silverlotus said, “but we’ve had a blackout for the past fifteen minutes.” That was when the hair stood up from the back of my neck.

It was like 1964. But it also was not. Most buildings had backup power. Fire elevators hummed along their protected shunts. People were on mobile phones. Bell’s voice and data networks were at 99% functionality. They were a bit congested at times, but they worked. We always take dialtone for granted. If you had a laptop with a modem, you could log into your Sympatico account and surf the web.

Couldn’t check into my hotel at first, because they needed their computers to look up my reservation. Silverlotus got my bedside radio clock working, and was my primary source of news for the next few hours.

When I was hungry, I went downstairs to find a hot dog vendor. The booth sat empty. “He ran out of buns, so he went to get more,” another would-be customer explained. I looked at the bumper to bumper traffic. Hell, if he ever returned, it wouldn’t be for hours.

As night fell, they barricaded all the doors to the hotel except the main entrance. Police cars roamed outside, their headlights creating surreal reliefs of grooves and potholes in the asphalt. Used the glow of the LCD screen of my digicam to use the pitch-black washroom. I fell asleep to the murmur of a hundred diesel generators.

The power had returned, at least briefly, during the night. Unless I dreamt it. In the morning, I brushed my teeth, went back to the sink, and discovered there was no more water. Water is piped in with electrical pumps…

The Bell building had full power, however. This will make a lot of businesses rethink they’re business continuity plans. It’s not good enough to have a backup datacentre in another building; maybe it needs to be in another province all together. And fully stocked with UPSs.

Later, I was sitting in a VIA train en route to London, immobilized somewhere east of Brantford. Trains run on diesel – but signals run on electricity. The ride eventually took over 5 hours – a normally 2 hour trip.

Came home, took a shower. A cold shower. No hot water.

Posted on Friday, August 15, 2003Categories life

I won!

My first endeavour in digital video creation, filming was done with Fraps and SWiSH. Sound was done in Audacity. Post-processing was done in Virtualdub. It took me a better part of a week’s worth of nights to get it completed.

We all hustled over to Vic Park today to enjoy the highlight of London’s summer season, the 2003 Ribfest. Steakhouses from across the continent come here to vie for titles such as “Best Ribs”, “Best Sauce”, and “People’s Choice”.

Kentucky Smokehouse’s somewhat unscientific explanation as to why their ribs taste better

I got the half rib and baked beans, and Silverlotus got the chicken on a bun. I personally thought the ribs and baked beans were better last year, but oh well.

The money shot

Visiting my parents is always an ordeal. I’m always too thin, not making enough money, too unshaven, too whatever nit they seem to want to pick at.

But I had to go. It was my dad’s birthday, and a sendoff for my sister before she starts working for the Evil Empire. We did go to a nice Chinese restaurant and had Peking duck and a Hong Kong style shrimp salad – potato, apple, melon, shrimp in mayonnaise. It was actually pretty dang good, and from what I understand from the exorbitant tip I had to pay, it took all day to prepare.

Which is another absurdity in itself, because I pretty much spend the most money eating out when I take them to dinner.

She did say yes.

Went and saw Sokurov’s Russian Ark, aka Russkij kovcheg tonight at Rainbow. Bloody place was packed, too. This is the film everyone is talking about that was shot in a single take – and in uncompressed HDTV format. One shot, 96 minutes. It takes place in one interior location, the Hermitage Museum, but involves hundreds of actors and actresses in period costumes, able to perform like clockwork.

Historically, it is very significant. Technically, it was a stunning achievement. Unfortunately, the plot left something to be desired (what was with the narrator anyway? Was he travelling through time? Or a dream?). I think if it took place in the Met or the ROM, it would be more relevant, but it’s in Russian and about Russian history, which I really don’t “get”.

Yesterday, I went downstairs to grab my laundry out of the washer, and I find out that some woman has already taken them out and put them in my basket. She was in the middle of heaping her particulars in the machine.

There must have been four empty washers when I came in, so I was too confused and stunned to give her a tongue lashing. Then I noticed her laundry “basket”.

It was a institution-sized garbage pail. You know, the kind that has its own wheels.

It turns out that Ms. Whites/Darks/Delicates Trash used FIVE of the six available washers. Must have been Laundry Month. It appears to have been such a complex, large-scale, pipeline processing operation, she even had Ziploc containers of food with her.

(note: I really wish they could set up a CCTV camera in the laundry. Or maybe a webcam. My dream would be to have all the machines web-enabled, so you can track exactly how much time is left in each machine. I could even write an app to hide in my system tray. God, I’m such a geek.) :lamer:

Went to see the 2003 Dragon’s Lair Jousting Tournament at the John Labatt Centre last night. It was 2.5 hours long, but pretty interesting. They had mount games (gauntlet), duels with broad swords, spears, half-swords, and of course, jousting.

There are two kinds of jousting: light armour and heavy armour. Light armour weighs almost 90lbs., not including the lance. Heavy armour jousting is even more brutal; lances are snapped in two, and sometimes riders are knocked right off their horses when they plough into each other. Pretty odd seeing grown men walking around in full knight armour taking swigs out of Aquafina bottles, though. At least these geeks get some exercise.

Silverlotus had a brainstorm. If they marketed jousting right, it could be just as big as professional wrestling! Think about it, the target market is the same (bumpkins), the appeal is the same (the possibility of someone getting hurt), and the knights already make dramatic entrances with theme music.

Not enough wenches, though.