Category: life

Seen on the side of a bus:

If you thought a drunken sailor was bad news, watch out for that drunk lawyer! 🙂

Smart university: University of Windsor goes wireless. In partnership with Bell Canada SMB, they just completed the crazy task of deploying over 1,000 802.11b/g wireless hotspots in and around campus.

Stupid university: Lakehead University bans wireless networks because it has “the potential for ‘some fairly significant’ health consequences”.

Other devices that work on the 2.4GHz spectrum at equal or higher electromagnetic strength than Wi-Fi devices but presumably are allowed on Lakehead’s campus:

* cordless phones
* walkie-talkies
* microwave ovens
* TV extenders
* Bluetooth devices (cellphones, headsets)
* Garage door openers
* Microwave radio transmitters on buildings

Maclean’s currently ranks this Thunder Bay-based institution of higher learning in 16th place out of 21 primarily undergraduate universities.

Well, the election is over, but here’s a little momento from a CPC flyer that was stuffed in my mailbox in early January.

It appears that the evil, kitten-snorting Liberals and NDP are against child care, health care, and families. Fortunately, they also appear to be against taxes and crime…so vote for Klufas if you like kids but don’t mind being burgled. At least I think that’s what they’re trying to tell me!

In the Xbox 360: __Ridge Racer 6__. Yuck. I feel like I’m driving a train.

A soda fountain at an IT training centre on Adelaide Street. One of the taps is labelled “MARGARITA”. It’s a strange carbonated green liquid.

Fun fact: Our instructor had taught his 10 year old daughter how to compromise a Windows 2003 server, extract the root password, and subsequently reformat the machine.

Took the woman to her very first dim sum lunch at Rol San. Bfunked showed up and we act copious amounts of all food groups (but no chicken feet my favourite, fried taro). Afterwards we walked off our brunch at Yorkdale, stopping by the chic new Apple Store in the process. It’s like The Gap, but with sixteen times more people.

It appears the new 5G video iPod really is the same width and height as my totally old and obsolete and senile 4G iPod.

Shades of six degrees: I just found out that Dalton McGuinty, current Ontario Premier, came from my alma mater, McMaster University. In an interview with the McMaster alumni magazine, it turns out he lived in a student house on the exact same street in Westdale I co-habitated in for two years, Hollywood. Heck, we may have had rented the same house.

P.S. Speaking of minor celebrities, yes, I did shake the hand of Preston Manning on Parliament Hill during Canada Day, 2000. I also saw Jacksoul and the Canadian Cheerleading Team. Couldn’t get close to Jean Chretien, though.

Saw this in Chapleau this week:

Speaking of Chinese, it’s the Lunar New Year. I celebrate the new year by unconventional means – digging around my hard drive to make the annual New Year’s picture, a tradition that’s been running for eight years or so. I look forward to the 12th anniversary when I don’t have to make them anymore and can just recycle them! 😉

My sister gave me this over the holidays – a penguin-shaped chocolate from L.A. Burdick’s, a chocolatier in New Hampshire. Check it out:

L.A. Burdick pays hommage to the flight less, tuxedoed birds of the artic with our hand-piped ganache of dark chocolate and lemon with almond arms, dressed in dark chocolate and accented with white chocolate.

I bit its head off before I realized what it was shaped as.

In a epilogue to this post: the American Brandstand 2005 report is proud to announce the top 10 brands mentioned in hiphop. The top three are, from boldest to least, are Mercedes, Nike, and Cadillac. The one brand rappers don’t seem to mind knockoffs of? The AK-47 at #10 with a bullet.

Biggest corporate shill? 50 Cent, of course.

But maybe I’m being judgemental. After all, named-ropping is as old as time. Hell, Mozambique put an AK-47 on their national flag. I also just watched “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” with my sister, and there’s Marilyn Monroe singing “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend”, where Tiffany’s, Cartier and Howard Winston are mentioned in a matter of moments.

Good ol’ Norma Jean even refers to her diamonds as “ice”. I’d drink Cristal to that. Happy New Year.

The more things change, the more things stay the same.

Like virtually every year, the cousins descended to the annual family quasi-Christmas dinner (It’s not always on Xmas Eve, we have Gregorian calendar difficulties, what can I say). However, this time it was at my cousin’s new 4 bedroom home. Very Emily Post; she and her husband played the consummate hostess and host, complete with smoked salmon, lichee cocktails and Vodka Twistee shots. The milky part was good, the strawberry needed some work but the vodka part was alright.

Then there was the coup de gras: a stuffed turkey cooked in a stainless steel oven that probably had more computer processing power than this computer.

The food was excellent, and the new house looked pretty nice (yes, even the neat trick they did with the temporary blinds!).

After dinner, we sat down to yet another family tradition: poker. In the past, I used to be the first man out. This year, I beat out almost a dozen folks to emerge with the second place prize: a magarita and daquiri mixing kit.

The more things stay the same, the more things change,