Archive for April, 2004

Jenn and I hit the mini-links for our first mini-putt of the season. I was off to a record breaking start on the front nine with a birdie and two holes and another birdie. Even though I managed a full six on hole eleven, I was on my way to an under fifty game.

Then the hole sixteen happened. I shot another six — I failed to hit it into one of three “tunnels” until shot five — so I really earned my six on that. But it wasn’t sealed even though I bogeyed seventeen. I five putted eighteen for a fifty four game.

Jenn who started slow finished strong and we ended up tied. I told her afterwards that I played so poorly at the end so she’d feel well. She told me I was a terrible liar.

Well, all of a sudden, out of nowhere, summer hit the capital region today. I was downtown this morning on my bike and it was warm and pleasant. I was wearing my shorts (not the first time this year, but the first time people didn’t look at me funny for it) and everything was good.

This afternoon, I rode to the bank at the mall, along the canal and then across the river. Sometime today they filled the Rideau Canal — a sure sign of summer. Today is the kind of day that makes unemployment seem like a good thing!

I’ve got good news and bad news on the Unfriendly cartoon front. The bad news is, I’m having a hard time scripting the buttons, so there’s no “Again” nor “Back” functionality. Nor is the Easter egg button working. The good news is the cartoon is done and the bonus material is done too. But — see the bad news. Hopefully it’ll be all going tomorrow.

I have a confession to make. The real reason I like Joe Hall so much is because he knows more about the Dukes of Hazzard than I do. And with that, I present the best Dukes of Hazzard trivia questions that Joe, Tyler, Jenn and myself came up with last night.

1) What does the P stand for in Rosco P Coltrane?
2) What do Boss Hogg’s initials J. D. stand for?
3) What was the name of Rosco’s dog?
4) Who replaced Bo and Luke for one season?
5) What were Bo and Luke doing the year they were away?
6) What was the year and model of the General Lee?
7) Who was fat, who was skinny, Enos and Cletus?

I’ll post the answers soon, feel free to answer in the comments section if you’d like.

You know how some people have all sorts of categories for their blog entries? Well, obviously I don’t. If I did, I think one of my categories would be “Chicken Skin — The Best Part” and today’s entry would be in it. Only because I made a roast chicken for supper. I used Jenn’s awesome turkey recipe and it turned out just great. It was Tyler’s last supper visit and his dad was in town to take him home so he came over for the visit as well.

It’s neat having Joe over. Not only is he one of my old high school teachers, but we used to live in the same neighbourhood, I’ve been friends with all of his sons and his wife was the worship co-ordinator at my church where I played for several years. Besides all the stuff we have to talk about, just covering the things we have in common, he’s a really smart guy with some varied interests. We were talking about old railroads that used to run through the area we used to live in, about teachers I had in high school, about provincial politics. It was a good time.

I guess, I just want to say, I like Joe. Joe who?

Today on World Report at 8:00am a striking health care worker from Newfoundland was quoted saying,

“Some of us have worked here for twenty or thirty years and they treat us like a piece of meat! They just throw us out on the street.”

Never mind the mixed-up metaphors, I’ve never thrown meat out on the street. I’d rather barbecue it up and eat it! Who throws meat out on the street anyways? I can see if it was twenty or thirty years old maybe. But wouldn’t you rather seal it in a bag and just throw it out in the garbage?

In other news…

“[Some country] has just implemented facial and Irish biometric scanning to combat terrorism.”

My guess is Northern Ireland. Either that or they meant to say “iris biometric scanning.”

I lived in Minneapolis for two years while I attended Bible college. While I was there, I became familiar with a place called The New Union It was a Christian music venue in the middle of a residential neighbourhood on the north side of the city. It had a weird building that maybe used to be a small school or something.

Anyway, my point with this is, I never gave much consideration to the name The New Union.

Today at church the fellow preaching was talking about the preisthood of believers. How everything has changed since Christ. In the past, the priests of Israel were special people, appointed by God to be the ones who dealt with God on behalf of the people. Certain appointed priests prayed while others offered sacrifices.

Since Christ, every believer is a priest because they can go to God on their own. They can pray to God, praise God and serve God on their own. How? All because of the new union the believer has with Christ.

It was a “Gee whiz!” moment for me when I realized that this concert hall in Minneapolis had more than a cool sounding name. I suppose it shouldn’t have surprised me. Well…

A prominent music magazine has just released it’s list of the fifty all time worst pop songs. While I don’t disagree that many — if not most — of their selections are bad (though, not what the kids mean by “bad”) I do question some of them.

For the uninformed out there, coming in at the top spot is Starship’s We Built this City on Rock and Roll. Truly horrid, I never liked it, stupid video, but deserving of top honours? Why not Color Me Badd’s I Wanna Sex You Up? I still shudder when I think of that one.

Then they put some great tunes in the list. Call me biased, but the Beatles’ Oh-Bla-Di, Oh-Bla-Da surely isn’t worst fifty material. And imagine my horror when Huey Lewis and the News’ Heart of Rock and Roll was listed. Poor Huey. Call me a child of the 80’s, but surely there are fifty other songs worse than that.

Oh well, I almost never listen to the radio anyway — aside from CBC Radio One — and I sometimes even wonder about that.

So, this whole world of Flash animation has really sucked me in over the last couple of days. I haven’t blogged and now, I’m supposed to be getting supper going for our guests tonight — and I haven’t started! I hope Jenn’s not reading this. Anyway, a couple observations…

1) I have a lot more patience for those guys who try to get new flash animations done every week for their websites. It’s a lot of work. I’m trying to do a minute and a half cartoon from a radio sketch, and it’s taking forever! Granted, I don’t have a library of stuff to use and re-use, and I’m just learning, but man-o-man, it’s taking quite a while.

2) Flash animating is like affecting me like video games on the C64 when I was a kid. I’m neglecting to do important* things so I can keep animating. Crazy!

So, my apologies for missing a few days of posting. I’ll be back at it soon. In the mean time, check out the new Unfriendly Giant page — with new cartoon!

*Like I haven’t showered yet today and it’s after lunch!

Did you know that the people who make all that flash development software allow a 30 day trial period? Pretty cool. So, I’m taking advantage of them. Today was a personal development day and I’m learning flash again — this time, more thoroughly.

A year or two back, I took a look at it and made a little animation via trial and error. Today, I sat down and did a few hours of tutorials and actually learned something. Yay me!

So, will I be making cartoons like a couple of chaps who are brothers? Who knows. But I figure if I give it a few more days I’ll be able to add this skill to my resume.

I think that I’d like to see the Leafs win the Stanley Cup, but not over any other Canadian team — or the Avs. I imagine I’m feeling charitable because the Leafs didn’t eliminate the Sens last night. I may feel different Wednesday morning.

While watching last night’s game, which was a good game, I decided that it’s not the Leafs I don’t like. I have no specific ill will towards the players. I think it might be Leafs fans I don’t like — and of course, I have friends and family, like everyone else, who are Leafs fans, so they don’t count.

Maybe that’s just it. So many people are Leafs fans. I can’t get away from them.

I’m not suggesting that any of these boorish loud mouths are bandwagon jumpers — there’s no bandwagon to jump on really. They’re just jerks. I used to be a jerk too, of the small-time sporting event kind. At university basketball I would sit in the stands behind the opposing team and heckle them all game. I’m not proud of it, and don’t advocate it, but at least I didn’t go to the opposing team’s home court to be a jerk.

Perhaps I’m trying to say that it’s okay to be root-root-rooting for the home team with rabid fanaticism when you’re at home. But when your Leafs are away, don’t infiltrate the home team’s territory and be a jerk. Don’t paint your car up like a Toronto Leaf, bungee cord an inflatable Stanley Cup to the hood and drive around my neighbourhood honking your horn. Don’t put on your brand new Leafs jersey and strut around the grocery store the morning after your team won because you want to provoke a negative reaction. Just don’t be a jerk.

Generally speaking, I don’t like Toronto the city, so that may have something to do with my dislike for Leafs fans too. Anyway, this has been too much of a rant. For the record, I’m a Nordiques fan, and I’ll pull for them while they’re in Colorado too.