Archive for December, 2004

My cousin gave my parents a new dog this evening and it was a surprise. I knew about it since Christmas, but was sworn to secrecy. I thought it was something that was going to happen in the next couple of months, but a couple of days ago, I found out it was going to happen tonight. I intended to try to talk my cousin out of it — when I thought there was time to reconsider. Instead, I called him up (he lives in southern Ontario) and told him I didn’t think it was a good idea.

Of course, dad would love a new hunting dog, but mom (on several occassions — and even a couple of days ago) has told me that she wasn’t ready for a new dog and may never be ready. But, when the new, seven week old, Chocolate Labrador Retriever (born on November first no less — Ben) showed up, mom melted and it was all a very good thing.

So, I was wrong about the dog — very wrong. See, I can admit being wrong. Doesn’t make me feel any less of a clod though. Anyway, I’ll post some photos of my new brother when I get them.

So, a funny thing happened a few days before I came up to Thunder Bay for holidays… I shaved off my handlebars. A day or so before that, I asked Jenn what she thought of them. She said they were fun. She also told me that I didn’t have to shave them off if I didn’t want to.

I guess being free to keep my handlebars made me free to get rid of them. So off they came. However, for those of you who didn’t get to see them, I unearthed a forgotten photograph of them. Actually, we just got a roll of film developed and there’s a shot from our small group Christmas party where I’m sitting on the couch with my handlebards. I’ll scan it and put it online when I get home… if someone reminds me.

Happy Boxing Day! Last night we went to my aunt Mary and uncle Donny’s place out at Lake Shabandowan for Christmas dinner. Grandma (Foulds) was out there too with two of my dad’s cousins, my cousin Kara and of course mom and dad were there too — ten of us in total. This was the second year we had Christmas supper out there and we decided last year that it should be a tradition.

Uncle Donny cleared a huge section of the lake in front of their house, flooded it and made sure it was great for skating last year and he did it again this year (it’s all part of the deal.) He doesn’t skate with us, but we sure appreciate it.

Another tradition we started last year was the annual snowman count. Aunt Mary has a lot of Christmas decorations. Last year, Jenn, Kara and I were in awe of all of the Christmas nick-nacks on display all over the house. We could have counted Santas or angels, but we decided to count snowmen. We decided that they had to be three dimensional snowmen — paintings of snowmen or snowmen on a shower curtain don’t count. We tried to remember what the total was last year, some said 180, but that seemed like too many so we settled on 80. This year we counted 123 (including at least one snowman angel) and of course, people brought new snowmen as gifts. Hopefully next year we’ll eclipse 150.

Anyways, it was a good time (again) and I hope that if I don’t see you soon, that I’ll see you later. Happy Christmas continues.

So, Lance was in Ottawa today and I got to hang out with him. In fact, I brought him over to the old homestead tonight and he, Jenn and I just hung around. It was a good time. That’s all I wanted to say about that. Oh, and one more thing. Nah na nee nah na.

PS: Lance says “Hi and merry Christmas to all his friends in Thunder Bay.”

I got a new high score in Astrostorm: 1378. Not a big improvment, I know, but an improvement all the same. I’ve also been trying to figure out some of the timings of the changes in the game, like when the fast asteroids start falling, when the sideways asteroids begin, the first background speedup, the red background speedup, etc. This is what I think (and Vanja can tell me if I’m totally wrong) the score is merely a counter/timer. When the count reaches certain points the changes happen. So far, no d’uh, right? At counter 64: fast asteroids, 128: horizontal asteroids, 512: stars speedup. That’s about it — if I get that far, I don’t want to crash to test out my theories. By the way, I find it much easier to when the stars speed up — probably because they fade more into the background at that point.

Here are some thoughts (or maybe just one thought) for the next Commodore DTV production run… why not go for a more ergonomic joystick? I know space is a consideration, but wouldn’t an Epyx style joystick be great? Or how about an Ergostick? Bet you haven’t thought of that for a while.

Hmm, I wonder if anyone reading this blog beside Robin and myself actually have a Commodore DTV. Probably too much time spent on it.

So, there’s this comercial going around these days that has a song in it that’s stuck in my head. And I know I’ve got the lyrics wrong, but those are stuck in my head too. It goes something like…

I wish you a hopeful Christmas
I wish you a great New Year
I hope there’ll be snow this Christmas
At Christmas you get what you earn

At least that’s how it goes around in my head. Now, I head to the internet to see if the reality is better or worse than what I remember and here are the results…

Emerson, Lake and Palmer “I Belive in Father Christmas”
I wish you a hopeful Christmas
I wish you a brave New Year
All anguish pain and sadness
Leave your heart and let your road be clear
They said there’ll be snow at Christmas
They said there’ll be peace on Earth
Hallelujah Noel be it Heaven or Hell
The Christmas you get you deserve

That’s funny, in another version that sometimes runs in my head the last line was “At Christmas you get what you deserve” but it has the wrong metre, so I guess I made up the other version. Never the less, both versions (ELP’s and mine) are wrong when it comes to the end. ELP state you get the Christmas you deserve and of course, none of us deserve Christmas. My version states you get the Christmas you earn and of course (at least presently) none of us get what we’ve earned, we get (it seems at the very minimum) God’s gift of being alive, breathing the air and the more fortunate of us have a warm bed, food in our stomachs and friends and family all thanks to Him.

Well, that’s enough of my Christmas prattle for the year. In case I don’t blog too much in the next week, have a happy Christmas. Oh, and you can send my presents to Thunder Bay!

PS: I hate to explain things, because I figure all of you are intelligent enough to understand, but to avoid confusion: “none of us deserve Christmas” = none of us deserve God becoming incarnate to providing atonement for our sin. “none of us get what we’ve earned” = we’ve all earned an eternity of hell for offending an infinite God.

Pretty good title, eh?

So, yesterday as I was driving Jenn to work in the morning, I didn’t kill anyone. But I could have. I was at the intersection of Clegg and Main streets, turning right onto Main to get out of our little neighbourhood when it happened. I Got to the light when it was red, but then it turned green. So, I made my turn onto Main.

Just then a pedestrian darted out in front of me from the sidewalk in a desparate attempt to cross the street at a location that wasn’t the crosswalk. I pressed the brakes in order to decelerate from my only modest speed. Then the pedestrian slipped on the icy street and fell down in front of my car! Before I was able to come to a complete stop, he hopped up and dashed across the street and I continued to take Jenn to work. And that’s how I heroicly didn’t kill anyone yesterday.

PS: I tend to start all my blog entries with “So…” but I usually catch myself and get rid of it. But not today.

… or another weather related blog entry. It’s pretty cold this morning in the nation’s capital. About -30°C and you could take off another 10° or so with the windchill. Never the less, my good, faithful, un-plugged, VW diesel started. It grunted a bit the first few times the engine turned and I did wonder if it would make it, but it did. Apparently as of 8:00am there was an eight hour wait if you called CAA for a boost. So, I turned the heaters on this morning and left my touque on. I’m pretty comfortable.

Yesterday afternoon, Jenn and I drove out to Merrickville, about three quarters of an hour south and west of Ottawa. But because I didn’t really know how to get there, we were only able to spend about an hour (if that) in town before we had to head back to Ottawa for our church’s evening Christmas program. Apparently, Merrickville is Canada’s prettiest town bloom — but nothing was blooming on December 19th, let me tell you. We had lunch at Brewed Awakenings coffeeshop and I spent some time browsing around a good sized model train store. Jenn told me that I might as well get something there, after driving all that way, so I got a book on model train layout design. If we’re still in Ottawa in the spring, I think it would be worth the trip to check out the town again.

So, I got my Commodore DTV in the mail on Wednesday and have had a few hours at it by now. For those of you who don’t know what a C=DTV is, it’s a joystick that plugs into your tv that had a miniature Commodore 64 built into it with 30+ games on it. Anyways, the first thing I did after plugging it in was check the one Easter Egg I know of and then I played Cliff Diving — a game I made back in highschool that Robin (the lead programmer on the C=DTV) snuck on it for fun.

Since then as I mention I’ve been playing lots of Tower Toppler/Nebulus. I’m pretty close to beating level two at this point. What I do is play a two player game, get to level two with my first life of each player, then I have six straight goes at the second tower without having to beat level one again. I can tell that this game is going to take up a lot of my time and I’m already thinking that I’m going to bring the game home for Christmas.

The other game that I’ve just started playing is Astrostorm — another game Robin snuck on. It’s a simple but elegant game of dodge the asteroids. There are no guns or lasers, just you controlling your ship as it streaks through a field of asteroids. My first play I got a score of over 800 at the point in the game where the stars in the background turn from blue to red and thing are just whizzing by. Then I couldn’t get back to the red stars for quite a few games. But I battled back and on my last game the stars started slowing down and turned blue again and I had a score of 1335. Wow!

Anyways, the Commodore DTV has been a great early Christmas present to myself — good job Robin, Jeri and team.

A double dose of Shroom-blog for you today. I got a package in the mail from QVC yesterday — my new Commodre 64 DTV video game system. I’ve been playing a little bit of Tower Toppler/Nebulus but haven’t spent too much time with it yet.

For those of you concerned that I might have OCD, I’ll have you know that the temperature was near 0°C today and I didn’t do a lick of shovelling. Instead, I spent time inside working away. Check out the cool big neighbourhood map I’m drawing for one of the sites I’m working on now. Today, I added some people and streetlamps. You’ll notice that I’ve shovelled all the streets down to the blacktop.