Oorgo

Loonie linky-loo

Hey, so , yeah, ok I have nothing to post today but I thought I'd throw up some webpages that peeked my interest.

Here's something for all you fans who really get more out of music. Make it real personal, make it really move you, get an Audi-Oh addon to your iPod. I... I'm speechless.

Along the same vein, iPod advertising has been banned from the University of Washington, who has signed an enslavement agreement to thrust Napster and Dell's crappy mp3 player down students throats. If I remember my university days right, it will backfire on Napster. University students are historically not as gullible to advertising plugs, they also research things and think a little more than your average Jill/Joe. As if Napster and Dell didn't have a bad enough rep already.

Oh, and this made me hungry just looking at it:
egg and muffin toaster

Oh yeah, and Pam from Beetroot just gave me this one: My Dream has Finally Come True. Ain't it so true.

I'll tip ya

Is it ever expected that when you pick up Take Out food that you tip? We frequent this chinese food place in the city fairly regularly, and I always seem to get a cold response when I take my change. Yesterday the guy almost shoo'd me out of the place. The price of the meal was $18.76, I gave him a 20, he went back to get change, comes back, gives me a look as I take the change, and says "bye bye" sweeping his hand towards the door. I was offended a bit.

Do you think I should have been? Do you know ANYONE that tips for Takeout? I sure as hell don't. Takeout in itself saves them the bother of serving the food to you, being pleasant, offering refills, you soiling their dishes, and them collecting and cleaning up the dishes. It's a win win situation for them, that's why they usually give you a discount on it. Really, if I tipped the bugger at the door I'd be giving up my 10% off, screw that right?

Security Nets and other things

I ducked out of a conversation here at work yesterday, mostly because of the insane possibilities for argument and I wasn't in the mood. Also because I know the person who started it, and from what I've seen their view of the world comes only from the big tv stations, newspapers and gossip. She tried telling us this: Homeless people choose to be homeless. Ok in my opinion blanket statements like this should be grabbed, strangled, stomped on a couple times and then thrown in the deepest pit you can find, because they just don't belong in a forward thinking society. Upon this statemtent I merely said "I'll just sit here drinking my coffee, I'm not getting into this", and luckily the "discussion" ended not long after that. As I was driving home I thought more about it and came up with some thoughts I had to post, to get them out of my head.

From my perception, albeit limited to my experience and knowledge, homelessness comes from a variety of beginnings:

• Poor family, bad neighborhood, parents die, no support group
• Abuse in the family (sexual or mental), runaway
• Psychological problems or substance abuse, no support group
• Financial trauma, loss of income and housing

If I've missed something out please let me know.

The instigator of the "discussion"s one argument was that there are so many social programs available for people that they have no reason to stay on the street, that they can get help if they want it. Ok yes, there are many social programs, and yes, they could probably pull themselves out of the gutter in say the 4th instance I listed, where they had recent memories of things being better. But when you were born to poverty, abuse and/or depression, there's apparently a big chance that you also will continue that poverty, abuse and/or depression unless something happens or you are smart/willful/hopeful enough to make something of yourself.

I read once in the Scientific American (ok, now I can't find a free link to the article) that extended sadness, where there is nothing that relieves misery, no good things happen, can actually change the makeup of the brains chemistry and create clinical depression where there was none. I truly believe this because before my little guy arrived I'm absolutely sure my world would have taken the down road to depression. When you continually perceive that nothing matters, that nothing will make it better, and that you really don't deserve better, you're view of this world is a flip-flop of what a "contributing" member of society is. I'm sure I could have found help, but I truthfully didn't think it was worth it. I'm lucky that I have a wonderful family, and I had that to fall back on during difficult times, others are not so lucky.

It's so easy to make snap judgements when you grew up with sane parents in a "normal" family where you went to school without the constant worry of going home to find no one or constant fighting or the threat of violence. Those of us who are the lucky ones take for granted that we always had food, and clothing, and a hug from a parent when we were sad. I thank God every day for my parents and they way they brought me up; we never had excess but we always had enough.

Comedian Dave

I wish that I could be as easily amused as a 2 year old.

Yesterday we were all sitting in the living room, Xavier was fooling around on the couch so I grabbed his baseball cap (which says "No Fear" on it, perfect, no?), I put it on my own head and made a goofy face. Oh my lord you would have thought I was Jerry Lewis in Paris the response I got: Xavier started cackling, falling backwards, laughing and laughing and laughing, of course once he starts he has a very infectous laugh, so we started laughing. Family fun for the price of a hat that's too small for my head.

92 souls in the roll

Well what the... according to Who Links to Me there are 92 people with me on their blogroll. 92? Hmmm that's gotta be wrong, unless my munuvian relatives have me added.. very odd though. Unfortunately when I try to search blogrolling it says 0, so... no help there.

Oh, hey, and on other non related subjects, how about that Blue Screen of Death.

Wow, an oil company is even getting into gear

Ran into this through an article at Worldchanging.com regarding a new advertising campaign by Chevron. They have created an online discussion with people regarding the future of energy and sustainability.

I would suggest visiting those sites, there's no use in me rehashing their points and there are some very interesting articles, you can even post your comment or opinion. An oil company... taking public opinion... what the .. where am I?

Stumble.. trip ... stagger

Ok so my posts recently have been lame, and uninspired, that's not surprising, because that's kind of how I feel these days.

One neat thing I've found (ala Dan is Stumbleupon. It's an extension for Firefox, and it's basically a community of net surfers etc. who find sites they find interesting, rate them and then give reviews. It's definitely addicting and can be quite fun. You sign up, then specify the type of sites you want to stumble... upon.

Anyways, here's the link, check it

What does your Birthday mean?

I is Abner! Well tan mah hide!

The Dialectizer, always funny.

Red and Ready to Implode

Oh the face... the face of defeat.



CBC News: Klein drops fight against same-sex marriage

Masterpiece! I swear!

X-man went into on a painting rampage, it's the first time he's finger painted anything that resembles anything, and he was excited to do it. They are both apparently airplanes, although you can definitely see it in the second one. I so proud beam.

I liked you better before you sold out

Just because this guy hates blogs so much, and he's bloody funny, I'm posting a link to him: If these words were people, I would embrace their genocide.

Blogging: If minds had anuses, blogging would be what your mind would do when it had to take a dump.

I love it, I think blogs died inside when the first person wrote "I've got a blog! Isn't it so neat?!". And then some other enterprising folks started blog hosting companies, free venues and so easy that someone with only a quarter of their brain left after all the crack they smoked could post.

Oh I forgot to mention I found this over at HiHat's place

Wait 5 minutes

I'm pretty observant of things at most times, and I seem to have a knack for seeing trends, even if I'm a little behind. This week I've been coming to work about 5 or 10 minutes earlier than usual, and I've found the traffic and drivers are much different.

At my old time I swear to God that a high percentage of drivers drive exactly the speed limit, or lower. Whereas this week I clipped along at 10-20 kph over the speed limit, along with probably 40% of the people on the road, it was refreshing.

Maybe I'll start coming to work a little early from now on

Or at least for tomorrow, I have Thurs and Fri off: thursday is my birthday, friday is a day to make the weekend longer.

Landmark

I thought I'd get in on the action (cause I like free things and prizes...) Jen is having a 200,000 visitor landmark party (sheesh... look at my counter... lol) and I wanna win tha prize waaaaa.

-Evil Dave

Where's Evil Dave? Am I Evil Dave?

Sometimes, and I don't know if other people have this happen to them too, sometimes I get the uncomfortable feeling that I am supposed to be doing something entirely different than what I'm doing at that moment. It feels like somewhere along the way I went down the wrong path, the dimension split, I went the wrong way and what must be my twin "Evil Dave" went the other. I'm pretty sure that this is the case because it's a damn strong feeling, and I start thinking "Where am I supposed to be? What am I supposed to be doing? He must be having a better time that me, that bastard!"

Maybe I'M Evil Dave, maybe the other dude is all peace and love and Christ-like in his speech and actions. Or maybe I'm the middle guy, the one who thinks too much and overevaluates things to no end

Then I start thinkin those deep thoughts, like: what would have happened if... What would I be like if.... How would I look in a Fu Manchu? What sort of a bad name is this guy giving me in the other dimension(s), and why can't I get in on the action? After an hour or so the feeling usually goes away, but there is always a residual "irk" sitting in the back of my brain annoying me to no end.

Am I mad? Does anyone else do this?

Piss off

I ran across this great post ala RP, it's a letter from London to the kind folks who bombed them and killed/injured their people.

I think it really shows the Briton spirit... they really have seen it all, damn, their bloody city was bombed to the ground in WWII by the Germans.

Blowing a gasket

A little view of our gig from Sunday, here's me during a solo.

(edited a little to blur out things)

I think it looks like I'm having an aneurysm....

Mental

Hey look! I'm a little more screwed in the head than I thought! Woot!

I found this Personality Disorder Test via Ogre's View. Apparently I'm in danger of being someone who wants to be the centre of attention, but also wants to hide in a corner so everyone will leave them alone. Oh, and then avoid trying difficult things because I might fail.

clusterfsck

Thursday night I'm talking to the bandleader/singer Roberto, about the gig in Saskatoon on Sunday, turns out no one told him that the tenor player wouldn't be able to make it, and it just so happens the alto player got a new job and couldn't take the Monday off. Oh joy! AND then he said the only contact for the trombone player was the Tenor sax player... and so we had no horn players but me.

As luck would have it my friend Jerrold moved back into town just a month ago, he's a monster sax player so I gave him a call and he was actually free and able to go! He also had the number for a friend of his that he went to Rutgers with (in New York) who happens to live in Saskatoon now, and he also is a monster sax player. I give Marc a call in Sask and luck of luck he can make it too! Whew! That's all taken care of. I get a call later that the Tenor book was missing and nowhere to be found, luckily it showed up under a pile of stuff in the back room at the bar we played at last.

Sunday morning after about 4 hours of sleep I get up at 5:30 am, shower, Jerrold and Troy (trombone sub) show up about 6:30, on time great! 2 secs before the bandleader shows up Jer realizes he's left his clothes at home in his hurry to get out of the house and be there on time. We decide that Jer and I will take his car to Saskatoon, tell the guys, and take off for his house. A half hour later we're on the way out of town, probably about 15 minutes east of the city and I get a call on my cell "Troy is here waiting and he says he's going to leave in 5 minutes". I'm like "What?!? What's he doin there?" I talk to him a bit and apparently they thought we were going together.. we turn the car around. Got out of the city about 7:45, on a 5 hour drive, for a sound check at 12:30, not looking so good.

We got into the thriving metropolis of Saskatoon about 12:45 or so, had a 5 minute soundcheck, left. The gig started at 3, 4 bands or something like that playing, we were supposed to play at 6. At 3 o'clock I pop by to see if my parents are there yet, and I overhear "Because of medical problems, the first band will not be playing, everything will be starting an hour earlier". Oh crap. Got a hold of the guy from Sask and cleared the new time with him. All good right? Yeah.

Gig starts, seems ok but I can't hear myself in the monitors, all I hear is sax and it keeps getting louder, (I notice the sax players going to the sound guy alot). I pretty much blew my chops the first 3 songs, playing too loud in an attempt to hear myself. Later that night I find out they had mixed up the monitors when they set us up... they had shifted them one over, the Tbone player had mine. That didn't make me that happy.

Oh, and did I mention that it started pouring rain halfway through the trip and until about 15 minutes after we started? Yeah, it did.