Mmmmmmm….new iPods!

Now I have to keep from drooling on the keyboard as I gaze longingly at the new iPod Touch – what a sweet piece of hardware! Enough space for my music, pics AND “important” files *cough* pr0n! *cough*

Guess it’s time to get a job again, so I can save up for the 16GB version – /me wants one, fer sure.

Who cares? The man only lives here.

Thank you, Chapters – for being a slack-ass, thoughtless corporation.

Today I went to TRY to buy my favourite author’s new novel, Spook Country, on the day it was supposed to be released – no luck.

How hard would it have been, really, to have the thing IN THE STORES, ON THE OFFICIAL RELEASE DATE, AT THE VERY LEAST IN THE CITY WHERE THE GUY HAS LIVED THROUGH HIS ENTIRE WRITING CAREER? Hmmm?

You already have it in stock online, so what’s your excuse, numb cunts?

No matter how soon it becomes available in the store, I will not renew my iRewards membership – I’ll shop elsewhere.

Pathetic.

Where did all this crap come from?

Just so anyone who trips over this page knows (whether they care to or not), all posts before/below this one were brought over from my Blogger pages. Already I can see it was a good idea, if only because I find WordPress to be a more finely tuned interface. Certainly it has been incredibly easy to make the move.

Enjoy – more to come, eventually.

Been awhile

Well, I might get around to this thing more often, now that I have the time.

More BushCo, NHL Referee and other Rants to come, to be sure (starting with HRSDC – that one’s going to be UGLY)

SCHWEEEEET! Firefox Kills IE

Colour me thoroughly impressed.

After having played around with the basics of Firefox, I’ve begun to customise it. What a bloody fantastic browser – to be able to customise it so much, and so incredibly easily, has been a pleasure. There are a number of great extensions out there, and I’ve picked up the ones that appeal to me – FoxyTunes (allows you to control your favourite music player from Firefox), TabBrowser (for customising Tab behaviour – surprise), BandwidthTester (gotta be sure my provider isn’t stiffing me), ForecastFox (so I know w/ a glance just how FRICKIN COLD it is outside), and Gmail notifier.

Let’s also not forget the built in functions – Tabbed browsing, Bookmarks Toolbar, Search Engines window (Google, Ebay, and much more) – and the speed of the program – far quicker to open than IE ever was – even w/ the new Extensions.

The companion Mail app, Thunderbird, is equally impressive, especially in that it allows me to subscribe to my favourite blog feeds. So, time to pimp the Fox:

Merry New Year!!

Truly, it is hard to believe that 2005 has come – couldn’t have even conceived of being around still – but that comes from watching wonderfully cheerful movies such as WarGames, Damnation Alley, etc., at a young age.

Now, at least, I’m looking forward to seeing what the next few years have in store, though I won’t try to speculate too much. Things change far too quickly. The only thing I can be sure to be glad of is that, in January 2009, the United States will be swearing in someone other than Genius Warmonger Bush – unless he pulls a Cliff Robertson a la Escape from L.A. and has the Constitution amended to give him a life-long term (so he can finally give up the pretense of being President of a democratic country). Yes, I am venting – that’s an exaggeration – but how much of one, really?

On a more amusing note, try reading the Christmas stories by authors William Gibson (Dec 24th posting) and China Mieville.

May this be a good year for all – and hopefully bring the end of that pointless nonsense in Iraq.

A voice of reason – PHEW! Finally!!

William Gibson, in his latest blog posting, points to the comments by a Lord Hoffmann of the British House of Lords (December 17th post). In this post the Lord essentially states that holding anyone without trial, including terrorists, gives terrorists a victory by trampling even those same terrorists’ rights. A brave statement, to be sure.

Nice to see someone have the guts to come out and speak for maintaining freedoms and rights, in the face of the fear generated by terrorists’ acts. I’m sure a large number of Brits will appreciate this stance, after the debacle that was Blair signing the UK up to join Gorgeous George’s troops in Iraq.

FUCKING OPPORTUNISTS – You’re cut off!!

Ahh – gotta love those people standing with their hands out at the tops and bottoms of stairwells in the Metro stations here in Montreal. Not that it’s much different in Vancouver or Victoria, mind you. I’ve just grown quite tired of this – especially when I see these same people lighting up a cigarette – compassion is one thing, feeding an addiction another. Not becuase I’m without my frequent vices, but how hard off are you if you can afford to – or are stupid enough to – buy cigarettes instead of FOOD?

[soupnazi]NO MONEY FOR YOU!![/soupnazi]

JOKE – please bear with me

Ok – I can only hope this works in print – my favourite joke (really, the only one I can seem to remember semi-reliably). Told to me by my mother, I believe. Heavily edited by said weak memory.

[deep breath]

A man dies and goes to Hell.

When he arrives, he finds himself standing with the Devil in front of three doors. The Devil turns to him and says “Since you haven’t been TOO bad, I’m going to let you choose how you want to spend your eternity here in Hell. Behind each of these doors is a different type of torture, so take your time and choose which one you want”

The doors open.

Behind the first door, the man sees an endless plain of broken glass on the ground, and hundreds of people walking across it barefoot, screaming with each step.

Behind the second door, the man sees another endless plain, but this one of hot coals.

Behind the third door, he sees hundreds of people standing around, hip deep in shit, drinking coffee.

He immediately turns to the Devil and says “I’ll take door number 3, thank you.”

No sooner has he walked through the door than it slams shut, and he hears a voice:

“Alright – Break’s over! Everyone, back on your heads!”

[/deep breath]

the shoeless one – Thanks – Too True :)

The shoeless one posted in his reply:

————————————

Tell me about it. I love Christmas to death, but after hearing Mariah Carey singing (translation: screaming) “All I want for Christmas is you”, all I wanna do is to bury myself alive so I wouldn’t have to listen to her shit again. She may no longer be popular where you are, but here in HK people still consider her “talened” and of course, a “very tasty number”.

Yeah so, merry fucking Christmas to you.

————————————

Well – Merry frickin Xmas right back at you!

I can’t say I’ve ever been subjected to that particular version of “All I Want for Xmas….”, but I can only imagine – and I actually like SOME of her older stuff. But the new stuff – [shrug] meh! [/shrug] And why the hell can’t people sing a song at least a little straighter – you don’t need to WARBLE through every note, do ya?? You can only take “jazzing up” a song so far, before it becomes absurdly unintelligible, and just WRONG, aesthetically – BOO!! HISS!!!

I’m not sure just how popular Mariah is in Canada overall – not Shania Twain huge, to be sure. I do agree that she’s quite tasty, though – lots of sweet curves, in all the right places. But I doubt I would want to do much more than admire her from afar, far, far away – I don’t want to deal with anyone’s bloody “entourage”, thank you.