This IS The Day

This might very well be my last post about Life Without Cable TV. Probably a good thing, that. Inevitably, a topic which sounded mostly like a survivor's tale. Which I intended. But, too often, the survivor just words away from a rant. I like a good rant, true. It's like blowing out my nose into someone else's hankie. I breathe so much freer after. But that wouldn't be very neighbourly of me, hootling that into a borrowed hankie, so I have resisted the urge.

And nope, no rant coming here. I've happily gone HIGH-SPEED, y'see.

I'd been waiting, years already. For government de-regulation to do its thing. For competition among internet service providers to bring us Canadian little folk the good deal. At least the better deal. Enough waiting already, I decided yesterday. Stopped by Lansdowne Mall. At Windmobile's kiosk. Came away with a Huawei E1691 data stick, and the 10-gig plan for 35-bucks Canadian. The closest plan to Unlimited I could currently find.

Last night, I plugged the Huawei E1691 data stick in a USB port on the old HP desktop which passes for my internet portal to the world and beyond. As it was supposed to, the E1691 installed its management dashboard thingy: here's where I'd connect to the web, disconnect, view my usage stats, and so on.

Yup, roamin' 'round the web, I've read folks callin' the Huawei E1691 slow, compared to the newer faster shinies out there. Maybe I'll call it slow too, in time. I make no apologies now, though, and am impressed with its 7.2 megabits per second performance. A definite improvement over my 52 dial-up bits per second. The 21st century come at last to my half-century old three-storey walk-up!

I'd tried having wired broadband put in, maybe four years ago. It wouldn't work. I'd decided then wireless was the way to go. This place still uses glass screw-ins in the fuse-box, after all.

But that's all yesterday now. I don't have to move somewhere gremlins haven't been gnawing the wiring for decades. Nor double my rent in the move. I didn't even have to shift the old HP closer to any window...

Last night, inside a couple hours, I flashed around the worldwide web. Glimpsed all my fave sites, in record time. Updated myself on local news. Watched BBC news online. Watched a buncha interesting videos. NASA's GRAIL project: Ebb beaming home a beautiful fly-by from the far side of the moon. And Mythbusters. And music. So much great music!

I even found This is The Day, by The The. A longtime fave. A spectacularly fitting nice thing I'd like to share with you.



The old tv in the corner still pulls in one channel over the air. It likely would pull in more, if I ever get around to wiring in an ATSC box and antenna. As it is, I did see and enjoy the Grammys this past Sunday.

Y'know, currently, I'm satisfied with my hash of tech. Okay, so it does seem like I'm riding the tortoise of time, through today, into tomorrow. Yeah, still, I'm comfy.

The Russians...Are Here

Okay. So it’s a grainy pic, snapped during grey drizzle about noon on about the last day of January. Snapped with the office Nikon CoolPix, which usually sees duty photo-recording work-related stuff that’ll be reported on in fascinating work-related emails to persons-in-charge who reside in exotic locales I might like to vacation in. I’m probably the only one in here inclined to so...broaden the CoolPix’s photographing experiences.

I started to hear...geese. Work is in the vicinity of Vancouver Airport. I won’t be more specific about work, simply because it’s boring. Vancouver Airport, aka YVR, sprawls over a low island dyked off from the surrounding Fraser River estuary and the sea. YVR is on the flyway, not only for migrating humans, let’s just say. I’d heard geese before. It wasn’t remarkable.

I kept working. I heard more geese. Looked up. Saw nothing remarkable out the front windows. Yet more geese honked overhead. I stopped working, dashed for the Nikon CoolPix, because now I could also hear jet airliners, engines spooling on the taxiway and not going anywhere.

It looked like an invasion crossing the grey sky, west to east. Those snow geese aren’t from around here, by the way. They’re Russian.

Lana Del Rey...Live Act

Lana Del Rey, performing LIVE, on Later...with Jools Holland.
Jools Holland, of Squeeze fame, of a whole jukebox of good music himself.



I’d say this LIVE performance from last October proves the gal can sing.

Currently, there’s a lot of ‘she can’t sing’ viciousness circling the blogosphere. And stuff about her touching her hair a lot. Because Miss Del Rey seemed a mite nervous this past weekend, before millions of watching Americans, on Saturday Night Live.

It’s like sharks circling something tasty and treading water, out there. All over the internet. It’s oddly funny.

Y’know, what they say probably is most true here. The only really bad publicity may be no publicity at all. A lot of people, who hadn’t heard of Lana Del Rey before last Saturday night, now have.

And y’gotta know it can’t hurt. Born to Die, Lana Del Rey’s debut album is about to pop, too. January 31.

Frankly, I didn’t mind Miss Del Rey touching her hair again and again on Saturday Night Live. There’s something appealing about a woman, singing in real time, brushing a lock of hair from her face. And seeming nervous. And thoroughly human.

Blogger Comments Not Working…Hmmm?

Something broke in Blogger’s comments display over the weekend just past. I experimented some. Discovered, unhappily, the embedded comments thingy only broken in any of the blogs I follow which are in the oldtimer or classic templates. Embedded comments displayed just fine in the newer blog templates.

Great...

I wasn’t about to go fiddle with my blog’s design template, not in the middle of the night. Certainly not during a rushed few minutes available time from work, either. So, Googled about. To see if I’m all alone in my woe. Nope, I had company. Other folks have likewise seen embedded comments not displaying. One, just this past weekend too. Gee. D’ya think some Admin-type changed something in Blogger...?

Okay. There is a workaround. Eventually, it'll all be working anyway.

Some helpful soul out there...I’ve lost the link...suggested going in to the blogger dashboard, to SETTINGS, to adjust how comments display on the blog.

Here's the path:
Blogger Dashboard > Settings > Comments > Comment Form Placement > Select Full Page, or Pop-Up Window, or Embedded Below Post > Save Settings [Go to Page Bottom].

Long story short, it worked. Instead of embedded comments beneath my posts, I might’ve opted for full page display of comments. I’ve decided on comments appearing in a pop-up box alongside my blog post. I figure if ever the comments pop-up malfunctions, the visitor at least will be able to red-x that pop-up, and still have a readable post page that works, and scrolls, and isn’t a frozen frustration.

Mid-January Harvest

I'd like to write. Yeah. Well, I suppose I am, even doing this. Right. Harvesting a few words.

So, okay, I won't whine then.

I'll resist the urge. Y'know, to whine. I will.

And if I really would rather be writing...anything else...any one, or every one, of the gazillion potential projects, or actual projects, currently in mind or merely drifting through...then now's really as good a time as any, isn't it? I am astounding myself that I'm comprehending the logic in this, and on a Saturday. There's only so much time available in the average weekend, after all.



Hmmm. Just doing a little math. If I allow fifteen minutes, say, of contemplation per each one of one gazillion projects, actual or, y'know, merely drifting by, I am going to run out of weekend, to be honest.

Okay. Five minutes per, then. And I'd best get started.

NASA's Twin Spacecraft on Final Approach for Moon Orbit

NASA's Twin Spacecraft on Final Approach for Moon Orbit

GRAIL-A is just now slipping into lunar orbit.

GRAIL-B will be arriving tomorrow, New Year's Day, about 2 pm PST.

Then the fun begins. Studying the Moon inside and out. This is simply wonderful stuff.

It's making me want to work on Revisitor. It'll come. Other writing projects are more pressing.

Evil? Moi?

Tonight, I shall be evil.

Yes, after three hundred hours of playing Mister Goody across the vast wastes of my well-enjoyed Game-of-the-Year Fallout 3, tonight I shall start...playing evil.

I haven't completely finished every side quest in the Goody playthrough, not quite. But I've maxed out my stats, acquired more abilities and exotic weaponry than ever I could use. Frankly, it's become boring, inevitably the champion of any fight now. And there's something horrible in my good-character's ability to obliterate even an adversary composed of pixels with a single shot.

I'll return to the Goody game, I will. I am a completionist.

But how now to Be Evil?...Hmmm.

Ugh, if it's as simple and mean as killing every friendly soul my bad-guy comes across, that isn't going to keep me playing more than the weekend. I can see I'll have to reach down inside me, find the evil place. Steal kiddies' teddy bears, perhaps.

That wasn't so hard. Hmmm...I'm somewhat disturbed at the revelation.