Radioactivity

Just a quick post with a video I made. I borrowed George's geiger counter and thought I'd see just how radioactive a lantern mantle is.



The mantle registers about 4 micro sieverts per hour. This is about 1 half to 1 days worth of radiation depending on where you live. In the US the average annual radiation exposure is about 3600 micro sieverts or 360 millirems. In Canada we get exposed to about half of this at about 1800 micro sieverts per year. This works out to about 9.8 and 4.9 micro sieverts per day for Americans and Canadians. These numbers are just averages and your local radiation count can vary greatly.

In the video you can see the geiger counter has to be almost touching the mantle to get the max reading and at a foot away it isn't reading anymore than background so these mantles are pretty safe. I wouldn't want to tuck one inside my hat and wear it around for a long time or have a stockpile of several thousand under the bed. The real danger is the smoke from these when they are first ashed. If breathed in the smoke can leave thorium and its decay products in your lungs which will sit there slowly irradiating your lung tissue. In turn this could very slightly up your chances of lung cancer.

Newer mantles are made with yttrium instead of thorium because it isn't radioactive.

I'm ready for Christmas to be here

I'm almost finished all of my Christmas shopping. I was out last night and picked up a few things but it made me realise that I'm ready for Christmas to be done already. This is a surprising two weeks later than when I worked in retail but I'm done. I want some time off, I want to give people their crap that I've been hording for months like some cold war, bomb shelter owning American. I want my stuff too, people have been asking me for weeks "what do you want for Christmas" and I'm tired of it, I have no ideas left. I just want to see what they bought.

We bought a tree on Monday and decorated it it on Tuesday. I got taken to the cleaners by the tree guy. $30 for a 6.5ft Douglas fir? Damn if I wasn't so lazy I'd go down to mayfair hardware and buy one for half that. Probably in better shape too. This is Lindsay's first real tree in quite some time and I think she was a little disappointed in the Charlie brown that we have. I think people get spoiled by fake trees, there's no sap on you from sawing the bottom off, there's no needles and it is perfectly shaped. Where is the fun in that? I think its all worth it just for the smell. In reality there isn't much mess, after you get the decorations on and stop playing with it the needles usually stay put pretty well. At least I have somewhere to put my stash of presents.

One thing that makes shopping difficult is the lack of vehicles. Yes Lindsay's car is still in the shop. Its been there for a month now and I'm getting tired of it. When she is closing at work, which is most of the time, I have no car. Sure I've got the truck but be damned if I am going to drive that downtown and deal with parking. I could probably get things delivered for the same price as gas and parking. My mom is in a worse place with vehicles, the truck is her only vehicle in the winter. The car is parked for the winter. She's getting ready to revolt and just take the truck back. I wouldn't blame her.

I'm looking forward to some time off but I have a feeling that I won't actually get any time "off". Let see... on Friday the 22nd we are going to Moosejaw after work and then back on Sunday morning. Sunday is going to be spent at my mom's house and we'll do Christmas then. She has a party there that night with my family and then on Monday I'm with Lindsay's mom's family all day. Tuesday is back with my family at my grandparents. *sigh* did I loose you there? I'm sure by Tuesday night I'll be ready to shove myself in a dark hole somewhere and not come out for a few days.

Well that's enough complaining for one lunch hour. Hopefully everyone elses Christmas will be just as busy and crazy as mine. I don't want to be the only one.

This might brighten up your day... or make you feel guilty

I'm loaded. It's official. I'm the 661,752,624 richest person on earth! How rich are you? >>

Car stuff

Well it looks like Lindsay's car is going to take a little while longer in the shop and should be so expensive she'll have to be buried in the car. I was talking to her dad and I was told a little bit about what happened to it. Apparently there is an oil pump between the two cams at the front of the head. It looks like a bolt fell out of this pump fell to the bottom of the timing chain and got tangled in the gear. It managed to chew up that gear and consequently the chain and other gears causing the timing to get screwed up and making valves and pistons meet violently. I guess we're still waiting on some parts. Joy.

At least my car is still running. It decided to scare us the other night by not wanting to start but its been running fine since, even in the -30 weather we had.

In other news James and Jacqui had us over for supper on Sunday night and it was fantastic. We had pork chops in some sort of sweet and sour sauce that were really good, veggies, salad, fresh olive oil bread and desert. They really went all out. After supper we played UNO attack. Its a fun twist on UNO because it has a card shooter instead of a deck to draw from. It adds an element of chance to the game because you never know how many cards are going to shoot out.

Well that's it for now. Hopefully next time I post it will be about getting Lindsay's car back.

Perhaps the tide is turning

My last post was overly negative in reflection of the crap going on lately but it seems to be changing. I took my truck to Kal-tire this morning before work and they fixed my tire for free. I know that if you buy your tires there they will fix flats for free but I don't think they had to do this for free as I didn't purchase the tires there. Plus they gave me a ride to work.

Now if only Top Gear was back on the air everything would be good again.

Too borring to post

Well its been a while since I've posted and I don't want to be labeled as an "absentee blogger" so I thought I'd throw something up here.

Have you ever just had a week that was total shit even when there are good things happening? I've been too busy to post but at the same time I'm not accomplishing anything. Lindsay's car broke down so we've been sharing vehicles and I've been driving her around a bit. I'm stuck driving my truck to work now and it sucks. I want my car back. To top it off one of the truck's tires has a good leak in it and someone is parked in my parking space. Its getting really fucking tiring having people always in my spot. I think I've wrote my last note, from now on I'm going to call to get them ticketed. 975-8344 will be forever burned in my memory. Work has been abnormally annoying. I don't like customers yet I can't get away from them. Everyone is getting awfully needy at work too. Yes you are the 12th person to tell me the printer is broken. Maybe it will magically fix itself when number 13 comes along.

To top it off I wasted $7.50 at the movies on Tuesday. The guys at work wanted to see Borat so I went with them and it was horrible. If it had been a regular price night I probably would have tried to get my money back. Sure there were a couple of funny parts but overall it was just fake and annoying. I expected so much more out of it. Borat was a whole movie of some guy making fun of people for being Jewish and getting away with it because he pretends to be from Kazakhstan. I feel sorry for the people of Kazakhstan.

Now every once in a while in this river of shit a little nugget of corn comes along and something good happens.

Dad and Nigel were in town on the weekend for a football game. His peewee team won the Alberta provincials and the Saskatoon falcons who won provincials here challenged them to a game at Griffiths stadium. It was damn cold but they had a good game. Nigel's team lost 30-28 but that only made them 11-2 on the season. The falcons improved to 11-0. Here are some pictures

I picked up a really nice Coleman 237 Empire from a collector in Esterhazy. I haven't got any pictures of it yet. I haven't fired it up yet either as it had a leaky valve when I got it, I think I've got that fixed now and I'm hoping to fire it this weekend.

That's about it for now. I'll have to try harder to do some more exciting stuff so I'll have a post worth posting. I did like the corn nugget line though :)

Halo movie has a director

Well there is good news and bad news. The bad is that the Halo movie is going to be delayed until atleast 2008. The good they've found a director. Neill Blomkamp. He does short films and commercials. I think they might have found just the right guy. Here are a few examples of his work. Plus he's Canadian. Thats always a good thing.

Snow

Here is what it looked like in Saskatoon yesterday at about 4pm



We recieved about 13cm of snow or almost 6 inches. Driving sure was fun, I watched countless people get stuck. I don't know why more people don't get a good snow tire. I've got Kumho power grip mud and snow tires and they dig like crazy. I'll get through most things that other people get stuck in. Ah well they'd rather spend the money on a car starter than on their safety.

Good morning to you too

Now before I begin I must post a little disclaimer. I am not a lawyer. If this is somehow going to get me sued I'll take it down immediately but I don't think I'm in the wrong.

1. If you leave a message on someone's voicemail you must know that it is being recorded or what is the point of voicemail then?

2. I would imagine that since it is recorded on your voicemail equipment the message becomes your property.

3. I am posting this unedited and un-molested. I am not going to say anything about the person that said this, I am merely posting it for you to hear. This is not slander or libel.

Again if these assumptions are wrong please let me know. This is a message that I recorded this morning off of my voice mail. It awaited me when I got in.

This customer purchased a solar light and was un happy with it because it wouldn't work for him. I tried to help him over the phone but I could not solve it. I offered him a refund or replacement of the non-working light. he chose a replacement and I sent it to him with the message that if he is still not happy I would refund his money. The light is very similar to this one I found online. After working with him to resolve his problem this is how he chose to respond.

Putfile Link **NSFW** This message isn't G rated.

I'm sorry but putfile doesn't seem to offer an embeded audio player, just click on the link.

Oh. My. God.

I knew it seemed cold today, but I thought that was because it was becoming winter, I have now discovered the truth. Hell has frozen over. Yes you read that right, I know its hard to accept but Bob Barker is leaving The Price is Right. He's been hosting it for over 3 decades, that's longer than I've been alive. Here is the story I read.

I'll admit I haven't watched the show in a while, but I love it. They never play Plinko enough though, for such a simple game I don't know why everyone loves it. So the axe falls in June and you will no longer her the familiar "Come on Down!" or "Its a new car!".

I just hope and pray that they don't replace him with someone who sucks. Bob Barker is the Price is Right but the show is too popular to let it end with his leaving. It should be interesting to see who they replace him with. I have no idea who would make a good replacement, what do you think?

Oooooh parts

Well I'm sure that everyone is getting tired of RC related posts... but I'm not so here's more pictures. :D

I got my new shocks installed and they are fantastic. I haven't had a chance to bash the car but they sure work nice on the bench.



Those with a keen eye and memory will notice the shocks are now grey and not black. I have no idea if that makes a difference but they are new and spectacular.



Here you can see the little bit of fuel tube I've put on the shock shaft. This will cusion the shock if it bottoms out and this should help it live a long life. It will prevent the cap (on the top) from popping off on a hard landing.



And here is a picture of my nifty new tackle bo.... I mean RC Tool box. It is a Flambeau Night Ranger. It has an LED light in the lid for evening use. Dunno if I'll ever need the light but it was the right price and size at Canadian Tire.

Well thats about it for now. I have to go back to work, yes it is 6:45pm, and finish some work. Ah well its for extra money and we all like money.

I am unique

Well atleast in the US I am. I found this over at Breakfast Meat

HowManyOfMe.com

There are: 0 people with my name in the U.S.A. How many have your name?

nobodyswatching.tv

Its happening again...

I find it quite fitting that on the day of the first snow fall of the year the second installment of Canada's Worst Drivers premiers. I love to hate this show, I can not miss it yet it enrages me to watch it. This season looks to be no different.

I can't believe how bad some of these people can be. Somehow they seem to have the same cross section of bad drivers as last time. There is the teenage girl who doesn't give a shit, the middle aged man who drives way too fast, the middle aged housewive who breaks down on the track and the engineer to over analyzes every move. I even think it is going to go the same. I think the first to leave will be the guy with the license plate "SPEEED" because he is exactly like the guy who played bumper tag last time. He can drive, he just chooses to be a moron. I think Canada's Worst driver will be the woman from Manitoba who strangely reminds me of Mark's ex Chantel who used to close her eyes while driving if something bad happened. She could have been on the show. The one I dislike the most on the show is the young girl who likes to hit stuff. She'll scrape the side of a car in a parking lot and giggle then drive away. Nevermind that she just caused hundreds or thousands of dollars of damage but she causes everyone else's insurance premiums to go up. These people shouldn't be allowed to drive. She is from Calgary and has wrecked 5 or more cars in her life, her cars usually last 3 to 6 months before she totals them. She is 22 and I would love to find out how much her insurance costs in Calgary. I would also like to slap her and her parents until my arm falls off.

I could rant all night about bad drivers but I won't bore you to death. Watch the show, it is on Monday evening at 8 on Discovery, thats 26 on shaw, 51 on Sasktel.

Carnage and Snow

I had the nitro sport out on Saturday and finally broke something. I was running around on the street when I hit a bump and the truck did a summersault. I guess it must have landed on the rear body mount because it snapped the rear shock tower.



A simple $6 part and 10 minutes and it was up and running again.

Well it snowed for the first substantial amount tonight... well its still snowing but here are a couple of pictures off of the balcony



We'll see how much we actually get but it may make the drive to work interesting tomorrow.

Have fun and stay warm.

Its been a while

Well I've been busy lately and haven't had a chance to post. I'll catch you up.

Over the Thanksgiving long weekend I was out in Edmonton visiting Dad and Nigel. That was a lot of fun. I saw them and we visited Sonia and her kids as well as Wendy and her kids came out. We had thanksgiving supper on Sunday with Nigel's Mom's family and it was awesome. On Saturday night we went to the peeler bar which was a blast and I'll leave the details out to protect the guilty. On Sunday Nigel had a football game at the U of A and they got to play on the artificial turf. Wow it was nice, felt just like real grass. It was a blow out, Nigel's team won 43-0. The poor other team couldn't even manage to get the snap count right most of the time. Ah well a win is a win. Nigel's team is in second place I believe and their next game decides first. I got a really good view of the game as I volunteered to run the down markers with 2 other guys. That was nice as I never got bored and I was always right by the action.

My Nitro Sport is still out of action. I took it apart when I got home and one of the clutch bearings is boned. This gave me an excuse to buy a ball bearing set to get rid of the wheel bushings. So I'm waiting for those as well as two sets of shocks, suspension pins, axle pins and drives as well as some various other parts. Parts for the nitro sport are so cheap on eBay. The Nitro Sport, Nitro Rustler and Stampede are all basically the same car so there are lots of parts out there. I would like to get a pro ball diff but its $50. $50 on a $100 car is a bit much. I'm going to pack the diff with some heavier grease so that it acts more like a limited slip for now. I also picked up a nice tackle box to store all the parts. While I was in Edmonton I stopped in at Great Hobbies and bought some Proline Dirt Hawg tires and some rims. Hopefully these will work better than the bald old tires I was using. :)



That's about it for now.

It lives!

Henry Frankenstein: Look! It's moving. It's alive. It's alive... It's alive, it's moving, it's alive, it's alive, it's alive, it's alive, IT'S ALIVE!
Victor Moritz: Henry -- In the name of God!
Henry Frankenstein: Oh, in the name of God! Now I know what it feels like to be God!

Here are some pictures of the Nitro Sport all cleaned up after its first run.



Now it doesn't look as amazing as I had hoped but if you compare it to the other set of pictures it quite a bit cleaner. It took me 3 hours on Sunday to clean and re-assemble the car.

I haven't had a chance to tune the car much but I did take it out to the park and run it around a baseball diamond. Without being tuned, having a poorly set up suspension and bald tires it was a real handful. I was barely able to get to WOT. The funny thing is I don't have any pictures becuase all my batteries were being used in the car. Besides with just me out there it would be hard to drive and take pictures. But hey atleast it runs.

Happy Birthday to Me

You may have wondered where I've been lately, I've found a new obsession. I've discovered nitro R/C.

Well Paul had one and Tristan was buying one so not to be out done, even though I can't afford to pay attention, I bought a Traxxas Nitro Sport off of eBay. Here it is with the body and wheels on shortly after I got it.



Its been well used and it looks kinda dirty. I had no idea until I started taking it apart of just how dirty it was.



Everything is caked with dirt and oil. The only ray of sunshine is that after I am done this I will have a really good idea of how it goes together and comes apart. This should help me fix it in the future.

I'll keep you guys posted on its and my progress. Oh and incase you are interested here is my putfile album for the car. New pictures will go there.

Saskatchewanese

There is a great article posted over at Prairie fire about the unique vocabulary in Saskatchewan. I suggest you go have a look whether or not you know what a bunnyhug and vico are.

Rain and ATF

Well its been a while since I posted so I thought I'd throw up some updates.

From Wednesday the 13th until Sunday the 17th it rained 4.5-5.0 inches, depending on who's rain gauge you listen to. I am very glad the rain has stopped but the weather has thrown us another curve ball. It froze last night, got down to -2C and I had to scrape my windows this morning. I'm not too concerned about the windows but I am worried about my peppers in the garden. Hopefully they have survived.

In truck news it looks like the rear seal in my truck wasn't the problem. My uncle fixed it for me, it turns out that who ever fixed the U-joints is a bit of a moron. The drive shafts were out of phase so I had a nasty vibration and the bolt that holds the drive shaft to the transmission was loose enough that ATF was able to leak out. That makes me feel good *cough*sarcasm*cough*. So its all fixed now and he also fixed the kick down linkage so it shifts so much smoother now.

I've been thrust into a new hobby, RC Nitro cars. Two weeks ago I was at Turtle lake with some guys from work and one of them brought his Team Losi XXXNT out and it was crazy amounts of fun. Now I've bought a Traxxas Nirto Sport. No I didn't get that money tree to germinate, I bought a used one off of eBay. Hopefully it gets here soon. I've also purchased 3 Estes Alpha rocket kits on eBay, so lets just say I'm all hobbied up.

This weekend is the annual Potatoe Dig and that means I've had this blog for a year now. The arrival of the potatoe dig means that my birthday must be near and what do you know it is! I'm turning 24 on the 25th. I guess that officially makes me mid-twenties. Here are my birthday demands... uh I mean birthday list :).

• A brand new nitro car - Team Associated RC10GT, Team Losi XXXNT2 or Traxxas Nitro Rustler would be acceptable
  
• Estes Comanche 3
  
• Tea pot
  
• More lanterns!
  
• More Corelle classic cafe blue dishes
  
• Quality forged steel chefs knife. German if possible.
  
• New shoes
  

Sunday is the last day of street legal drags at SIR this season and hopefully I'll be out there with Tristan and his malibu. He and his dad flushed the trans, put the new converter and the 4.60 gears in. It should haul some ass now. I guess we'll have to wait and see.

Have fun people and enjoy blogger beta.

Someday it'll come to this

Thought I would share this funny video with you. Funny and scarry.

Karma is a bitch

I'll start with the good. That 236 runs like a dream. All I had to do was oil up the pump leather, oil the valve and tip cleaner and give it a general rub down and she lit right up. It runs solid as a rock, I would say a person could easily read by it. That is they could read by it if they had welding goggles on because it is rediculously bright. It lights up my whole back yard.



I didn't get a chance to take any of it running at night but I wish I could have. Now I must get my 237 empire running. It is the kerosene version of this lantern.

Now the bad. I went out to Tristan's to put the torque converter in his malibu and the transmission is full of water. The ATF is pepto-bismal pink and cloudy. Just fricken great. So we got it taken apart but not put back together because he doesn't want to put the brand new converter in until the water issue is figured out.

Second. I'm just about to pull up infront of my mom's house and I notice a big spot on the road. The truck is leaking something, but what? ATF. Looks like the rear seal is gone. If anyone knows how hard it is to change a rear seal in a 727 trans let me know.

Third. I think the clutch is going in the Jetta. It seems to be spinning it at high revs when it is in the powerband. I'm going to have to watch it more closely but I wouldn't be surprised if it needs a clutch.

Its a bad fucking day to be a transmission around me.

My long weekend

We finally got a chance to visit Lindsay's Dad's Cabin at Emma Lake over the long weekend and look what I found in his shed. It is a 1/54 236. It should go nicely with my 237 empire, that is if I ever get it running. The 237 is in a lot worse shape.




We were up there for her Grandpa's 70th birthday so it was kinda like a mini family reunion for them. It was a lot of fun. I drank too much and ate too much. Now the picture below has nothing to do with drinking but the drinking definitely helped keep the pain away afterwards.

Everyone knows I loved to ride ATV's and sometimes I do dumb things. The last one was getting Tim's quad stuck in the mud, that's a great story for another time. Now Melissa and I were out on the neighbors quad at Emma and the end of a trail was the golf course. Instead of turning around I just ran across the edge of the fairway and hopped on the cart track. I didn't cause and damage but that didn't stop some old woman from running and yelling after us. I though this was the only stupid thing I would do on this quad.... I was wrong. Lindsay and I were running through the ditch when we came across a large mud puddle and I tried to go around it. Well the side was pretty steep and we flopped the quad onto its side. Lindsay got a little muddy but she was ok, I on the other hand got my foot stuck under it. That is what this picture is of. Too bad the photo doesn't show the swelling.



On top of that I've got a bruise farther up my leg as well as a lump on my ribs. Nothing is broken but it makes getting out of bed in the morning a stiff and painful experience. Was it stupid? Yes. Was it fun? Hell yes. We pushed the quad back over, fired it up and rode home waiting for some shit. Lindsay's dad laughed at us because we were covered in mud and stagnant water and even more importantly Frank didn't care. Frank is the owner of the quad. When I told him that we had it on its side he laughed and said that's what quads are for. I'm just happy that Lindsay came out of it ok. I hurt myself, well its my own stupid fault but I wouldn't forgive myself for hurting someone else. Remember children, don't do what Donny don't does.

Ah laziness

I am lazy and I'm also a gadget freak so when I saw the new Scrubbing Bubbles shower cleaner I had to have one. I didn't expect that it would work very well because of the poor performance of gimmicky things in the past. Well I was very surprised by it.

I wish I had taken before and after pictures now because the difference would amaze you. I moved into a new apartment on June 1st and I've been using the shower cleaner for about the last month. The shower is the typical apartment shower that has seen a lot of use and a lot less cleaning so it wasn't looking the best. The chrome was covered in hard water spots and my poor cleaning had resulted in a good soap scum build up. That is all gone now.

I noticed about a week ago that the shower seemed shinier and thought it was my imagination but Lindsay agrees with me. Now the tap shines and reflects light. The tiles near the bottom which normally would be dull from soap scum are showing reflections like they were new. Even the caulking is bright white again. It is very easy to use, just press the button after your shower and it sprays solution all over to clean your shower.

Now it isn't without its downsides. I can't use my shower caddy anymore and that annoys me. I like having everything in easy reach and I can't have that with the cleaner hanging around the shower head. This isn't a huge problem as the cleaner makes sure that no mold or anything grows on my shampoo bottle that is constantly in the wet now. It also leaves a bit of a chlorine smell in the morning. This is a little unpleasent but isn't a deal breaker.

When I bought mine there was a special deal on with a $5 coupon on the website as well as a $5 coupon on the box so it was half price for me. I noticed that the $5 coupon is no longer on the website but I'm sure some of the boxes still have a coupon on them. There is also a $5 coupon included in the box so the first person who can guess what number between 1 and 10 that I am thinking of can have it.

So while the automatic shower cleaner isn't Rosie the robotic maid from the Jetsons, it's one step closer.

Pluto, you're still a planet to me.

So its official, Pluto is no longer a planet. Well that isn't exactly true either, it is a dwrarf planet, not a classical planet like the other 8. It falls under the umbrella of being a planet but it isn't really.

Now I grew up with people teaching that Pluto was a planet, but we all knew all along that it wasn't really. It is much smaller than the other planets, it doesn't really fit in where it is. Jupiter through Neptune are "Gas Giants" and pluto is this little rock smaller than our moon. Even if you ignore that you can't ignore its orbit. Which is off the plane of the other planets and even brings it in closer than Neptune sometimes. This really doesn't seem like a planet.

I am kind of sad to see it loose its planet status though, I think it should have been grandfathered in as a planet since it has been considered one since the 1930's when it was discovered. It just doesn't seem right to take that way from Pluto now.

CNN has a pretty good story about the whole situation here

I was a little dissapointed that they did not rename Pluto as a double planet with its moon. Charon is about half the size of Pluto but it is large enough that they actually orbit a point in space between each other. I thought it would have been pretty cool to have a double planet system in our solar system but it was not to be.

If you want more information wikipedia has a great article on Pluto and its moons.

Oh and incase anyone is wondering, Pluto is not named after a cartoon dog. Pluto is the Roman god of the underworld.

My spoon is too big

Now I'll admit that I may not have the most "normal" sense of humor but I found this hilarious. If you have around nine minutes to spend watching some great animation, watch this. Afterwards look around on youtube and google video for some more. I recommend "Genre"



For the love of god and everything holy my anus is bleeding!

Drag racing Rox0rz

I'm not a complete stranger to the drag strip, I've even gone down it about a half a dozen times, as a passenger though. It is fun as a passenger but it doesn't even come close to driving. Over the last few weeks I've been stealing away evenings, hence the lack of posts, to work on a car with Tristan from work. He had an 80 chev malibu with no motor. He also had a 350 from the junk yard so for about $500 total we put together a low 14 second car. Well I helped build it that is, I didn't put any money in. It was a great learning experience but I don't know how much I actually helped, I probably just slowed down the whole process. Either way I had fun.

So tonight we went out to the Friday night street legal drags and got a few runs in. Tristan did a couple of shake down runs and then it was my turn. I was nervous and sweating and shaking but I got up there and did it. I even cut a good light and if I wasn't a moron I would have beat my first competitor. I saw the mph trap line and let off... too bad the finish line is another 60ft after that. Damnit. Here is my time slip from my first run (I was in the left lane both times)*:


(I ran a 15.366 @ 89.473 mph with a 0.128 light)
* the dot matrix printing doesn't scan worth a shit but you can still make out the numbers if you squint and tilt your head to the left a bit.

OK I'm primed now and raring to go. I've got all the starters signals figured out, I can keep the car running and I'm feeling pretty good. I'm still shaking but for a different reason now. I'm not nervous at all. I'm pumped. I pull up beside this neon and destroy him on the tree, at 60 ft I've still got a narrow lead and I beat him by almost a full second at the other end. Man this is fun.


(I ran a 14.864 @ 95.838 mph and a 0.207 light)

After all this all Tristan can talk about is what needs to be done to the car. It's got tons of power from 3000 to 6000 but is a real dog off the line. The next steps will be some 4.60 gears and a 10" converter. He figures that the car can get into the high 12's. I can't wait to see that.

So what have I learned from all this? Well you can put a car together for $500 and a few evenings and go run with almost anyone out there. I think this really burns some of the guys asses but others are impressed at how well the little oxidized yellow malibu runs. The other thing I figured out is that I'm going to have to ride my uncles ass to get his '64 belvedere 440 sixpak running. I'm shaking already.

New addition to the family

Ah don't worry, I just meant I got a new lantern. Here are some pictures.



It is a 3/70 200A made in the USA. I purchased off of eBay. I wanted a ready to run 200A because I'm getting a bistro set for the balcony and I wanted this lantern for that. I do still want to get a frosted globe for it, but that'll have to wait until next month.

As you can see we are in the apartment. That was also part of the reason I bought a ready to run lantern as I have no where to work on one right now. Lindsay wouldn't appreciate solvent all over the kitchen table!

On the upside the A/C now works. Before it was just a handy shelf outside when I was BBQing, but no more. Now we can enjoy artifically cooled air at home, albeit just in the living room but it helps take the edge off.

For some reason I like doing these and I found these ones over at Breakfast Meat

You Are 70% Evil

You are very evil. And you're too evil to care. Those who love you probably also fear you. A lot.

How Evil Are You?

Your IQ Is 115

Your Logical Intelligence is Below Average Your Verbal Intelligence is Exceptional Your Mathematical Intelligence is Exceptional Your General Knowledge is Exceptional

A Quick and Dirty IQ Test

Your Penis Name Is...

Prince Charming

Penis Name Generator

Your 2005 Song Is

Feel Good Inc by Gorillaz "Love forever love is free. Let's turn forever you and me." In 2005, you were loving life and feeling no pain.

What Hit Song of 2005 Are You?

Your Political Profile:

Overall: 70% Conservative, 30% Liberal

Social Issues: 75% Conservative, 25% Liberal

Personal Responsibility: 75% Conservative, 25% Liberal

Fiscal Issues: 100% Conservative, 0% Liberal

Ethics: 25% Conservative, 75% Liberal

Defense and Crime: 75% Conservative, 25% Liberal

How Liberal Or Conservative Are You?

I hate spam

At work my email address is on one of our websites so I get a lot of spam. I get about 100 spam emails a day and for me that seems like a lot. Lately it seems to be mostly about stock insider tips and of course there is the usual stuff about free software and enlarging my penis. I know how to use bit torrent and my penis is large enough thank you very much.

I had been using Norton's antispam and I wasn't very happy with it. I deal with suppliers in china and customers all over the world so I do get many strange emails that I actually need and Norton wasn't able to distinguish those from the spam messages. I was getting too many false positives and this was pissing me off.

I found my solution a while ago but I thought I would share it with you. My solution is a program called spambayes. It is an open source program, we all know how much I like free stuff, and it works amazingly well. It does take a bit of time to get going as you have to train it to reconize spam from ham but once it is going it is almost perfect. I would guesstimate that it catches 98% or more of the spam with less than 0.1% false positives.

There are a couple of catches with this program.

- You pretty much need to be running Outlook, not outlook express or Thunderbird. This is not to say you can't use it if you aren't useing outlook, but it is the easiest way.
- If you don't have a large amount of spam and ham available to train it the training takes a lot longer

Now I use Outlook so spambayes was easy to install and it is easy to use. If you don't use outlook you have to install it so that it sits between(logically) your email client and your email server. I haven't done this but I'm sure it isn't too hard. The other thing you want to do before installing it is to make sure you have lots of email and lots of spam saved up to train it. When you install it, it will ask you for the location of your good email(ham) and bad email(spam) then it will go through and learn what it is you consider spam. If you don't have this it will put almost all your email in a "suspected spam" folder and you have to go through and tell it what is and isn't spam. It is easier than it sounds.

After its been trained it pretty much runs hands off. I can fire up outlook and watch as my email is automatically sorted between spam and ham without worrying that there is something screwed up. Most of the time I don't even look at my spam folder before I empty it. That is the best part.

So if you get lots of spam, use outlook, are cheap, and lazy this is the answer you were looking for.

ITS DONE!

After 3 days of screwing around I finally got the camping post finished. Look down, way down and I'll call rusty.

VLC

Hey guys I'm back from camping but I can't post about it because blogger keeps f$#king up and won't let me post images. Its very frustrating, I've been trying for two days and it will let me do one a day. Damn shit.

Keep your eyes open for those but in the mean time I want to talk about VLC. VLC is an opensource media player that will play anything you can throw at it, well pretty much anything. If you have a file that is damaged and windows media player won't play it try VLC, it probably will. It also doesn't require extra codecs for the most part so if you have a video that you don't know what it is try playing it here first. Another tip on that one is G-spot. Now get your mind out of the gutter and pay attention. If you've ever had a video that won't play and you don't know what codec it is using, open it in g-spot. It will tell you what video and audio codecs the video needs and whether you have them installed. Its great.

Anyways, back to VLC. I was told that it was good at streaming video and I thought that would be perfect for my torrent downloading. I like to download shows and then play them through my TV on my laptop but I have to transfer them to it first and that takes time. Now with VLC I can just stream the video to it and all is well. Did I mention that my laptop is an iBook? Well VLC runs on almost everything. Windows, OSX, Linux, Unix, you name it. Good stuff.

A little local news for you

Saskatoon Man Faces Internet Child Exploitation Charges

2006-07-14
Author: Lindsay Rabyj- CJWW News


A Saskatoon man facing charges of Internet child exploitation made a court appearance Friday.

33 year old David Hubbard was arrested Thursday night after allegedly making contact with a 12 year old girl though a web chatroom and setting up a face-to-face meeting to engage in sexual activity.

Police intervened before the incident could take place and the man was arrested.

He's been remanded in custody and will make another court appearance July 17.

Now why would I put this on my blog? Because I know this guy and he lives down the block from me. This does not surprise me at all. This guy used to be a customer of mine at LD and he was very annoying. He would always come in with strange questions about hardware that he bought somewhere else or software questions that were too vague to answer. He was always kinda shifty looking and just seemed too weird. An example would be that he always wore a leather jacket no matter what the weather. I saw him a week ago walking home in 30C+ in his black leather jacket. Something is not right. I guess I shouldn't bash people too much as I am a bit strange myself but I had to yell at my tv when I saw him on there. It was me telling my brain, "I knew there was something strange about that guy". The absolute funniest part about this was what happened a month ago. I was in LD talking to one of my former co-workers when I saw this guy working there. I almost shit my pants but I was soon calmed down by them letting me know he was only a work-ed student or something. I couldn't find a picture for you guys, not that blogger would let me post it anyways, but if you've watched the news the last couple of days you've seen him. You also saw Pete my land lord as he also manages the building that David lived in.

Just thought I'd let you know that it is a small scary little world out there.

Back from camping

As I mentioned in the last post we went to Moose Mountain Provincial park to do some camping. Here is the link to google maps. The green arrow on the map is pointing at the resort town of Kenosee Lake. I couldn't get google maps to show the campground. To the left of the town is the campground. We were staying between the large lake (Kenosee lake) and the smaller one to the left. That smaller lake is little Kenosee lake. It is amazing how many smaller lakes there are around there. They were left behind when the glaciers receded.

Day 1:

Make the long drive. It is around 500kms to get to Moose Mountain from Saskatoon and it took us 5 hours. Most of the way is good highways. Leaving here you drive to Regina and then take the trans-Canada for a while. There is only about 50kms on the #9, which wasn't that bad really. We got there about 3 in the afternoon and set up camp.

Now being the gadget freak that I am I had to try to see if I could pick anything up on my weather radio.

We didn't do too much that evening. Finished setting up camp and cooked up some smokies for supper on the fire. After supper we got a bit bored and went for a walk. Not too far from our camp was a nature trail that went though the woods along little Kenosee lake. We saw a deer when we were on the walk but we didn't bring the camera along. We were able to get within 25-30 feet of the deer without a problem. Then something spooked her and the flag was up and she was gone. Other than the deer there was a lot of wild life around. This is the resident squirrel that hung around our camp site cleaning up after my messy peanut eating. He would come by quite often and would even fight off the other squirrels that were trying to move in on his territory. He ate quite good while we were there. As well as the peanuts he got raw carrots and potatoes and cooked carrots and potatoes. I don't know if squirrels will eat those but atleast they will decompose on their own. There was also a rabbit that frequented the campsite but neither of us could get a picture of it as it was quite skiddish. It was usually sniffing around in the morning, perhaps knowing that the squirrel was smaller than him.

Day 2:

This was our exploring day. We started it off with a swim at the beach.




We drove around the park and went into the village. I found some cheap micro brewed beer there that was quite good. I was going to bring some home but I drank it all and forgot to buy more. 500ml for 2.25 isn't bad for beer that doesn't suck. While driving around the park we found a great look out point above Kenosee lake.




We also made the trip into Carlyle because we read in a local news paper that the Carlyle Bakery's cinnamon buns kicked ass and they were good. A dozen for 3 bucks. Not too shabby considering that they were great and didn't have any raisins! I hate raisins. The trip to Carlyle took us through the White Bear First Nation and we found some odd Road signs. When you enter the white bear territory there is a sign that welcomes you and shows off the attractions like the casino etc. and right behind that is a sign that reads "Watch for pedestrians Next 10 KMs" and then you get one of these signs every 2 kms through the reserve. They appear on both sides of the road but only inside the reserve. I cannot figure this out. Why is there all this pedestrian traffic in this area? Do the natives not own vehicles or do they have some death wish and insist on walking on the highway? It baffles the mind. By now the whole day was pretty much done so we went back to camp and ate some cinnamon buns and made the supper fire.

Day 3:

Time for the slides! I didn't get any pictures of the Kenosee Super Slides but you can visit their website. I didn't want to take my camera in there and leave it unattended and risk getting it wet so you'll have to use your imagination as you read. I apologize if my writing sucks but I'm not a writer so too bad.

The good:
The free fall was a blast. 80 feet straight down and it only takes 3 seconds! Now when I first saw it I didn't think it was that bad. From the ground it looked pretty tame but when I got up there I had to lean out to see the slide. The first 20ft is actually vertical. You fall for the first 20 ft and then the slide catches you. The fun begins after that because you start to go faster than the water and I kicked up a huge bow wave/spray. It must have been over 6 feet high. You also get a monster wedgie from it.

There is a nice slow canal you can float around in on tubes to relax and recharge. This is nice but it does not replace having a pool.

The other slides are good if a bit violent. I hurt my elbow on the tube slides and Lindsay hurt her shoulder on the bonsai. The Bonsai was a fun one for me though as you go fast enough to get air but if you aren't prepared the landing can hurt. Lindsay hurt her shoulder and the first time I went I hurt my ass. Still fun somehow.

The other slides are pretty normal.

The bad:

The paths to the slides are concrete that was brushed to make it non-slip. This also turns it into a cheese grater for soft pink feet. I had to give up before I was completely exhausted because it hurt too much to walk to the top. Speaking of walking that sucked all the fun out the free fall. You walk way up this hill for a 3 second ride down it. Atleast the tube rides took long enough that you didn't feel ripped off.

No pool sucked on a hot day. There was a shallow canal and a hot tub. The canal was fun but it was hard to cool off in. Also you have to rent the tubes to float around the canal for $5. I'm already paying $20 a head to get in I think the tubes should be free.

Overall I would give this park a 7. They were no where near as fun as the Atlantis waterslides in Vernon BC.

Needless to say we were pretty tired after that so we just hung around the campsite most of the afternoon. After supper that night we went back to the nature trail in search of that deer. This time we were armed with my camera. We did not see the deer but we got some awesome shots of Little Kenosee lake at dusk.





Later that night it decided to storm on us. It started off as some nice distant lightning but soon moved upon us and sent us into the tent. Lindsay was afraid the tent was going to blow down but I assured her that with my fat ass in it the tent wasn't going anywhere. It rained on and off all night but thankfully it stopped in time for us to pack up. All that was left was the drive home and that was pretty uneventful.

Would I go back to Moose Mountain? Probably not. I'm glad that we went and that we experience one of Saskatchewan's oldest provincial parks but I didn't really like it that much. When we went to Green Water we didn't start the car for 3 days because we could walk everywhere. At Moose Mountain the store and beach were 5km's away from the campground so it seemed like everytime we wanted to do something we had to start the car and plan our trip. The slides were outside the park and down the highway, definitely not in walking distance. I guess this all made everything feel less relaxing and more rushed. Even with that I had a ton of fun and I think Lindsay did too.