Christmas vacation update.

I spent most of the 26th shopping with my mom, I got an mp3 discman for Tracie, and a few other things. Mom bought a new digital camera and docking station. Dad has learned how to download the pictures, by using the Irvine school camera and mom bought an identical one.

On the 27th, Dad and I hauled some old boards to the dump for Gail and Ralph. They really have changed the dump since I went there the last time. We unloaded the garbage, and on the way home, we took a little tour of the flats. I went and played squash with Ralph, he beat me every game. I only scored between 3 and 6 points in every game. That night I went to the Jacobson's house for their shin-dig. It was quite fun, I enjoyed the little visit that I had with all of them. I excused myself so that I could go to see if Tracie had gotten to Medicine Hat yet, I walked right past my own car and still wasn't sure if Tracie had gotten there yet. She was downstairs, and so we got ready and went to her parents house to open the rest of our presents. Becky was really happy to see us.

On the 28th I went to play squash with, Ralph again. I did about the same, but I did win one game about 9 to 4 or so but he won all the rest. I'm not sure if he was just fooling around, or if I really did beat him. He claims that I really did. I showered at the Y and then came back to the Daniels' to have supper. It was quite good, and Tracie finally learned how to make gravy. Tracie learning how to make gravy may quite possibly be the best thing about this whole trip so far.

Well I guess the final total as far as gifts are concerned is this: 1 shirt from Mom and Jackie, electric toothbrush from Mom, 2 helicopters from Tracie, $50 from Dad, 2 pairs of pajama pants from Tracie and Becky, bag of candy from Grandma Daniels, piggy bank and socks from Grandma Follis, clothes basket and materials to make bread from Ralph and Gail, bread maker from Ralph and Gail, blank CDs from Ralph, head massager from Jackie, tic tack toe game from Becky (hand made in grade 7 woodworking) Sequence game from Gail, and I'm not sure what else, but if I remember something I will update the list.

Merry Christmas! I went shopping all day with my mom on the 23, we went out to eat together at the Pita Pit. It was quite fun and I am having a good time here in Medicine Hat, but I miss Tracie. She had to work a bunch of night shifts in Calgary at the hospital. I got a lot of presents, I went to Tracie's parents in the morning to open presents with them. It was pretty fun, Becky got a ton of presents! Amy got dance dance revolution and it was pretty funny to watch her play it.

Somehow the dog story wasn't nearly as funny as I expected. I guess it was all the hype.

I am trying to get down to California so I can spend a week with Anna and her family before my swim camp (which is also in Southern California). Anyway if I take the bus down and don't take the flight down with the team the airline will cancel the ticket for the return flight. So my coach sent out an email to see if anyone on the team who is not going would like to take this last chance and if someone replies then I guess I'll be going, otherwise it doesn't look good. For sure I won't be leaving until Saturday at the earliest.

In other news, I haven't been accepted to the Faculty of Fine Arts in Multimedia, but apparently they are accepting me as some multi-classified student or something weird like that. Whatever it is, it means that I will be eligible to compete on the swim team.

The build up to this dream story is going to ruin it, but here goes...

I was at the race track watching the horses racing, when out of the corner of my eye I saw a puff of dust. It intrigued me, I had to know what that puff of dust was. My dream rewound. I zoomed in, and saw a dog running beside the track then a puff of dust. It rewound and zoomed in so that all I could see was the dog running then suddenly the dog fell into a hole and a puff of dust flew out of the hole. It was the funniest thing I had ever seen. The dog fell in a hole and dust shot out of the hole. In the hole!!! Dust shot out!!! The dream replayed 3 or 4 times, I was laughing so hard that I woke myself up because my belly was shaking so hard. It woke Tracie up too. Now, all I have to do is think about the dog falling in the hole, and I start smiling. I can make myself laugh by thinking of the dream.

I have to admit that the story is a lot funnier when I tell it in person.

ps. The guy I was hoping for won survivor. That's 2 out of five survivors that I picked to win.

I am back in Lethbridge. I've been travelling a lot lately. First it was Calgary on Saturday, then back to Lethbridge on Monday. I drove to Medicine Hat on Tuesday, back here again tonight (Thursday) and most likely I will either be leaving tomorrow or Saturday for California depending on how long it takes me to get everything ready to leave. I have two new roommates who would like to move in on the 23rd of December and another roommate who would like to move in on the 4th of January. The problem is, I'm going to be soaking up the sun all the way until the 5th of January so I'm going to have to figure out how to get the house ready for them, find someone to give them a key, and basically just hope everything works out while I'm gone.

Important note: Gary you still never posted about your funny dream. Did you think I would forget?

Hi everybody! I finished my final exam on Tuesday. It's so nice to be done. The stress is gone. I even read a book yesterday. 160 pages in one day.

I can't remember if I posted my complaints and idea for a new book organizing system for the U of C library (I know, I know, it's spelled libary) but since I withdrew 2 books yesterday, it bears repeating. (I can always take it out later) It all started about a year ago. I had some free time, so I went to the library to read a few magazines. I couldn't find a nice magazine section with soft chairs like they have a MHC so I decided to ask the Librarian. Being a new-Canadian, she had a hard time speaking either of the 2 official languages. Not speaking French wasn't as big a problem as not speaking English, let me tell you. Anyway through a series of grunts, clicks and hand motions, I made it clear that I wanted to find a copy of Wired Magazine. This was to be my first run in with the completely crappy Library of Congress organizational system, and the U of C's interpretation of it. The lady gave me a paper with the call number on it and directions of how to find it.

First I had to go up a really large escalator. Then I had to go through the public computer lab. Then I had to go down 2 flights of stairs. Then I had to make my way to the far end of the room to find my magazines. Here is a side complaint. The walkways are too narrow; it's like the first ghost scene in Ghostbusters 1. The shelves are so high a close together it is very hard to find what you are looking for. Anyway suffice it to say that it was a wild goose chase. All I could find were tons and tons of engineering books about making mine shafts safe that were 100 years out of date before I was even born. By the time I realized that there would be no copy of wired magazine for me, I just had to go to class anyway.

Fast forward a year. I decide that I will get a book about Adobe Photoshop. I type it into the computer and write down the call numbers for each of the 2 books they have in the entire 13 floors of outdated books. I made my way back up the escalator, through the computer lab and down the 2 flights of stairs. By sheer serendipity, I find the computer graphics section. How ever there were no books for me. The newest book in the entire shelf hadn't been signed out since 1981. This seemed like the perfect time to ask a librarian for help to find the books. This was the reply, "Sorry those books are on the shelf." Obviously, because if they were they would have been in my hand. She continued, "I just put those books into the computer yesterday. They were donated by a man who....Blah Blah Blah... So they're probably still on the sorting cart. Come back in a week or so." A week or so! How long does it take you to push that stupid cart around the library anyway.

So a week passes. I look for the books again. Obviously to the reader at this point, is the fact that they were still not on the shelf, although the damn computer said that they were. Once again I ask the librarian where these books are. She says, "Oh we just barely got those books. They are probably on the shelves for new books." Well why the hell isn't there a way on the computer search function to tell users that there exists a shelf for all the new books and the book you are looking for is on it.

I go back down the escalators and over to the new book section of the library. I search through both giant racks. There are no Photoshop books on the shelves. I'm beging to doubt the existence of Photoshop based directly on the fact that there seems to be no books written about it.

Anyway to end this rant, I have two points to make about the shelving system.

First, Why does a library need a shelf to brag about the fact that they have new books? In case people miss the news conference or miss the daily newspapers headline "Library gets new books". Libraries get new books all the time. It seems like after the millionth new book that it somehow wouldn't be as special to get a new book.

Second, although it's nice to be able to find all the books of a specific topic in one spot, if no body knows how to find that spot with out consulting the card catalogue anyway wouldn't it make sense to devise a system based on number order or alphabetical order, and then use the computer to find out the position of the book in question. It sure would make reshelfing faster. Book 2125412, that goes right between book 2125411 and book 2125413. You could fire all the librarians, except one boss librarian and then hire flunkies to reshelf the books.

So anyway yesterday I was going to find some reading material for the holidays (Christmas not any other holiday) and I ask some guy where the non-fiction was, or if it even existed. He asked, "What are you looking for?" I said I just wanted to browse the fiction. He said "10th floor, but you better ask a librarian because it's a pretty big place up there." I said I would take my chances.

I went up and picked out two books and contrary to popular belief, you can judge books by their cover. That's how I picked out my two books and the first one was very entertaining.

ps. Here is a link about LOTR for Jeff and a Link for Anna

Anna and I were just browsing Gary Milner's Super Duper Web Page and discovered that he mentioned how he is in the process of making a new flash movie based on his dream. However, he never told me about the dream - because it was some big secret that would only be revealed when he finished the flash movie. Since I now know that he will never finish the movie, I'm now going to ask: Gary will you please post an explanation of your funny dream for the world to see? That is all.

-begin Homer voice. "Segway. It's spelled Segway." -end Homer voice

Today, I rode the only Calgary bus driven in the Argentine style. Fast acceleration, not slowing down for corners or speed bumps. It was kind of like that movie Speed 2 only with a bus instead of a boat. Seriously, I was having flash backs to my mission. It was scary until I realized that there would be less walking, more music, more tv and more sex. A lot more.

I finished my last final exam. My seat was C 22. I was 5 or 6 seats from the very back, and there was only one row separating me from an engineering class. It's kind of depressing to overhear the engineers say, "If the class average is 50%, that makes 32% an A". One engineer friend of mine said that in some classes 20% is a passing grade. I guess that's why 80% of bridges and dams fail. In my faculty we actually have to perform. Stupid engineers, stupid bell curve.

ps. Don't worry Anna-Maria Onomatopoeia, my expectations are pretty low.

I hate Hotmail. I hate it with a passion. I wish I had never signed up for their crappy, albeit free, service. I just tried to click on a link from a hotmail message to join a blog, but hotmail keeps it's little frame on and that messed up the scripts on the page I was trying to load and in the end I am just very frustrated with hotmail. I'm pretty happy that I now have my own domain and my own new email address, jeff@milnerdesign.com so I can finally say goodbye to hotmail once and for all.

Mom and Dad came and visited me today. We went for lunch at Pizza Hut. They just left a few minutes ago and are heading back to Medicine Hat. Tonight I am going to Calgary but I haven't told Gary and Tracie I am coming to visit yet. Mom thinks I should pack before I call them. I think maybe I should just show up - as a kind of happy surprise. Anyway I am swimming tomorrow so I should get packed and get going. Instead I will procrastinate and end up driving in the dark.

This is one thing I can do to procrastinate doing my Take Home Final Quiz. It's 11:43 right now. The paper is due at 4:00. I'm helping some friends move at 2:30. I really don't have enough time to fool around. I really don't want to write this stupid paper worth 10% of my grade. I wish it were a regular final exam. I wish I could just concentrate on writing it. But I just don't care. Tracie will kill me when she reads this. She thinks I'm working right now, but I'm not. At least she won't read this untill it's too late. Hopefully she doesn't come in here and catch me fooling around when I should be working. I guess thats it, back to work. Wait for it.... NOW!

Saturday I went to the FRES Christmas party. In case you read the whole post before clicking the link, FRES is the Ferret Rescue and Education Society I have nevery seen so many fricken Ferrets in my entire life. There must have been close to 20 in the basement of the chruch where they held the party. Now you may be wondering, "How did Gary get involved with the Ferret Rescue and Education Society?" Well it all started because of an attempted coup d'etat within the society itself. Obviously the two letters they sent were too good not to print, but unfortunately they could only be printed in the AP section of the paper. Well apparently someone took offense at being called "evil" and so that prompted them to send the article to their lawyer (apparently). But they were not mad enough to ignore the media power that is the Gauntlet so we were invited to do a story about their Christmas party. Unfortunately, the only one that pays attention to them is the AP editor who, although he does have a ferret, is only maintaining contact with them in order to find funny content for his section that is Academic Probation.

Yesterday was the Swim Team Christmas Party. We had a pot luck which was pretty tasty... well actually there were a few pasta dishes that weren't all that tasty, but there was enough really good food that I thoroughly enjoyed myself. Afterwards we had a "chinese" gift exchange. I thought I was going to get a really good present because I drew a high number and would have the choice of a lot of the different presents if I wanted to steal one from someone else, but instead I decided to unwrap a present from the middle. A tradition has developed over the years at these Swim Team Christmas parties. It involves regiving the same crappy / scary doll each year. I was lucky enough to pick the doll present and now I'm expected to save it at my house for a whole year so that I can screw someone else over next year so they can be in charge of it for a whole year... lucky them. Merry Christmas.

Today was the office Christmas party. We went over the paper and then had the party. I acted as Santa and gave out all the gifts. I had the list of all the people and then made a question for each of the people and then everyone had to guess who the person was before they could get their gift. It was a real hoot. Everyone enjoyed it a lot. I'm actually getting more into the Christmas spirit now, or at least is seems more like Christmas now that I have been to a Christmas party. I do have a lot of things that I would like to do over the holidays, and if I were to actually do them, I would be pretty busy.

Actually I posted the wrong fridge, but it's fixed now. Anyway I decided that I'd better not get the fridge after all. The one that I was going to get is only $688.00. I'll just have to make due with the small one that I have now.

I watched the South Park Movie today. To be honest I was quite disappointed. I'm not sure what I was expecting, but it just felt like a let down. I suppose there were some really funny parts, but overall I'd have to say thumbs down.

Anna is making elf ears and an elf nose for her makeup class tomorrow. She is making them out of latex paint and they look really cool. It seems to be a lot like the way the professionals must do it. Anyway that's about all I have to say for today.

Only 2 days left for school. I have two take home finals already and two real finals. My africa teacher has continued on with stupidness. The final question is entirely vauge, and is supposed to be no more than 2 pages double spaced. I have no problem with the shortness of it, but I know that there are some people in the class that would have written a two page introduction. Some of my posts here would be two pages if you double spaced them. Ok, maybe not quite, but if you increased the margins a tiny bit then for sure they would be two pages.

I'm having a hard time deciding when to head down to Medicine Hat. I kind of want to rent a video camera over the holidays, but comms media stays open for half a day on Christmas eve, so if I wanted it for the whole holiday, I would have to come down on the 24th. But it sure would be fun. I thought of some movies that I would like to make. One would be a two parter entitled "Reasons it would be bad if I had a clone" and "Reasons it would be good if I had a clone"

Reasons it would be bad:
1. If I told a joke, the clone would laugh before I was done because he would already know the punchline.
2. If I wanted to have the last doughnut, the clone would probably have already eaten it.
3. If the clone did something stupid, he would probably blame it on me.
4. He would wear my favorite shirt.
5. He would take too much time on the computer.

Reasons it would be good:
1. I'm cool.
2. He would laugh at all my jokes.
3. We would be a good match playing games.
4. He would do all the chores because Tracie and I would team our votes together and it would always be two to one.
5. Half as much homework.
6. He would make sure I didn't pay $800 for a fridge.

Riding on a bus for 13 hours sucks. However, the results are in and I did very well at the Swim Meet in Winnipeg. I have a new best time in 50 free (25.58) and that time qualifies me for the Canada West Meet this February. I lent my parking pass to Anna while I was gone and although I just knew this would happen I forgot to put it back in my car on Tuesday and sure enough I got a parking ticket. I am going to appeal it at the security office after my multimedia class today.

In other news, I finally decided to get my own domain. Let the "master of my own domain" jokes begin! It's not up yet, but it should only be a day or two until http://www.milnerdesign.com/ is fully functional! I will probably also use the email jeff@milnerdesign.com but I haven't decided for sure yet.

I bought a fridge the other day from Sears. I came home and double checked the amount of room I have and it looks like I'll either have to cancel the fridge, or remove cupboards. I'm still undecided. I think I have until the 20th to decide.

Last Friday, I had a runing with some supervisor (aka Jack Ace) from the athletic department. The university has purchased pads that go around the basketball court for advertising purposes, anyway, when I arrived at the game, I went past the ad pads and took up position underneath the basket. The game hadn't even started yet when I hear the aformentioned "ACE" yell, "Excuse me"! Of course I ignore him, pretending not to hear because I know that he's just going to tell me that I can't shoot there. On his way over to me, I just ignore him as he yells to me a couple more times. Finally he arrives and taps me on the shoulder and tells me that I'm not allowed to shoot there.
I say, "Well, why not?"

He says, "Because you could get hurt, or break your camera."

I think, grow a pair of balls and say, "Because I say so" or at least pretend you care about the welfare of the players. I say, "That's a chance I'm willing to take."

He says, "What am I supposed to do if you get hurt?"

I say, "Laugh and say I told you so. Even if I do get hurt, you've mitigated the University's legal resposability by telling me that it's dangerous to take pictures there."

He says, "These pads are here to keep people out."

I say, "No they're not, they for advertising. See all those signs and the phone number to call if you want to place an ad?"

He says, "If I let you shoot there, I have to let everyone shoot there."

I say, "No you don't. Tell them one at a time, or that I am with the university so I get special priviledges."

He tells me, "NO".

I say, "Then I'll publish all crappy pictures and have the athletes talk to you about why they get crappy photos, and why you can't give me good access to the court."

He says "Fine".

That's why he's a Jack Ace. So I shoot the girls game, and the best photo I got was of a girl shooting and her arm was in front of her face. The worst of it is, he won't even know why that photo is ugly, and post it on hiw wall of fame in kineseology.

Anyway, this story has a happy ending. I know both the coaches for the Dinos. Brad, the assistant coach, was my apartment manager in Bowness, and Dan, the Head coach purchased two or three 8x10's from me when he coached in Medicine Hat. As luck would have it, Mike Connelly had become the coach of the pronghorns in Lethbridge, and I knew him from Medicine Hat as well. I asked all the coaches if they cared if I was on the inside of the pads and they all said that they didn't. Mike actually asked that I email him some photos if I got any good ones. So I shot the Men's game from inside the pads, and got good photos.

I went to play floor hockey two nights ago and I still haven't recovered completely. We played 3 on 3 in the church with no goalies. After the first 15 minutes of light playing, I thought that I was going to die. We took a short break, then I knew I wasn't going to die, but just wished that I would. Then after another 30 minutes or so, I stopped longing for death's sweet release and was actually ready to do some hard playing. But by then it was time to go home.

Here I go stating the obvious. The student loan people are BASTARDS. Not just garden variety Bastards, but real Bastards the kind that would rather spit on you than look at you. Capital B Bastards. I think people know the kind I mean.
I got a message on my machine on Friday night pretty late, and called back yesterday evening. Apparently they wanted to get my new address, because a form they sent me got returned to them on Oct.18th (yes over a month ago). It seems that they have been charging me $3 a day since the end of april because I failed to send in my confermation of enrollment. Just to make it clear to everyone, $336 were rolled into the principle of my loan on the 18th of October, and $50 more have been added since then. Now even though the form showing that I have been a full time student this whole time, I'm still screwed out of the $336 which has been added to my loan, and they want the $50 before they will reinstate my fulltime status. So that means $400 for filling out a form late.

Here I go stating the obvious. Waiting until after watching The Lord of the Rings extended edition to do my homework was a bad idea. It resulted in me writing a very bad paper. I can hardly wait until school is over.

On Wednesday I'm going to Winnipeg. You can see how I compare to the rest of Canada here. You have to understand though, my new best time for 50 free is 26.05 so I rank much higher than shows.

Anna and I went to see Bowling for Columbine on Saturday. I just loved it. It was a great documentary about violence in America.

Today Anna purchased the special edition Lord of the Rings. We are watching it right now, even though I have homework due tomorrow. You know, sometimes an English paper just needs to wait. Well Anna is back from talking on the phone, so I'm going back to the show.

Ever since wednesday my stress level has gone way down. I handed in my Africa term paper, I have been getting more sleep and things in general have been great.

It seems to me that not all sleep is equal. That is to say that any old 8 hours of sleep does not equal an other old 8 hours of sleep. The best sleep starts before 12:00 midnight. I have found that going to bed at 1:00 and getting up at 9:00 is not as good as going to bed at 12:00 and getting up at 8:00. What even more interesting is that going to bed at 2:00 or 3:00 and getting up 10, 11 or even 12 hours later is not as good as a good eight hours that start before the stroke of midnight.

I finished my handwriting font yesterday. It's still missing a few of the weird characters and could use fine tuning, but it's a lot better than the first one I made. I might even post it here for the world to see if it ever gets good enough.

Shouting amen didn't work. Taking off my pants did. Direct quote from my prof, "I can clearly see you're nuts!" Just kidding, the class went on without interuption, and now I know a lot more than I ever wanted to know about distributed databases. Strike that, I now have forgotten more than I ever wanted to know about distributed databases. On a better note, I got my Africa term paper done. I layed it out in Indesign. I'm thinking of making it into a pdf. I might also do my resume, as a .pdf as well. I'll have to find a pdf maker for my computer so that I don't have to do it at the school.

A guy I know said that he would burn me a copy of font folio. Apparently it cost like $8000. But you get a crap load of fonts. I'm not really a font guy, but I could use a few nice ones. I wonder if my computer would boot faster if I took some of the crappy fonts off. I mean really I only use Arial and Times New Roman. If I could get rid of all the fonts that suck and have 5 or 10 really good fonts, instead of 2 ok fonts and 20 crappy fonts, as well as have my computer boot faster, I would be a happy kid.

Need Sleepy a little less now than before.

I'm halfway through my 3 hour database class, and this is one of the most boring days of school I have ever had. NEED SLEEPY! NEED SLEEPY!
When will it ever end? In about 10 more minutes I'm going to stand up and shout AMEN! AMEN! AMEN! AMEN!

I've been burning the candle at both ends. Apparently I'm not responsible enough to stay home alone, when Tracie is working nights. I stay up until 2:00 or 3:00am everytime she isn't here. I don't know why. What is worse is that even when she is home, during her night time rotation, I stay up late anyway. My internal clock is set to goto sleep at 2:00-3:00am and to wake up at 7:00 or 8:00am. This has been going on for about 2 weeks or so. I don't know what to do. I'm so tired, and taking a nap only makes it worse.
On another note, as far as work goes, we got 4 or 5 requests but 2 of them are out of town. One is in New York and the other is in Norway! Oh well.
Need Sleepy, Need Sleepy.

Well I'm pretty glad I didn't go kayaking on the weekend. Even if I would have bothered bringing my kayak to Calgary there is no way I would have gone. I did however talk to the guy who gave me the idea to go this morning. He said that he did go canoeing, and that one of the guys got hypothermia, also he lost his canoe for about 2 hours when it dumped and one of the girls that was there was so cold she couldn't swim so he went after her instead of the canoe. It was really interesting to talk to him. I'd write more but class is starting.

Jeff, Mom and Dad came up to visit over the long weekend. The weekend was great, and I had a really good time visiting everybody. Jeff had lots of interesting things to talk about. I would go into it a little more, but he's the only person who ever reads this, so what would be the point? I worked on the hockey pictures I took saturday night, and I took a picture of Ralph Klein's wife getting an honourary degree (doctorate in law) from the University today. I'll bet she ordered it through the internet. King Ralph was there and I got a few pictures of him sitting on the stand. He must have been pretty bored during his wife's speech, because his eyes were closed. Maybe he had stage fright and was imagining the coed's without thier graduation gowns on.

Today was my last day of being free from school, but I must admit that I didn't get a lot done school work wise. I did some work on my stupid database yesterday. It appears that the lab notes that the prof. has put up for SQL loader have bugs in the code, and just by chance I found a debugging site and was able to figure out what was wrong with his code and modify it. I'm behind on my africa readings again, but I'll read a couple of chapters before class tomorrow. I looked at a calander, and I found out that I'm pretty close to a BSC or BA in Geography. I think I only need about 4 or 5 more classes in it. Which is about what I need in Management. So I'm thinking of doing a double degree. Since it may not even mean any more time in school than I'm already going to spend, just a few more classes. I'm going to look into it a little more closely though.

It seems that I had a couple of good rants to write while Jeff was here, but I seem to have forgotten them for now. They'll come back to me, don't you worry your pretty little head.

Here are a few of the kickboxing photos, I didn't scan all of them, and there is no fancy interface for them, but you can just click on the file name and then click back to go back. I don't really have much to say today, altough I might if I am able to make it to the swim meet.

I found this site called googlefight.com where you can type to search queries in and find out which has more results on google. Unfortunately for me, Gary Milner beats Jeff Milner by a few thousands results.

But on the bright side of things, life is good, and school is at least tolerable. I applied for the Faculty of Multimedia the other day, and I've even updated my portfolio. Can life get much better? Oh and one last thing... I think you use the right amount of boldness Gary.

I tried to upload my kickboxing photos, but I forgot the password to the stupid telus site, and they only give you 5 tries to get it right. Like someone will hack a homepage. Or like someone would be able to get the password if even if they had 100 tries. I guess I'll have to phone some dumbass telus phone service guy, and he'll think that I'm not really the owner of the internet connection even though I'm calling from the Milner residence. I'll have to get him to phone the police, because obviously I broke in here to use the phone to get the password to hack some guy's website.

Hello I Kiss You! I am a HaXor! I Rule! SuXor to you!

OH NO! My blog has been hacked! Someone must have had more than 5 tries to get my password right. Damn those blogspot web designers! Don't they care about my security? Don't they know that potentially millions of web surfers want to destroy my sight? Don't they want the internet to be a happy place? Don't they love me anymore?

Now that I am done ranting (or maybe not). I had my last midterm today. What a feeling of relief. Now I only have 3 big ace assignments and a few quizzez to worry about. I am sick of school. I want it to end, and I still have a year left. I have two major problems (not counting being a suicidal procrastinator). They are the fact that I am indifferent to most things and that I just don't care about my apathy. At least if I cared about being apathetic, I might be temped to care about other stuff too. Right now I just want school to end so that I can get a job, pay back my stoopid student loan and start having an adventure.

The way I see it, you really only have time in you life to have 2 really good major adventures before you have to settle down. Living in Argentina was definitely number 1. Now I pretty much only have time for one more. It's too bad really, because that means that Tracie is stuck only getting one, and that one is sitting somewhere between, we've got our tickets and maybe it will happen.

I guess I have had side adventures, but they are different. Like driving to Disneyland a bunch of times. Sure it's fun and a pretty good road trip when you are little, but not letting your brother control the flying elephant isn't exactly a Herculean feat. Or even as exciting as getting yelled at by a bag lady outside a Honolulu McDonalds for trying to horn in on her garbage can. Mmm, McMuffins only slightly used. I guess seeing a Mexican border guard beating the crap out of a Mexican with his baton is pretty cool, especially when your Grandma is stopped for looking slightly Mexican not a minute later. When it comes right down to it, I guess I have had quite a few good adventures.

ps. Do I use too much bold type?

I'm off to Calgary on Saturday, and I must admit - I'm pretty excited. I guess kayaking in the cold was a bad idea to begin with but the weather in Lethbridge has been so nice it's hard to imagine the cold winter that Gary has described in Lethbridge. Anyway the meet is going to be a short one. I am only competing in 2 events. The nice thing is that I do get to miss some school, but really it's Multimedia which I enjoy anyway so it's a mixed blessing.

The fact that I don't have much to write about shows how boring my life really is. I mean I could go on about how my rake sucks and my lawn looks horrible littered with leaves. Perhaps I could ramble on about the wind in Lethbridge - of course that never gets old. But instead perhaps I should just say that life is good.

I do have one thing that's slightly interesting to tell you about. My swimming is coming along nicely. Yesterday we did a set of 75m - 75m - 100m with each 75 or 100 both done in less than 1:35. Well for those of you that are not big into swimming let me just say that doing 8 of those is VERY VERY tiring. I'm happy to say that I was able to complete them.

I downloaded the demo for Tribes 2 on the weekend. I am completely addicted to that game. Anyway I played it all day Saturday, and a couple of rounds Sunday morning. Don't worry though - I decided for my own good to erase it, and hopefully I'll be able to resist downloading it again.

In other news I am going to Calgary for the weekend for a swim meet. The swim team is having a mandatory meeting this Wednesday at 9pm. It kind of ticks me off that they are always having these 9pm meetings. I mean we see each other at practice and I usually don't leave the school until after practice ends at 4:30, so to have to come all the way back at 9 just sort of bugs me. I am excited to have another meet so soon though. I hope Gary takes some good pictures too. Maybe there will be an angle where you can get some Calgary swimmer in with me and then publish the picture under the pretense of that Calgary swimmer, but I'll actually be in the picture too. That'd be sweet.

I went to watch the Muay Thai Kickboxing last night. It was wild. Muay Thai is just like kickboxing except that you are allowed to knee and elbow your opponent. Elbows are padded for the safety of the competitors. I got to go right up to the ring, and take pictures underneath the ropes. When I get them developed tomorrow, I will post a few so that you can see a little of the action.

I always thought that I would see a boxing match before I went to see kickboxing, but I guess that it just didn't work out that way. Some of the fights went all 5 rounds, but some were shorter, like only 1 or 2 rounds. Unfortunately, they had girl fighters, which doesn't seem quite right. Although people only go to see fights, which seems pretty crass in and of itself. A couple of guys got kicked in the head pretty hard.

An intersting thing to note is that when you see a guy get hit and a spray flies off his head, it seems to me that most often, it's not actually sweat flying off but water. In between rounds, they pour water all over the competitors. I don't know if it's to cool them down, lubricate them so the gloves don't stick and tear their skin or what. But it sure does make punches that connect a little more impressive.

Stupid Gas Station dropped their prices again. I just filled up on Tuesday. What else is new?

Yesterday I had to stay home with the flu. Staying home from school and swim practice is fun, but it's only fun if you aren't actually sick. Being sick sucks. Glad I'm not sick anymore. Anyway I finished writing my philosophy paper this morning which is due in about 10 minutes. If you ever have the chance to not take philosophy, I say go for it.

So in conclusion, things that suck:
-Gas Stations dropping their prices after I fill up and raising them before I fill up
-Being sick with the flu
-Taking Philosophy class

No big news so far this week, I had the feeling this would eventually would happen. Post all my rants, then have nothing to say. Anyway, the weather here has been snowy and cold.

Actually there is one fun piece of info: SATURDAY!!!! SATURDAY!!!! SATURDAY!!!! AT THE CALGARY EXHIBITION AND STAMPEDE CORRAL!!!!! ONE DAY ONLY!!!! I am going to the XTREME FIGHTING CHAMPIONSHIP here in Calgary. It's basically going to be a kick boxing championship. Apparently I get ringside seats, free and so I'll be taking photos and probably writing a story with one of the photo volunteers. I have to pick up the tickets from some kick boxing club. I'll post a photo when I get some. Here is a link to the Xtreme Fighting Championship: Battle for the Belts World championship Muay Thai and Kickboxing. There are 10 fights, and each fight has at least one Canadian fighter. The fights are being televised for TSN, and some other pay-per-view company, so maybe I'll be on tv, seeing as how I'm going to be ringside. The title bout sounds like it will be a real doozie!
5 rounds of 3 minutes of Full Muay Thai - WMC COMMONWEALTH MUAY THAI TITLE
TREVOR 'T.N.T.' SMANDYCH (Calgary, Canada) vs. KURT 'KILLER' FINLAYSON (Australia)
Apparently TNT's foot has broken 32 bones over the course of his career, if you could call kickboxing a career, but don't worry folks none of those 32 bones belonged to good'ole Trevor 'T.N.T' Smandych.

My swim meet was great. Aside from the power going out and delaying the meet for an hour and a half, I think it was a great day. I competed in the 50 breast and the 50 free. Breast was great - lane 4, heat 4. I was the fastest in my heat with a time around 34 seconds. In the 50 Free, I came out with a 26.4.

It snowed today which sucks, but gas prices are low and I can finally take advantage of it. With my luck prices will be back up before I get out of class and have a chance to go. That's life I guess.

I was riding the bus to the university the other day, and a bunch of highschool kids got on at the stop after mine. A kid in the seat in front of mine refused to let another kid sit down beside him so I said, "Let him sit down." As he was moving over I added, "Jackass." The kid looked a little offended that I would call him a jackass, and the guy who was about to sit down said, "It's ok, we go to the same school. I know him." I said, "I don't care, I wasn't sticking up for you. There are two seats, two people should be sitting down."

Lipping off highschool kids is really fun. Especially when they are trashy kids. I overheard the 2nd kid bragging that he was kicked out of 65 classes in one month. At my highschool, that would be almost 70% of your classes.

While I'm on the topic of lipping off highschool kids, about a year and a half ago, I was going in one of the back doors of the college in Medicine Hat and there were 4 kids smoking at a picnic table. One of the younger kids (probably 15 or so) threw a empty cigarette box on the ground. He was sitting less than five feet from the garbage can. I said, "Pick that up and put it in the garbage. A kid with down syndrome could have thrown it in from where you are sitting." He picked it up and threw it out, and all his so called friends laughed at him. That was quite possibly my favorite burn of all time, although there haven't been many.

I just finished the first day of my first meet swimming for the U of L. I am dead tired. Today I swam the 100 Breast (1:18), 100 Free (1:01), and 50 Fly (32.5). I took a few pictures on my digital camera but I don't think they are going to turn out to well. It's too dark in the pool area, but if there are any worth it I may try to improve them in Photoshop.

Happy birthday Jackie 'O Lantern! You know I always wished that your birthday was on the 31st.

Tracie and I opened a savings account today. I went to a teller to find out what you had to do. (at my old bank, we had an information desk) Anyway the teller said two pieces of id with my address on them. Well, I had my drivers licence, my SIN card, 2 different visas (one from the bank in question), student id and any number of club cards. But she wanted something with my address on it. Like a bill. Like a bill. I'd just like to point out that you call what ever company up and just tell them your address. You just tell the driver's licence people your address. That's how you get your address on anything! You just tell someone and they put it on. That's how the bank knows we moved. We just told them our address, and they typed it into the computer. Well Tracie happened to go to another teller at the same time who didn't think that we needed another address id, and so the tellers had a little discussion about the importance of having two pieces of address verification. Anyway, we got sent back to a personal banker, who gave us another account and offered us a $10,000 line of credit. All without having any piece of Id with a current address. (We haven't updated our driver's licences since the last time we moved.) Anyway, I hate banks and dumb tellers.

Happy Birthday Jackie! Just like that "Walla!" she's 21! It's my sister Jackie's birthday today. I was going to call her, but I realized that she wasn't going to be home so instead I just sent her and email and dedicated this web log to her. That's right Jack, this is all for you. So what I'm going to do is list some of the things I like about you, Jackie, and some of the things I don't like.

Things I like about growing up with my kid-sister Jackie:
-She's always been a easy scapegoat, it's her own fault really.
-that time she stole a pack of hubba bubba and shared with everyone
-all the my little ponies that she had for targets for my GI Joe
-never complaining to mom and dad all the times that Gary and I tied her up with ropes just for the fun of it.
-never asking me to give you my Christmas spending money so you could buy a present for me and then turn around and buy headphones for yourself.
-also never whining about not wanting to go on the Dumbo ride at Disneyland and then monopolizing the controls.
-someone to talk to through the vents in my ceiling.
-always being a good sport about all the nick names you've been given over the years.
-bringing over friends...(don't ask why)
-hmmm, I guess that's about it.

Things I dislike about growning up with my kid-sister Jackie:
-that time she squirted ketchup on me just to prove that she would.
-that time she borrowed risk for her boyfriend and never returned it (still)
-all the times that she decided she would like to play monopoly but then either quit 10 minutes into it or the equivilent by just letting us roll for her.
-telling me that you love me when you know I am angry at you and then saying that you only said you love me to impress people at church.
-hmmm I guess that's about it too.

So, I'm sitting through a classmate's presentation, when he gets to the big finnish and says, "And walla!" Nobody's sure if he's making a joke or if we should laugh or not, this being the instant right before his amazing finnish. He clicks to the next slide where in big bold all caps it says, "WALLA!". He could tell that we didn't get it and so he says, "You know, Walla! Walla! Here it is!". We're still confused so he turns to the French kid here on exchange for a semester and says, "Explain Walla to them."

Anyway, I took a picture of a knight yesterday. A real knight, but not a real knight. I mean he didn't have any armour or a sword or anything, but everyone prefaced his name with Sir, and apparently the Queen had knighted him. He won the Nobel prize for work in genetics. I think he made a half rhino, half elephant. It's called an elefino. When the new Gauntlet comes out, I'll post a link to the photo. Although it's not that great on account of the lack of swords and armour.

Conspiracy theories aside, here is an email I got today. I realize its just a silly forward, but it made me laugh.

YOU KNOW YOU'RE TRAILER TRASH WHEN:
1. The Halloween pumpkin on your porch has more teeth than your spouse.
2. You let your twelve-year-old daughter smoke at the dinner table in front of her kids.
3. You've been married three times and still have the same in-laws.
4. You think a woman who is "out of your league" bowls on a different night.
5. Jack Daniels makes your list of "most admired people."
6. You wonder how service stations keep their restrooms so clean.
7. Someone in your family died right after saying: "Hey watch this."
8. You think Dom Perignon is a Mafia leader.
9. Your wife's hairdo was once ruined by a ceiling fan.
10. Your junior prom had a daycare.
11. You think the last words of the Star Spangled Banner are: "Gentlemen, start your engines."
12. You lit a match in the bathroom and your house exploded right off its wheels.
13. The bluebook value of your truck goes up and down, depending on how much gas is in it.
14. You have to go outside to get something from the fridge.
15. One of your kids was born on a pool table.
16. You need one more hole punched in your card to get a freebie at the House of Tattoos.
17. You can't get married to your sweetheart because there's a law against it.
18. You think "loaded dishwasher" means your wife is drunk.
19. Your toilet paper has page numbers on it.
20. Your front porch collapses and kills more than five dogs

The conspiracy continues. My gas tank is still three quarters full but gas dropped to 25.4 cents yesterday. On top of that Safeway gives 3.5 cents off per litre so all I can say is at least I'm happy that I don't have to wait in line for cheap gas.

Yesterday, Tracie and I went to see a play in Lethbridge. It was, "You Can't Take it With You". Anna Maria Onomatopoeia was in it. She Played Penny. It was very funny. Afterwards, we went to Boston Pizza. To end off the night, we drove all the way to Medicine Hat.
Today, we visited Mom and Dad, and had dinner at Tracie's parent's house. At 5:30 we went to the pool party at crestwood pool. Dad went in Corry's Kayak so did mom, but I never had a camera.

I think there is a conspiracy going on in Lethbridge. Actually I think it's all across Southern Alberta. Every time my gas tank is full, the gas stations drop their prices. When it comes time for me to buy - they jack them up like crazy. It's as if they actually know when I need gas and change their prices just to screw me over.

By the way, it's Kyoto, not Keyoto. The interesting thing about Kyoto is that, from the sounds of it, you might think it's a small town or even a medium sized city. This, however, is not the case. Kyoto is in fact a major metropolis. An easy way to remember how to spell Kyoto is to just switch the letters of Tokyo around. Kyoto means number two and I guess that was the deal - Tokyo is number one, Kyoto well it's number two because it's just a rearrangement of letters. Also interesting about Kyoto, I think that they sure produce a lot of poisonous gases themselves to be bossing everyone around. But thanks to Kyoto, we now have the Kyoto Accord and now everybody's got to reduce their emissions. I wish the kid next to me in this computer lab would reduce his emissions. That's all for me.

The Gauntlet staff had a dinner meeting last night. The first half of the meeting went really well. Kris (the Editor) told everyone what he felt that they were doing well, and what they were doing not so well at. Pretty much everything is going ok, with the exception of people making booby traps, people fooling around with the fire extinguisher, and people blowing up pop bottles with dry ice. Oh yeah, don't forget shooting people in the eye with rubber bands and licking the microwave plate. (I dislike using the microwave because the inside of it is so nasty.)

Kris is very worried about getting sued. Myke things that if you like the microwave plate and die from food poisoning it's your own darn fault. I agree with Myke, it is your own darn fault. Lawyers agree with Kris. If you lick the microwave plate and die from food poisoning, your parents can sue the office for not doing anything to stop it. I agree with both of them. A line has to be drawn somewhere to mitigate the liability of the paper.

Anyway, I have to come up with a system of archiving the photos by January, but hopefully I'll get it done before then.

I had the 2nd funniest dream ever the other day. Mom and I were in some grand stands watching the Queen do something. Mom was going to takes some pictures, but I said don't bother. I went down to the corner of the stands and started taking pictures. The Queen was about to get into the driver's side of a pick-up truck to scoot over for the driver to get in after her. As she was getting in, her foot accidentally hit the accelerator and the truck starts to zoom away with the Queen all by herself half in the truck. Somehow she manages to get into the truck, but she doesn't know how to drive because she has had chauffeurs all her life. The truck careens out of control speeding up and slowing down, as she travels in a circle around the bleachers. I shoot tons of amazing pics, and I'm thinking to myself, "I'm going to make tons of money! These pics are amazing and nobody else is shooting them!" Anyway the Queen made about five laps of the bleachers and managed to stop or slow down enough that her body guards could get into the truck to stop it for her.

Last night I went to Student Union meeting. It's a miracle that anything actually gets done by them. They spent the first 10 or 15 minutes debating on whether or not the crowd of spectators (5 people, including 3 from the Gauntlet) should be allowed to pass notes to the council members. Then they had a vote to see if they would have a vote on the issue, then they voted on the issue, and as it turns out, spectators are still not allowed to pass notes to the council members. Why anyone cares, I don't know.

Another interesting bit of news from me is that most of the photo stuff for this issue of the paper is done. I may have to take a picture of the meeting about the Kyoto accord, but it will be running online in the e-Gauntlet

I watched The Tuxedo on my computer the other day, and well it's a Jackie Chan movie, but that's about it. It's not even a good Jackie Chan movie. If I only had two words to describe it, they would be "Ho Hum" or is that just one word? Hohum.

Tracie is writing her RN exam right now, it's a two parter. The first half is in the morning and the second in the afternoon. It's the type of test that is hard to study for. but I'm pretty sure that she will do alright.

Nothing funny or amusing to report today. So instead of a funny or even slightly amusing story, I'll relate the lame pun I heard on CBC Radio last night while driving home to lethbridge:
"[With increasing threats from George W. to Saddam Hussien Canada is left between Iraq and a hard place.]"
I think it would have been better if Canada was left between Iraq and a hard-ass. But that's just my opinion.

My love affair with public transit is losing it's luster. I used to really enjoy taking public transit. Now my eyes are opening to the fact that riding the bus SUCKS.

I got invited to Kris and Vero Jensen's for Thanksgiving dinner today. At noon I realized that Tracie had taken the car to work and that I needed to find a ride to Bowness. I fired up the Calgary Transit website and found out that the #40 bus goes from the corner by my house to the corner by the Jensen's house, and that it would arrive at my stop in just about 45 minutes. I hopped "like a bunny" into the shower and when I got out there was still 30 minutes to the bus. I got dressed, and there were still 15 minutes to the bus. I arrived at the stop 10 minutes early and 5 minutes go by. 10 minutes go by, 15 minutes go by, 20 minutes go by and no #40. The only bus that went by was the 91 and it doesn't go to Bowness. Finally I hear the sound of a bus, but it's the #20. I decide to get on and ride to the bottom of the hill. At least at the bottom of the hill I can catch the #40 or the #1 and those both go reasonably near where I wanted to go. So I waited at the bottom of the hill for another 10 minutes and my beloved #40 is still nowhere to be seen. Fortunately the #1 showed up and it took be with in 4 blocks of the Jensens and I was only half an hour late. Luckily the meal wasn't quite ready, and so it was ok.

Dinner was quite good. Since I'm neither my Mother nor my aunt Mary Ann, I am not going to give you a list of all the things I ate or how delicious each item was, other than to say it was quite good.

This thanksgiving I am thankful that I got invited over somewhere to eat. (Since tomorrow is not Thanksgiving anymore, I may list a few things I am no thankful for if I remember)

Since I can't think of anything better to post, I've decided to write about my new computer. I purchased a 19" monitor but had to take it back. The picture on it was compressed at the top. I got a new monitor - same model (NEC AccuSync 95f) and it has the same problem. Since I live in Lethbridge and the computer store is closed for Canadian Thanksgiving, I've decided to let my parents take it back and I will get a new one in Lethbridge.

My house is far enough away from the University, that I can ride the bus. My house is also close enough to the University that I can walk. This shouldn't be a dilemma for a guy like me. I can wait for the bus or I can walk. In fact, there are two busses that both go right past my house straight to the University of Calgary. However, they both come every half hour. First one, then 10 minutes later the other, then another 20 minutes and the next bus arrives. This is the dilemma, I don’t know how much time has passed since the last bus has come and gone, and it is only a 15-minute walk to the university. One might suggest that I simply walk along the bus route and get picked up at the next stop. Apparently this is a common thought because Calgary Transit has made sure that these two buses don’t duplicate too much of the same route. Therefore the bus that comes first turns off at the corner before the next stop does a one block jog east then joins back up to the same route 2 blocks north.

You may have correctly guessed that I have decide to walk the last few trips and paid the price for my impatience. It seems as if the bus is at least 3 or 4 minutes faster 90% of the time, unless I just barely miss the second bus in which case it is about 1 or 2 minutes faster to walk.

So, I was watching the Queen on TV yesterday, and she's walking down a long aisle at the CBC, and all these little kids have flowers. The Queen goes to the edge of the red carpet and takes the flowers from the kids. As her arms get full of flowers, she passes them back to the peons behind her. To put in water obviously, or the garbage, we might as well say what really happens to the flowers.

Anyway, Tracie says, “What makes the Queen think those flowers are for her? They could just be holding the flowers for somebody else.”

That makes me think that if I were holding flowers and the Queen made a grab for them, I would pull them away just in the nick of time and maybe say to the Queen, “What the hell are you doing? These flowers aren’t for you!” Then I’d shout out, “Police! Police! The Queen just tried to steal my flowers!”

Maybe it would be better to just say, “Too slow!” or “Too bad sucker!” And after all the dust settled, I’d be on every TV in the Common Wealth for at least a few minutes as the crazy guy of the day.

Just to get the ball really rolling here is a joke:

President Bush and Colin Powell are sitting in a bar. A guy walks in and asks the barman, "Isn't that Bush and Powell sitting over there?"
The barman says, "Yep, that's them." So the guy walks over and says, "Wow, this is a real honour. What are you guys doing in here?"
Bush says, "We're planning WW III ". And the guy says, "Really? What's going to happen?"
Bush says, "Well, we're going to kill 20 million Iraqis this time and one blonde with really big breasts.
The guy exclaimed, "A blonde with really big breasts? Why kill a blonde with really big breasts?"
Bush turns to Powell, punches him on the shoulder and says,
"See, smart ass?! I told you no one would give a damn about the 20 million Iraqis!"