COMPUTER TOYS!

As of yesterday I became the owner of an ESPON STYLUS PHOTO 960. Am I the proud owner this rather large printer?. On the assumption that you asked I will reply. The photo quality is incredible, amazing even. I write this on the other hand to say that although I love it now it took a whole day of messing with the thing to get it to work the way I wanted it to work. Oh and unless your junkie for gizmos maybe this is not for you 'cause this thing came with a box as big as my 273lb brother.




MORE COMPUTER TOYS!

The printer would not be complete without something to print. So I picked out a digital camera to go along with it. Something with a little more kick than my mom's sony spy cam with no zoom. I noticed that everyone had a favourite brand, from Kodak to Olympus. So knowing that at least Jeff is reading this (he has helped me with computer issues in the past) I would like to know what you out there would have suggested for me before I tell which major purchase I made.

Jeff Milner the Swim Coach

All I can say about coaching yesterday was that it was Easy - Capital E. Lisa prepared a lesson plan for me and as my luck would have it, only two kids showed up. I was teaching 8 year olds, and the other girl that was supposed to coach the 7 year olds left because nobody from her class showed up on time but one girl did come late and I took her into my class. I should try and get a job coaching all the time.

Anna-Maria's Trip to Medicine Hat

Anna went to Medicine Hat yesterday for her sister's birthday party. I'm not exactly sure, but Josh's birthday is also coming right up so they might have had his party this weekend too. I know Anna was buying presents for both of them. Anyway she's almost back at home now so I'm going to run. I'll try and scrounge up something interesting to do tonight so that I'll have something more interesting to blog about tomorrow.

Roommate Update

The other day at his work, my roommate cut his hand and had to go to the hospital. He had three sitches and a week off work - paid. He said he was pretty happy about getting a paid vacation, but unfortunatly for him he just got diagnosed with Strep throat so it looks like he's going to be sick during the time that he is off. Life's like that sometimes; maybe it's karma?

Wisdom Teeth If You're Reading This, Good Riddance

I got my wisdom teeth out yesterday. Well three of them anyway. One has moved to fill in a hole left by one of my previous teeth. Not that the dentist didn't make a try for it. I felt him swabbing it up for the needle and told him that that one was staying.

He said, "I just realized that right before you spoke up." What a liar.

They came out pretty easily, and it didn't hurt too much. The cracking noise coming from the general vicinity of my mouth was really creepy though. The University dental plan will be covering half of the $604.00 and Tracie's Blue Cross will cover the rest.

Tracie's Dad came to town last night with Becky looking for a motobike, he went home disappointed, but not before he took us to Jack Astor's. I had to have the soup. It was good soup, but I went home hun-gary, not full-gary.

The swelling has really settled in this morning. I look a lot like the Godfather now. I'm thinking of having the dentist wacked. Speaking of the Godfather, we watched AFI's 100 most heart pounding movies last night. #50 is Marathon Man, I don't really know what it is about, but a large part of it involves the Rain Man getting toutured by a friggin dentist drilling in his mouth. They showed long clips of that damn dentist and I just about passed out from the thought of it.

Lawnmower If You're Reading This, Please Come Home

I went to the police station and filed a report. It looks like the purpose of the report is just so that in the event that I find the mower in a pawn shop or second hand store I can say, "Um hey! That's my mower and I have this peice of paper as proof". I went around to pawn shops this morning and came up empty handed. As far as paying with a credit card and having some sort of theft protection goes, I used my Sears card which I found out does not give you any kind of insurance on your purchase. I only even used it to get the points so I wouldn't have paid with my visa anyway. Maybe I should start... Well, I suppose the sooner I forget about it the sooner I can stop feeling bad about it. As I explained to Anna-Maria, it could have been a lot worse - like they could have actually robbed something from inside the house or perhaps a car accident or something. You've got to keep it in perspective, at least nobody died.

I Hate to Give Primates a Bad Name...

Some degenearate primate saw my lawnmower sitting against the back side of Anna's house and decided it would be a good idea to steal it. Anna figures it might be the two Indians that routinely prowl the alley "looking for things to pawn". Personally, I thought at first it might be that guy who was so interested in checking out my new lawnmower. I should never have left it out at her house. I should have taken it home. In fact I would have taken it home except for the fact that I knew that as soon I as I took it home Anna's yard would need mowing and I even started mowing it yesterday except that I ran out of gas almost immediately. Why do people steal? Just buy your own frickin stuff and if you can't afford it then get a job you @#$&*! lowlife scumbags.

Tracking Down My Stuff

I called the police and they said I could come down and fill out a report. I called Sears to see if they had a record of my serial number. Of course - they didn't. They said that their computers don't have a place to record serial numbers, just model numbers. Luckily enough for me, although I packed the lawnmower box full of junk for spring cleaning, the garbage men have not come around to collect the big stuff yet and so the box was still out there serial number intact. I'm going to fill out a report form at the police station now.

Robbers Revisited:

One thing I forgot to mention about the kids who stole our cds. Apparently they are trying to catch a buzz from some pills that we had in our glove compartment... or they just have bad diarrhea.

-Gary Milner

I Love to See the Pansies in the Springtime

You are definately right Gary, a kilometer is not that far to swim. That's why yesterday I swam two. I was also asked by one of the girls on the team to substitute for her on Friday coaching some younger kids on the LASC team. They are pretty little kids, eight and under I think, but she said she would have a lesson plan made up for me so hopefully things go smoothly. I will keep you posted.

Think or Thwim:

I went swimming today, and I realized that swimming a kilometer isn't really all that far. I also realized that since a kilometer isn't very far, there's no point in going a whole kilometer.

-Gary Milner

My New Job: This Time It's Personal

I got hired to do landscaping. It pays $10.00 / hour, and it doesn't involve using a phone. It turns out that the lady at the truck stop decided to give someone who already worked there a promotion. She said that I would probably be better and more interesting to talk to, but that she wanted to be loyal to her current employees and promote from within.

It turns out that I will probably make more money doing landscaping because I will be able to get just about as many hours as I want with the landscaping outfit. He seems like he will be very willing to give me time off when I need it, so I'll be there for the family reunion and I'll still be able to get my wisdom teeth out on friday.

-Gary Milner

My New Job

I still haven't heard back about working at the swimming pool, but it's only been one day. However I did get another job today. As of today I am now an interviewer for a company that does market research. Apparently I'll be on the phones starting this Monday conducting market research for a blazing $8.00 / hour. I sure hope that lifeguarding job comes through, but even if it does I'm not totally sure that I won't just keep this job for the extra hours I can put in. Stay tuned for updates...

Here's a true story that I'm posting mostly for Anna-Maria since she's into acting. Jeff will back me up on this. Jeff and I once went to an off broadway play called the Diary of Ann Frank. The girl who played Ann, Pia Zadorra, was such a bad actor that when the the nazi's came to the house where Ann was hiding, the people in the audience shouted "she's in the attic".

This just in:

I heard a little bit about the Husein boys on the news yesterday. I can only remember one of their names but here goes: Both of these guys are out of control and they have been known to plot against each other and each would have the other killed at the drop of a hat. One of the boys, the younger of the two has been groomed by Saddam to take over the business when Saddam retires. You can imagine how the older brother feels about that. Said younger brother is a pretty good hand with the girls since among other things he has so much power. He had a harem of the most gorgeous girls in all of Iraq. This was more than older brother could take. (By the way the older brothers name is Uday) He kidnaps a quantity of the girls, does it with them all and has them branded on their behinds with the letter "U" for Uday.

Be Wary Wary Quiet, I'm Hunting Jobs:

I got called back by the truck stop lady, but I wasn't home so she left a message. I called her back just now, but she was on long distance, so now I'm just waiting patiently by the phone for her to call me back. I figured that I might as well take this opportunity to make an entry.

Unfortunately, I can't think of anything good to write, which makes me really mad, because I had two things saved to write that were very funny. Now I'll just have to write something I said to Jackie the other day.

I said, "Jackie. If you hear a bunch of Mexicans shouting 'Imigre! Imigre!' and running around very fast and all scared like, just act cool because you look like an American and they probably won't deport you." I don't think she thought it was as funny as I did.

-Gary Milner

And the Job Hunt Goes On

When I got up this morning and was just getting ready to head over to the Fritz Sick pool to apply for a job. When I went into the living room I discovered my roommate and his girlfriend each asleep on one of the couches. "Hmmm, this is strange," I thought to myself but then thought well whatever they must have just fallen asleep when they were hanging out and it got too late or something. Anyway I tried to be quiet and as I was slipping out of the house my roommate says to me, "Hey Jeff, I locked myself out of my room, do you know how to get back in?" It just so happens the door knob on that one particular room is broken and if you lock it, you have to be on the inside to unlock it. Anyway sure enough he was locked out. I was running late on dropping of my resume so after a quick look at it I told him that I would take another crack at it when I got back. When I got back I thought I'm really going to have to do something major like saw off that doorknob or something. Before I did anything drastic I just took my needle nose pliers (yes the ones that I brought from Canadian Tire so recently) and worked away at it. Next thing I know, viola - a small violin, err um I mean Open Sesame the door was unlocked. Hopefully I get that job working for the Y (at the Fritz Sick), because opening doors while a handy skill doesn't seem to be doing much for me in the way of cashola.

New Washer and Dryer

Sorry to hear about your bad luck Gary and Tracie. I, on the other hand, have had some pretty good luck lately. No, I haven't gotten a summer job yet, but I did finally get the new washer and dryer working. I would have loved to get them going a long time ago, but it was more complicated than just unplugging the old ones and plugging in the new ones. For one thing the old dryer was "hard wired" into the house. That meant that I would have to either hard wire this new one too, or install a new high voltage outlet. Well I finally put that new saw to use and as well Anna's drill. But there are always a million things you never think about until you actually start on a project. I had to drill out holes for the screws, and how was I supposed to know how big to make the holes? Well to make a long story short I finally got the new washer and dryer working! Oh and I found someone's panties behind the old washer; yes they were dirty - YUCK!!!!!!!!!

I think I'll get a chauffeur

Like Gary said, I was quite upset after the break in. Not so much because our cd's were gone, but mostly I just felt violated knowing that someone went through our stuff. We had all of our information in there and some pictures from our trip, so this creep knew who we were, what we looked like, where we live, our phone number and our taste in music.

Anyway, I was feeling so sorry for myself that yesterday at work I decided to tell everyone what happened so that I could get a little sympathy. As it turns out, every person I talked to had been robbed themselves, only way worse than us. One lady had all of her tires stolen off her car - rims, hubcaps and everything. She said it cost her $500 each side to replace and it took a week to do it because they had to order the parts from Vancouver. She said that another guy we work with got all of his windows smashed.

After hearing that story, I started to feel a little better about only having my cd's taken, but I decided I'd try someone else to get some sympathy. I told another coworker my sob story, and once again I was outdone. She said that last year when her car was broken into, they took her wallet and camera and they tried to hot wire her car, but luckily were unsuccessful. She said it was a huge headache, and only a year later does she think that she's finally replaced everything in her wallet. Now I just felt guilty for being upset over stupid cd's.

The interesting thing about all of these stories is that they all happened in the parking lot of Sunridge mall in NE Calgary. All of those people have now bought parking passes for the hospital parking lot, but I think I'm still too cheap for that. From now on I'll just have Gary drive me to work.

There is no Air-conditioning in Hell:

Yesterday, I dropped the car off for Tracie at the park'n'ride. I guess I left the window open enough for someone to stick their arm in because when Tracie got their, we had been robbed. They took all our change, and all our cds. Tracie seemed pretty upset about it, but I strangely and not that worried about it. It's really too bad that they didn't think to look in the cd case, because a lot of the cds were just burnt cds anyway. I guess it's not like he could sell them without the jewel cases anyway.

The joke is really on him though, because I haven't bought a cd in 3 years, and that cd was a Bare Naked Ladies greatest hits cd, so it's as if I have bought a new cd in like 6 years. Obviously we won't be replacing the cds, but I might just buy "Big Shiny 90's" because it has all the songs I like anyway. By "buy" I mean download and burn. It's kind of ironic that I plan on downloading and burning more music because someone stole all my cds.

I'm kind of sad that some jackace stole all our cds, but I am comforted by the fact that everybody dies, he's no exception, and there is no air-conditioning in Hell.

Kayaking

The Medicine Hat Milner's are in Lethbridge today and we are going kayaking down the Belly River. Too bad you couldn't come this weekend Gary, I have an extra kayak and everything! Well I'll let you know how it goes.

The Dentist Revisited

I went to the dentist today for a checkup, scaling, and cleaning. It went pretty well, although I do need to get three wisdom teeth out. I made an appointment for Friday morning. Hopefully it isn't too bad.

I have a job interview tomorrow to be a cash clerk. The lady called at 8:30 this morning. Hopefully that's a good sign. I faxed her my resume yesterday, hopefully there aren't a lot of other candidates, I need a job pretty bad. It's 40 hours per week in an office and it runs June, July and August. The only draw back is that it may be a little far away, although it's getting to the point that it doesn't really matter. If I get this job, it will likely cover all my school expenses for the coming year. I can't believe that I only have 5 classes left, I can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel.

After reading Dad's post about the slicing of the face, I looked it up on google. Let me just say that I'm kind of glad Dad doesn't know how to make links, because then it would be his fault that I saw that picture. That's just plain nasty.

-Gary Milner

I was reading urban legends this morning when I discovered the one about a guy who under the influence of angle dust went into the restroom and sliced off his face and fed it to his two dobermans. When I saw the picture I had to run to the bathroom and throw up.

It's diatomaceous earth, not diametrious earth... oops

...And the ants are still surviving. I'm thinking about taking Anna's shovel and digging down to the queen. I wonder if that would work. Anyone with any ideas, feel free to shout out.

X Men Reloaded/ X Men Revisited

Boy that reloaded/revisited joke is sure panning out. It's practically as good as "With a Vengance" was back when Die Hard 3 came out.

As you may have guessed by my beautiful title, I went to see X2 (trailer) last night. I really enjoyed it, even the commercials at the beginning. There were so many commercials that I finnaly snapped and shouted, "START THE MOVIE!!!!" (caps added for extra emphasis). For real, not for pretend. The only unfortunate part was the stupid commercials are so loud that I don't really know how the rest of the audience responded. I'm sure some people were a little afraid, but I'm also sure that some probably laughed to themselves. Now I know that nobody at the theater heard me yell, or would have cared even if they had heard me, but hopefully the audience realized that other people are annoyed by those commercials and that they are not alone. Hopefully their annoyance of starts smouldering in their souls and becomes a burning hatred of cinema commercials.

Anyway, X-men 2 is way better than X-men 1. Right after I saw the first one I predicted this would happen by saying, "The sequel will be way better." Turns out I was right. The effects were way better, the mutants used their powers a little bit more, and there was a way better story. There were a few things that I would have done differently, but in general most superhero movies have this problem. For example, they don't seem to use their powers to maximum effect, as if they have forgotten that they are mutants. Besides that, they do things that just don't make sense. To illustrate these things, I will explain one scene. Towards the end of the movie, there is a scene inside of a collapsing dam. Unable to escape the way they came in because of a wall of crashing water, they leave through a door in the top of the dam, then head down to a helicopter pad underneath the dam only to discover that the helicopter is gone. Two things, why didn't they just stay at the above the lake and send someone to get the helicopter, and why didn't the mutant who could freeze things instantly, freeze the lake so that the water wouldn't all come rushing out? And when they did realize that the helicopter was gone, why didn't the guy who could teleport take everyone to the safety of higher ground? I guess they just wanted one more heroic scene, even though it could have been easily solved with even rudimentary use of their super powers.

Cold Weather

While I don't usually like cold weather, it dropped below freezing here in Lethbridge last night too. It was really great for the weeding though - all my weeds just died overnight! Anna's next-door neighbour had a particularly bad dandelion problem - they had dandelions but no grass. Now they have a front yard full of dead dandelions. It almost looks like really well groomed grass through the morning mist. They must be especially happy.

The Medicine Hat Revisited:

We went home to Medicine Hat for the weekend. Lukily for us, because Calgary has been having record lows, -5 last night was the coldest it has been in 100 years, when it was -3. It seems as if the cold weather here in calgary started when Tracie and I moved here, because it was this cold last year too. There was snow last June! I'm beginning to really hate the weather here.

Medicine Hat was fun, we got to visit with both of our families and Becky got me a really nice present. A really big birthday card with candybars taped inside. We brought both our mothers some candy covered almonds and homemade jam. It's really good, and really easy to make. Tracie went to see the movie Holes and gives it two thumbs up. (Or one, if you think that each person can only give one thumb and that there has to be two people rating the movie to give it two thumbs up.)

After arriving back in Calgary, I had to go to my staff meeting which was pretty short thankfully and the photo that I was going to take, got rescheduled for tomorrow. Now I have two photos in the morning, and I plan to spend the rest of the day looking for a job.

-Gary Milner

ps. Check out zombo.com

My Visit in Medicine Hat

Anna and I both had a great time in Medicine Hat. Albeit there was a little more cake shared than I would have liked at Solange's party I'm quickly recovering. Oops, my supper is ready so I'll finish this post a bit later.

'Stupid People' Trick Lures 10 for Arrest (Los Angeles Times, 10 May 2003)

Relying on the assumption that people love freebies and can't read foreign languages, San Bernardino County sheriff's deputies arrested 10 wanted people by luring them to Big Bear to receive a free pair of hiking boots made by "Stockdum Scelestus" -- meant to be a mix of German and Latin meaning "utterly stupid criminal." If you've never logged onto the LA Times before and don't feel like registering, you can use the username plasticuser and password plastic.

Medicine Hat

Well I came to Medicine Hat this weekend to visit Mom and Dad, and of course Gary and Tracie, but Gary and Tracie are no where to be found. Where are you guys?

Jeff Milner Movie Review - Holes

Last night Mom, Dad, Anna-Maria, her sisters, and I all took in the new Disney Movie, Holes (Official Site / trailer). I didn't love the Matrix, but I loved Holes. What does this say about me? I'm not sure but let me tell you why Holes is a great movie. First of all let me give a little background. Based on the enormously popular novel by Louis Sachar, Holes illustrates the misfortune of Stanley Yelnats IV (Shia LaBeouf) after he is sent to Camp Greenlake, a juvenille detention camp, basically because of some bad luck. It also explains the history of misfortune befallen upon the Yelnats' family after a curse was put on Stanley Yelnats the first when he didn't live up to a promise made to a certain European fortuneteller. This movie seems to have everything including family fortunes, family curses, a turn-of-the-century interracial romance, train robbers, buried treasure, ghosts, onions, peaches, sneakers and Texas Yellow Spotted Lizards, - then ties them all into the resolution. Despite being a movie filled with "holes", this movie is funny and touching and more logical than you'd think possible. I recommend it even if you aren't taking your girlfriend's younger sisters with you.

Understanding My Homepage Reloaded:

So I was really board and I decided that I would do a google search for the email address I gave up last October. It gave me about 8 or 9 hits, all from my good old homepage. This got me to thinking, I should delete that, because all I use that account for is to get spam. I decided that I would edit all the offending pages to provide links here and back to my mainpage. My phone number is on my mainpage. I figure that you can look it up online anyway. Up until about 30 seconds ago, I thought that I would be about the only Gary Milner in Calgary at least. As you can see from that last link, I am not. I had this opinion because very few show up on the internet, and in fact I am the number 3,4, and 5 on google right now.
Back to the real story, I was going through old homepage stuff, when I found this page, which I had completely forgotten about. If Jackie ever comes here, I'm sure she'll have a good laugh at it again although it's not as funny as the picture of the wedgie.

-Gary Milner

Jeff Milner Movie Review - Understanding The Matrix Reloaded

Whoa! Last night I went to see The Matrix Reloaded (Official Site | Trailer) with Anna-Maria and some of her friends. As expected The Matrix Reloaded was filled with really long fight scenes, a bunch of bad dialogue, a boatload of amazing special effects, oh and did I mention some really long kung fu fight scenes? Overall I thought it was a cool movie but I was hoping for something more. It had the potential to go in all sorts of new directions but instead they just waste time in meaningless kung fu battles. When I say meaningless - I mean exactly that, the fight scene where Neo takes on hundreds of replicated agents ends when Neo gets bored and flys away. How stupid is that? What was the point?

In case it's not self-evident, this movie is not for Mom and Dad. As much as I thought you might like the first one, (I don't know what I was thinking) you will absolutely hate this movie.

New Lawn Mower

I finally got a new lawnmower and I must say I'm really pleased. 6.25 horsepower and boy does it mow like crazy. When I was out working on the yard my neighbour, Steve, came by to compliment me by telling me that in the short time I lived here I had already done more work keeping the place in shape than the six guys living there before me did in two years! I really haven't done much but I guess something is better than nothing.

California Oreo Lovers Rejoice

A couple of nights ago, I heard on the news that some lawyer in California was trying to get Oreo Cookies banned in California because they are too unhealthy. It looks like he's given up. Thank goodness - nevertheless does what he say make you less likely to enjoy the tempting treat of Oreo Cookies?

Star Wars Kid Interview

The Star Wars kid has been identified... The full story here!

A New Jedi for Star Wars 3

This kid was playing with a video camera at school. He should have used his own tape or recorded over his antics.

Pictures and this weekend

Well, we got our pictures back from our trip. We took 4 rolls with the regular camera and we also had all of our digital pics printed.

May long weekend is coming up, which means campers will be out in full force. It's still a little too cold to camp for my liking, although I can't wait to go when it's warmer. We're going to Medicine Hat to visit this weekend. Anyone interested in visiting with us/seeing our pictures should also go (that means you Jeff).

P.S. In case anyone was planning to buy me a birthday present, this is just a little reminder that my birthday is in just over a week.

A guy in Medicine Hat got run over by the train yesterday. He was laying across one of the tracks so it cut him in half. He was from somewhere up north but we haven't been told who he was yet. They think it was suicide. I suspect things wern't going to good for the poor snook.

Jeff you had better watch out!

How to Make Strawberry Jam

To make 5 cups of Strawberry Jam.

Ingredients, 1.75 cups prepared strawberries, 2 Tbsp lemon juice 4 cups sugar, 1 pouch Certo liquid.

Step 1. Prepare straberries by hulling and thoroughly crushing them with a potatoe masher (a real potatoe masher, not a german grenade)

Step 2. Measure 1.75 cups of prepared strawberries into a mixing bowl, and add exactly 4 cups of sugar ('they' tried less, but it doesn't work.) Mix well and let stand 10 minutes.

Step 3. Stir in lemon juice and Certo Liquid Fruit Pectin and stir for 3 more minutes.

Step 4. Pour into containers filling up to 1/4 inch from the top. Cover with lids and let stand at room temp until set. (This can take up to 24 hours.) If you plan on eating it within 3 weeks, go ahead and keep it in the fridge.

Step 5. Eat your very own jam. You can just spoon it up, but I recommend eating it on toast or ice cream.

It's totally worth it. You don't even have to cook anything. It will be the best jam you ever ate. Tracie did it perfectly her very first try. That means you'll probably get jam that's edible, but maybe not perfect.


Job Hunt

I applied for 6 more jobs today. Hopefully I get a call back. 4 office jobs with the health region, and 2 jobs from the paper. I hope I can get a job with the health region. I don't want to end up working in a store.

-Gary Milner

I'm back on line baby. And when I think of something to post I'll be on here like Oprah Winfrey onto a baked ham.

Job Search Update:

Still no job. If this goes on much longer, Tracie will be making sleep in the car pretty soon.

Vancouver Comments:

One thing that was really good about Vancouver was the drivers. They all seem to know that the left lane is the passing lane, not the dumbass drive slowly lane. The absolutely best thing about Vancouver drivers is the way that they merge. Maybe they all ski, but they can merge four lanes into one like none other. It boggled my mind the way that they merge there. My mind is boggled. They take turns! It's exactly like a line up, at a lift, at a ski hill. No one lane stops, and they alternate cars when they merge. Driving in places where the drivers are nice, makes you want to be nice to the other drivers as well. Even when there are a million other cars on the road.

-Gary Milner

Recycling the Web

I found this quote and thought it's ever so relevant during the "difficult time" the US is now going through. You know, the "situation" where there actually are no weapons of mass destruction to be found in Iraq. Don't get me wrong, it's not that I am sticking up for Saddam Hussein or his fallen regime - it's just that the USA has certainly put its "credibility" in jeopardy. Enjoy:

A truly Canadian Apology to the USA, courtesy of comedian Colin Mochrie from This Hour Has 22 Minutes, CBC Television aired on 11 February 2003 (Real Media Clip) :

Hello. I'm Anthony St. George on location here in Washington.

On behalf of Canadians everywhere I'd like to offer an apology to the United States of America. We haven't been getting along very well recently and for that, I am truly sorry. I'm sorry we called George Bush a moron. He is a moron, but it wasn't nice of us to point it out. If it's any consolation, the fact that he's a moron shouldn't reflect poorly on the people of America. After all, it's not like you actually elected him.

I'm sorry about our softwood lumber. Just because we have more trees than you, doesn't give us the right to sell you lumber that's cheaper and better than your own. It would be like if, well, say you had ten times the television audeince we did and you flood our market with great shows, cheaper than we could produce. I know you'd never do that.

I'm sorry we beat you in Olympic hockey. In our defence I guess our excuse would be that our team was much, much, much, much better than yours. As word of apology, please accept all of our NHL teams which, one by one, are going out of business and moving to your fine country.

I'm sorry about our waffling on Iraq. I mean, when you're going up against a crazed dictator, you want to have your friends by your side. I realize it took more than two years before you guys pitched in against Hitler, but that was different. Everyone knew he had weapons.

I'm sorry we burnt down your White House during the War of 1812. I see you've rebuilt it! It's very nice.

I'm sorry for Alan Thicke, Shania Twain, Celine Dion, Loverboy, that song from Seriff that ends with a really high-pitched long note.

Your beer. I know we had nothing to do with your beer, but we feel your pain.

And finally on behalf of all Canadians, I'm sorry that we're constantly apologizing for things in a passive-aggressive way which is really a thinly veiled criticism. I sincerely hope that you're not upset over this. Because we've seen what you do to countries you get upset with.

For 22 minutes, I'm Anthony St. George, and I'm sorry.

Diametrious Earth Update

Most of the ants died after only one application of the diametrious earth. It did rain the next day so maybe that is why they didn't all die. I put some more on the last anthill where there seemed to be some survivors. Jeff's recomendation: If you have ant problems then diametrious earth is the way to go.

Vacations Pictures Published!

Here is a link to some of the pictures we took on our trip to Vancouver. This is about half of them. The other's probably won't be posted unless there are some execptional ones. Depending on how things go over the next few weeks, I might link to some of them and write more in depth about what we did on our trip.

Right now, I have to go to bed.

Vacation Log, May 8th (my birthday)

The wake up call came at 5:30 and we got up, got ready and had the continental breakfast. We had to hurry but we made it to the ferry 10 minutes before departure and boarded just in the nick of time. Only one truck got on after us.

Once we were back on the mainland, we began looking for a gas station. I figure that we only had about 100 km worth of gas left on during our little trip across the island. It's lucky that we made it out the other side, because we wouldn't have had enough gas to go back the way we came and all the way to Sooke (the nearest town with a gas station). Looking for a gas station brings up an interesting complaint about trees. Trees are nice and all, but they tend to block the view of things. I really learned the truth of not being able to see the forest for the trees. In my case it was not being able to see the gas station for the trees, but living on the prairies for 24 years and on savannah for 2 years, trees blocking my line of vision hasn't really been a problem for me. I only now find it ironic, that because of trees I had a hard time finding a gas station. I am now not only in favour of big oil, but also the forestry industry.

The car seems to be burning more oil now, than it was before. I think it is because of all the highway driving. By that I mean that it burns more oil on the highway than it does in the city. I don't know why.

After 12.5 hours of hard driving, we got home. We are sad to be home. The weather in Alberta stinks. There are no leave on any of the trees, there is still snow on the ground, and you can't wear your shorts yet. This makes two years in a row with snow on or after my birthday. I can't remember that happening in Medicine Hat.

Vacation Log continued

May 7th (Wednesday)

We went to the very end (or beginning) of the Trans-Canada Highway to start our trip across the entire country. There is a big sign there. I can give you directions on how to get there from my house, if you need them. At the entrance to the parking lot at my house, turn left. Take the first right turn, then the first left turn and drive. Keep on going, then go some more. Finally you will get to a ferry. The ferry takes you across the Georgia Straight. It costs $30 for your car and $10 per passenger on your car. Pay it, drive onto the ferry. Drive off the ferry then keep going straight. About an hour later you will be at the far west end of the Trans-Canada Highway.

The Butterfly Gardens are a nice thing to visit. We got a two for the price of one coupon out of the phone book in our hotel. It was really good that we had the coupon. I don't think that it would be worth it to pay full price to see the Butterfly Gardens, but it is definitely worth half price. We were going to go to the Butchart (pronounced "boo-shart" by most, pronounced "butt-chart" by me) but it was a little overcast, and it was very expensive, so we just decided to go to Port Renfrew.

Port Renfrew is a podunk little town on the west coast of Vancouver Island. Its claim to fame is that it is the beginning of the West Coast Trail. Other than that there is not much there. Instead of going back to Nanaimo driving along the coast like normal people, we decided to cut over land and save about a 200km trip. Well the only roads that go from east to west on the island are logging roads. We drove along gravel road for at least 2 hours. We took a wrong turn and came to a dead end. Here's a little hint to the more adventurous types out there. Just because the guy in the Port Renfrew general story says, "It's practically impossible to get lost" doesn't make it reality. There weren't even signs. Fortunately the logging trucks have to radio in about every 10km and there were cardboard signs at all the checkpoints, like breadcrumbs assuring us that we were on the right track.

We finally made it back, and stopped in Cowichan for ice cream. Yes we are emotional eaters, happy to have survived the trip over the misty mountains of Vancouver Island. We got to Nanaimo at about 10:00 but missed the last ferry by 2 hours. We decided to stay at the Travelodge instead of camping, and then to catch the first ferry back to the mainland in the morning.

Dad Comes to Lethbridge

Dad visited me today and now he's gone. I was supposed to fix his computer but it seemed to be working fine when he brought it here, so I don't know what the problem was or is, but I suspect he will still not have his internet working when he gets home. Something with either his ISP or the router. Anyway hopefully I'll be able to help them over the phone. Anyway while Dad was here he took Anna-Maria and I to Pizza Hut for all you can eat pizza! He also made me a nice loaf of bread in the bread-maker. I guess the problem I was having with it had to do with substituting butter for shortening. He substituted some vegetable oil because I don't have margerine or crisco and it seems to have made a really nice loaf. I love fresh bread. I hope you had a happy birthday Gary, and I hope you are enjoying your vacation. When do you get back?

Roommate Insanity

Anna and I bought Pizza and had a good time eating it while watching an old video that Scott had laying around, "Cocktail". Well I was pretty confident that after talking so sternly to Jason (the 18 year old roommate) about eating and drinking my food that the pizza would be okay in the fridge. All I can say is - at least he didn't eat the whole thing. Anyway he still hasn't paid the rent for this month (just half and only today did I get that much) and so I still haven't told him that I'm kicking him out. I figure I'd better at least collect the rent so that I do indeed get paid. I suppose I could always take it out of his damage deposit - just so long as he doesn't wreck anything before he's gone. Speaking of wrecking things - now you may think I'm overreacting, but someone (probably Jason because he's the only one around and the only one that would do this) anyway someone took a permanent marker and drew a small line about 1 cm on the front of my computer. Why would someone do this? Why would anyone think that the front of a computer is a place to draw a small black line? I spent the last 10 minutes scrubbing at it and now it's barely noticeable. I'm glad I discovered it today and not a few weeks from now when it had really set in. The thing is now, I don't even want to talk to him about it because for one, I am sick of making him feel bad, number two I don't even know if he did it and I don't want to constantly be accusing the guy of all these nitpicky things and yet I feel violated by him all of the time. I guess it's time I put the computer in my own room and said - sorry Jason, you can use the Pentium 130 if you need to check your email. Well now that I have vented all my frustration I feel like I should finish my laundry, go upstairs, and make something to eat.

P.S. Happy Birthday Gary (I know it's tomorrow but I don't want to take the chance and forget to post)

Tracie back on the blog

Well kids, here I am, back on the blog. Jeff seemed so sad that I wasn't reading it anymore, so about a week ago I started reading it again, and I'll admit it's nice to read, especially when everyone posts. I'll try harder from now on.

Vacation Log; May 6 (2 days before Gary's birthday)

After our first night of camping in our new tent, we went back to Granville island. I'll admit, it really was a little bit like Pinnochio's island, especially the kid's market. It was like an entire shopping mall of only kids toys, clothes and candy stores. We went over to the food market, which was pretty big, and bought a few things to take home with us, and we also ate breakfast and dessert (yes, dessert at 9 am). We walked around the rest of the island, and looked at some stores, mostly arsty stores like pottery and glass. There was a train museum that looked kind of cool, but we didn't want to pay to go in, because it looked pretty small and we weren't sure how good it would be.

At noon, we went over to the Ferries and decided to take a ride over to the island. The Ferry seemed a lot smaller than it did when I was little, but don't get me wrong, it was awfully big. The ride took an hour and a half, and before we knew it, we were in Nanaimo. At this point, we really didn't have any idea what to do or where to go next. We decided that we would either go to Tofino or Victoria, but not both, because we wouldn't have enough time. We figured that there might be a bit more to do/see in Victoria, so we headed out on the road.

About 5 minutes out of Nanaimo, there were signs to a fish hatchery, so we turned off and got a tour of the place. I thought it was very intersting... I never realised that so much work went into fish. Gary tapped the top of the water, and the fish thought he was food and would come up and bite his finger. It didn't hurt though.

We got to Victoria around 5 pm. We walked around the marina and looked at all of the buskers. Gary liked the guys who made beautiful pictures out of spray paint. The pictures cost $30 each though, and I thought they were cool, but looked a little tacky. After walking around for a while, we just wanted to stop. We were tired, dirty and didn't know where we were staying. We found a hotel and took our clothes to a laundromat. We ordered a pizza and just relaxed in the hotel room. That was probably the best sleep we've had so far this trip.

First full day continued...

After we got our tent set up, we decided that we would go to Granville Island to look around. We didn't know what it was, but it was highly recommended to us by the girl in charge of bike rentals at the sea plane place.

We drove to where we thought it was, but it looked startlingly like a business park. We had imagined it to look a lot more like the island that pinochio went to than a business park. We eventually found it, and it did indeed look a lot more like pinochio's island than a business park. Unfortunately most of the stores were closed, so we just had supper at one of the many restaurants and went back to the tent.

On our way back to the tent, we drove through Gastown and saw the steam clock play a song at 9:00pm. It was pretty good, but I remembered Gastown to be alot better than that. But I guess I was a lot smaller then, and the stores were all open and there was no construction. While we were at the clock, we got pestered by a bum for $0.25.

First Full Day in Vancouver

We drove from the hotel to the Marina and looked at all the boats. We saw some amazing condos for sale that ranged from $500K to $1.4 million. As we continued on down the docks, we came to a place giving seaplane rides and decided that we would go for a ride. It was amazing. The buildings looked just like they do in Sim City, especially the Hockey Arena. We both really enjoyed it, and we took lots of pictures.

We found a cool restaurant on stilts over the marina for lunch. It was quite good. I had grilled hailbut.

After lunch, we walked along the seawall in Stanley Park, and then we went to the Capilano Bridge. It cost $16.00, but we had our student id's and so it only cost $8.00 each. We were pretty lucky. The bridge is very high, and I commented that we should drop a penny into the river but I figured that they would get mad. Tracie agreed that you are probably not allowed to drop things into the river. I demonstrated how you could sneakily drop a penny into the river, and just as I was doing it, my camera bumped into the fence, the lens cap fell off, and dropped onto the bridge. It hit my foot and slid through the little crack between the walkway and the fence. It dropped 250 feet into the Capilano River below.

We asked the girls at the gate if they knew where any campgrounds were. They didn't know where any close ones were, but said that we should go to Hope, if we wanted to camp! What idiots those girls are. You can camp at the RV park about 5 blocks away.

continued...

Gary and Tracie Ride North America's Longest Free Ferry

Traice and I left Cardston Saturday afternoon at about 1:30. We headed towards Waterton and then went north to Pincher Creek. We got some food at the Co-op in Pincher Creek. (pics of food to follow) We ate and then headed west on the #3 Highway. We stopped to see lundbreck falls, by the way if any government types are reading this, the out houses don't have any T.P. I found this out the hard way. I shouted for Tracie for like 5 minutes from the top of the hole, but she couldn't hear me because of the roaring waterfall.

We stopped at the Colierer (sp?) just before Frank, then we stopped at the interprative center at Frank Slide. The have a big sign in the parking lot that says "admission fee". I guess they got sick of telling people that it cost $6.50 to go in. We didn't feel like going in, so we didn't. Athough they have very nice bathroom facilities.

From there we drove straight on through to Sparwood, where we stopped to see the world's largest truck, and to check our bankbook balance. We have pics of the Truck, and printouts of our bank balances.

After Sparwood, it was pretty uneventful all the way to Crestin. Crestin is beautiful this time of year, all the fruit trees have blooms. One thing that you have to remember is that if you are going to Vancouver on the #3 highway. You have to turn off in Crestin to stay on the #3. Tracie was driving, and suddenly I see a sign that say #3a. This seems weird to me, but Tracie got on the wrong road near sparwood, and I made her turn around right away, so this can't be a repeat. We trade off right away, and I continue on. The road going north from Crestin is possibly one of the windy-est roads I have ever been on. It started to get dark, and I drove about 45 minutes in the complete dark. We saw more deer than cars on that road.

Finally we get to the end of the road, which seems weird because I didn't think we were getting to go on a boat ride. We drove over to the signs, and look. Apparently you can go to Nelson, B.C. on this road, but you have to take a 40 minute ferry ride. Tracie had gone the wrong way in Crestin and we ended up taking a long detour.

I was really excited to go on the ferry though so it turned out to be a fantastic mistake. By pure luck be got there at 9:00, 20 minutes after the second last boat left. An hour later we got onto the boat for a 40 minute ride on North-America's longest free ferry. I loved it the whole way. We were on the deck for a while, and the boat started rocking quite a bit, so I made rocking motions, and Tracie says to me, "Quit rocking the boat!" As if I could budge a boat that holds 30 cars. She realized that as soon as she said it.

There were no hotels in Nelson, so we came to Castlegar (My castle is here but was sadly destroyed in an earthquake) and got a room in the Sandman.

-Gary Milner

Nintendo Power

The other night when I was in Medicine Hat with Anna, I spent about 15 or 20 minutes playing the original Nintendo Entertainment System with her brother Josh. It brought back a flood of memories about stomping on the evil mushroom kingdom turtles, and searching for the Triforce or even for Zelda herself not to mention the endless possibilites of Excitebike where you could design your own levels! Anyway it just so turns out that today I discovered a page dedicated to the 1st issue of Nintendo power. I really had to laugh about this:

"Ah, the famous '1-Up Trick' from Super Mario Brothers, something with which I had a success rate of .0007% in accomplishing. It's not that I didn't know how to do it - the information was right there in front of me. Still, for whatever reason, I could never seem to pull it off. I'd get that first Koopa turtle out of the way, and when the fabled second Koopa made his trek down the brick mountain, I'd always [screw] up and somehow kill Mario. You know the music that played whenever Mario lost one of his lives? Well, and I swear this is true - it got to the point where that music would play as soon as I got up to that second turtle. The game became so confident that I was gonna die again that it'd roll out with the theme prematurely just to spite and shame me. I really hated that stupid Koopa turtle. The second one, I mean. The first one was just doing his job. The second one was mean to me."

My Favorite Rejected Office Assistant

This will seem more funny if you are familiar with Nature's Harmonic Time Cube Principle. (Hey do you think we should get some web building tips from that guy?)

Roommate Update

I came home from Medicine Hat this afternoon and the house seemed to be in good shape, nothing broken - the oven wasn't left on, and the lights were all out. Nobody was home and things seemed good. I went to teach swimming lessons and when I got back I noticed a strong scent of my cologne in my room. I hadn't used any of it for a while now so I was suspicious. It seems that someone had spilt it sometime after I left and before I got back. I decided then that maybe it's time for Jason to move out. Not only was he stealing from me but he was in my room stealing from me - and he knows that he is NEVER allowed to go in my room. I'll give him until the end of the month. Now in the mean time I've got to find more roommates.

Ants

I have a little ant problem. Actually the ants are little and the problem is big. There are about three anthills in my front lawn (four if you can't the little one) and they are peeking up so high that if I mow over them the blades rub down on them sending sand and dirt flying everywhere - not to mention ants. It has gotten so bad that I actually mowed around the anthills. I also applied some diametrious earth, which is supposed to be the best way to get rid of ants and other insects and so far so good. They don't seem very lively now, in fact there isn't a single ant to be seen.

Lawnmower

When I went out to mow this evening I decided to mow my front lawn first because it was looking like such a jungle compared to all the neighbours that had just mowed yesterday and today. It was lucky that I did because when I got to the back and finished about one quarter of the lawn back there the lawnmower made a bad sound. It was one of those bad sounds that are accompanied by a very bad vibration and the sinking feeling that this particular lawn won't be mowed tonight. As well the feeling that - "Oh no you've just wrecked Anna's lawnmower!" I guess it's not such a big deal, she said she was going to give it to me anyway when she moves, but I still felt bad for wrecking it. I shouldn't feel bad though, because it's not like it was something that I did, it was just the lawnmower Gods calling their sweet beater of a 3.5 horsepower mower back to whence it came. Now I can go out and get something with a little power, a nice 6 horsepower lawn-devouring machine. I bet you with one of those I could mow my whole lawn a hell of a lot faster than six horses could eat it.

I went out to breakfast this morning with members of the band I play in.

Two of them made it a point to invite me. It turned out that the breakfast was at the hospital and was free because its volunteer week this week. We were to all meet at the back gate to the parking lot at precisely eight-thirty a.m.. I wasn't hungry but I decided I had to go because of the party factor and I thought it might be rude if I didn't show up after being invited by my friends. I got there five minutes early and I saw my friends vehicles parked nearby but there were no friends in sight. I went to the cafeteria and there they all were scarfing pancakes and sausages. I reminded them that we were supposed to meet at the gate at eight-thirty. (I was pretty insulted) They kindly explained that as they were waiting there, they saw quite a few other volunteers going in and they thought they better get in there or it would all be gone.
Here's the point of this message. Don't ever be a guy that would do this kind of thing. Don't be a pig. And that's all I have to say about that.

Andrew Carlssin - the insider trader from the future

Here at milner.blogspot.com we get more people looking for details about Andrew Carlssin than about anything else. So here is the low down on the future man:

[Collected on the Internet, 2003]
'TIME-TRAVELER' BUSTED FOR INSIDER TRADING
Wednesday March 19, 2003

By CHAD KULTGEN

NEW YORK -- Federal investigators have arrested an enigmatic Wall Street wiz on insider-trading charges -- and incredibly, he claims to be a time-traveler from the year 2256!

Sources at the Security and Exchange Commission confirm that 44-year-old Andrew Carlssin offered the bizarre explanation for his uncanny success in the stock market after being led off in handcuffs on January 28.

"We don't believe this guy's story -- he's either a lunatic or a pathological liar," says an SEC insider.

"But the fact is, with an initial investment of only $800, in two weeks' time he had a portfolio valued at over $350 million. Every trade he made capitalized on unexpected business developments, which simply can't be pure luck.

"The only way he could pull it off is with illegal inside information. He's going to sit in a jail cell on Rikers Island until he agrees to give up his sources."

{Click here to read the rest of this article]

All I need to tell you about this article is that it originated in the Weekly World News an entertainment tabloid devoted to arousing curiosity and to catering to popular superstitions. They often do so with flashy headlines designed to astonish (e.g. Half-man Half-woman Makes Self Pregnant and no I don't have a link). Unfortunately, as I have learned the hard way, Yahoo!, a primary news source for many people on the Internet, makes it a habbit of reprinting some Weekly World News articles under the heading of "Entertainment News & Gossip," a title that to me doesn't convey a strong "bogus" warning to readers who don't notice the original source is the Weekly World News or don't know what the Weekly World News is.

Dispite this article's shady origins I have noticed it reprinted in a variety of newspaper and magazine sites verbatim and published as a "real" news item. Apparently FBI and US Security officials have been inundated with a rash of inquiries from reporters and journalists seeking to confirm this outrageous story.

The spokesman at the US Security and Exchange Commission in Washington has been asked a lot about the mysterious time traveller.

"This story is pure fantasy. There is no truth in it at all," he says. "This is the kind of story that belongs in the same file as 'Elvis Shrine Found on Mars.'

"You know something? We have had an enormous number of calls from the media on this one. It has been absolutely amazing. Of course, we had to look into it, but as far as we know, it's just not true."

At FBI Headquarters in Washington, spokesman Bill Carter is also well aware of the story. "I had a call about this yesterday too," he sighs. "When I think about it, the other call came from Britain too.

"Look," he continues. "I doubt very much the veracity of the story. I am not aware of any individual who has made 350 million on the stock market with an 800 stake."

In a follow-up article on 29 April 2003, the Weekly World News reported that mysterious time-traveling Andrew Carlssin had been bailed out by an "unidentified benefactor" who ponied up $1 million, then jumped bail before an April 3 court hearing and disappeared without a trace.

"Still, it takes more than cold, hard facts to curb a worldwide fascination with time travel. After all, it was none other than Albert Einstein who, using little more than high-school maths, discovered in 1905 that travelling at fast speeds actually slows down time. To put the theory to the test, in 1971 scientists Joe Hafele and Richard Keating put highly accurate atomic clocks into aeroplanes and flew them around the world. According to Einstein's calculations, on their return they should have read 59 nanoseconds slow compared with identical clocks on the ground - they did. Rack up the speed to a much more significant level and who knows where it might take you. Just remember, the truth is out there. . ."

World's Toughest Man

Aron Ralston is described as "an avid outdoorsman in exceptional physical condition" who has climbed 49 of Colorado's highest mountains. And yesterday, he amputated his own arm just below the elbow (CNN.com Story / DenverPost story) when it was pinned under a boulder. Then he rappelled down a canyon and hiked until rescuers found him.

U.S. says Canada not enough like Nazi Germany for their tastes

It is reported in a Canada.com story, that comments were made in an annual report on International Terrorism criticizing the Canadian Government for not "spend[ing] enough on policing" and "plac[ing] too much emphasis on civil liberties." I guess they would prefer us to get rid of the very few laws we have protecting our citizens just as they have destroyed some of the laws that I thought were so dear to the heart of every American with the creation of the Patriot Act. (The Critical Voice Article) I guess my Social 30 teacher was at least partially right stating that Canada's government could be turned into a dictatorship under the right circumstances, but it turns out that it's the United States Government that has turned authoritarian.

On the subject of Redi Enterprises, I'm posting a link to The Tard Blog.

Introduction to The Tard Blog:
This is a weblog written by a real life special education teacher.
It is updated on a weekly basis, usually on Sunday night.

Before you click on the link, I have to warn you that there is some profanity in the teacher's posts, but for the most part it is very funny. It's the funniest thing I've read today. It reminds me of Mom, telling stories about her ECS, only with more swears and tards.

Here is an excerpt from one of her postings.

Lewis (from 12/20: Every student is funny in their own way) approaches me and says, "Are you affected by Global Warming?"
Me "Sure, are you?"
Him "Well, in what way?"
Me "Is your skin more suseptable to sunburn due to the increase in UV ray penetration and a boost in the albedo effect?"
Him "I would assume so," he says, "I will have to do some research on the internet, and then I will let you know."
This is a classic example of a highly functioning autistic nutcase. Later on that same day he asks me "What is the difference between raw sewage and cooked sewage?"