Video Games Make You Lose Weight

There is a video game called Dance Dance Revolution. They have it at the University arcade. The idea of the game is that you have to step on different combinations of buttions on the floor of the game. You do it to the beat of the song that is played along with directions as to which button you have to step on. The music and button combos get faster and more complicated as the game progresses. Thus making you dance faster and faster. Here is the story of one girl who became hooked on this game.

"I started playing Dance Dance Revolution (DDR) at the age of 17 with the very first version that was released to the United States, DDR Version 1.5. The first time I saw the game was at Gameworks arcade in Seattle, where tons of people were crowded around the DDR machine to watch different players dance. At this time, I was a senior in high school and weighed about 235 lbs. Four and a half years later, I now weigh close to 140 lbs and I would’ve never guessed how much that trip (OR a video game) would affect me with my health/weight, and in growing to be a better, more self-confident person."

continued...

I'm personally not a big fan of the game (no pun intended), but this girl's story just goes to show how much doing a little exercise will affect your body.

-Gary Milner, just dance dance away the pounds.

Job Hunt

I applied for two jobs today. The problem with a job search after University is that it is completely different from any other job search you have ever done before.

In highschool, if you wanted a job, you would just go to the place where you wanted to work talk to the manager and they would hire you, or you would just move on to the next business where you would like to work.

Blockbuster not hiring? Go to Video Update. Wendy says no? Go talk to Ronald.

It's different now. You don't get to talk to the guy who does the hiring. They might not even let you onto the elevator to his floor. It's almost a gaurentee that you won't be getting past the secratary. Yet thousands of people work in those towers downtown, and they make a lot of money doing it too. How did they get in there? Why am I getting discouraged by the process. I know that I'm at least as smart as they were when they got their first job, so it should be easy.

It gets worse for me, though, because when one company turns me down, I don't know who the next guy to talk to even is. He could even be in the very same building, but I may never even know.

-Gary Milner

TALKING DOG FOR SALE

One day, a guy see's a sign in front of a house: TALKING DOG FOR SALE. The owner tells him the dog's in the back yard, so he goes around to the back and sees a black mutt.. . You talk? he asks the dog. "Yup replies the mutt". "So whats your story?" The mutt says: Well when I discovered my gift, I wanted to help the government, so I told them about it, and in no time they had me jetting around the world, sitting with spies and world leaders. And because noone suspected a dog, I was their most valuable spie. Then I wanted to settle down so I signed up to do undercover security work at an airport. I uncovered some incredible dealings there and earned a pile of medals. I got married , had a mess of puppies, and now I'm retired. The guy is amazed. He goes inside and asks the owner what he wants for the dog. The owner says $l0.00 . The guy asks, why are you selling him so cheap? The owner replies:
Because he is such a liar--- he didn't do any of that stuff.

Colder Than a Witch's Tit in a Brass Bra

It is so cold here in Calgary. Really cold, so cold your words freeze in mid-air like Get Smart's cone of silence, or Batman's "bam-pow's"

Our car wouldn't start at the university last night. Luckily we were within pushing distance to a plug-in. We were able to plug the car in, and after 45 minutes of pure engine thawing, we were able to get it going. I'll have to go out to the car every few hours to start it up, from now on.

One of the first things I'm going to buy when I get a job is a new car. A nice silver civic, with an automatic transmission and air conditioning. I'll also get a Japanese kid to put some of those cool lights underneath the running boards, on the "H" insignia, where the windshield washer fluid shoots out, and a some big ace bass speakers in the back that make the car bounce up and down to the beat. It's going to be a really sweet ride.

-Gary Milner

Butter, Butter, Butter

Some people in the office ate butter this afternoon. A stick of butter each. There were six of them. One quit before he even got halfway through. He was the unlucky one. The others all ended up "purging" because eating a pound of butter is very bad for you. I think the guy who gave up early still has a 1/4 pound of butter in his stomach.

The official stance of the Milner Blog is this: Don't eat a stick of butter.

Well, the redesign is going along rather well. Some of the tables are a little messed still, I got rid of the grey bar on the right hand side, but I think it will be better without it, and I don't have everyone's links back up. I don't know what I will be linking to in the future. One of the main benefits is that I was able to clean up my code quite a bit. The HTML was a real mess before, with lots of stuff that was un-necessary.

Oops

I had a little accident, and I guess the redesign that I talked about before will be happening a little sooner than I had planned. Luckily, only the template got messed, not the database. If you think I should change it back, or have any suggestions for the new layout, just leave a comment.

-Gary

GETTING THE SHAFT

As everyone knows by now an inmate fell to his death in an elevator shaft in an Edmonton courthouse. Also everyone is wondering just how this came about. Here's my theory: We know that he was raising a fuss and asking for food just before the incident. I think that the guards misunderstood that he was asking for food to eat, not "food for thought."

Belinda Stronach's Web Faux Pas

You may be wondering who she is. She was the president of Magna International and is a multi-millionaire and possibly bilionaire. She wants to be the leader of the PC party. Her campain website is Belinda.ca, which is fine as far as domain names go. However, the .com version of her domain name does not belong to her. It belongs to someone in an industry even less savory than building car parts and even less savory than politics. It's a pr0n site.
What this means is that if she gets thousands of supporters who want to come to her site, but forget that it's belinda.ca not .com, they will all be getting an eyefull.

-Gary Milner, Internet Superstar who advises a domain name change

THE DEVILS SERIAL NUMBER

The devil has a serial number other than 666. It's 370H55V-0773H and it has an encoded message . To decipher the code, write the number down and read it up side down.

A LESSON ON GRAVITY

Here's something you never thought of. What if you fell into a hole in the earth that was pretty wide and went all the way through the earth. What effect would gravity have on you at the centre of the earth. The answer is no effect at all. You would go shooting past the middle at about two hundred miles an hour and then pretty soon you would come shooting back the other way at about the same speed and back and forth awhile and then stop in the middle. You better hope somebody has a rope a few hundred miles long to rescue you.

Me In a Nutshell

Help! Help! I'm in a nutshell!!!

But seriously folks, things are going good. I'm looking for a job. People at the Gauntlet have started placing bets on my job search. Adam thinks I'll get a job by Feb 2, and Alan thinks I'll get a job by Mar 2, in either case, thanks for the vote of confidence guys. I seriously hope at least one of you is right. Feb would be better, but I'll take what I can get.

Nat bet that Daorcey will get a job before I do. I can't remember who bet on me. If Daorcey wins, I'll be a little disappointed, but only because I want to find a job pretty bad. I'll actually be quite happy for him, because it isn't as if him getting a job will have any effect on my getting a job at all. He has actually given me quite a few good tips for my job search. Around the office, he seems to be the guy who knows the most about getting good jobs. He worked for the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra last summer which is somewhat impressive. I'm not the only one who thinks his chances of getting a good job are quite high.

Well, that's enough for now. I should be doing more productive things.

-Gary Milner, Unemployed Internet Superstar

Ps. If you get a line on any jobs suited for a Commerce Degree holder, let me know. I specialized in Management of Information Systems.

Not A Winner After All

I was more like a victim. Tracie and I stayed up really late watching one of the DVD's that we won. It was called "Shocker". If you ever see it on the shelf, run, don't walk away. It was quite possibly the worst movie I have ever seen. For the first half an hour, they are chasing a mass murderer. They catch him and send him to the electric chair, but through some sort of voo doo, the electricity gives him supernatural powers. The next hour and a half are spent trying to defeat him.

-Gary Milner, regrets watching "Shocker"

Second Time a Winner

Faithful readers may recall that awhile back, I won a copy of "About Schmidt" from the Globe Cinema. You may also recall that Tracie and I went to the Globe Cinema to watch a movie on New Year's Eve, and further that we once again entered the draw. Well I have good news to report. I once again have won a prize. This time we received two horror movies on DVD and three free rentals from Casablanca Video.

-Gary Milner, Winningest Internet Superstar Ever

Super Store Continued

Gary didn't even mention the half of it. This new superstore has everything....I mean everything. On top of all the stuff in the store that they already had- only in way bigger quantities (four aisles worth of lamps for example), they also have a ton of crap around the edge of the store. On one wall there's a portrait studio and an eyeglass store. Upstairs there's a gym and something else I think, but we never actually went up there. It was disgustingly crowded though and I didn't know where anything was, so unless it dies down I won't be going there again anytime soon.

Megalo-Mart Opens In Country Hills

A huge Real Canadian Superstore opened up in the neighbourhood just to the north of us. It is one of the largest, if not the largest grocery store I have ever seen. Here is my review.

Product Layout: C-, with chance to appeal grade. I'm giving this grade for one reason only. The layout is completely different from any other Superstore I have ever been to. I'm giving the store a chance to appeal the grade because the isles are a little wider than normal, they put the treat isle right next to the cashiers, and because once people get used to the layout it will be way better. In one year, I predict an A.

Quantity of Crap to sell: A-, this store has a lot of crap. This is facilitated by the rather large size of the store. It would have gotten an A+, but they continue to put crap in areas people need to walk. (I hate it when they do that, but it sells a lot of crap.)

Checkouts: A+, this store has five self serve checkouts. I like this. It separates the dumb slow people from the smart fast people. It will only improve as people learn how to use the machine or as people learn that they are too dumb to use the machine. There are also 20 other tills that were open when we were there. It doesn't quite approach the 40 or so tills in *every* large grocery store in Argentina, but it comes close.

Quantity of Customers: F, there were a lot of people at the store. Too many really. I know that I dislike crowds, but the ambiance of the store will be way better when the opening week crowds die down.

Availability of Yoga Equipment: A+, just check isle 15, "Yoga Mats and Supplies". I wouldn't have believed it, if I hadn't seen it, an isle dedicated to yoga crap.

There are now two huge Real Canadian Superstores in Northern Calgary. Hopefully, they soften the crowds a little bit. I'm pretty sure from the crowd I saw tonight, that we could use a third with in a year or so.

-Gary Milner, Real Canadian Internet Superstar.

STREAKERS IN SPOKANE

By now you've probably heard about the two streakers in Spokane who when they were finished streaking at a fast food restaurant discovered that their getaway car (which had been left running) had been stolen. When the cops got there they found the two hidden between two cars. The cop said he didn't think they were hiding to avoid capture, they were just concealing themselves. Well here's the part of the story that you probably didn't hear: The first thing the cop said to them was: "I can clearly see your nuts".

President's Choice Mastercard

Today, after a month of waiting, I received my President's Choice Financial Mastercard. Boy am I ever excited. I've been checking the mail everyday for the last two weeks. Let me tell you, they gave us a pretty high limit too. They bring our total credit limit to pretty much $10,500.

I don't mind saying that crazy thoughts have been going through my head. Thoughts like, "I should get 30 credit cards max them all out with cash advances and move to South America." I'm sure that we could live happily for a long time with $100,000 or so.

It is likely a lot more fun to think about it than it is to do it.

The biggest legal benefit to us will be the PC points. We already have enough money to pay Tracie's tuition this semester. We plan to pay it with the new credit card, to get the PC points. With this one transaction alone, we will get enough points to go to the movies and for snacks.

The Superstore bank has seemed great to me for the last 8 months. They pay way more interest and charge way less fees. It's not for someone who doesn't do internet banking or has a dislike of ATM's, but that doesn't matter to Tracie and I because those are our preferred manners of banking.

Gary Milner, Internet Superstar who's about to have a ton of credit card debt. (Just kidding credit card companies hate us because we use their cards like debit cards)

Comments Updated

I found a new comment system. It's free from Haloscan. They ask that you put a link on your page, so I put one on the bottom. I don't know why the old one broke, but I like the new one better anyway. If you want to post a comment, feel free, you don't need to post an email address, but if you have a blog or other such home page, feel free to put it in to the url section so that I can come and see your site.

I'm itching to redesign the blog. I guess after a year and a half, you get sick of looking at the same page all the time. I guess we'll just have to see what happens.

-Gary

Gary's Life

My goal was to apply for at least one job every day. At least I am averaging one job application everyday. It seems like I have a very hard time writing cover letters. This problem is compounded by the fact that many places would like you to apply via email. This means that you write your resume and cover letter in word, attach it to your email, but still have to write an email on top of you resume and cover letter.

I generally attach read receipt requests on my emails, and I had two sent to me the first day after I sent out my first applications, so at least I know that two people saw my emails. I just hope that they bothered to open the attachment and read my cover letter and resume as well.

Daorcey, a communications and culture major, says that because there aren't very many communications jobs advertised, he has sent letters to a undisclosed number of companies asking for informational interviews. He plans to ask them questions about their various industries. What they are looking for in employees, what they think others are looking for and other things along those lines. He has 6-7 interviews in the next week or so. He knows that none of them have any openings, but the idea is that by meeting these people, he will save them the trouble of having to advertise an opening when one does become available. They will remember his glowing personality and call him to offer a job. Or at least tell their friends about him when their friends are looking for someone. I'm thinking that I should be doing some thing like that.

-Gary Milner

Ps. I wrote an editorial for the Gauntlet. Unfortunately, it's not being printed, it's going on the website. While it may get the same number of readers, and we tell the volunteers that it is the same, it isn't really the same. Here it is in all its glory.

Being the first person murdered this year probably wasn’t anything like being the first baby of the New Year. Being a New Year’s baby is a good thing, while being a murder victim is not. I am neither, so I can only assume.

There have been six murders in the Calgary area in 13 days. That’s well on pace for over 168 murders this year. But don’t worry, the murdered generally know their murderers in Cow Town even when there is nearly 1 murder for every 5,500 people.

While I don’t know very many people, I am both nervous and unconcerned at the possibility of record number of assassinations in the Calgary area. I know that I am not going to kill anyone, and I would be willing to bet on myself in a life or death sort of confrontation with any of my friends. Even if they had a weapon, I could at least make a hasty retreat.

Mr. Lawrence Bailey, the editor of the Gauntlet would be the one exception. He’s a little bigger than I am, he seems to have connections inside the SU, and he’s been looking at me in a weird way lately. His eyes are glassy, sort of dilated, and he wants my Doritos. I think this editorial might push him over the edge.

I might be the one exception to the rule about knowing your murderer. This paper has a circulation of 12,000. My name is in print all the time and my photo from time to time. I could be developing a stalker, maybe someone so devoted to me that she (or he, I don’t judge my stalkers) might start thinking that if they can’t have me, no one can.

Manny, the stunt guy from the anti-movie piracy advertisements might be a person that doesn’t know me but who would like to kill me. He risks his life all the time to make movies, and then I come along, press a few keys and reap all that benefit. I bet he is feeling the sting of my nefarious downloads. The funny thing is, I just keep doing it with impunity. Come at me! Try and murder me Manny.

After every thing is said and done, Calgary is a pretty safe place. We stick to ourselves and don’t kill the people we don’t know and love.

COMMENT BUTTONS NOT WORKING

Sometimes I like to comment on what other guys are saying. Most of the time these comments are not worth putting into prime space such as the space I'm now putting this comment. So I suggest you get the comment section working again. Anyway here is my comment about "Big Fish". I give it toes up.

Big Fish

Tracie and I went to see the movie "Big Fish" today and we both give it two thumbs up. That's a combined total of four thumbs. It's about a son who has to come to grips with the impending death of his father. One of the son's major problems is that all he knows about his Dad's life are the larger than life fish stories that were told to him as he was growing up. The son desperately wants to know the truth about his father's life.

When you get the chance, go and see this movie.
-Gary Milner

There is No Food For The Media, or How To Steal a Salad From The Palliser Hotel

My job at the Gauntlet often includes taking photographs of what we like to call, "talking heads". Talking heads are people giving speeches at a podium or possibly sitting behind a table. Today like many other days, I was called upon to photograph Jack M. Mintz the President and CEO of the C. D. Howe Institute at the Palliser Hotel, during a speaking engagement for the Calgary chapter of the Canadian Club.

I arrived a few minutes before noon, and spoke to Edmund A. Oliverio, a man it seems who is what I like to call a big cheese. He in fact sponsored one of the tables which was somewhat impressive because the only other sponsors were billion dollar oil companies. Mr. Oliverio directed me to the media liaison who sent me to the media table.

When I arrived at the table there were three salads and three pieces of cake. All the silver haired club members had already begun eating, so I decide that when in Rome, do as the Romans and began to eat my salad. I ate about three bites and then I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was the boss waiter. He told me that I was eating someone else's food. I said, Mr. Oliverio sent me to this table. The boss waiter told me that there was no food for the media, but that I should finish my salad.

Soon after, lackey waiters came and removed the other two salads and three pieces of cake.

My only regret is that I didn't eat the cake first.

-Gary Milner, stole a salad from the Palliser Hotel

WHAT THE HECK

My intention was to put this post in the comment section of Tracie's post which was just ahead of this one, but it seems that was not possible.
Here's the deal. Tracie, if you're as busy as you say you are, why in the world are you taking a literature coarse involving detectives? Are you changing your major to criminal investigation or what? Maybe english literature.

Back to School...yet again

I feel like all I ever do is go back to school. I just did it a few months ago and now here I am doing it again. That's just the life of a student I guess.

Yesterday was my first day of classes. I only have two classes, but I'll be very busy with my practicum. This semester I will be working on the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) at the Peter Lougheed. I've already worked out my schedule for the semester -it goes until the end of march- and pretty much I'll be at the NICU 3 days a week and working on my floor 1 or 2 days a week. Plus classes on monday. Needless to say I'll be very busy. I start my practicum tomorrow, so right now I really have no idea what to expect.

My morning class on mondays is the class that goes along with my practicum. We talk about issues surrounding pregnancy and labour and all that stuff. But my evening class is the one I'm most looking forward to. I'm taking a detective fiction english class. I think it's going to be really interesting. We are reading eight detective books for class, and then I get to pick any one of my choice and give a presentation about it in class on february 9th. If anyone reading this has any good suggestions of books I can read that involve detectives, please let me know. I'm thinking about reading a Mary Higgins Clark book, but I haven't really decided. I don't really want to do the obvious Sherlock Holmes or Agatha Christie, but it doesn't really matter.

I just got back from Superstore, where I overheard a comment so rude that I almost got involved. One lady was standing almost directly in front of the cashier bagging her groceries. The cashier had started ringing up the groceries of the lady behind her and putting them on the far belt. The lady behind said to the lady bagging her groceries, "Excuse me please", as she obviously wanted to get by to start bagging her own groceries. The lady in front in her nasty old lady smoker voice said "Uhh, I'm bagging my groceries right now...or can't you see me". The lady behind stood there in shock. The cashier stood there in shock. I stood there in shock. There were so many things I wanted to say under my breath but loud enough for her to hear like "That was the rudest thing I've ever heard" or "Of course she sees you, that's why she asked you to move instead of running you over with her cart". Maybe it was one of those "you had to be there" things, but it's been an hour, and I'm still offended by the rudeness of that lady.

Trump TV follow up

I guess no matter how much money you have, spending $1000 on a glass of lemonade is dumb. Even if you know you will be making multi-millions more. How about this. If you have $200,000 do you spend $1 on a glass of lemonade?

The problem is, to some $200 millionaires, lemonade may not be lemonade. Some lemonade may be better than other lemonade. Not all lemonade is equal. Some tastes better, and some comes with a story. While the $1000 lemonade was physically identical to the $1 lemonade, a different product was being sold. Not that I would buy the product, but I'm cheap, and the story about a guy trying to sell me lemonade would be just as good or better than the story about buying $1000 lemonade.

There is a famous quote about a more democratic drink

"You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you can know that the President drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and just think, you can drink Coke, too. A Coke is a Coke, and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good. Liz Taylor knows it, the President knows it, the bum knows it, and you know it."
-Andy Warhol

I read a some interviews with a group of semi-famous CEOs and they all seemed to think that using sex to sell wouldn't pay off for the women.

Here is a snippet of The Donald's opinion:

But in an interview Thursday, Trump said the men never stood a chance in the lemonade test and doubted if they could have overcome the disadvantage with time. Hiring attractive women to sell for them might have been against the program rules, Trump said.

Trump agreed with an expert who said that women had better expand their arsenal because one day they will be 40. "I would personally rather buy lemonade from a attractive woman, or any woman," Trump said. But he agreed that a team of 40-year-old women might not have won.

Of course being sexy won't work 20 years from now, but this is a show that is being taped over what, like a month? I would agree that being sexy isn't something that will work over a long term, each of the events in this show are likely going to be a couple of days long tops. Being sexy is like having the best time in the 50 meter dash. You'll win the 50 meter dash every time, but things get evened out in the 100, you fall behind in the 200 and outright loose anything 500+. What is worse is that next year, your too old to sprint.

-Gary Milner, An internet superstar who wouldn't pay $1000 for any drink, possibly even medicine.

Trump's New Tv Show

It's called "The Apprentice". I like it a lot better than I thought I would.

This is the premise of the show:8 men and 8 women vie for a job as the president of one of Trump's companies. Every episode, there is a business related challenge. The losing team has to meet in the boardroom to defend themselves, and then 3 people are chosen, those three have one more chance to defend themselves, and then one is fired.

Last night they had to sell lemonade. Each team had $250 startup capital and instructions to sell as much lemonade as possible. The women started off badly, it was a real gong show. But as we all know the gong show made quite a bit of money for a few years. The women ended up with $1200, and the men ended with only $500.

It seemed to me that this possibly wasn't the most even challenge, but that's how the cookie crumbles. If people are more willing to pay $5 for a lemonade from an attractive woman than $1 from some guy, that's just too bad. Realistically, I think that they probably sold the same number of glasses, but the women had priced theirs so much higher it was no contest.

One of the guys, sensing that they needed to do better tried to sell a cup for $1000 to a guy (who obviously could afford it) on the premise that he would have a great story to tell his buddies about the time he paid $1000 for a glass of Trump lemonade.

I pose the question to all of you: If you had $200 million, would you spend $1000 on a glass of lemonade just to be able to tell the story?

-Gary Milner, Thirsty Internet Superstar

A PUZZLE?

Some people have expressed puzzlement that the Britany Spears wedding captured more media attention than the mars landing. I'm not puzzled and I'll tell you why. It's because we know darn well how worthless the information is going to be that we get from mars and it's going to be very scant. The most interesting thing about the whole boondoggle is how much money was wasted. Now the Brittany Spears story; that's something else. This was a story that has some practicallity. For one thing, now that we know that she is divorced this means that she will be back on the marriage market. This means that some day you or I could still marry her. As remote as that possibility might be it's still more applicable to the average person than anything there going to find out about mars.

Mission To The Red Planet Paraphrased

“I am ready,” said the emperor. “Does not my suit fit me marvellously?” Then he turned once more to the looking-glass, that people should think he admired his garments.

The chamberlains, who were to carry the train, stretched their hands to the ground as if they lifted up a train, and pretended to hold something in their hands; they did not like people to know that they could not see anything.

The emperor marched in the procession under the beautiful canopy, and all who saw him in the street and out of the windows exclaimed: “Indeed, the emperor’s new suit is incomparable! What a long train he has! How well it fits him!” Nobody wished to let others know he saw nothing, for then he would have been unfit for his office or too stupid. Never emperor’s clothes were more admired.

“But he has nothing on at all,” said a little child at last. “Good heavens! listen to the voice of an innocent child,” said the father, and one whispered to the other what the child had said. “But he has nothing on at all,” cried at last the whole people. That made a deep impression upon the emperor, for it seemed to him that they were right; but he thought to himself, “Now I must bear up to the end.” And the chamberlains walked with still greater dignity, as if they carried the train which did not exist.
-Hans Christian Andersen


That will be $800,000,000 please.

Colonies on Mars?
I'll believe in people settling Mars at about the
same time I see people setting the Gobi Desert.
The Gobi Desert is about a thousand times
as hospitable as Mars and five hundred times
cheaper and easier to reach. Nobody ever
writes "Gobi Desert Opera" because, well,
it's just kind of plonkingly obvious that there's
no good reason to go there and live. It's ugly,
it's inhospitable and there's no way to
make it pay. Mars is just the same, really.
We just romanticize it because it's so hard to reach.

On the other hand, there might really be some
way to make living in the Gobi Desert pay.
And if that were the case, and you really
had communities making a nice cheerful
go of daily life on arid, freezing, barren rock
and sand, then a cultural transfer to Mars
might make a certain sense.
-Bruce Sterling

-Gary Milner, thinks mars might be a waste of money.

MISSION TO THE RED PLANET

The current mission to mars cost over eight hundred million dollars. The main purpose for the mission is to find out if life exists on mars or ever could have existed. Finding this out would prove that we are not alone in the universe and it would prove that life is probably existing in many other places. My question is this: How come life on mars proves so much and life on earth doesn't . Where do I go to collect my 800 million for pointing out that life on earth proves that there's life elsewhere?

Furthermore, the equipment they're using for this exploration is so primitive when it comes to actual worthwhile space exploration that the main thing they'll learn from all this is that they're going to need way better equipment if they ever expect to do anything worthwhile in space.

I Am Rude

I am rude. I don't know why. Over the last few years I have slowly stopped thinking twice before speaking.

As it turns out, the first thing I think about is generally not at all nice. I should go back to saying the second thing I think. Many people wish they could come up with biting comments before they are a block away, just to offend the other person. I find myself thinking of polite responses a little too late.

Even though the person behind the counter may be closely related to the vegetable kingdom, I have to remind myself that even artichokes have hearts.

-Gary Milner

I Am An Action Hero

Over the weekend, nearly 1,158,000 people paid to see the movie "Paycheck". Fortunately, I was not one of them. I found this little gem on the internet.

This movie is about a man who invents a machine that can see into the future. This means that the protagonist knows ahead of time that he will pretty much be able to win and get the girl. "Paycheck" is an action flick, and as such, the viewer also knows the outcome of the movie from the start, that the hero will win and get the girl.

In order for you to save 1.5 hours of you life here is the plot.

An engineer is offered 90 million to help build the machine. When the job is done, he will have his memory erased so as to prevent him from being able to build another one. The man builds it. The man sees what havoc the machine will wreak, then decides to destroy it. However, the man can't just destroy it outright. Before his memory is erased, he sends some innocuous clues to himself. The items aren't suspicious to the company but will allow him to figure out what the machine is and help him to destroy it.

The only mildly interesting thing in this movie is finding out how he uses the items in his quest to destroy the machine and win the girl. For example, he uses the hair spray as a flame thrower and he uses a bus pass to get on a bus.

Wow I have done both of those things.

-Gary Milner, action hero.

Here is a picture of the snake courtesy of the Guardian. The article that accompanied it said that it measured between 6.5 and 7 meters. That's between 21 and 23 feet or so.

"The imprecise estimate is due to my reluctance to grab hold of his tail..."




-Gary Milner, dislikes snakes, like(s) Indiana Jones.

THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING SNAKE

There was a picture in the news this morning of a large boa constrictor. They said it's size was a new world record. They said in fact the snake was 49.2 feet long and weighed over 900 pounds. Well I measured out 49 feet and then I looked at the snake in the picture. All I can say is they should have taken the picture before the snake had a chance to shrink so drastically. The snake I saw was more like fifteen feet long. The only way that snake could have been 49 feet long is if it could somehow be the same one that Gary and Jeff saw in the coulee a few years back.

Adventures With a Dual Monitor System

My Mom got a new 19" monitor for Christmas, and let me take her old 15". My plan was to use her old monitor as a secondary monitor on my own system. That way, I could work even more efficiently. For example, I could have a webpage open on one screen, and a word document open on the other screen. This would be a real benefit because I could type and see the information I needed just by swiveling my head instead of switching back and forth between two windows. Basically if you have more territory to display stuff, it's better. If you can afford a huge monitor that's the way to go, but if you can afford to be given someone else's monitor for free that's even better.

Any way, in order to get my new dual monitor system going, I was fooling around with the BIOS. I don't really know what the acronym BIOS stands for, and that should have been my first sign that I shouldn't be fooling with it. Just so that it's perfectly clear, messing with your BIOS can seriously mess your computer in a real hurry. I'm talking you have to buy a new computer type messed so don't do it. I changed the BIOS to use an onboard video card instead of my AGP video card, and that was the incorrect thing to do, evidently.

When my computer tried to boot up, there was nothing. Well almost nothing, the internal fans came on. I was sick, because I knew that even if the computer itself was working, you can't change internal setting without a monitor. I started thinking that I had made a $1800 + gst mistake, not to mention the over 3 gigabytes of photos I have stored on my computer. (digital photos of my family,not the kind can be re-downloaded). Fortunately for me, the computer did boot up after about 10 minutes of waiting. I quickly burned all my photos and made backups of all my important data.

I emailed Ben Li, the Gauntlet computer expert and he gave me a few tips. What I ended up doing as per Ben's and my computer manual's suggestion was to short two solder points on the mother board using a piece of metal, to reset the memory on the BIOS. Luck shone on me again, and it worked.

-Gary Milner, won't be messing with the BIOS again.

Start The New Year Off With A Bang!

Unless you are a terrorist, but if you are it's ok to start the year of with a bang if you are shooting, A. yourself, or B. one of your buddies, in the head.

Like Tracie already wrote, we went to see a movie called "In America". It was quite good. I give it two thumbs up. One of the major reasons that I really enjoyed this movie was that I felt that I could really identify with the family in this movie (even though I'm not Irish and I don't have kids). They were a young family coming off several big transitions in their lives, moving to New York for example. I felt that this was somewhat similar to Tracie and I moving to Calgary. Even more so, because Tracie has a job, and I am looking for work, just like the guy in the movie.

There are several really touching moments in the movie, and I really recommend it when it comes to your local block buster. Here is a link to the preview via apple.com. You watch two regular preview as well as watching the first six minutes of the movie.

Gary Milner- fan of "In America", a movie better than 95% of all the other movies I have ever seen, and I have seen a lot of movies.

Happy New Year!

I'm very excited to find that I'll be the first person writing on the blog in 2004. This website is certainly getting off to a good start!

To celebrate New Year's eve last night, Gary and I went to a movie called "In America". It's about a young family from Ireland who moved to New York and are trying to get by. I can't really put into words why this movie was so good, but it was arguably the best movie I saw in 2003. Because it was New Year's eve, the theatre gave out free popcorn, which was an added bonus. Our tickets were free too- a friend gave them to us- so we were pretty pleased. We also entered for a draw for something (I don't know what) when we were there. I mention this only because the last time we went to a movie there and entered a draw, Gary won a free DVD (About Schmidt) and a free movie rental.

After the movie we got nachos and then came home. It wasn't a particularly exciting New Year's, but we had fun anyway. There's a link from msn.ca today about how people from other countries celebrate New Year's eve. Apparently in Spain and Portugal they eat a grape for all twleve chimes at midnight to bring good luck. This is so important that everything stops including movies and concerts so that this can be done. Another interesting tradition is in Denmark where people throw dishes at their friends doors. Lots of broken dishes on your doorstep the next day is a sign of good luck and friendship.