Pumpkin Carving Continued

I've noticed that we've been getting a lot of hits from people looking for free pumpkin carving stencils. If you are looking for information aobut how to carve a pumpkin, or how to make a pumpking carving stencil or template, a good place to look would be the sponsered links on the left hand side of the page. If you are looking for the Darth Vader Stencil follow the link. There are two really great links further on down the page.

While I don't have any free stencils or templates for pumpkin carving, I have done a little carving in the past. My favorite was a self portrait. Here is a little hint for making your own template. In a photo editing program, turn your photo into a greyscale image, and then adjust the contrast alot until the photo loses all it's shades of grey and has only black and white. Then you can decide if it looks enough like what you want to carve, if it doesn't pick another photo. You'll have to decide if you want to cut out the black or the white, inverting the picture will help you decide which part to cut out. I've found that it works best if you use an easily recognizable photo. There are tips about how to transfer the stencil to the pumpkin. I've found that using a needle to poke holes around the outside of the parts you want to cut helps. You can also use a felt tipped pen to shade the areas that you are going to cut.

Traffic is Killing Me Slowly

The winter traffic is making me want to die... somewhere warm like Arizona. It took us an hour to go the 10 blocks to Deerfoot trail and then only 10 minutes to go the other 200 blocks to the University. I don't know what the problem was, there were no accidents or any other problems. I get the feeling that there are 2 or 3 really stupid people who can't drive and who should lose their licenses, that are causing serious problems. They back the traffic up so much by driving 10km/h, that it takes 3 hours for the normal, smart people to be able to clear the roads. It's like driving in a parade.

-Gary Milner, guy who hates traffic but loves carving pumpkins.

JUST WHEN YOU THINK IT COULDN'T GET ANY WORSE

I see that a couple of the contributors to this blog are unhappy with the cold and the snow. The Dennis Douglases probably weren't fussy about the weather either . It was the weather that caused a power outtage out at Irvine and they lit their fireplace to counteract the resulting cold and now their house is laying on the ground in ashes.

It's Not Brain Drain...

If I ever do move to the states permanently, it won't be brain drain. It will be, "I'm sick of freezing my ace off drain."

I went out and scraped the windows and just about froze to death. Then to make matters worse, on the drive to school the radio said that it would get as cold as -8. It just about broke my heart because -8 isn't cold, it wasn't yet -8, and I could barely face the temperature as it was.

It's blizzarding in Calgary.....yet again

Today when we got up, it was snowing like crazy and the streets were all icy. It kind of sucks, but it's not unexpected at this time of year in Calgary. Well, today I was supposed to be at the university at 8:30 for my practicum at the weight loss clinic. It normally takes about 20 or 25 minutes to get from our house to the university, so we usually leave around 8:00. We decided to leave about 15 minutes early this morning so that we could acutally make it on time. The first big snowfall of the year is always the worst, becasue for some reason people forget how to drive on icy roads, and there are way more crashes and stalls.

So-did Gary and Tracie actually make it to school on time? you ask. The answer is no. It didn't take us one hour to get there or even two hours. I made it into the clinic at 9:55, over two hours after leaving home. We practically could have gone to Edmonton in the same amount of time. Anyone who has sat in traffic, barely inching along for over two hours, knows that this is not a fun way to spend the morning- which by the way, it wasn't.

-Tracie Milner, hates being stuck in traffic for over two hours

OF MICE AND MEN

I was doing a job at a house out in Redcliff and I left a pail of water on the floor of the garage. A mouse was able to jump into the pail but unable to jump out because of the water. The presumption is that he was able to swim until he got tired and then slowly drowned. I wouldn't wish that fate on anybody.

I For One Welcome Our New Pumpkin Carving Overlords

If you are looking for information aobut how to carve a pumpkin, or how to make a pumpking carving stencil or template, a good place to look would be the sponsered links on the left hand side of the page.

Here is a pumpkin site.


"A drywall-saw-wielding industrial robot with a chip on its shoulder.

"Last Halloween we could only run the robot at about 30% because it would tear itself out of the floor. Consequently it took about 6 minutes to carve a pumpkin. This year I hope it will make it in under 2.

"As each piece is completed, the robot spears it in the center, then wipes it off by passing the saw through a fork located above the orange bucket. Unfortunately, the robot does not gut the pumpkin."

Student Loan People Stink Again, Just Like Last Year

Those S.O.B's at the student loan place did it again this year. Somehow they managed to screw up my full time student status, and then not notify me until a day before it was too late.

This year it was the dolts at CIBC. Which makes them even stupider than the Edulinks people because, I have two different student loans with the CIBC people a provincial loan and a federal loan. They are willing to admit that I am a full time student on the provincial side, but not on the federal side. Presumably, they never got the form for the provincial loan, but the two groups aren't allowed to talk to each other. Or try to make things easy on the customers.

I guess the real problem is that there are about a thousand companies called CIBC something something, and the only way (besides their name) that they are related is that they pay their money up the chain to the same people. They are not acctually allowed to talk to each other or get data from each other.

What bugs is that while they pretend to care about you, they don't. All banks care about is your getting your money. What bugs me even more, is that the people you have to deal with at the bank, don't even care about getting your money. At least if someone at the bank, (besides the owners) cared about getting my money, I would have some basis for a business relationship with them. Some reason to keep my accounts with them and keep paying them high fees for no interest.

Right now, the only reason I stay a banking customer is convenience. I like being able to cash checks once in a while. Tracie likes getting her checks deposited right into our account. We like paying bills online instead of waiting in line. Eventually the cost of being a CIBC customer will outweight the benefits of being a CIBC customer and we will have to change banks.

We are customers at the Superstore bank, for our savings account, and we are quite happy with it. They pay just about the highest rate of interest available and there are no fees. You don't need to carry a minimum balance and you get to use all the CIBC ATMs free. That's something that CIBC customers don't even get.

-Gary Milner Hates Banks and Student Loan People

Happy Belated Birthday Jackie

Happy birthday Jackie. I don't know your phone number, or I would have called you. I phoned Mom to find it out, but she wasn't home. I hope you got to do someting fun.

Big Trucks Stink

I went to the IGA to pick up some cream and hamburger buns. I was surpriesed to see how many really big trucks there are. Especially big trucks with people who can't seem to drive them adequately or park them properly. It seems to me that if you have a really big pickup you should learn how to handle it properly, or at least park in a part of the lot where it will be easier to stay inside the yellow lines and drive away after.

-Gary Milner internet superstar

My Life In A Nutshell

Well, if I had one word to describe it, it would be uneventful. For the past two months since going back to school, I have done the same thing day in and day out. Monday to Thursday, I'm in school. I have my practicum at a weight loss clinic at the University, so I'm there all the time. I was hoping that some of the weight loss would rub off on be, but apparently I would have to give up things like ice cream and cinnamon buns. Mmmm, cinnamon buns.

Thursday nights I watch survivor. This is my favorite night of the week. I hope Rupert wins. Then on the weekends I work at the hospital. That's right, I've worked every single weekend for the past two months. This weekend I worked night shifts, which means 7pm to 7 am. Last night was the daylight savings-set the clocks back an hour-night. One hour doesn't seem like much extra to work, but it is.

Then on monday, I'm back in school and the rotation starts all over again. So that's my life in a nutshell. I just keep saying to myself over and over "only five months left" - referring to school of course. It's not so bad, but I'll be glad to be done - again.

-Tracie Milner, wife of internet superstar

A PROPHETIC ANSWER TO A QUESTION

Over at church this morning they handed everyone a list of questions that we're supposed to answer and hand in . Later they'll tabulate the all the answers together and tell us the results at a fireside. The first question was,"who was the most influencial prophet?" Lance Morris said that the most infuencial prophet was Mohammed and proceeded to give us his reasons. Personally I thought it was funny. But you should have heard the icy silence. Some guys have no sense of humor.

Life at the U of C

Today, I was working on the group portion of one of my midterms, and low and behold the two dumbest/most shallow girls in the entire faculty of management sat down right behind us. I wish I could convey to you their conversation. Quite frankly, I feel dumber for having overheard them, and so, I will spare you the pain.

We had the annual general meeting for the Gauntlet, were we elect board members. We elected two incumbents to the board, and an ex-photo editor. We also elected the staff representatives to the board. I asked the staff candidates which cover they liked the best, and they all picked covers that somehow involved themselves. Adam picked his first cover shot. Russ picked a cover that he got this summer, and Karoline picked a cover that had one of her stories. Even the other guy, who I can't remember his name, picked a cover that had a picture of his friend in the background.

-Gary Milner

Midterms Meet Their Maker

Well midterms meet me anyway.

I virtually finished my third midterm a little while ago. I say virtually finished, because there is a group takehome that I am doing tomorrow with my group. It involves excel and an excel plugin called chrystal ball.
It's a big relief to be done my midterms. It will be smooth sailing for a week or two anyway. I don't think any of my classes have cumulative finals so I'm pretty happy.

I don't know if any of you read the hit tracker page, but the one Jeff set up, mysteriously disappeared at around 9:00am and I didn't get it put back up untill about 9:03am. I'm probably going to write an email to extreme-tracking to find out how it mistakenly got deleted.

On the bright side, starting fresh will mean that the average number of hits per day won't be stuck on 12 for the next thousand years. Even though we have been getting 18+ hits a day for the last 2 months, that's not enough to raise the average because of the other 10 months when we were only getting 10 or 11 per day.

Linux Ate My Dog

Well, Linux went into my computer just fine. It took about two hours, but everything worked just fine on the first try. Ben also gave me another 64megs of ram he got from a computer he bought just so that he could get the network card.
I guess, that they have been making lots of improvements to Linux over the years. Ben said that in the past you needed 24 disks, and it was text only. Now you can boot from you cd and there is a graphical user interface. It tells you what to select so that even a beginner could do a custom install.
One of the best things is that you get almost everything you need right off the bat and it is free. You get an office suite, for wordprocessing, spread sheets and presentations. You get server software for fileserving, web serving and ftp serving. You get a bunch of games and a ton of other stuff packaged with the Operating System.
It even accessed the internet over the Gauntlet's network without doing any extra configuring. I'm pretty happy. Now all I need to do is get a router and I will have my own little LAN conneted to the Interweb.

-Gary Linux Guru

Well, let's just say, "if your VCR is still blinking 12:00, you don't want Linux"

I bought a computer for the University surplus last friday. I got a pentium 233 and 15 inch moniter for $50, as well as an ergonomic keyboard and mouse. I'm going to install Linux, and use the computer as a web browser for now. Later on, I will make it into a web server. Maybe a file server as well.
The moniter was the best part of the entire thing. My old moniter is starting to crap out a bit, there are blurry spots that move across the screen. I had hoped to install today, but it might get put off for a little while.

-Gary

TICKLED PINK

I heard on the news tonight that a guy went over Niagara falls today and lived. This tickles me pink. He was filmed going over the brink so they know for sure that he went over the falls. The maid of the mist spotted him swiming about l00 yards below the falls and tried to throw him a life presearver but failed. He then swam to shore unaided . I saw him with a towel over his head and walking on his own with only minor injuries. I think he is only the second guy to achieve this feat without protective equipment. Dozens have died even using protective barrels and other devices.

I'm Retiring

I guess this will be my last post at the milner blog. It was a fun place to post for awhile but due to political reasons I've decided to post elsewhere. Besides my posts were probably too boring for such a classy site anyway - as some of us know Gary is hypercritical of content not written at a professional level. Gary you can take your ball and go home.

A Trip to the Theater

One of my volunteers and I went to a media call last Tuesday for a play called, "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf", we took a few photos and on our way out, the publicist asked us if we would like to have tickets to Friday's show. I am not a guy to turn down $50 worth of tickets said, "Yes, I'll take two".

Little did I know, that Tracie had to work, and that I would be going to the show by myself. Don't worry anyone, we won't be getting a divorce one week before Christmas, like the time I had to goto the Star Trek movie by myself.

I dropped Tracie off at the hospital and rode the c-train downtown to the theater. I picked up my ticket and made my way to my seat. The first thing that you notice upon entering the theater is that the set tilts forward and to the left, which is weird for a little while, but then you adjust and don't even notice after awhile. Valerie Ann Pearson (Martha) said, "Sitting on the couch is the worst part, it really hurts your back. Walking around on it is great though, because you don't even have to act drunk." The play was wonderfully done, I can see why it has been so acclaimed over the years. I felt uncomfortable with George and Martha's conversation, and I was in the audience.

A Trip Home From the Theater

I am really becoming aware that I feel a little uncomfortable around people who hang out around the c-train. Not just the homeless kids downtown, but the gangsta types that hang out at the Rundle Station in the NE.

I was at the City Hall station waiting for a NE bound train, looking around minding my own business, when I notice a homeless type kid, about 20 feet away, with a florescent orange exacto knife with the blade extended concealed in his hand. Then I notice that he's doing the "head thrust" at me, like bullies do to little kids to make them flinch. Apparently he thought that I was staring at him and trying to start something.

I am strongly opposed to getting cut by, Jimmy "The Box Cutter" Homelesspunk, so I walked down the steps off the platform and then back up the steps more in the middle where there were more people.

It was the first time that I went from feeling pretty safe in Calgary, to feeling aprehensive. I have to admit that I don't really want Tracie to go to the hospital by herself anymore. Maybe it's because we had our CD's stolen from our car at that station, but it really doesn't seem safe to me. Especially after dark.

Things like this are just serving to make me even more classist than I already am. If we stay in Calgary, I want to live in a place where you have to have a $40,000-$50,000 down payment. Somewhere totally unreachable by Jimmy Homelesspunk.

I wonder what early Hutterites would have thought?

Black Person + Ethnic DNA Test = ?

I picked this up from metafilter.com:

After watching a 60 Minutes segment on the subject last year, Wayne Joseph decided on a whim to take a new ethnic DNA test. Being of Creole stock, and therefore on the lighter end of the black color spectrum, he had developed a casual curiosity about his exact percentage of black blood. What he discovered was astounding.

I wonder what early Mormons would have thought?

Midterm Time

I handed in a take-home midterm exam today, and I have another midterm tomorrow. My third and final midterm is on wednesday next week. The first half of my last semester has gone by very quickly. I'm so glad. I'm half a semester closer to being done school.

In Other Pedestrian Related news...

A 21-year-old woman and her two year old daughter were hit by a truck on Edmonton Trail yesterday. The mother was critically hurt. The girl received broken bones and cuts.
At this time last year, three pedestrians had been killed on Calgary streets. So far, this year, there have been 12 deaths, despite more tickets being written and higher fines.

-Gary Milner,

Chinese Launch Manned Spacecraft

The Chinese have launched their first manned spacecraft and it's now in orbit.

The craft, carrying a single astronaut, Yang Liwei, is expected to circle the planet 14 times, returning to Earth after a flight of about 22 hours.

Who Owns the Moon?

Meanwhile in another space related story a businessman in Australian claimed yesterday he had purchased the rights to sell pieces of land on the moon.

Paul Jackson, 33, opens his Melbourne real estate agency, Lunar Realty, tomorrow, offering one-acre blocks on the moon for $59 and 10-acre "lifestyle" blocks for $298.

According to Lunar Realty, the moon is owned by Nevada businessman Dennis Hope who challenged a loophole in a United Nations' treaty.

The United Nations 1967 Outer Space Treaty disallows any country from owning the moon, but says nothing about companies, Mr Jackson said.

Mr Hope declared his possession of the moon by filing a declaration of ownership at the San Francisco County Offices in 1980.

Lunatics.