***Whatever Date you May Be Reading This***

I'm slowly moving all articles below to my Sparky's Space Blog Page
Just click on the link and read to your heart's content.

***November 11, 2004***

Lest we forget.

So much for any semblance of updating regularly...

I purchased a Kodak DC120 Digital Science digital camera in May of 1998 and have enjoyed taking pics with it ever since. Most of my friends are quite sick of me bringing the camera along wherever we go, but they humour me.

A few things are happening in my life right now which draws attention to the digital camera I purchased over 6 years ago--

I just realized today that I'm missing a CD of pictures. In the past, when I get about 650meg of pics on my hard drive downloaded over time from my camera, I burn a CD and delete those pics off my hard drive. Today I went looking for Christmas '03--nada. The CD for that particular time is missing! Kinda bothers me--it's like losing a portion of your life. This wasn't as bad as the day when I lost over 4 gig worth of images due to a hard drive failure. That incident taught me to start burning CD's of my pics every so often. This incident taught me to start making back-up CD's. As long as I learned something from this.

More importantly (for me anyway), I just won an eBay auction for 3 Kodak DC120's. These DC120's are in various stages of non-functioning, but I don't care--My DC120 is working just fine but looks like it's been 'thru the mill' a few times, what, with the duct tape and all. So these 3 non-functioning cameras en route to me are basically going to be 'frankensteined' for parts to make my camera look 'new' again. I'm actually looking forward to that.

I thought I'd share that with the masses for no particular reason.

As a way of wrapping this up, I've come to understand something lately--I'm loath to get rid of anything that has many good memories associated with it. People see my digital camera and mention that I'd be better off buying a new one (for significantly less cost than the original price tag of my DC120). I sometimes am tempted to 'upgrade', but then I just take a few more pics with my camera and I think, 'not today'. Hikes, canoe trips, casual get-togethers with friends--not to mention the volume of LEGO pics, vacation pics, family pics--this camera has seen it all with me.

To me, that's impressive, and worth a little bit of effort to maintain. So many pictures from one camera, and, I believe, many more to come (now that I have extra parts to keep it goin').

Just 'cause I know no one really is interested in this beyond me--# of pics taken on my camera to date? 11988. Yeah, not going to replace it anytime soon...

Case in point--

My truck was making a horrible racket yesterday morning after I started it. When I had a quick perusal, and using all the automotive expertise I'm known for, I said "Water Pump". Much to my surprise, I was pretty much dead on. But that's neither here nor there.

I takes de vehicular rustbucket over to my friendly neighbourhood automekanic. He confirms my diagnosis--water pump--and mentions that I probably shouldn't drive it until the truck is fixed.

So I left the vehicle with him and go about my daily business using a borrowed vehicle from a family member.

Now friends, there are a few points of note here--my mechanic took a look at my vehicle immediately and added it to his already busy schedule for the day so I could get it back by end of day. He didn't have to do that, but he did. Further, I wasn't able to return to the shop until 10 p.m. due to other obligations, so, again my mechanic went out of his way to make sure the vehicle could be picked up after working hours.

Anyway, I get my truck back last night at 11 p.m. and it's sounding just fine, thank you. I look at the bill and it's less expensive than I was lead to believe, which also helps.

En route to work this morning, I thought it'd be a friendly gesture for me to give him a call and thank him for the wonderful and quick job he did for me.

So that's what I did--"Thanks!", I said to him on the phone.

He was mildly surprised for the call--most people, he lets me know, usually call to complain about something else that he may have missed or they think he forgot to check.

"No, just thanks for doing a great job!" I assure him.

Why is it such a surprise in this day and age when someone gives someone else a heartfelt "Thank you"? Doncha think that people deserve a thank you? I mean, sure it's his job and all, but I appreciated the effort and what did it cost me to say thanks?

Nothing. Nothing at all. (well, air time on the cell phone, to be sure) And yet it made my mechanics day just a little better.

I'm just saying...

(continuing with quotation week...)
"More and more we've come to expect less and less from each other."
-Aaron Sorkin, West Wing and Sports Night (same quotation used in both series)

This is readily apparent no matter what stage you happen to be during your worldly walk.

Whether driving on the road, walking in a mall, conversing on the phone... It just seems that the trend is moving towards abruptness, rudeness and an "I'm first" attitude.

I was at Tim Hortons the other day, in line waiting for my extra large tea (three sugars, teabag out, please) and my muffin (though this week was 'Happy Cookies' (smile cookies, monies going to charity)) and guy parks his car right in front of the entrance, blocking the road access, walks up to the counter, ignores the other people in line, and places his order.

I, being pretty much oblivious to people stepping on my own toes, didn't really notice this until after the fact. Maybe I've just got to the point where this type of behaviour is just 'background noise' like the birds chirping or the wind whistling, and one just sort of 'tunes it out'..

Anyway, apathy is running rampant.

No solution, except that I'm going to endeavour to be the opposite.

But that's just me.

And the sign said 'Everyone welcome to come in, kneel down and pray'
But when they passed a plate at the end of it all I didn't have a penny to pay
So I got me a pen and a paper and I made up my own little sign
I said, "Thank you Lord for thinking about me, I'm alive and doing fine!"...
-Signs (from recollection--sue me if its wrong)

Boy I just love a good tune.

I am alive, and I'm doin' fine...

There's another thought--What you think you hear in a song opposed to what the actual lyrics are. When I was oh so much younger than I am now, I thought it was 'Any old gift from any old star'.
(What, you think I would have actually paid attention to the DJ's intro of 'Video killed the radio star'?)

Anyway, it's amazing how that sort of misconception sticks with you--what you origionally think something is stays with you long after you discover what is really there.

Well, enuf thoghts for today.

Notice to all you crazy drivers that cut me off and expect that I'll slam on my brakes to let you in--
Let this be your warning that I'm no longer going to get seatbelt burn across my neck, no longer going to kill my brake pads, no longer going to have a heart attack due to your inept and reckless driving.

See, I'm driving a piece of scrap '88 pickup truck which already has a few bumps and scrapes on it--a few more will just add to the ambience of the truck.

So when you scoot out from behind me, zoom past me, and then cut me off, and I happen to see that this is what you're attempting--guess what? I'll do what I can to keep me safe, but no more.

You're the idiot in this scenario, and you deserve a little punishment. As a matter of fact, I'm thinking about installing an air horn in the pickup, just to jar you out of your stupidity.

That is my vent for today.

LEGO building is very theraputic. The hands are busy, and the mind needs about 10 percent of mental acuity to be focused on the building process--enough to provide stimulation, but also leaves enough freedom for the mind to wander and think about things.

When a particularly complex issue arises during hte building process, the mind can come back from the wanderings and focus on the task at hand. That way the mind doesn't wander too far afield, taking away from the building process.

Ahh, LEGO. The perfect union of simple procedures and complex ones.

Site of the day: Acts of Gord. Check out the Acts of Villany--my personal favourite.
I have no idea how many sites I can come up with on a regular basis. The one's I've posted are the ones I frequent regularly. The internet may be vast, but my interests are few and specific. Eh, I'll try to keep you entertained.

04/15/04--who woulda thunk we'd make it this far? We're already more than a few years into the 21st century. Somehow you'd think that we'd be a better species for it.

Anyway, not to get all melancholy on this wonderful spring day--the buds are out, the trees are 'blushing with gold'--life is pretty good.

My major plan for the season is to get the canoe down and do a wee bit of work--it has developed a few leaks over the years and needs some patching.

That's about it for this Thursday. This blogging thing isn't al that it's cracked up to be ;)

Quote of the day: "What we have here is a failure to communicate..."
- various places too numerous to mention.

Site of the day: Oh what the hay--Mine!
(and for a really obscure corner of my site, see here)

John Derringer has the 'Tool of the Day' on his morning show on Q107. The TOTD is someone that has done something so outrageously idiotic to be deemed by Derringer as the daily tool.

Usually I am in complete concurrance with Derringer's daily tools. I, for one, think that pointing out the idiocy of others is something that should be done--if 'the emporer has no clothes', then someone should tell 'im!

Not that I'm going to do this on a regular basis, but the person who thought a seal hunt in today's age was a good idea--my Tool of the Day!

Site of the day: Hmmm, which one... Oh, staying on a political thing, the Democratic Underground, for all your leftist needs. Pay close attention to the 'Top 10 Conservative Idiots' (updated weekly)

One of these days I'm going to start carrying around a notepad to write down the 'great ideas' I have to talk about in my little blog. Everytime I get to the keyboard, these ideas disappear like 'a fart in the wind'... (name the movie!)

Anyway, hey, we're just plodding along on this blog thingy. I'm trying something over on my webcam page--

Temporary WebCam Page

It ain't pretty, but there's potential. We shall see what transpires.

Site of the day: LEGO User Group NETwork--LUGNET - the place for all things LEGO

WKRP. Wow. Thankfully I have a few episodes on tape.

Other shows that left the airwaves far too quickly--
Sports Night
Firefly
(Not necessarily in that order)

Site of the day: West Wing/Sports Night similarities.

Eh, whatever.

So this internet thingy's been around for a wee bit. I know I've had a site somewhere in the sub-ether since 1994 when I experimented with HTML programming to get a site started forthe college I was attending at the time. (Redeemer College) Over the years I've had fun doing low level raw HTML programming, with a few quirks thrown in (like web-cams and the like). It's been 10 years with no sighs of my interest in it abating.

See, when I'm awake at 4 a.m. my mind is even less coherent than usual, and that's saying something.

Anyway, I thought I'd update this blog two days in a row, at least to start it off right.

By the way, 'Funeral for a Friend' is perhaps my favourite Elton John song. Then again, I like most rock 'n roll songs that have some sort of long instrumental section to it--'Fool's Overture' by my personal favourite group, Supertramp, comes to mind....

In the end, just call this the 'blather on' section and you won't be too far from the truth. Maybe this'll get better in the future. We can only hope.

Site of the day: Least I Could Do (PG-13, just to give ya a heads up)

So with this in mind, I’m considering starting some sort of semi-daily web journal, or ‘blog’ as some have deemed to call it. That said, I don’t think that enough interesting things happen in my life, or enough interesting ideas show up in my mostly cluttered mind, to attempt a daily blog. This endeavour, therefore, may or may not be updated daily. I’m thinking right now that it might not even be updated weekly, but eh, whatrya gonna do?

I also didn’t know where to put this on my website, but there is probably no better place than under ‘Winona Press’. For those of you who weren’t the original 20 people in the world who received the sporadic publication called “The Winona Press” back in, what was it again, ’86 to 91ish, then you just haven’t lived. I may scan and post a few issues. Then again, I may not.

Anyway, let’s see where this goes. Welcome back to The Winona Press.

Site of the Day: HomestarRunner.Com

If you have any questions, comments or rebuttals, e-mail me and maybe I'll even post it here.