New phone day

Yesterday, after almost three years of the same phones, Jeannette and I upgraded our cell phones.

Initially, I was thinking that for this upgrade iteration I would switch to an Android phone (not that I am altogether an Android fan).  Thanks to Jeannette's desire to maintain the same brand, a desire on my part that we have the same hardware, an appreciation of the advantages of now changing systems, and lower than expected prices we ended up with much newer version of the same type of phone we already have.

Now that we're about 15 hours into our new phones and most of the key settings have been selected I think it is safe to say that we are both happy with the function of our new machines.  Of course, I'm not necessarily as pleased with technological/legal/moral implications of this decision.  Maybe in two years time (or more - if the hardware lasts/continues to be functional) I'll finally move away from this technology provider?

But, damn, they've done a very good job of making that a difficult decision to make.

Cameron - 10
Neil - 0

A Few Quick Notes 602

-Though cloudy, today wasn't a particularly cool day.  Since our sudden and unexpectedly resilient snowfall of a few days ago I expect full-blown winter to arrive with each dawn.  When I leave the house and discover winter hasn't yet arrived I'm both pleased and disappointed.

-The arrival of winter would be even more welcome if our fireplace was fully functional.  At the moment the chimney is in need of a serious cleaning.  Until we have it cleaned we won't be able to determine if it's safe to use, and if not how much work might be required to make it so.  While I'd really like to have a fully functional fireplace this is likely something that will have to wait until at least next year.

-We went on a somewhat lengthy shopping trip this afternoon.  As usual, once we're out on our weekend shopping trips we keep remembering additional items that we've been meaning to buy.  Also, at least this normally happens, we tend to forget a handful of items necessitating future trips.  Fortunately, the items that we forgot today weren't so important that we'll have to head out today or even tomorrow.

-My 'smart' phone, or at least its operating system, has been behaving somewhat erratically for the past few weeks.  It seems that the major update has really negatively impacted the operational capacity of the phone - despite the fact that this was presumably exactly the opposite of what the developers intended with the new update.  Anyway, it's definitely been a frustrating way to waste a few hours.

-Now that we're a few weeks into fall the sun has started setting not long after I return home from work.  While this is to be expected, the transition has been happening a little more quickly than I expected.  It won't be long before my walks to and from work will occur mostly in the dark.

-A few days ago I combined a few ingredients and made some pea soup.  I'm continually amazed at how simple, yet tasty, pea soup can be.  Maybe even more impressive, is that the stuff seems to keep getting better in the following days.

-Turns out homeownership is definitely time-consuming.  This weekend I had the pleasure of spending a fair bit of time installing a single board above one of our basement windows.  Not only will this board be used to hang a blind, it will also improve our house's security as it will also prevent one of our windows from easily being pushed in from the outside.  While I'm not pleased at how long this project took, I am pleased with the results.

Am I missing something?

I have been doing some work this afternoon and through a somewhat circuitous route I ended up on looking at a list of members of The Council on Governmental Ethics Laws. Not surprisingly, most of the members on the list appear to be governments or public entities with a pretty explicit stake in the governmental ethics arena. There are also quite a number of law firms, which I guess also makes sense (presumably some specialize in this area of law).

I also noticed that there are a few technology companies that are listed as members. For the life of me I can't figure out why Apple, Oracle, and Xerox would be members of such an organization.

Given that there are at least three such companies with membership in the organization I presume there is a reason for this trend, I just haven't been able to figure it out yet.

A Few Quick Notes 297

-Today was another great Spring day. According to Environment Canada it made it as high as 13, which is quite a nice temperature. If things had been a little brighter it would have been almost perfect.

-We had pot roast (beef) for dinner tonight. In addition to the standard carrots and potatoes, we also had corn, green beans, and cauliflower, making for a rather colourful selection of food.

-Yesterday I posted a YouTube video in one of my posts. For some reason it didn't seem to work. I have since uploaded the video again, and it now seems to be working. If you are so inclined you can watch it in yesterday's post or here.

-I finally added an 'App' to my iPod Touch. The 'App' I have added, Remote, allows me to control the iTunes program on my computer from my iPod, thus turning my iPod into a remote control. While this might be somewhat useful at some point, I haven't really had much cause to use it in the four hours since I downloaded it. Maybe I will try to acquire one or two more free 'Apps' in the coming days.

-I don't understand why it is that Environment Canada will report that it is a temperature higher than the forecast temperature and then not change the forecast to reflect reality. This always baffles me. I know opening a window isn't a particularly sophisticated technique, but sometimes it seems to work.

-This morning, for breakfast, I decided to make another batch of Cowboy Coffee Cake. I still don't know why the recipe has the word 'cowboy' in the title, but so far I am quite impressed with the results. Unfortunately, the recipe caused me to use all of our brown sugar.

-Because all of our brown sugar had been used in the cake baking, I ended up making a late afternoon trip to the grocery store. Aside from replenishing our sugar supplies, I also snagged a few vegetables. I am particularly looking forward to consuming some of the newly acquired celery and radishes, two of my favourite vegetables.

-While at the store I forgot to pick up a can of kidney beans. This means that I will have to put off my 'Bean Brownies' until at least tomorrow. While I hope these turn out well, I am not really sure what a brownie with beans will taste like. Though I guess if I was willing to make pork cake I might as well try brownies with beans.

-There is nothing quite like being woken up from a nap by kidney stone related pain, particularly when it is coming from the 'clean' kidney. Yum.

-A few days ago Neil, Rebecca, and I happened to purchase a few inexpensive used DVDs. After watching one of them, Cleaner with Samuel L. Jackson and Ed Harris, I decided to check out the synopsis on the back. As I was reading the synopsis something struck me as a little off, it seemed that the name they were assigning to the main character was different than the name that I remembered being assigned to the character in the movie. After a little checking I was able to determine that my recollection was correct, and that they had screwed up on the back of the DVD case. This would seem to be a rather embarrassing mistake to make in this circumstance. It also suggests that the individual writing the blurb on the back of the case hasn't even seen the movie, or a copy of the script. I now wonder what information such blurbs are actually based on.



-The scarlet runner beans in my bedroom are continuing to grow at a reasonable pace. I think that with a few days more growth I will be able to more effectively photograph their development.

-Last night I ended up using some of my new potting soil and planting a few tomato and watermelon seeds. As I am a little more hopeful that the tomatoes will actually be productive more tomato seeds were planted. Hopefully I will start to see signs of germination in a few days. (The pots are not in the same location as the spider mite infestation, in case you were wondering).

A Few Quick Notes 258

-Though we didn't get the storm that was briefly predicted, we did mange to get the above zero temperatures that were predicted. This means that much of the snow that has fallen in the past several days has now turned to slush. The particularly nice part about the arrangement is that as the temperature is now dropping quickly we are a great position to get all kinds of ice. Notably, the cement area outside my window may be a particularly good area for sliding in a few hours.

Just moments ago I learned that apparently the threat of ice was enough to close schools in Halifax this afternoon. As it is now after school closing time and the ice hasn't formed it seems that his may have been a slight over-reaction.

-Yesterday, while at school, I was told about a pile of crap that one of the offices was giving/throwing away. Almost as soon as I heard about this opportunity I made my way down to inspect the goods. Almost immediately it was clear that most of the things that were in the pile were on the obsolete and useless side of things. Fortunately I stuck to my inspection was thus able to nab myself a Dictaphone (complete with foot controller, headset, and tapes). The only problem with the find is that it didn't come with an appropriate AC adapter. Hopefully once I find an adapter I will have the Dictaphone up and running. I imagine that this should improve my efficiency by a fair margin.

-As celery is on sale this week at one of the local grocery store I picked up a bunch made myself a celery, carrot, onion salad for dinner. As I was making the salad I realized that I forgot to buy radishes, oh well, I guess if I head back to the store tomorrow I might pick some up.

-Today I learned that, if I am so inclined, I can buy a set of photocopies for one of my classes for $120. You may not be surprised to learn that I have decided to just go to the library instead. I can't see how I can justify paying $120 for things that I can borrow from the library for free (and now I can justify blowing $120 that I saved on school expenses).

-To save on textbook expenses in another class I decided to borrow the required books from other university libraries in Nova Scotia (which should work quite nicely as my loans are good until the end of May). I should give credit for this plan to Cheryl, who tried something similar last year (though there were a few glitches in the execution if I remember correctly).

Instant books are coming to a library near you (if you live in Ann Arbor, Michigan)

It seems that the University of Michigan will be introducing technology that will allow individuals to request, and receive within minutes, printed and bound copies of digitized, out-of-copyright books for a reasonable price. Interestingly, the machine will be associated with the library, what this means I don't quite know.

While I won't go as far as the manufacturer of the technology and say that its impact will be comparable to that of Gutenberg's, I do think that it has the potential to do some pretty impressive things. I guess over time we will see if this type of technology manages to take-off, or it is a high-technology solution that problem that is less of a problem in the digital environment (that this technology is dependent on digitized works that are already available leads me to believe that this may be the case).

Reconnected to the World

After close to ten days, Nithum and I finally have an internet connection in our apartment. As one may have guessed, this period of time without such a connection was not intentional. Rather, the process of transferring our account from our old apartment to our current place of residence did not go as smoothly as we expected.

We first noticed that there was a problem when our phone did not work when we plugged it into the socket. Without phone service we expected that our DSL connection would not function properly. Fortunately within a day or two phone service was restored, though we were still not able to access the internet.

After several days and many phone calls later Nithum learned that simultaneous to our move there had been an equipment change and that our old modem would no longer work and that a replacement had been sent. Once acquired, the new modem also failed to work as we had been lead to believe it would. We were then informed that our line had to be checked, something that was to be accomplished within 48 hours.

After about 72 hours we learned that our line had just been checked and that the appropriate repairs had been made. Nithum was then told that after sitting for 19 hours the line would be functional. Fortunately, after about only 6 hours of the line sitting unused we seemed to have internet service.

Time after time Nithum was given timelines and told things that, in retrospect, appear to be complete fabrications. By the end of the experience the things he was told just sounded as though they were being made up by call center employees so that they would not have to deal with providing any actual service.

A Few Quick Notes 78

-These past few days have been pretty winter-like. On Friday night we had a pretty reasonable batch of blowing snow, something that held over until yesterday. While today was it bit warmer, it was still definitely winter, with plenty of slush as evidence.

-Celery dropped in price from $2.99 to $1.29 at Lobos. This is great news for me as I eat celery more than just about any other vegetable, maybe even potatoes. I was beginning to wonder if I would have to cut back because of the high prices. Because of this great news I doubled my purchase, I am now the proud owner of two bunches of celery (well, one and a half).

-How about a Vokuhila to go with my Oliba?

Or in more standard English, how about a mullet to go with mustache?

My friend Thomas passed these two terms on to me from Germany. Both of them are derived from the longer and fuller form of the terms. This is key information, if you ever go into a barber shop remember to say ‘nein’ if you hear ‘vokuhila.’

-The Thomson House St. Paddy’s Day Party was a success in my eyes. As far as I can tell the main negative part of the evening was the Francophone/Anglophone fuelled bar fight. Fortunately this wasn’t a big fight and was interrupted quickly.

-Over the past few days I have started to listen to “When We Was Boys” by a Crowd of Bold Sharemen. This seems to be a song in support of Newfoundland nationalism, lamenting Newfoundland’s perceived loss of independence and reliance on Government.

-For the past few months I have had battery problems with my digital camera. In late summer, I purchased some very expensive disposable batteries for my camera. These batteries lasted until January of this year. Since then I have been using a mish-mash of disposable and rechargeable batteries, none of which have been very satisfactory.

It seems that the disposable batteries that I purchased yesterday came pre-depleted, while the rechargeable batteries that I have don’t last much longer.

This is annoying because it limits the functionality of my digital camera. For instance, it was of no use in documenting my celebration of St. Paddy’s day yesterday. I guess there are two solutions, either buy expensive disposable batteries or buy expensive rechargeable batteries. It is unfortunate that both of these solutions mean spending money.