Articles from December 2005

I went to see The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe last night with my father and brother. It was pretty awesome. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

The camera angles were a bit too tight for my liking. It was like they were trying to stuff too much into every scene, or move too close in on a character's face. It just felt unusual. It will be interesting to see how it…

It looks like Christmas wins out over election this time around, which is good. I haven't seen an party advertisement for a little while now. And hey . . . I think I could get used to it. Hard to believe, I know, but I think I just might be able to survive without party advertisements!

Saw Ken Boshcoff going to his constituency office yesterday while we were driving to Quality Market.

But soon the…

Okay, eh, so you know that digital camera I talked about purchasing? Well, I bought it! :D

I woke up at 7 AM to go to CompuSmart for 8, when it opened. There were already many people waiting in the small entrance chamber outside the store. I felt like I was really participating in a "Christmas vulture extravaganza". We got in, found the camera, and there it was! I got a 256 MB memory…

I'm not talking about the religious significance, nor what Christmas represents. Nor am I talking about how retail outlets like to turn Christmas into a commercial venture and media circus. That's been done ad nauseum.

I'd like to point out that Christmas, however, is quite silly if you think about it. Let's take this "good will" and "Christmas cheer" idea. We're supposed to have extra good will toward people and be extra cheery, eh? Isn't…

My friends, crazy that they are, combined three major holidays and tacked an extra "day" on the end to make the uber-politically correct version. :D

Not very materialistic, I hope, I won't list the Christmas presents I got, because it's the thought that counts. . . . But I did like them. Particularly Age of Empires III, and the DVDs Serenity and the Firefly series. Now I need to convince my dad to go for…

Christmas holidays are here, eh! Two weeks to relax. Since semiformal was last night, and it was the last day of school, few people showed today. We played "Mad Gab" in English and watched Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone in Physics (I know, I know it's "Philosopher's" stone, but my teacher taped the American version).

I know that Stephen already ranted about this, but I feel a need to vent a little, so…

We got our Christmas tree today (a real one, not artificial). So we spent time trimming it. I toyed with the idea of not doing my English homework. "Ms. Burton, I did not do my homework because I was trimming our tree." If she said that was unacceptable, I could claim she was discriminating against my religion. :shifty:

Here's a picture of the tree taken with my hugely crazily bad-quality webcam. I'm planning on rectifying…

Since the dawn of time, Man himself has puzzled over this very question. How does one stop a moving school bus? Well, take it from me: running at side of the bus wildly with a laptop satchel over one shoulder and a schoolbag over the other, waving papers in the air, is not the way to do it. Trust me, I know. Throwing oneself into traffic may work for Gonzo, but it doesn't work too…

I watched the French-language Federal election debates tonight and abruptly lost two hours of my life that I'll never, ever, ever get back. It was unbearable. The translators did a good job making it look like they weren't reading from a script, however.

t: Jack Layton d: I must say that he didn't do as well as he could have. He didn't speak very much, and I don't really remember much of what he said.…

No, really. Gerard Kennedy wants to stop any high school dropout below the age of 18 from getting driver's licenses. See this shiny CBC News article on the subject.

As much as I value school, the government is once again showing their lack of problem-solving skills. (Maybe they should go back to school. :D ) Getting kids to stay in school until they are 18 is not to be accomplished via negative incentive. Instead, perhaps…

Kyle MacDonald is trading his way up from a paperclip to a house.

How cool is that? Very cool.

Check it out: one red paperclip.

It's five minutes of your life you won't regret.

I had a really bad afternoon because I got my computer back after 4 weeks of service and I found it that it still wasn't working. I took it to CompuSmart, and none of the tech support guys were "in," but one guy had popped in for a moment and stayed in to help me with my problem.

He determined that it was my adapter that was broken and is going to send it to…

I have good news and bad news today.

The good news first: my computer is back (and working)! :D I'm so glad I've got cookies back now . . . no more logging in all the time. I'm going to work on updating VSNS Lemon now, since it does have some bugs that could be worked out and features too.

Now for the bad news: I feel sick. :( Sneezing, snuffling, tired and sore throat…

At 96 pages, Word gave up. It decided that my novel had too many spelling errors for it to mark up anymore, and promptly advised me that I was an idiot and should use spell check. Those red squiggles that underline mispelt words then disappeared. How I miss them. :(

I don't actually spell many words wrong, but I do make up a lot of places and names. I'm just too lazy to add those…

Sometimes I'm running a bit late in the mornings, and I run to the bus stop for fear of missing my bus. Inevitably, the bus itself is late and I end up actually waiting in the cold, after running frantically to get to the stop!

One would think that after a few of these episodes, I'd stop running, eh? Nope. I live in perpetual fear. :D

Many of you know that Cookie Monster now eats cookies as a "sometimes" food. rolleyes Now, I am as much against rising child obesity as the next intelligent superluminal particle. It is a problem, especially in developed countries like Canada. But this . . . this goes too far!

The Christmas season is now upon us, and it has got me thinking (yes! :o). Santa really isn't all that different from Cookie Monster; he's this…

I actually meant to post last night (or, I guess, very early this morning would be more correct) but never got around to it. :D

We've got a set of those plastic ice cube tray things at home. Now, like any good plastic ice cube tray, it has started to break. Portions of the plastic are tearing right where the cube-cup thing joins with the little skeleton along the top. For some reason, this means…