My avatar across the web: a photo of my feet in grey-white socks and brown sandals.

Ben Babcock

I read, write, code, and knit.

8 Articles from October 2006

  1. The addictive nature of online shopping

    It all started with The Little Book of Calm...

    I was putting together the semblance of a costume to wear tomorrow to school, since it's Halloween--aka an excuse to wear a housecoat to school. :D Anyway, I wanted to make a fake Little Book of Calm. It's an actual book, but in this case I'm referencing a British comedy series called Black Books. For some reason I looked it up on Chapters' website ... one thing led to another ... eventually it disappeared from my shopping bag but I found myself staring at other purchases.

    I think that after seeing The Little Book of Calm I decided I should go ahead and buy American Gods, by Neil Gaiman. Then it occurred to me that Chapters now sells DVDs, so I could search for Frank Herbert's Children of Dune (the Sci-Fi miniseries). I've wanted that for so long but couldn't find it in stores. Just my luck--it was there! :w00t: Then it occurred to me to search for the soundtrack to Love Actually. Into the shopping bag it goes.

    After this was all over, I looked at the shopping bag page and stared at it for…

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  2. Fall back (and laugh)

    For those who observe Daylight Saving Time, we changed back to standard time this morning. I was there when it happened (no secrets of the universe were revealed to me, however, so I want my money back).

    This morning at about 11:15 I was getting ready for work when the phone rings. Who is it? It's my coworker, Danielle, calling from work.

    Danielle: Ben ... you do know you're supposed to be working, right? Me: Yes... Danielle: Well, you're late. It's after 12. Me: Um ... no it's not. Danielle: All the clocks around here say 12:15. Me: You didn't set your clocks back? Danielle: (Calling off to our curator) Glenn did we set our clocks back? (To me) Oh my god... Me: I'll see you in about half an hour.

    Yes, suffice it to say, we aren't going to let her live that one down. :lol: She spent the rest of the time looking for the manual to reprogram the front desk phone's clock, though, which is good because it was always ten minutes slow and annoyed us to no end.

    Other than that work was pretty slow.

    Oh, last night the American Movie Classics channel was playing …

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  3. It's a miracle!

    Tonight we're having hot dogs. Now, it is common knowledge that hot dog buns and hot dog sausages come in disparate ratios--8 buns, 10 sausages--so as to create an inconvenient discrepancy for the cook. Life is great, is it not?

    Well, my dad bought two packages of hot dog sausages, each one containing six sausages. That makes a total of 12. Guess how many buns are in the package he bought? Twelve. :w00t:

    I think I'll email the Vatican and volunteer this as one of the miracles required to canonize John Paul II. :D

  4. Blaghishness

    Seems like an appropriate title.

    I'm sick, in the "runny nose, sore throat, unable to focus because of massive tissue usage" sort of way. :( It's the sort of sickness that lines the pockets of all those people with stock in Kleenex and Scotties and whoever else sends tissue my way. So, in light of this, and the fact that I worked four hours tonight and am really tired, this isn't going to be a long post.

    We finished doing our play in drama today. It went a lot better than yesterday; I wasn't nervous, and even though I was sick I don't think I did so bad. Kudos to everyone, especially to Cortney and Krista, who had to play two characters each.

    Mozilla released Firefox 2.0 today. :yes: It's nifty. Not enough visible changes to really throw me off, but just enough to keep it fresh (and this is going directly from 1.5.0.7 to 2.0; I don't download the betas and release candidates). There are a few changes that require some getting used to, but I like this new quick jumping menu thingy to the right of all the tabs; it's useful for those of us who have a…

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  5. Canada is apparently America's prison now

    It's true. A U.S. teacher convicted of sexual abuse has been exiled to Canada as his punishment (post your view here). He lives here already with his wife and kids, but now he just can't come back to the U.S. for three years. Oh my. Such a terrible punishment. We all know how harsh it is to live in Canada. :ermm:

    Since when did Canada become the America's prison? "Let's not waste the taxpayer's money on storing our criminals in little buildings in America. Let's just send them to Canada instead." Ouch. Firstly, what does that say about the U.S. courts' view of Canada? Apparently living here is equivocable to living in jail in America? Secondly, and I may be going out on a limb here, what with my radical Canadian liberal views on morality, but shouldn't a sex offender be, oh, I don't know, behind bars? What sort of message does this send to other sex offenders, or other criminals in general, in America? Be good and we might let you go to Canada?

    It's astounding at the audacity of politicians sometimes. Just when I think it can't get any more entertaining, it does.

  6. Down to Earth

    Wow. I feel really detached from everything today, but it hasn't only been today. The past few weeks have been really saturated--not necessarily busy, although some days were. But every day was saturated with activities. Now I feel like someone cut my tether and I'm lost in space.

    I'm attempting to muddle through this scholarship application for the Canadian Merit Award, and uh--yeah, it's really difficult. They expect me to be some sort of leader who contributes a lot to the community. I'm not going to delude myself: I haven't contributed much to the community, and I'm not much of a leader. It's these sorts of activities that really rub it in. It's like writing my resume all over again--in fact, it is precisely that. I'm trying to sell myself to them, and I hate it. I hate the entire process of trying to tell a bunch of people I don't know how great I am and why they should give me money. :arr:

    So I'm filling out all of this stuff, and I hit the essay questions. Ouch. As I'm trying to answer these questions, I more and more feel like I'm not a leader. Which is fine.…

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  7. Reasons why we like TV

    Interesting observation about the world of television--or rather, our view of the world behind television. Especially now that the Internet provides a 24/7 resource for us, we've become increasingly interested in the behind-the-scenes aspect of production. Who directed? Who was that guest star in season 6, episode 3? And when the producers of our favourite television show make a bad decision, or the writers introduce a clichéd plot twist, what do we do? We turn around and say, "Ugggh, I could do better than that!"

    Well, some of us probably could. Most of us probably couldn't. And the truth is, not many of us actually want to. That's the thing with TV, you see. The entire concept of fiction is centred around watching things happen to people without being able to do anything about it. This extends beyond fiction itself, however: most of the television industry happens without the public having direct control over it. We can't control who they'll hire as that new regular or who will write the season finale, and we wouldn't want to be in control. It's good to have things to complain about, after all.

    Boy, this sounded a lot more interesting in my head.…

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  8. Beginnings

    Last night was the Canadian premiere of Battlestar Galactica, season 3. It was fantastic as television episodes go, but only okay by BSG standards--it was no "Kobol's Last Gleaming". The main problem was not enough action, too much talk--they had to spend too much time explaining what had happened during the four months that elapsed over the summer. It was too rough of a transition into the BSG universe for me. That said, I did enjoy it and I'm sure that the season will pick up as we see more episodes.

    Air Farce is still no longer funny, but luckily both This Hour Has 22 Minutes and The Rick Mercer Report are carrying on the tradition of Canadian political satire. :) I've also been watching The Colbert Report lately. And tomorrow The Hour starts again, so I can actually catch up with the real news! :w00t: Doctor Who starts tomorrow as well, but unfortunately it conflicts with Stargate Atlantis. :'( Why?! Why must you do this to me?!

    Drama class is putting on a play; we're doing 7 Stories, by Morris Panych, and I got cast as the lead role of "the Man", who is a jumper.…

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