while walking thru walmart today, i noticed ash-trays for sale, and i wondered - if pot was legal here, or maybe "when" its legal here, will they sell cheap bongs and grinders from china and stuff? probably. i mean, they used to sell opium in the sears catalogue.

buddy came around with his elise today - nice :)
phx says she saw ppl rubber-necking as they passed. he asked me if i wanted to take it for a drive, but somehow i didnt feel like it was the right time or something, so i turned the offer down. hope it comes around again - preferably when "the time is right" :)

buddy bought a lotus elise today. just called to yell "yeeeee-haaaaaa!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
cool :)
god speed montoyo! :D

Created by OnePlusYou

another one gone...

Just sold my Talon. always feels weird when they take away your car. but it had to go. it was getting on in years, and more and more things started getting buggered up in it. i was getting into deeper and deeper mechanics territory, and while every time it was a learning experience, every time was also a bit of an ordeal - not knowing, needing to read up and look at websites and forums, buying parts, buying tools i didnt know existed, and it always took sooooo looooooong. these 2 guys put a new arm in right there on the spot in like 15 minutes. it took me hours and hours to get all the shit off. mind you, it always seems harder to take shit apart in a car - shit is seized up, cant see a screw or bolt thats still holding it all together...
that was the first "good" car i bought with my own money. actually, it was the first one i bought with my own money, period. the previous one was bought with student loan money.
this car went with me to San Francisco, then almost to LA, then to Las Vegas, Hoover Dam, back home, then to Toronto... and then back again :) well, there were little excursions to Niagara Falls, Windsor, Detroit. got quite a few speeding tickets with it, including one that might still make me wanted in California :)
when i bought it in 2001, it had about 60K on it. 7 years later - it has 235K

fastest i've ever gone in it was 215 kms/hr (133 mi/hr for you 'mericans) - 215 was also its nominal horsepower.

...

i wrote the above like a month or 2 ago, then just saved it - to be edited and added to later. well, that never happened, and i'm not sure what i was thinking of adding to it, so here it goes.

Łukasz

you were born on january 27 - a month premature. i knew that a month early, especially these days, is not bad at all, but watching you suffer like that right from the get-go felt really shitty. they plopped you down on the scale, all naked and cold and screaming, then put you on some examining table, squirting antibiotic cream in between your puffy eyelids, repeatedly vaccuuming your nose, mouth, throat and lungs with this tube, to clear out as much fluid as possible, injecting you with all kinds of shit to help with this and that, hooking up the intravenous, cutting your heel and squeezing and squeezing and squeezing to get way too much of your very thick blood for tests. other babies get to rest a lot with their moms after they're born. not you, little guy. your mom was in the recovery room, drugged and vomiting and being pumped with other drugs that were supposed to help but only exacerbated it. finally they ran out of things to inject her with, and she stabilized.
what did it do to you, baby - being born to pain for hours, and then subsistence for weeks - almost no comfort of human contact, just machines: checking your heart-beat, your breathing, your blood oxygen saturation, keeping an elevated air pressure to your nose with extra blows of air when you're supposed to be breathing, machines dosing intravenous fluid with an added fat solution and electrolytes, and a tube taped to your little chin and going down into your tummy to make sure air bubbles come out easily. and a UV lamp on for 2 days straight to help get rid of your jaundice. people would come around every now and then, to stick an IV in a different hand, foot, thigh, both sides of your head, and all you got to show for it is a crappy mohawk and tracks and bruises everywhere.
the nurses said that you were doing pretty good for a premie, but there wasnt much to be rejoicing about. i felt fucked up, and all i did was look.
but sounds like you've been doing better and better - too bad we havent even been able to visit with you more often, but we've been sick, and we dont want to risk getting you sick. wonder if the nurses think we're shitty parents. fuck'em if they do - i think this is unfortunately the best course of action. maybe they know and understand. here at home we've all been going through a stomach flu, a cold, boogie's teething, and trying to let mommy heal from the c-section. your babcia has been helping with your sister, so that's been great. times like this you feel the value of being part of a community, a family, having someone to help you when you need it - its survival of the group, not survival of the fittest.

i was on some web page when i noticed a link that said something like "video of heath ledger snorting coke". huh??? they're actually showing this?? after clicking on the link, i found myself on one of those celebrity-following websites, and an article talking ABOUT the video having been bought, but not released, yadda, yadda... so, disillusionedly reading down the short blurb i happened upon this line:
"Referring to his love of cannabis - an illegal drug often smoked in cigarette form - Heath added: "I used to smoke five joints a day.""

umm, where do you begin....
do most people not know what cannabis is? certainly people who read about these celebrity "indiscretions". though, granted, people who follow the lives of celebrities are much more likely to learn a thing or 2 about coke than pot. but calling pot "an illegal drug often smoked in cigarette form"? i guess it sounds more sensationalistic than an "illegal plant". and describing it as such might focus undue attention on the ludicrousness of the concept of an illegal plant.
smoking 5 jays a day may be a bit much. the guy probably had either problems that he should have been dealing with, or too much time on his hands and nothing to do with it. still, i would say let him do whatever he wants if it doesnt hurt anybody. unless it does, then thats a different story.
i can see how idiots might right away point and say"gateway drug!" i would love to pound their stupid heads with the bottles of booze he'd drunk before he ever touched a joint. i'm such an angry little boy :)
lots of people go thru life snorting coke and having jobs, raising families, and not becoming junkies. lots of people go thru life like everybody else, while smoking pot and not touching other illegal substances. lots never touch anything illegal, and just booze it up. some never even drink. "drugs" are not as straightforward as misinformed or misinforming loudmouths would have us believe. we need truth and education - not sensationalism.

here's a fucking positive post of the day - i fucking hate how life keeps throwing me curve-balls, shit i'm not ready to deal with, dont know how to deal with, dont wanna deal with. life is a story of just barely good enough to procreate the species, processes out of control, but maybe just good enough for the moment. maybe i was right in believing once that bringing a child into this world is cruel - if i'm suffering thru it, then why the fuck bring another being into it too? its the fucking blind, mechanistic instincts - liking sex, finding babies cute, caring for those close to you. shit like that.
i find life to be a nearly constant hassle. maybe i shouldnt have procreated - then i wouldnt have passed-on the fucked-up genes that make me feel this way. people for whom life is great should procreate - chances are their offspring will perceive life in a similar way.
i dont want fucking hassles, i just want to be happy.

got phx' car maintenance taken care of = changed rear brake pads and rotors, changed the oil and filter, and even topped up the windshield wiper fluid = purdy sweet :)

phew - almost forgot to make my positive entry of the day - well, it is the next day but i havent gone to sleep yet, so that should be ok.
there's several i can think of - the morning started with remembering that its friday - so that was cool - and i'd slept-in like a mofo - so that was cool too. listening to the dopecast - sans dope - that was chill. bla bla, work crap - then sampling some "juicy fruit" was cool, brought back a taste i havent had in years. realizing that a lot of work stuff was done already was cool.
getting everything together to work on the jetta was a relief in itself - before even starting any work. hearing that a friend is pursuing happiness over the mammon was cool, even if it does mean that i wont be really working for him for any length of time like we thought - but it might not even turn out that way. and now the crimpins tree is sitting neatly in 4 boxes, ready to be shipped off to my 'rents' garage - so thats a win. ok - my's ready to hit the hays :)

the time leading up to the holidays was dreadful, the holidays themselves werent much better, and i'm back to the grind. hitting another low point on new year's day, i was thinking about a fellow blogger's advice to just force myself into a positive mindset, think happy thoughts, *make* it happen. but i just couldnt/wouldnt - didnt happen, i wondered if i was simply more comfortable because more familiar with the depressed metal state or something. but i'm not really depressed most of the time, i dont think... either way, fast-forward to to my shower today, and i suddenly felt that i wasnt really down, and felt almost... positive or something. and then i remembered trying to feel happier when i wasnt, and thought that its so much easier to do when ur not totally down. and then i remembered my ex's "therapy" as advised by her doctor once - put little red stickers at various places around the house and places you look, and every time you see one of those - think a happy thought - a way to get the mind in the habit of thinking and feeling happy. so i decided to finally try it too - i put one little penguin sticker on the coffee maker, and one above the comp screen - that way my earliest moments of the day should get the positive vibe going. and i thought to make a new years' resolution - even though a few days late - i'm going to try to post at least one positive thought on the blog every day.
so - ...
man, my happiness kinda fizzled there. think happy, or positive. its friday tomorrow! thats kinda good. hmm.
this is depressing - i get brought down so easily. i get to smoke up and listen to the dopecast's 100th episode tomorrow morning..? well, that, the fact that its friday, and the fact i made this resolution should count for something. we'll see tomorrow.

huge bust in my city - 100 perps arrested, literally tonnes of drugs and drug-making materials and $2 million seized, along with ... 17 guns - this must be canada :D
but... another bust will not solve anything. a void was created in the supply side of the drug market, and it will be quickly and eagerly filled. prohibition didn't work with alcohol, neither will it work with drugs of any sort. the only viable course of action i see is the legalization and government regulation of all products people want to buy - including drugs. the population needs to be educated and reminded of the effects of all consumer products, whether they cause cancer, cirrhosis of the liver, asthma, or what have you. the government should regulate drugs like they do all legal drugs, including alcohol and tobacco, and in addition taxed accordingly to offset their cost to society - like projected costs to the healthcare system, and services that help cope with addiction (already in place in the gambling industry.)
its not the addicts who are the real victims here, either - nobody forced them to get hooked on anything - they're just a product of bad circumstances, lousy character and "unfortunate" genetic makeup. the real victims are their families, friends and every one of us who's ever had to suffer our cars and homes being broken into, our things and money stolen, all who've ever been assaulted for money, and every one of us who gets constantly harassed for "spare change".
i dont pity the bums - i fucking hate them. they're vermin. a lot of the dealers are scumbags too - thats why regulation is needed - the substances would be pure, the quality would be standardized, the prices of drugs lower, and... no more shady dealers.

i've been promissing myself that i'd put up a post about this or that for a while now - so i'll do it now - just before going to bed. btw - holly shizznit - its almost a quarter to 1 am!!!

i just farted a midget fart, and after i "cought wind" of it, i said something like "man, i need a filter". Phx didnt hear what i'd said, so i said louder "i dont think i'd pass aircare!" she giggled :)

and i just got an emergency page - some dude freaked out b/c their condo alarm was going off in the middle of the night, and he didnt know how to turn it off. they'd managed to chop the siren wires before i called them back, though. so i encouraged him to chop some more, since he sounded concerned that it might start going off again :)
a few nights ago the pager went off and i actually had to go downtown at 2 am because no card-readers were working at one of the highrises at this one project. people werent able to get into their building and up to their floor, unless the concierge was escorting them with his keys. of course, it turned out to be a loose wire - how cliche. but i'm supposed to get $300 for emergency service, so hopefully i actually get to see this money. if not, i'm throwing the fucken pager away - the boss can go look for it.

and in BIG NEWS - WE'RE GONNA HAVE A BABY BOY!!! :D
so thats gonna be cool - have one of each. so much for my aunt's prediction that i'll have two girls and my brother just one boy.

still havent fixed my car - but i'm working like crazy now, so i dont have the time. i dont think i've posted about the car, but my wheel basically fell off - good thing i was basically standing still. one of the ball joints tore apart. it turns out that crappy ball joints caused a recall in those cars. i believe the dealer said they checked out every recall and performed it on this car, but maybe i should check on that particular one - would they fix the car for free? i guess its worth checking. if i ever get any time from work. i've got 3 projects, and all of a sudden i find out that all 3 of them will need to be completed by the end of november. that's not looking very promising now, maybe mid-december - certainly before christmas, at least i hope so. i knew one of them was happening this year. i thought another son after it, but the 3rd one i was counting on not finishing until spring or summer. so i asked and asked for more guys, and the bosses kept brushing me off, until i told my boss that occupancy is in a month and we got fuck-all done for access control runs. that finally seems to have gotten through to him, because i started getting more and more guys. all of a sudden i had to switch from physically working to just running around, trying to plan and make sure that i know what needs to be done, what can be done, how many guys i'll need for that, find something else to do for the rest of them, make sure we have enough materials and tools - which we never do, and just do a lot of babysitting and hand-holding, because the morons i keep getting just hardly know how to do anything. but if i plans things well enough, at least something will get done. so thats a different kinda stress. now i'm there when they're all there, and i'm there after they've gone, to clean up, organise, and try to plan what can be done soon. keeping the other 2 sites in mind and trying to prioritise between all. i never got any training on managing anything, so its pretty hard. i guess i'm learning, but i hate this sink-or-swim shit. and since i'm on salary, all i can do is to hope that all this overtime will convert into time off for christmas - but i'm kinda skeptical that the projects will be done in time. i just want it to be over. and then every now and then the boss or the receptioninst, having some stupid little service or project for someone to do ask "Tom, how busy are you?" to which i answer "extremely". but there's still some things that no one else can really do very well, like service at a project that no one else has ever been to but me and 2 guys who no longer work for the company. i dont know who's gonna be servicing that when i quit. maybe they could sub it out to me - i'd get a bigger cut of the service monies, i'd say a bit over half would be good.

anywho - there's work to do and phx is having a tough time being 6 months pregnant, so i better quit fucking around on the comp and go help. i'll probably write again when the kids go to school :D

i've just seen 2 friends who have got chem related bachelor degrees, and one of them is working as a driving test guy, while the other is working at his dad's machine shop. BUT: the road test guy has a higher wage than me - he just started, i've been doing my thing for 7 years, and have the responsibility of carrying through the low-voltage installation on 3 construction sites, with 6 guys under me (though that number will dwindle to probably 2 or 3 once these projects come to a close). the other guy is basically his own boss since his dad doesnt seem to get involved too much with the shop, and buddy just pays himself, pretty much. he doesnt wanna go to work for somebody else anymore. i need to start working for myself. but i dont wanna work hard - let other people do that. i need to seriously startr pursuing my interests with the goal of probably eventually picking out one of them to pursue all the way - it will be one that will guarantee great income, one i will be good at, and one i will like a lot. for a while i've been thinking about translation - i've sorta gotten started on that already - just gotta keep it going. another one would be automation/robotics. then there was the t-shirt/clothing idea. i need to pursue these in parallel to hash out which one will be best. if i cant pursue them all at the same time, i'll have to time-share them - a week or 2 each, in constant rotation.
another friend of mine is working sorta part-time for a great company - he's getting an engineering degree, and when he's got the time, he lets them know and they throw some work his way if they go any. i'm pretty sure they're paying him $40/hr as a contractor or consultant, since he's not actually able to work for them full time at the moment. $40/hr is almost twice what i make. yet there's this girl i know who works for a cancer research institute for something like $8.50/hr - but she's a total humanitarian, so i guess her personal income at the moment is not her greatest priority right now - she's in it for the long run, wants to help, and hopes she'll start getting paid well eventually.

howcome i seem to mostly post when i'm tired and/or depressed and/or bitching.
i guess its a rhetorical question, since there's no question mark at the end.
and i just went to dictionary.com and found out that rhetoric doesnt really mean what i thought it meant. i thought it meant speach/speaking, probably public, "spieling". oh well.

been listening to the last harry potter on my mp3 player - havent caught up to the point i've read to, and its pissing me off.
i called around to see who would like to chill out with me and phx and boogie this evening - one couple showed up.
it sucks that i used to be pretty close with my buddy voider, but now it takes like 2 hours just to melt the ice and start having a nice flow of fun. and by then his wife gets tired of not getting whats going on and they go home.
life sucks for quite a few people, it seems - did things ever use to be different? or more precisely - better?
i cant imagine a way that i could direct my life to be truly happy - there always seem to be drawbacks. maybe i'm aiming too high.
i'm really tired, but i wanted to do something enjoyable before succumbing to sleep.
and last but not least - everything sucks, and i want a device installed in my brain that would make me happy and glad all the time.
bla bla bla...

fully back

so i'm fully back - work is still crazy, rains like a motherfucker, i'm depressed and tired and wishing for a toke while getting nothing done, and phx works her ass off and finally gets depressed too - life officially sucks again - fucking wonderful. its just all bullshit - happiness is some abstract concept, almost within arms reach when fucked up on something, anything. fuck everything.

time flies

wow - so much has happened since my last post...
...we started getting hints that phx might be pregnant again, we went to toronto to visit phx' family, then we went to niagara falls and got thoroughly soaked by mischievous winds, flew to germany, got one of our bags lost by an arrogant LTU check-in lady, visited phx' family in germany, went to the town where they make jagermeister - very cool town, went to poland for 3 weddings, got sick, got followed by rain everywhere we went, spazzed out time and again at the horrible roads and drivers in poland, and the lack of clothes dryers, decided that the european union has no idea what they're getting themselves into accepting poland into their ranks, because poland is evidently a 3rd world country, trying to get into the 2nd world. we ended up spending more time on the road than sightseeing, and forget about relaxing. then we drove back to berlin, flew to dusseldorf, and got separated by LTU which wouldnt allow me to fly back to canada because they didnt think my canadian citizenship card was proof enough that i'd be allowed back into canada. their single nice employee helped me get in touch with the canadian consulate, and i got an emergency passport about 3 hours after phx and boogie flew off to canada. i got a cheap hotel, a delish doner kebab, check out enchanting dusseldorf by night, and flew off back home next day. an eternity later i was greeted by the very pretty vancouver airport, and a retardedly long wait to get past the customs booths, followed by a nearly as retarded wait at immigration, where nothing was moving, where i was just supposed to drop off my stupid emergency passport, followed by another retarded wait to get out of the carousel area - the vancouver airport may look pretty, but has an unworkeable system of getting travelers through. next time i may fly to seattle. i've come to hate travelling though.
finally past all the waiting, i was greeted by phx and boogie with a flower - i was very glad to see them :)
in a couple of days we went to a carepoint walk-in clinic - this chain seems to hire mostly 'doctors' who are unprofessional enough to have their own successful practice, where one of their 'dudes' confirmed that phx is pregnant, and proceeded to prescribe her antibiotics which she'd just told him she allergic to.
i went back to work, which is still a clusterfuck, and my right front tire fell off - i'll be retiring my car, i think. then we went to visit phx' parents, enjoyed some great mother-in-law cooking, and saw the abomination that is 'stomp the yard' or whatever - which i give a rating of 5 beers to get through. it was like the fast and the furious of dancing, but worse.
found out dopefiend is in vancouver, visiting uncle weed, and hope they have some sort of meet-up with the fans before dopefiend goes back to london.

and i'm late for work again.

Halina 9000

got an e-mail forward from my cousin in spain about how ikea's got this automated assistant on their website - anna - which you can ask ikea-related questions in natural language. the email suggested to ask her some non-ikea-related questions though, and see what she says. i gotta say - the creators did a good job! :D to find out who the creators are, just ask anna "who's your daddy?"
i finally found out where the name "ikea" came from. but when asked if she's just a big database of answers she said she'd rather not discuss this delicate topic right now. of course she doesnt always get the question right, but her answers are often ingenious, despite of, or because of constraining directives like political correctness and insisting on talking about ikea-related stuff. hehe, i practically got bitched out after asking the polish anna some downright lewd questions. she told me that if i wanna talk about stuff like that, i'm in the wrong place. then she suggested to call one of those phone lines where someone would be more than happy to continue talking with me on that subject. and another time she almost put me to shame by reprimanding me about using highly inappropriate language in front of a lady. totally sweet :)
anna didnt know what a Turing test was, but i did find out from her that her creators review difficult questions from people, so i took the opportunity to congratulate these "creators" on a job well done. i wonder how long its gonna take before too many people muck around with anna before ikea pulls her plug as a waste of resources. but if they dont - could she ironically become the first AI, if she runs for long enough..?

heroes

we dont have cable - or time - so i'm not up to speed with whats happening on tv these days. i've been hearing about this "heroes series", just that its pretty cool, and i've had the first 12 episodes for a while. phx and boogie just went to k-town, so i thought i'd take a look at some of the footage thats been sitting around, accumulating dust.
i gotta say - heroes is a whole other level of primetime tv. it just keeps undulating, the separate story lines are starting to coalesce, a new reality is starting to emerge, solidify, its rules are becoming more pronounced and coherent. and is that a shmoozy attempt to ensnare geekdom - probably the core target audience for the show in the first place, anyways - into an awed army of loyal fandom? or is it an originally unintended, but brilliant money-maker of a side effect?
although sometimes it does seem to be moving a bit too sluggishly. i mean, a bit of suspense is alright, but come on.
awrite - back to it :)

spring is here, and summer is surely just around the corner :)
we've been having some truly summery days recently, and i'm totally hyped about the prospect of going for little picnics with Phx and Boogie on the various beaches around town, and even in the park across the street :D
i love it when i get up in the morning and already the sunshine is trying to burst in through the blinds :)