Okay .. sit down drink a "POP" (aka Beer) and watch this... Don Cherry with Rick Mercer .. pure Canadian humour.

I don't want to get political, but we are about to have a election here in Canada. The conservatives are probably going to stay in power and Harper seems to be trying to make us into "Little America". The video above is a great response to his cuts in Cultural spending. Hopefully we can get the NDP and Liberals to form a coalition government to defeat Harper. (Do you think they are that smart?)

I support the funding of Canadian arts. Do you?

DEAD AT 79

cancer

What happened on Monday May 26th?

White Hyacinth

I'm still alive but I'm over here ... Oreo Cookie Blues .... see ya

What happened on Thursday April 3rd?

Aretha Franklin is canceled. Wife and I had tickets to go see her at Rama tonight. We get a call last night, letting us know that the "star" has canceled the show for personal reasons, but we will be reimbursed the purchase price of the tickets.

One of the women I worked with cracked a joke that there "Won't be any R-E-S-P-E-C-T for Aretha tonight"

Arrgh! and I was really looking forward to going.

What happened on Monday March 24th?

Eldest turns 16 today, Wow! Hard to believe he is 16, I remember his birth like yesterday. He is a great kid, a bit touchy and can feel slighted very easily, but I think he is going to turn out to be a really great warm hearted guy. He is almost as tall as me now, long shaggy hair (we are forever getting notes telling us to have his hair cut for school), two earrings now (the third hole that he did himself tore apart!) and is just nice to be around. So happy 16th birthday Eldest, we may not always get along but I'm glad I'm your Dad.

I took him to see the Foo Fighters on Saturday, great concert .. read the reviews. I took a bunch of pictures with my cell phone. Not great but I will try to post some of them in the next few days.

What happened on Wednesday March 19th?

Today sucks, Wife told me this morning that a friends son was shot and killed last night. This is hard to process, he was 35, I've known him since he was 15. We only see him once a year but we are are very close to his father and step-mother. This type of crap has to end.

I also just found out that Arthur C. Clarke passed away last night. There is to much death right now.

Hopefully with spring better things will begin.

ON HOLIDAY, SEE YOU IN A WEEK!

While I'm gone enjoy the music, The Diodes - Red Rubber Ball -:> (download mp3)

What happened on Monday March 3rd?

Damn... this sucks .. you probably already heard... Jeff Healy .. a awesome jazz/blues/rock guitarist has passed away. Talk about someone who died before his time.

Howlin' Wolf - Wang Dang Doodle -> (download mp3)

Lonnie Mack with Stevie Ray Vaughn -> Oreo Cookie Blues (Download mp3)

Great news for me I got my Numark TT USB Turntable last night. Once we get back from vacation, I'm going to start digitizing albums.

What happened on Monday February 18th?

Okay here I am Forty-five years old and happy (drugged but happy .. joking). Yesterday was my birthday, and I really don't feel a day over twenty-five.

Aren't we supposed to feel older and more mature as we grow up? I always thought I would, but every day I am surprised that I have 3 kids between 15 and 8. That I've been married to the same beautiful woman for 20 years. That I have been working for almost twenty three years (spread that over about 7 companies). Here I am supposedly getting old and I just don't feel that way. (hey the other night at TaiKwonDo I was doing ninja rolls and summersaults .. I paid for it the next day). So I guess what I saying is all that myth about adults getting older and wiser is just crap (shhh!!! don't let the secret out)

Here it is the first official Family Day in Ontario and I am at work. Or at least I am supposed to be working. What are you doing?

Here is a couple of original tracks and cover versions for you to listen to. Which version do you like better?

John Lee Hooker - Boom Boom Boom (download .mp3)
The Animals - Boom Boom Boom(live)(download .mp3)
Howlin' Wolf - Killing Floor (download .mp3)
Jimi Hendrix - Killing Floor(live Monterey Pop)(download .mp3)

If you like the music go out and buy some.

I just finished reading White Night by Jim Butcher. If you want a great read with a lot of adventure, humour and just all around fun, pick up any of Jim's Dresden file books. Now I read a fair bit, but lately I've been looking into what and how I read. School books and Non Fiction, I can't get into, in fact I can't pay attention to a single page long enough to get any information out of it. (though for some reason I can read biographies) I read what I call movie books. If I can get into a book deep enough I begin to see the action and characters as if they are on a screen and I'm watching a movie.
Anyway .. take some time a pick up a Dresden book, if you have read any before I would suggest #1 "Storm Front"

What happened on Monday February 11th?

I haven't made a personal post in a fair while (I probably have lost most of my regular friends), mainly because I'm not willing to admit things to myself. Kind of a bold statement don't ya think!

What's going on is I have been suffering from depression for about the last 10 months or so. I hadn't done anything about it until recently because I felt I was being a wimp and just causing myself to be down. Due to how I've been handling the depression I've been flying off the handle quickly, yelling a lot, this has made me a real asshole to my family and just a jerk to live with. I finally felt I had to do something about it when I was getting suicidal thoughts. Not that I would ever do it, just that I would think how much better Wife and kids would be without me.

I went to the doctor a few weeks ago, he has put me on a antidepressant called Cipralex. I find the affects to be interesting. My emotions/reactions aren't as explosive .. I'm thinking before I get upset or worked up and I can make a more intelligent decision about what my reaction needs to be. For the most part it's kind of nice. There are down side's to this, I get a slight nausea feeling an hour or two after I take the pill. Late in the day around two or three pm I get incredibly tired and this may sound weird but I have to remind myself which part of my progressive lenses that I need to look out of. I've also come to realize that I handle my emotions differently then people around me.

We have been talking to a family councillor the last few months, on how to handle raising a teenager with ADD-I. Part of is that I have come to realise that I am also ADD (I have to get myself tested, but like I said other things have to come first -- BILLS!!!), and I don't know how to explain this but I get a rush from extreme emotions. These pills make me feel mostly dead emotionally (though it has been explained to me that I am feeling and thinking about things the way everyone else does - damn you guys are emotionally dead), things that would normally set me off in a emotional high I am now thinking about and realise that I don't have to overreact, where before I would have gone through the roof. I was or better put I do enjoy the extreme rush of the emotional reaction. Though I now realize that this is not good for me, my family and my married life.

I have had a couple of anxiety attacks since starting to take the pills, mainly while I'm out shopping with Wife, I think these originate when I'm conflicting between what she wants me to do and the fact that it goes against what I want. My only problem is that I get testy and snappy when this happens and I get upset at her. I don't want to do this, so I have to work on this. I know that I will need to talk to someone about this, I have plans to it's just right now I have to many other things that I need to get done.

Things are going well for Eldest, he is on a new ADD med and is succeeding at school. In fact today we have been informed that in two of the classes that he has been struggling in, he was able to get a 85% in the last two tests as opposed to 45% to 55% that he was getting. He is happy and says he likes the difference between (as he says) the focused world and the unfocused world.

Middle is being a thirteen year old, the attitude is incredible, but for the most part she is a wonderful human being who puts up with being a middle child trapped between a brother who is getting a ton of attention and a little sister who demands attention. Life can be unfair, but we are trying to be fair with her. She hates being a goalie, but she plays so well, its a shame but I think this year will be her last year in hockey.

Youngest is youngest, demanding attention, seeking confirmation that she is the centre of attention. She wants to be a famous singer when she grows up, but just try to get her to practice.

Well that is it from me, I've come clean with myself and now back to music and pictures of plants.

Enjoy Muddy Waters,download
Mannish Boy.mp3

What happened on Friday February 1st?

17 days till I'm half way to 90, 14 days to the day of Love. Not a lot to post about, or anything that I'm willing to write about for now. Enjoy the music

From Rent, download the mp3 of " Seasons of Love" {Buy}

What happened on Friday January 25th?

Where's the mouse, Rascal likes to attack the curser.

Feast One Hundred & Seventy Seven , for Friday, January 25th, 2008

Appetizer
How many times per day do you usually laugh?
Not sure right now, I guess a couple of times. I know today I've laughed at least 3 times so far. Maybe soon I will laugh more.

Soup
What do your sunglasses look like?
They are clipons that go onto my Progressive lenses, yea I'm getting old!

Salad
You win a free trip to anywhere on your continent, but you have to travel by train. Where do you go?
I want to go fishing on the very tip of the Baja Peninsula at Cabo San Lucas . I don't know if you can get there by train but I sure hope you can.

Main Course
Name one thing you consider a great quality about living in your town/city.
The people for the most part are still nice to each other.

Dessert
If the sky could be another color, what color do you think would look best?
A shade of pale green would be nice.

From Boing Boing Jan 21/08

Canadian Privacy Commissioner rejects DRM: don't give spyware legal protection!

Posted by Cory Doctorow, January 20, 2008 10:04 PM permalink

Jennifer Stoddart, the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, has published an open letter to Industry Minister Jim Prentice, who has been working behind the scenes to resurrect his disaster of a copyright bill, which will import the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act to Canada. The DMCA has been a total failure, resulting in nearly 30,000 lawsuits against music fans, massive anti-competitive effects, and despite all that, no discernable decrease in unauthorised copying.
At issue in Stoddart's letter is the idea of protecting "Digital Rights Management" anti-copying and use-control systems in law. These systems frequently spy on users and then "phone home" with detailed information about your activities. The Privacy Commissioner is understandably alarmed at the prospect of changing Canadian law to make it illegal to tamper with this spyware:
If DRM technologies only controlled copying and use of content, our Office would have few concerns. However, DRM technologies can also collect detailed personal information from users, who often do no more than access the content on a computer. This information is transmitted back to the copyright owner or content provider, without the consent or knowledge of the user. Although the means exist to circumvent these technologies and thus prevent the collection of this information, previous proposals to amend the Copyright Act contained anti-circumvention provisions.
Technologies that report back to a company about the use of a product reveal a great deal about an individual’s tastes and preferences. Indeed, such information can be extremely personal. Technologies that automatically collect personal information about individuals without their knowledge or consent violate the fair information principles that are central to PIPEDA and most other privacy legislation. That this occurs when individuals are engaged in a private activity in their homes or other places where they have a high expectation of privacy exacerbates the intrusiveness of the collection.

Link (via Ars Technica)

What happened on Tuesday January 1st?

This is my neighbours house, they do it to raise money for sick kids hospital, can you believe we even have tour buses come to our street!

Welcome to 2008, Happy New Year ... may it be the best for all of you and your loved ones. Keep well in the coming year and I wish you all that you can handle. Stay well!!
Hore Frost, on Boxing Day 2007 (that Dec 26th to you guys south of the border)