I posted a

brief review of "Night shift" on my website. I'm now reading "Odd girl out" Timothy Zahn's Frank Compton series. I like this series.

I'm considering letting my LJ account languish. It's not as robust as Blogger or even WordPress. Speaking of which I opened up a WordPress blog account earlier this morning. I like WordPress because it allows you to have categories. Even my website wont let me have that. Its getting harder and harder to keep my website going at $100/year. Hard to justify that when Blogger and WordPress are free. Yes WordPress is plagued with "Upgrades" same like LJ but even the basic WordPress addition is more robust then my website. Besides I've got everything more or less backed up with Blogger and everything is on my diary anyway. I'm almost 95% certain this is the last year for my website.

Tonight it's Montreal/Flyers,game #5. i think this is it for the Habs.Anyway, that's all for now.

I love the May long weekend

It’s been about a year now that I’ve signed onto Goodreads. It’s pretty good. I’ve got about 8 friends reading the same book or types of books I’m reading. I Haven’t figured out how to work the “follow” feature.

Looks like its trying to clear up out there. The Sun seems to be poking out through the cloud cover. It’s going to be a cooler weekend.

But at least I got some hockey to watch even though CBC has the game on at 1pm today. I’ll be able to catch some of it from 1-2pm and miss a good chunk of it on the way home but at least the Chicago/SJ game #4 is on Sunday. I’d love to see Chicago sweep SJ. First time Chicago in the finale since 1991.

According to my stat counter I’m getting about 20 hits/day this month. Since this isn’t content for the masses, that’s not to bad. I might be moving that Google ad somewhere else on the page and removing that Spot ad altogether since it’s not making me any money.

The contingency buses were running this morning. Oh, I had forgotten that the LRT would be shut down from Clairview to Corona. For the last few weeks ETS was adding new track from the tunnel entrance at 91st street. ETS was providing shuttle service from Clairview to downtown but at the Library the driver in broken English mentioned Churchill station. I ws on the street at this time. Something inside of me said I should have taken the day off. I walked over to Jasper Ave by about 99th street and decided I’d walk the rest of the way down to 106th and hang a left. I strolled in shortly before 10am and even got a preferred dialer 6 feet in front of the TV to watch the game at 1pm. Or what I could watch of the game. We did MF again (uggh) but I was getting sales. No credit cards. The second half as a bit easier. JT was there and we were tossing paper balls around having a bit of fun. I was contemplating working the afternoon extra hours but they canceled it. Just as well.

I walked with Will as far as Corona and I was going to wait for a #2 bus but a contingency bus arrived. I boarded that since the busses are more or less express. I listened to my Itouch along the way home. All the Lilac bushes our out in full bloom now. The driver wouldn’t let me out along the stop by my place so I had to go to Clairview. I got a regular bus and at the corner here I saw Anne across the street as I was waiting for the light to change. She didn’t see me.

I got inside taking the stairs as she was just coming off the elevator. I got the last period of the Flyers\Habs game. 2-0 Philadelphia. Yikes, the Habs are in trouble. They could be out by Monday night. Yet this playoff season they’ve been the comeback kids, coming back from Washington and then Pittsburgh. So never say never. At least I’ll be able to watch the Chicago/Sharks game at 1pm tomorrow. Crazy time of day for a hockey playoff game. I remember seeing the NY Islanders this day 30 years ago today take out the Flyers and it was over by 4pm.

Speaking of which it was 30 years ago today Richard, Ellen and I saw Star Wars “The Empire strikes back.” That was a special weekend. I’m glad I recorded that time in my original diary. I wish I was into photography and had a Polaroid back in the day. I would have asked a passerby; “Scuze me sir, would mind snapping a photo of us three?“ I’d have loved a photo of us 3 in the movie line up. Where have all the years gone?

That’s another reason why I’d like the Iphone because it can take video and photos. I’ve been hearing on places like YouTube and Cnet that an Itouch with a camera is coming this summer. I don’t believe it. I’m surprised Apple didn’t include a camera in the 3G version of the Itouch in the first place. Maybe they want to see what the success of the Ipad will be like. Anyway, that’s about all for now.

This week is just cruisng along

We’ve got a scorcher of a day going on today at +27 at this hour. We’re going for a +29 even though a +30 is being called for. That’s 86 F for my American readers. That’s hot. In the interior of BC like Hope etc, they usually get +40 in July and August.

I’m off tomorrow because Anne has relatives coming from Sydney NS and they want to take us out to dinner. Anne has the whole week off except for Saturday. In which case I’m watching game 4 of the NHL Conference finales and trying to get over this cold.

Tonight I’m in for 4 hours and we’re doing FFAB. Uggh. It’s not that bad though. Last night I got $200 and a $20 card. Nothing much to speak of but we don’t have taps until we do Cops sometime in June.

Today in SF Signal they announce a new SFF podcast: The Skiffy and Fanty show. All things SFF. I checked out there Home page to see if the show is available in Itunes. I’m also downloading the last issue of LibrVox. Also from SF Signal they announced a cool anthology: “Before they were giants.” It comes with 15 stories and Interviews from the authors and anecdotes of the stories they tried to publish and about writing in general. This actually is a cool idea. The anthology is edited by James L. Sutter. I’m going to ask for it next time I’m in Audrey’s.

I’m finishing off my first coffee here for the day and this entry is going to be published before I tackle my email. Anyway that’s all for now.

trip heading into work this afternoon. I bought a 6/49 ticket and had left over Pizza from last night for my lunch and a large diet Cola. Good stuff. The guys were doing FASB and the women were doing Rainbow. We had the game on and I watched a little of it following the scores. Jerry and I had a $2 bet. I took the Flyers. I won 4-3. Boston was up 3-0 and then the Flyers came back. They even had a game that was dissalowed. It took the officials a long time to decide if the Flyers go ahead goal was allowed but it wasn't. Philadelphia got the go ahead goal and the 8th place in the East (Flyers) make it in.

I headed up to my bank barely catching the bus. I did my banking and got all my vacation pay on my paycheck. Excellent. I headed home on the train without incident.

Anne was on the balcony planting flowers getting ready for summer and the cats out and about.

As for me, I'm going to do a bit of reading and have some supper and then try and go to bed. Anyway, that's about all for now.

I'm enjoying the weekend

I got up early having the usual 2 hours sleep overnight for a Friday night. Although I was feeling good heading into the office. I was actually feeling happy, knowing I had just the 4 hour shift ahead of me. It was partially overcast out there under somewhat sunny skies. I bought some Tim's on my way into the office.

Work went well. We had a light shift. Maybe 12 tap shooters and about 8 in the back. We covered 3 campaigns and I got 5 cards for $145 on card. Jerry brought in a couple of bags of empties for me. I was glad to get out of there with about the lowest total I had for the week.

I went to my bank got my $20 for my book for latter and the train home. It was mild going home. Not warm but mild. I got home as Anne was getting ready trying to clean up before she left for her job.

The only casualty for the day was not being able to go see RJS as Anne needed the bus pass to get to work. Anyway, that's about all for now.

I had a decent evening tonight on the job

and I'm grateful I'm able to just sit by myself on the train ride home.

We were watching the Chicago/Vancouver game. When I left the office late in the 2nd period it was Cicago 3/Vancouver 1. Yikes. Hawks lead 2-1 in the series.

I'm off work tomorrow night as I have an oral exam I'm giving one of our Lodge brothers tomorrow night. I know my material and I'm looking forward to it.

I think on Friday night I'm going to put my bid in for my vacation pay and this way I'll have it on my pay check next week for something special. Anyway, that's about all for now

We got snow in May

couple of days here. Yesterday afternoon I finished reading "Crossing the line." I enjoyed it and I'll return back to the Wes'har series later this year. I'll have a bit of a "review" of this book later tonight when I get home from work.

Right now I'm reading something a little out from my usual comofrt zone of SFF. "Night Shift" by Lilith Saintcrow is my first stab at reading urban fantasy and as I'm 20 pages into this thing, its not too bad. I like the writing and its in first person.

Over night we had a whack of snow on the ground. We're getting what Calgary had over the last weekend. I'll try and get a photo up. This early May snow storm is not uncommon this time of year around here, anything can happen.

Podcasts are great. I've got about half a dozen on my ITouch right now. I'm subscribing to "Starship Sofa," "Mysterious Universe," "Aware," "Logans run," "Slice of Sci-Fi," and of course "Puck daddy." I like Starship Sofa the best and ITunes lets me subscribe to these podcasts. I hook my ITouch to my PC and after a brief sync ITunes opens up and searches for new episodes and downloads them right to my ITouch, for free. I haven't figured out how to delete podcasts I no longer need to free up space on my ITouch. I've got about 6.5 Gb/7.1Gb of space left. I think when I get a second part time job I'm going to get the 64Gb ITouch.

This weekend Robert J. Sawyer is coming to Audrey's books for a reading and a signing. I'd like to get Robs's "Watch," but I'm so short of descretionary funds this year and I'm lucky if I can get 1 book/month. Anne wants me to put in the extra 2 hours for Saturday but even though I can't buy "Watch" at least I can to go to the reading after work. I'll try and do the Friday afternoon shift to make up for Saturday afternoon. It's the Lodge night thing that is getting in the way of things this month. .

Speaking of podcasting and the playoffs, Montreal won game #2 with the Pens, their series is tied at 1 as they go into the Bell center tonight. Go habs go! Last night Chicago split a home at home and they tie their series at 1. The Flyers and Boston are I think tied at 1. Red Wings/Sharks, Sharks are leading that series 2-0. If the Habs can take out the Pens -yeah, right- and SJ can take out Detroit, then we got new Stanley Cup champs this year. I'd love to see a Habs/Vancouver match up in the finale.

Tonight, I'm at the 5-9 for a snowy Spring evening but luckily for me we got monitors all over the place so I can get an occasional glimpse of the playoffs in between calls. I had a great site line to the monitor above Jerry's desk at the end of our tap dialers but for some reason as soon as Patrick left that dialer and I settled in the last 2 systems went and crashed on us. Something to do with the power grid. Why those two systems, I don't rightly know. Maybe its because we're using very old computers. Anyway, that's about all for now.