A Darkness Awoken

There is a dark secret within my family. The heartwood of our family tree is rotten and corrupted. I know this from personal experience, for I was the victim.  At the heart of my childhood torment was the high-inquisitor herself, the queen witch… my eldest sister.

She had at her fingertips a variety of spells and incantations to drive a young mind into the depths of rage and despair, but her most powerful dark ritual was repeated endlessly until the victim was rendered hopeless.

It goes like this

Little Tommy Tinker
Sat upon a clinker
He began to cry
Mama
Mama
What a poor boy am I

Today even writing that out still makes my teeth clench.


I had hoped that my branch would be pure, that being the victim of years of abuse would have somehow cleaned my genetic lines of whatever chromadial (yes I made up the word, but it does have a nice cadence don’t you think) mutation caused the torment gene to be awaken.

Alas I was a fool to hope for such miracles.  

Last night we were heading out to the local Dollar Store to pick up goodies for loot bags. I had loaded and buckled all three boys in the van and then ran back into the house to grab something.  I was a little longer than I had anticipated… but when I got back to the van Liam was in a state of inarticulate rage, tears rolling down his face. I honestly believe that had I been a few seconds later there would have been bloodshed. I knew all this without opening the van doors… I could hear his wails of anguish over the sound of the running engine, and behind the closed doors…. I could also hear the cause of his torment.

Two little voices singing in the night, two little voices whispering a dark incantation over and over, two little voices repeating

I love you
You love me
We’re a happy family.

Or in two-year old speak

Me love you
You love me
We a family.

After the tears had been wiped away and the rage settled I got the full story.  Apparently while waiting in the car Aiden had started to sing the tune…  Liam, (being a big boy and using his words) informed Aiden that the song was annoying him, at which point my youngest (or as I like to call him, the child incarnation of darkness) picked up on this and started belting it out in full voice.  Of course Aiden followed along.

Poor Liam, so much like his father.  Now that the younger boys have smelled weakness they have started to circle like a pack of rabid wolves.

And to you my eldest sister, feel pride and joy, for your genes have run true and the legacy lives on.

A night in Tameril

Blessed Oblivion how do I love thee.  

So the newest and greatest of the video games was release yesterday. I have been waiting for this for some time. Oblivion is the 4th game in the Elder Scrolls series. It is a very wide opened game, you can choose to follow the main story/quest line, but there is a multitude of exploring and secondary quest lines… become the head of the Mage’s Guild. Defeat a thieving ring etc, etc.  The world allows you to explore at your own pace. It also allows one of the most flexible class creation systems I have seen. Instead of your standard fighter, mage, thief (which you can choose if you want) you can combine different skill set together into you own class… Currently I am playing a Destruction (combat) based mage, with light armour, a sword and stealth abilities.

Since I have not purchased a new video game in about 18 months I treated myself to both the collector’s edition of the game and the strategy guide. I do not get grief from my wife about spending since I have been a good boy over the last couple of years, however, apparently buying a video game before your birthday is not a good idea. Seriously though, how could she expect me to wait another 3 weeks that would be torture.

I patiently waited for the early evening hours to pass. I was a good father and did not dwell on the package that was waiting for me in the den… I did not make excuses and spent a good quality evening with the boys, not rushing them to bed( as much as I wanted to go and play). I did sneak in to install the game earlier, but that was only 2 minutes of click, click and then walk away and let it install( I love games on DVD, no switching cds anymore) . As part of savoring the experience when I did make it downstairs I did not jump into the game, but made a pot of decaf and sat back and read the manual and the character creation section of the strategy guide.

Then when I had digested the information and the suspense was too much I fired up the game… I watched the opening credits, the introductory cinematic… the main game page and the menu started to load, the immersion was complete and then boom…

Crash to the desktop. The game exploded. Grrr no surprise as this tends to happen with all of the Elder Scrolls games…but it did piss me off.

Over the course of the night I had 2 more crashes, once during character creation and another around midnight, which I figure was a sign that I needed to go to bed….

While Wednesday is usually spousal snuggle time I think I may write a rain check to the wife and once more head into the realms of Oblivion.

One Step at a Time

Hi all

Sorry I know the wife and I have not been updating our blogs of late… Y has been working a ton of hours to make sure she hits some deliverables for some of the many contracts she has currently open… (Too many if you ask me, but the lure of money is so sweet…)

I on the other hand have been helping cover the slack of said wife, working on my own deliverables and dealing with sick kids.  They seemed to have picked up a bug on their last road trip.

The kids are now healthy, my current project is mostly on track and Y is surviving.

To be perfectly honest I have also been avoiding blogging as I have been feeling stretched very thin these days and I wanted to avoid public whining.

Life continues to move forward and you have 2 choices, continue to move with it or get left behind… I am still moving forward; even if it is a stumbling shamble with my head hanging low.

Pass the Lube

A post leached from here.

The original post is in italics, my comments in regualr type.  I know better than to read this crap because it makes me very cranky, raises my blood pressure and makes me want to lash out and break things.

And yes for the record I am bitter.

TORONTO (CP) - Rogers Communications (TSX:RCI.NV.B) expects more moderate growth in its Internet and digital cable TV subscriber base this year but will be able to push through price increases, a senior executive said Tuesday.
"The good news, I think, on both is that there is actually some pricing power," Rogers vice-president finance John Gossling said in a webcast speech at an investor conference in Palm Beach, Fla.
Because in Canada there is no competition, you can choose Rogers or Ma Bell and both of them will equally screw you.
"Unlike the competitive situation down here (in the U.S.), the prices on Internet and TV have been actually moving up quite nicely (for Rogers) in the last little while.
"We don't seem to have the competitive pressure to take these decent-margin products and move their prices down, so we're seeing good lift there," Gossling said.
It’s ok on one side we have no competition, and the other side we have the fully supported RIAA and Motion Picture Industry suing and battering anyone who dares to try to d/l anything of the internet, because god forbid, we have the option of paying for the content we want to watch, rather than the 80% of channels that are either advertising, foreign language or religious”
Rogers Communications, which owns Canada's largest cable company as well as its largest wireless carrier and one of its biggest media businesses, announced several price increases when it released its fourth-quarter and 2005 financial results on Feb. 9. Gossling said at the Bear, Stearns & Co. conference that, after a slow start with the launch of a Rogers Internet phone services in the Toronto area last summer, Rogers Cable is ready to make a big push in that business in 2006.
Yeah we lost money on trying to branch into another market where we can screw Canadians. So in turn we just turned around and increased cable costs to cover that. That way we get to screw people while we plan and implement more ways to screw people.

Rogers has a goal of having 200,000 to 250,000 additions to its home phone product in 2006, he said.
"We had some initial technical bugs we had to work out and didn't have a big push in the latter half of '05 but now we're ready to go hard on that product," Gossling said.
The cable business is having good revenue growth, driven by new products, but needs to work on its profitability, he said.
"We do expect relatively flat margins in the cable business going forward, but I think there's some potential leverage there in terms of pricing increases and driving the penetration of some of our new products," Gossling said.

Enlightening the world one post at a time.

My good friend and blogging matriach Dani often dabbles and deals in topics that are more geared towards the fairer sex.  In an act of kindness she will mention such at the top of her blog post giving the male readers an opportunity to move on to more neutral topics if they so please.

By nature I am a curious beast so it is rare indeed when I will not take the time to peruse her rumblings in an attempt to increase my understanding of our female friends.  There have been multiple posts in her blog over the last year(s?) regarding bras.

Apparently the purchase of, fitting of and general day-to-day wearing of bras is a large issue amongst our xx chromosome friends.  While I have made an effort to understand the issue, I believe it truly requires walking a mile in her shoes, or in this case her support garments. No I am not coming out of the closet as a transvestite, though, if someone ever really markets a manssiere I may be all over that.

It occurred to me at one point that perhaps the problem is that men are more of a visual beast and that is why I am having some issues understanding the issue at hand.  So with a little google-fu and some luck I went searching for a visual aid.  I figured this was a better idea than suggesting to Dani that pictures may aid her posts.  

My google-fu was strong and I found the perfect link… so I sent off an email to her.

I know from time to time you have tried to detail the difficulties that women of your "stature" face when purchasing a bra, leaning over a cold desk, or doing athletics.
I know you have warned the poorer sex away from your blog when those types of discussions are forthcoming.
To be honest I have always felt that perhaps you have taken the wrong approach. Instead of warning the men away perhaps you need to illustrate the problems in a manner in which they can comprehend.
While not a psychologist on any level I have always felt that men are a visual creature, and perhaps with the correct multimedia aids you can get your message across.
Since I am such a great friend and admirer of your blog I give you this gift as a method of illustrating your issues.
Always here to help.

Much to my dismay my idea was not received with the enthusiasm I expected.

Um, no thank you.  That was disturbing. Post it yourself, blog boy!  After that German sex-ed thing, this is mild...

Sound advice if I have ever heard any.  So here you go. But before you begin I should warn you that it is not pornographic and is a tool used by a commercial website that sells sports bras. That being said it does feature CGI rendered boobies and may be NSFW.
http://www.shockabsorber.co.uk/bounceometer/shock.html