E.Jim Shannon

Yeesh, Thursday

2008-06-06T02:33:00.002-06:00

Sleep didn’t come very well for me Wednesday night/Thursday morning and I ended sleeping late. We Didn’t get our pay cheque’s last night, some difficulty with the courier but we are assured they will be here today.

So because my team won the Stanley Cup game the other day, I won the pool. Or my share of it: $35. I got $10 out of that today from JT.

I got a call from Audrey’s books saying 3 of my “Mission Earth” books came in. Anne says I can have the pool money and my bonuses.

Police Air 1 is out there trying to catch the bad guys. I can hear the chopper doing it's thing. Early this morning City police were out here in the back and this concerned my wife. She put on her hous coat about 4am and went to take a look out front and some crack head had bashed the inside lobby door in. Police cars were out in the front. Something was going on.

Anyway Bloggers, that’s all for now

e. Jim

I got out of here

2008-06-04T14:41:00.001-06:00

not needing to shut the place down as Anne went out for a bottle run. I got to the train platform as there was no train yet but one was coming on it’s way. I boarded the last car and read some more. Maybe 2 pages. Possibly 4 so far this evening. I had a slow start to the shift. On the bonus sheet, I’ve got $15. No credit card sales? I had about $300 at break. It was a slow night doing multi files all night. I got 1 credit card sale. Anne called in the 2nd half and I got another credit card sale. That’s half of what I qualify for. I got Greg’s attention and all the credit cards I got 16 last week, all went through ok. Most likely what happened because I took Saturday off Rob accidentally Rob “forgot” my credit card bonus this week. He’ll correct it again for next week so they’ll show up next week. Typical. Moe and I made up and were friends again. That’s good. He said he’d look into the missing credit card thing for me. So next week, I should have 12 more credit card sales for this week plus the 16 from last week. That’s $56 plus this week when this Stanley Cup playoff finally ends that’s another $35. That’s $91. I can use that towards my external hard drive. I walked across the parkade and down to my train. There was J, the other East Indian fellow that said hello to me. Nice fellow. He’s living in Clairview now and in a 2 bedroom Condo forking out $1300 month to rent. And Anne’s complaining about our $815?

Of course as we got on out of the tunnel and passing by Richards place, I was mindful of the event 29 years ago. Funny, by the end of the week Ellen broke up with me. The week after that was Sherwood park Medieval days.

I boarded my bus at 9:40pm and I was home as Anne was cleaning in the apartment. Everything is right with the world. Other then what she has to do tomorrow.

Over the last week the Weather Pixie has been turned off. They say they are having troubles with their hosting company. I hope they will be back online soon. It’s a nice service.
My 56th Birthday will be August 21st this year on a Thursday night. My wife wants to replace the money she used from my income tax return and add a bit more to get me a PS3 as a birthday present. Also, Summerslam this year is August 17th. Hopefully I’ll have the pay per view and a Rosebowl Pizza. And a PS3. That’s a nice birthday present.

Some 12 hours later: I didn't go to bed this morning. I was kind of stressed out over my wife’s mammogram today. She returned moments ago. She said it wasn't as bad as it sounded. No worse then taking ones blood pressure. She knows what to expect for next time.
So tonight it's do or die for the Pens. I hope they win tonight and force a game 7, if they do then I get to watch the Stanley Cup game Saturday night. That'd be great. Let's go Pens. It doesn't matter what teams are in the playoffs. It's excellent hockey.

I decided not to go to Lodge Thursday as I want to go to our annual Lodge BBQ on Sunday. I've never been to one of these before. I also want to put a full work week in as well while I can.
I‘m enjoying a nice first coffee here today. Speaking of, which it‘s Tim Horton’s Camp Day today and I think I‘ll go get myself a nice medium size coffee and a donut. This is one charity I really feel good about supporting. Among others but this one is kind of special.

It’s a beautiful sunny spring afternoon. Anne‘s going to her job at her usual time, rent‘s paid up and bills are taken care of. Now if the Pens win tonight I‘ll be able to watch the Stanley Cup game on Saturday.

Anyway Bloggers, that’s all for now

e. Jim

I left out

2008-06-03T14:06:00.000-06:00

of here at 4pm and caught the train. I think the train driver is playing games with me because he can see late arrivals coming up the escalator from his rear view mirror. So if I turn to catch the last car, he’ll shut the doors and take off. But if I go right off the escalator a few feet away he’ll wait. Yesterday on the commute into work, I tested out this theory and went for the car right off the escalator. I noticed he hung around and didn’t leave right away but allowed others to catch the last car. This afternoon, I’m going to attempt to catch the last car, see what happens.

I got my seat and cracked open my book, Ps. Just slightly past the halfway mark. I’m most likely going to get into the 2nd part as soon as I complete reading this. “Judas Unchained.” Another monster book at 1,008 pages. I should have Ps, completed b the end of this month. I hope. “JU” by the end of September. The that’s it for huge books for awhile.

So far I’ve read:

1.) The New Space Opera
2.) Undertow
3.) Solar winds
4.) Night Train to Rigel
5.) Pandora’s Star
I hope to read next:
6.) Judas Unchained
7.) Helix
8.) Fast Forward
9.)
10.)

I hope to read 10 books this year. I read about 1/6th of what I actually buy. Three out of those 10 books were short story collections. Most likely the last 2 books will be Fantasy because I haven’t read any Fantasy this year. I’m eyeing on my shelf a Forgotten Realm’s omnibus trilogy but it’s a huge book and after Fast forward, I think I’m going to get right into this series.
Now if I had a security guard Job I could certainly read a lot more. In theory that is.
So, last night I got into work a little bit early as the shift was just winding down. Nobody said anything to me but in Moe’s kick off he said something about missing Saturdays etc. I told JT Pittsburg was going to win tonight. He said something like “they look like they have nothing left in the tank,” I had a pretty good night, pulling in a couple of credit card sales. I called Audrey’s books asking if they could stop the Vanguard order but he said if I continue to cancel book orders they might request a deposit on future orders. Good point. Let em go. I don’t need to continue with them. I ordered the 4 EverQuest novels and 4 of the Warcraft novels. And some others but they weren’t available. The first 3 Stardoc series were in by S.L. Viel. I ordered those. I continued on with my work. At break Anne called and we had a talk. With half an hour to go in the shift, I was flying, pulling in sales left and right. One caller updated me on the game, going into OT, tied at 3. I knew it. I called Audrey’s back and some of the book series I had to say no to because they were broken series. I ordered the 2 EverQuest books because they were stand alones. I ordered the first 4 Warcraft books and the 3 Stardoc books. So far at Audrey’s I’ve got 16 books on order. I’m still waiting for the Jack Vance books. A lot of these books won’t come in all at once. I’ve got 2 of the Star Trek books there. At American pricing, I may as well take advantage, right? I doubt even Amazon books are US pricing.

I ended up with a pretty good night pulling in 4 credit cards and $485 for top total. I doubt I’ll get the $15 bonus from last week. If all credit cards kick in from last week I’ll have $32 from credit card sales plus $15 for $47. If I get $47, then great. Now watch because Rob uses me as a yardstick he’s going to say something like, “In order to qualify for your credit card bonus you must be hear for all your shifts.” That’s the next water down in this credit card thing. He already watered it down by saying we need 12 for part time and 20 for full time to qualify. The 2nd water down will be based on attendance. And that will probably be announced this month sometime. He likes making it harder and harder for people to get bonuses around here. This is a good job. It’s fun and easy to do and for the 4 hours I put in, I’m half expecting the bottom to fall out at anytime. I’ve been on the gravy train for the last several years.

I was glad to get out of the office. I hadn’t got a lot of cans or bottles along home with me except for what Lucianne gave me. He’s been extolling the virtues of Ebay for awhile now and apparently they are safe and secure. He says so is Amazon and most likely cheaper then Audrey’s with free shipping. Yeah but still at Canadian pricing. I got the train home, ever mindful on my way past the old five oaks location and the party we had afterwards upon our return from Vancouver 29 years ago. We didn’t have our big celebration until Tuesday night of that year. I recall light rain in the evening.

Tonight it’s off to work and I’ll put my 4 hours in. No hockey book ordering or anything like that. It’s just 4 hours in and out.

Anyway Bloggers, that’s all for now

e. Jim

I did a lot of

2008-06-02T13:45:00.001-06:00

JFK research Sunday. This is not a site for JFK assassination research. See "mission statement" in photo block. I found the address of the Oak Cliff Library Oswald would have attended but the Police dispatcher reports give the 500 block of Jefferson but the library was at Marsalis and Jefferson. If the Oak Cliff Library Oswald went to was indeed at M&J then Oswald (if that was him that killed Tippit) Oswald was heading to one place and one place only: Jack Ruby’s apartment. There is the story that Jack mailed photographs of Dallas Police cars to Traficanti in Chicago I think the story goes and apparently had a car built for the sole purpose of transporting it to Dallas to transport Oswald? But I think that story like James K Andrew's is a bit far fetched.

I really wanted to go in for this morning but I’m lazy and tired. Besides nobody cares if I’m there at work or not. Just as well. Anyway, it’s almost time for bed.

Almost all day I’ve been doing JFK research. I’ve got back a few replies about the James K Andrew’s thread. I’m inclined to discount his story. O also think I narrowed down the Oak Cliff public library for 1963 as it was apparently on Marsalis and Jefferson. This was one of LHO’s regular haunts in Oak Cliff in 1963. Yet if he was somehow mixed up in the Tippit shooting to place him at 10th & Patton what was he doing there if not going to the Library? He’s in the opposite direction if the theater factors into this part of the case. He’s way off base. That leads to only one possible conclusion. But I’m not ready to admit that yet. I also posted on JFK Lancer a post about Troy Lee Davis. Husband of Virginia Davis.

I wanted to go into work early for this morning but I don’t know. I think I’ll just go into my regular hours. One thing I’ve got to do for today is to stop the order for those Vanguard Star Trek books. I want the Warcraft EverQuest novels over and above the Star Trek books.
Speaking about posting and such, I’ve got a thread on Edmonton Connect about Edmonton Photo’s for downtown Edmonton from 1975-1980. I would prefer aerial photos for the area of where I work.

Also while doing JFK research yesterday it dawned on me to check the New Westminster Library telephone book for 1974-75 for tax businesses along Carnarvon street. This would get me the name of the income tax business that was living on top of. I’ve got a 1948 image of the Bench and Gavel building and it looks like nothing like it did in 1974-5. But I need access to telephone books for those years.

Some 12 hours later: A really nice looking day out there. I got about half a dz responses to the Edmonton photo’s. A really old one which looks like it’s from the 1940’s and one from the era I need but to far East for my use. Some good resources as well. Anne kind of wants me to stay home tonight. We have our rent money, she just need to go to the office and take care of that before she goes to work. What with me missing Saturday and all I can’t realistically justify missing 2 days off even though my wife has to go in for that mammogram tomorrow.

I had a lousy sleep over night. I ended up at 5am to do the cbi thing. I’m no worse for wear. Tonight could be the Stanley Cup game and I have $70 bucks riding on this thing. Greg and I agreed we’d split the difference anyway. Also, Raw is on tonight in the aftermath of No Way out. So I don’t mind going to work. Greg will pay me tomorrow if the Red Wings win the Cup tonight.
I got up about 5am like I said and did the cbi thing only to read more from Ps. It’s really getting good at this point. Speaking of, which I just passed the halfway point of the book. Also tonight, I need to call Audrey’s. If I can cancel those Vanguard books I will for the Warcraft ones. Get the early Warcraft books before they go out of print while I can.

Anyway Bloggers, that’s all for now

e. Jim

hey, it's a new month

2008-06-01T13:56:00.001-06:00

and the lilacs are still in bloom. Meteorologists are calling for rain for most of next week, I love it when it’s raining and the lilacs are in bloom.

It would be about this time Richard and I would be in Vancouver 29 years ago attending SCA classes with our packed luggage and our booty. Our hots (I can’t recall her family’s last name but her name was Kelly) provided us with breakfast and we went to the SCA classes on siege warfare or something. I took notes and was attentive as much as I could be. Richard and I barely caught our bus leaving the greyhound bus station with a few minutes to spare. I think he wanted to remain there. He was kind of into Kelly. She might have been the same age as Ellen and by now Kelly would be in her early 40’s. I got to thinking as I got up out of bed about 20 minutes ago, if Richard ever looked her up and if they got together when he settled in the Kitsilano area of West Vancouver in 1983? Funny, I’d only thought about this now.

On tap for today: See if any enquiries as to my JFK newsgroup community came through on my James K Andrews topic. Check my blog rounds, have brunch, download that Open Source program mentioned yesterday, do some more reading on PS. I’ve just reached the halfway part of the novel. I want to do some piano stuff as well.

Right now, I’m onto my first coffee. Mostly cloudy out there with some sunny breaks.

Tomorrow, I hope the Wings burry the Pens and end this playoff round. Before the game began yesterday Ron MacLean had a sit down chat with Gary Bettman about the stat of the NHL. Interesting. I came in around the middle of the interview so I didn’t hear him say anything about Canadian NHL expansion. Especially now with our dollar on par with the US.
Canadian NHL expansion isn’t even on life support anymore. I would love to see: Winnipeg, Hamilton and Quebec City get franchises. Even Seattle and Portland to make it 35 teams. Lets be done with hockey so we can get on with the draft and the trades and the rest of summer.
Tomorrow I go into work. I’m almost inclined to go in for Monday morning just so I can stay home and watch the Stanley Cup game and all this week do mornings. I can always do an evening shift if Rob wants to send me home because my totals are low. Or the afternoon shift. Maybe tomorrow, I’ll go in for the morning shift.

I knew stat counter was down on my Blogger account and now it's down on my website. Most likely undergoing maintenance. Weather Pixie has been down all week same over at Blogger. Strange.

Anyway Bloggers, that’s all for now

e. Jim

I locked everything up

2008-05-31T22:30:00.000-06:00

out of here heading into work but I missed my bus and I got to the train and the train took off as soon as I pressed the button to open the doors. That’s the 2nd time this week. I got to work late but that’s ok. Again Moe’s taking the silent treatment pretty hard. Not that I haven’t made an effort. I’m off for an unschedualed Saturday and you know what, I don’t give a damn. I had a good night sitting with JT. I ended up with $385 on the night and a couple of credit card sales. I won’t get the $15 team credit card bonus because I’m off today. Other then my insulin in the morning, I’m sleeping in.

I got a small collection of bottles and cans after leaving the office I headed out to Audrey’s and got my only Star Trek book. I tried to order the Hall Spacejock books but the postage is going to kill me. I already have The Demon Princes books on order and they as omnibus books and the postage on those will kill me even more when they come in. We checked the Bard’s Tale books and unfortunately they are all out of print. I ended up ordering instead The first 3 Star Trek Vanguard series. They are not the original characters or anything but the books are in the same Universe. I’m also going to collect my Star Wars (books) again, less the Young Jedi Knights series. Actually, I’m going to forgo the Vanguard series for Timothy Zahn’s Star Wars: Thrawn Omnibus instead. I tried ordering Star Trek Enterprise but the series is partially out of print.
I had a nice quiet train ride to Clairview and Anne called again as I just got on the bus. I wanted to do some reading but no such luck. I got home did my admin stuff and Anne called saying she put the rent money in the bank. The first month since we got married that we didn’t have the $300 allowance. This helped pay for half our rent. That’s gone. But we’re okay. We both have jobs and getting by. Also we have $300 sitting here stored away for next month.

Blogging for me was a washout yesterday. I ended up doing some JFK research. I’m researching James A Andrew. This fellow tells a story of how a JD Tippit (moments before the policeman was killed) moved his Police car ahead of Andrew's car to block him off. Tippit ran out of his car holding up his hand looked in the front of Andrew's car through the glass and in the back seat and proceeded to get back in his car and move about his business. Whatever that was. Odd how this fellow wasn’t called to testify before the WC. Andrew said he recognized Tippit's name plate on his uniform. Even odd still how come nobody eve asked what kind of car Andrew drove? Odd even still was the location of this incident. If we knew what kind of car Andrew had at the time, this might have given us some insite as to the finale moments of JD Tippit's life. That would have given us a clue as to why Tippit pulled over this car above any others. I wonder if the newsgroup knows anything?

I don’t think I’ll take the pill over night. I’m tired enough as it is. I’ll save that for tonight and I’m going to head into bed as soon as I can.

Another book series I’m considering is the Everquest and Warcraft books. I've played Everquest about 5 years ago and really enjoyed it. Warcraft looks good but the characters look a little cartoony for me.

Twelve hours later: Anne gave me that pill about 3:45am and I took it after all. I went to bed and after 3am listened to a bit of George and Richard Hoagland. Good stuff. The space shuttle is supposed to launch today at 5:02pm EDT. They were talking about that today. This current module is named KIBO and the payload fills up the entire shuttle bay. It’s the size of a school bus.

On tap for today, I’m working on CH a bit and some more research on James Anderson and other stuff. I need to call Audrey’s books to cancel an order for another one instead.
I woke up about 5:30am to do the cbi thing and stumbled back to bed. At 6pm I’m watching game #4 of the Wings/Pens game. Of course a Pens victory. The Stanley Cup series is so predictable.

Anyway Bloggers, that’s all for now

e. Jim

Another Thursday

2008-05-29T22:52:00.000-06:00

Relic Hunter was pretty good this afternoon. I had some trouble locking the place up getting all the cats inside. Anne forgot to make me a lunch but I think she didn’t have time. I got outside with a brief wait. I catch the bus just after 4pm. This way I avoid all the kids getting off school. Weather wise it was a bit on the humid side of things this afternoon. I got in and scooped up my end dialer. Rob was a bit shaken up because his Son had his Ipod stolen right from his desk. Lucianne keeps asking me if I called the Dentist from the number he gave me. I got some bottles and cans. I thought I’d be the bigger man and kind of come to Moe and carry on like nothing happened asking him if he would make an announcement about the Ipod incident but he just gave me a dry cold stare of contempt and walked away. I got to get out of that place. Kick off. I had a pretty good start with Winnipeg ASB and no credit card sales. JT and Sundeep weren’t there. Anne called me at break and had a decent total at break. I collected more cans and bottles.

After the brake I began to get credit cards. I got 3 on the night for my 12+ Actually 14 on the week, so if any of them kick out, it gives me a cushion and there’s always Friday night to get a few more. But if the $15 bonus from credit cards comes into play and the $28 in credit card bonuses, that should be $43 in bonuses, so far but because I’m taking Saturday off Rob might not pay me. The thing is, Once you collect 30 credit cards, that becomes $4, which could be $120 in bonuses. Some of those guys are getting $800 pay cheque’s for one week! Of course they’re like getting $11/hour but they are working like 62 hours/week, clearing $5-600/week. That’s like working every shift/day. Crazy but they’re getting a lot of crap from Rob in the process. Getting those credit cards sales isn’t easy.

I was glad to get out of there 9am and had a bit of a ride with Smarky to Central and a seat by myself back. There was a concert there at Rexal of some kind. It’ll show on the news. If I get $20 for my allowance, then great. I’ll have enough for the festive board for Lodge next week. I met the Security guard Moe on the bus at Clairview on the way home. The clouds were just beautiful this evening, covered in dark gold and blue backgrounds. Moe said he’d get me an application from the guard company tomorrow. I’m just thinking, what I’d like to do is work, Monday-Friday at Xl, but afternoons only and do the security guard job evenings. This way I still keep Xl and my weekly pay cheque. Anyway, that’s all right now. I’ll most likely edit this post before work.

Anyway Bloggers, that’s all for now

e. Jim

I'm considering

2008-05-29T01:39:00.003-06:00

using my Blogger account more often. So this was posted from earlier. Blogger has some nice features missing from Geeklog.

Leaving out the apartment yesterday afternoon I felt pretty good. I brought my list of books I want to order from Audrey’s. The 4 “Hal Spacejock” books. I like ordering 3 books at a time. My book ordering guy tells me that Amazon is pretty good indicator for finding what if any books are in print.

I got my dialer at work and Darrel sit with me. I didn’t say a word to Moe. I just ignored him. I had a pretty good Wednesday night pulling in 4 credit card sales. Love it. I had a couple of near misses but I got 11 so far out of the 12 I need to qualify. 12+ would be better. I had a good night getting updates on the game. I got a bunch of bottles and cans as well. We won the credit card sales bonus for the night. $15 each. I’ll have almost $40 bucks.

I had a nice relaxing train ride home getting in about 9:40pm.
Anne made me hotdogs and fries for lunch and I have a sleep time tea here I’m nursing on. Hopefully this will help put me to sleep.

While listening to Coast George read an excerpt from the “Director” (I can’t recall what the official title was ) of CERN’s Large Hadron Collider or LHC. In a press release the Director said the world doesn’t have to worry about the world coming to an end or anything like that. George said that the LHC will be turned in next month. In June? Wow. That’s when I got to check online this afternoon, to see of there’s a countdown clock of some kind. Sure enough, there is and it’s 40 days, 8 hours away as of this writing that means, Sunday July 9th. Most likely the first couple of attempts won’t provide any Earth shacking news. But with the LHC Physicists hope to have the right tool to locate the Higgs boson partial which theorists hope will provide missing links in the Standard Model of physics and could explain how other elementary particles acquire properties such as mass. Out of the LHC as if that isn’t exciting enough, Physicists hope to be able to create mini-black holes that lasts for micro of seconds and even wormholes. There are some interesting spin off applications of the LHC, such as The Grid that will make the Internet 1,000 times more faster. The Grid should come on line in about the fall of this year but I doubt we’ll be able to use it right away.

The Pen’s of course won their game #3 at home. No kidding. The next game is on Saturday. I’m getting $20 bucks for my allowance. Plus the $15 COH, That’ll give me $35 and I can get all 3 of the Star Trek books, Friday after work. During lunch Anne suggested I take Saturday off. Damn that’s a good idea. I hadn’t had a Saturday off in like 10 weeks. I’ll go in Friday afternoon and work the afternoon shift and the evening shift. Go pick up my 3 books and I’ve got the weekend off.

My wife is going in for a mammogram test on Tuesday and we’re a little worried about the results. Hopefully the next day they will be favorable for her.
Currently on Coast: UFO Special From 11pm-1a PT, researcher & filmmaker James Fox updates his latest work investigating French ufology. He'll be joined by a surprise witness. From 12a-2a, author Richard Dolan discusses UFO secrecy and confrontations. Should be a pretty good show.

I’m kind of excited about CERN’s LHC when it comes online and what physicists hope to find. Now I’m not a Physicist but I still find the topic interesting. That’s be awesome if they discover the Higg’s boson right away or often referred to as the Higg’s Field (HF). Would the HF rip a hole in the Space-time? Stephen Hawkings doesn’t think physicists will find the HF. We’ll know after 39 days.

Anyway Bloggers, that’s all for now

e. Jim

Website back up

2007-11-05T14:34:00.000-07:00

okay first my website goes down as of Thursday. I’ve got Blogger as a back up at least. Then as I was going to Blog something about 20 after midnight this morning, the power goes off in the apartment. Not all of it. We’re left with the fridge working and a hall outlet. We got the extension cords out and rigged the bedroom fan to work and a radio. The power was being shut down all over the place, off and on all night, so this could go at anytime. The problem is underground. So, Anne rigged up cables and extensions and we’ve got the TV working. We also have the computer and Internet up and running as well. For now. Epcor (Edmonton Utilities) is working on the problem.

At least I have my website up and running that’s good news. Markus thinks it’s a mistake on their end. Watch the shitheads will blame it on “global warming” or some such nonsense.

I didn’t get much writing done on the weekend but as long as my computer works, I’ll get some done this afternoon. I hope. Now it’s time to Blog this and put the entry on my Blogger site as well. So the madness resumes over at my website. You know where it is. Just Google:

E. Jim Shannon

Anyway, that’s all for now

e. Jim

Late Saturday,early Sunday

2007-11-04T00:03:00.000-06:00

After supper I fooled around with YouTube and I even got a bit of writing in.

Now it begins. Yes, we’ve got snow. But I think this round it’s not going to stay on the ground. The stay on the ground snow I predict we’ll hit this November 11th, which is 2 Sunday’s from now.

Well, the Oilers lost last night and the Eskimo’s lost in Hamilton today closing out their last regular season game. They lost 19-21. It was close but as usual, no cigar.
Okay, I got a bit of writing done this evening. I ended up doing 2 scenes. About 2,500 words more or less. I’ll get up to scene #70 sometime Sunday.

About my website. I’m not to worried about losing the website if the damage done is to severe. I feel bad about all the work I put into it going down the drain but I haven’t lost all those posts because those posts are all part of my ongoing diary anyway, so nothing was really lost except the work that went into all of this. Markus’s hard work at the menu’s and just as that was getting off the ground this happens.

If we end up losing everything I’m still staying with Markus. I’m going to start fresh if we do and start a basic site. If he’s giving up on all of this for other reasons then I’ve got 2 choices. I can go to Mark and work with his OS hosting if it’s still up and running now that I have a sure fire way to pay mark using Western Union. Or and I might just work it this way and go for Google Pages as my website and linked to Blogger for the Blog. I’ll figure out something.

Anyway, that’s all for now

e. Jim

The rest of Saturday

2007-11-03T19:07:00.000-06:00

I didn’t leave myself a lot of room to get out of here just before 9am and even though it was a bit on the cooler side this morning I managed to have a brief wait for my bus and was on the train and into work about 9:20am and my breakfast sandwich ordered and at my dialer at 9:30am. We did three campaigns today, MM, AES and CFB all at once so we had to watch our list names. It got a bit tricky but I think I got top total at around $470 and a $20 credit card.
So far no word from Audrey’s about the stand alone Julie E. Czerneda book. The book covers on my right Blogger side bar need to be updated. I’m done with those books. What with our dollar passing the US dollar books here in Canada are going to be taking a price drop. The book I’m reading now: “Camouflage” By Joe Haldeman when I bought it October 2006 cost me $10.99. That same book today will cost me $7.99. The difference is 60% of my lunch at Taco Bell.

There’s no new progress on my website woes. Markus says they want to identify the problem and provide a patch. I think there’s a kind of a ricochet program out there that sends these kinds of scripts back to their sender so it infects their source as well. The only thing is, this malicious code might be sent from an unsuspected terminal and we wouldn’t want an innocent victim to go through what we’re going through. I mean all you do is trace the ISP number and file charges with local Law enforcement. All it means is once the problem is solved a better encryption protocol needs to be installed. They know what they’re doing. In the meantime I hope my website readers will find my Blogger blog and head over there.

So tonight we change the clocks back. We lose an hour of daylight. Right now it’s about 90% dusk out there. Winter (for me at least) officially begins at Daylight Savings time because we lose an hour of light. Same in the Spring when we gain an hour of Standard time the 2nd Sunday in March. Spring is in March.

I had a bit of a nap about 4pm for an hour. It was more or less just a rest and when I finally got to sleep Anne calls me. She’s been working since 11am-5pm. She had to go up the block to Wallmart for a few things.

I did a bsl reading jut now and I’m sitting at 6.8, which isn’t too bad.

Before I had my nap I came across something on YouTube by Joe Strummer called “The future is unwritten.” it basically in terms of film and recollection by our narrators (can’t recall their names) of the life, times and legacy of Joe Strummer. It’s in 4 parts and was pretty good. To me Joe Strummer and The Clash brought back that excitement of Rock n’ roll I had yet to experience again. The music is timeless. I’d say my favorite Clash song of all time is “Death or Glory.” DJ’s today couldn’t give it airplay because of one of the lines from the song, “He who fucks Nuns will later join the church.” As much as I dislike Rap, it’s amazing it gets any airplay at all with the fuck this and nigger that, holy geese.

Tonight I’m back to work on F. Because I’m working the extra hours this week, progress on F will be slow. Maybe 1 scene/day. I still hope to have F done by the end of this month. Once the story mechanics are worked out and the novel more or less fixed comes the creative prose. The stuff that makes the reader go, wow. Right now I’m checking my cause and effect.
Anne’s making me a Saturday night hamburger and fries. No Oiler game on this weekend. Maybe the Oil Kings play, I’m not sure.
Anyway, that’s all for now

e. Jim

Hi all

2007-11-03T07:52:00.000-06:00

I'm back on Blogger for a few days. My website is down. For my regular readers that have been visiting the official E. Jim Shannon site, I apologize for any inconvenience. Someone has been deleting domain names from my hosts account. Scary. This just happened this last Friday so they are currently trying to fix the problem.

That's all for now

e. Jim

Computers

2007-07-31T01:07:00.000-06:00

This picture I just took shows my new set up.

I hope it's a good shot

The W/98 computer the one that crashed recently is the tall white tower on the left. My Xp is the black case on the right. That yellow cable is the one I just dug up.

back and forth

2007-07-25T13:34:00.000-06:00

Lets see if this works.

The image uploading is clean and easy in Blogger.

but you can see here that the image is blurry and out of focus.

I've got to learn how to fix this

I hope

Back on Bloger for awhile

2007-07-15T20:15:00.000-06:00

I've been having computer trouble lately and I've been trying to get a hold of Markus.

The main problem being is although I know my website password, I don't remember my user name. The trouble began last Monday morning July 9th. While working away my screen went blank. Set up began and then scan disk. It took me twenty minutes to get onto my desktop so I could send the last blog entry. I've got all my work on that computer. F, and lots of diary logs as well. Not to mention hoards of photos. I want that stuff back, especially my Word files. So I looked in the phone book to find a PC service that comes to the door. I found the Geek guys and called them at work last Monday night and booked a service call for just this last Friday. Friday the 13th. One guy came by and were all very professional. He suggested he take the computer back to the shop and they'd do a diagnostic there for $45 bucks. Ok, I can live with that. I should call them in 3 days. Wednesday sounds about right.

So that same afternon about an hour before I had to leave for work with my wife's reluctant aproval, I purged my Xp computer and started everything again. Lots of data was lost but I wasn't going to spend $100 to preserve the data when I'm attempting to do that anyway. Within thirty minutes I had my Xp desktop recoverd. WhenI came back that night I and yesterday I managed to oget almost everything else set up. Except Outlook Express. So now I have a Gmail account.

I'm hoping I can salvage my email contacts and hopefully get my website up and going again asap. in other words, I'm working on it folks. So Markus, if you ever get a chance to see this please leave a comment. The previous Gmail account doesn't work.

That's all for now.

e. Jim

2006-11-28T11:29:00.000-07:00

This is not an official resignation or anything and I still will use my Blogger account a couple of times/month but for the most part my new daily Blog and all Blog activity will be here:
Or here at E.Jim Shannon.com it just makes more sense to have everything at one location.

To all of you that have read this blog and have posted comments, I thank you. See you at the new site..

e.Jim

2006-11-27T18:13:00.000-07:00

we braved
the cold weather and walked down to Clairview, very cold out there. After a bit of a wait we had a cold walk to the office and inside upstairs. We didn’t get to see my Doctor until about 40 min later and I had

drops in my eyes he made some scans and I have the yag booked for Jan 10^th which is on a Wednesday. I could have had it this Wednesday but it was too late. My vision should be about the same until then. It’s a day in day out kind of thing and he’s going to do both eyes at the same time.

So we braved the elements again and stepped outside and headed to Tim Horton’s and got a coffee. The train came by right away and after a brief wait inside the bus shelter at Clairview our bus came by and I got off the stop just behind Future Shop. I didn’t have enough for the David Byrne CD I wanted but next time. I checked on the memory card readers, $30 bucks. Good to know. I checked on their laptops and they’ve got some nice systems up and running for just under a grand. Beauties. Then I thought to ask tech support about the current state of my Compaq and he said bring it, they’ll scan for hard drive damages if they can salvage anything they’ll do it for $40 bucks. So, I’ll save this $20 and if I get another one this Friday, I’ll take the machine in and get it serviced if the tech guy can save all my files then great, what a relief, What I could really use then is a KV switch so I can hook up booth computers. Use the W98 machine for writing and the Xp machine for research. But as for the laptop I wont be ready to by until this time next year.

e. Jim

2006-11-27T12:28:00.000-07:00

My vision
is progressively becoming more and more hazy but that’s why I’m going over to see my Doctor today anyway. Most likely to give me a yag orientation and finale yag scans. I’d like to go in for it today but I don’t suspect it’s going to happen until next week about this time.

Having my first coffee of the day here.

Currently it’s –23/33. That’s cold. Last year, our winter never really hit us until after January. Even then we hadn’t got up to –20 during the day like it is now. It’s supposed to warm up but then we got that windchill, so even a –3 could have a windchill making it feel like –12* and that’s cold enough as it is. I think we’re in for a couple of days of Chinooks next month but for the most part, this winter kind of reminds me of back in 1979.

Anne and I are going out to brave the cold winter in a couple of hours. I’m going to wake her at 1pm so we can get ready to leave out of here at 2pm. I want to be in that office at 2:35pm. I’ve got some anxiety over this stage of my vision woes. I wish I could stay inside all afternoon but I’ve got to get this thing done.

Last night I worked some more on the extension scenes for “F” and I like what I got, some good stuff developing there. I completed the middle. Now I’m going onto the end. I’m also going to use some tricks I learned from Bickham and Swain, I’ve got 112 scenes and the work should be 144k. I’ll be in full writing mode Jan first. I’m also excited about the next novel project after this one. “MF” But I’ll probably finish “F” about the end of March. Then I should have “MF” outlined out by the time I finish “F” and I’ll start “MF” right after “F”, “MF” will have about the same number of scenes and if all goes well, I’ll be in the 2^nd rewrite stage when “MF” is done. “MF” should be completed by about the end of June. I’m going to do about 2 more drafts of “F” and the ms both “F” and “MF” should be ready to market by this time next year. Nut I’m going to write a few short stories as well and send them out. Last time I looked “Crosshairs” had over 125 views. I don’t know what the number of views is now or even if the story is still up on the site.

But that’s all for now..

e.Jim

2006-11-26T16:04:00.000-07:00

Wow.
Add the gravel pill and the lack of sleep I’ve had the night before and the past couple of days, I slept for 11,5 hours. I recall going to bed at 1am right after Hogan’s Heroes. I might have stayed up to listen to Coast and it looked like Art had a pretty good show going on. By 1:30am I was asleep, I woke up at about 7:10am to do the cbi thing and in bed about 7:25am or so. I think part of the reason why I’m not sleeping well is because I’m not putting in a full day of work. Because I had all the sleep from the night before I’ll have trouble getting sleep overnight.

Last night I was spending so much time on the Fantastic fiction site I forgot about my TNA wrestling. I only realized this as I was watching the news. Shit. I was so involved preparing a special book order for Audrey’s I forgot the time. Other then specialty books on writing; Audrey’s doesn’t carry a good selection of SF books. Not like Chapters and even then their selection is small. I placed a special order on Peter F Hamilton’s “Judas unchained” and that won’t be out until the spring. For all the food it does me, I might as well special order from Chapters but I’m going to special order from Audrey’s and by my books at Chapters.

Not much on my plate for today. I’m feeling the gravel pill still in me working away. I’ll probably work on “F” some more and flesh out the main characters. There are some ideas I need to work on and the story subplots. I’ll tinker around again on my website. I added a topic “My Favorite Science fiction Villains.” Last night. I’m going to add another list on heroes soon.

Anne made us a nice brunch now she’s got a huge clean up ahead of her there. Also, if I can keep up the new work schedule I’ll have enough to qualify for the company medical plan. By the end if March if not sooner I’ll have enough to qualify. What I’d like to do for April is get my rotting teeth out and get dentures installed so I’ll have a decent summer without eye problems and teeth problems.

This weekend in Alberta has been the PC leadership election to see who will replace Ralph Kline. Nothing has been decided yet because in order for there to be a winner, the winner must have 50% of the vote. At the moment when the polls closed at 7pm last night, the front-runner had 30%. Jim Dinning is the front-runner but in all the 35+ years or so the Conservatives have been in power the PC membership has only elected 3 Premiers from Northern Alberta. Usually in these things one of the other members will through their support over to the leader or their favorite. So lets say the 2^nd place winner doesn’t like the 1^st place winner will put their support over to the 3^rd place winner so the 1^st place guy doesn’t get in. So far there are 3 winners in the first ballot and the 2^nd ballot is next weekend. In order to vote all you need is a PC membership card and they’re $5 bucks each. I’ll probably go buy a membership card just to vote for an Edmonton/Northern Alberta based Premier.

Anyhow, that’s all for now..

e.Jim

2006-11-25T08:30:00.000-07:00

okay, I
done all my cbi and shower.. I just got to pack my thing sup and get my coffee before I’m ready to head out the door. I don’t mind heading out to work this morning. I went to bed about 3am and I got up at a bit after 7am, so I had a good 4 hours sleep. I’m okay to go for the day. I think what I’ll do because Anne needs the bus pass to do her thing this afternoon, is I’ll go over to Audrey’s see if they have what I’m looking for and then down to Money mart. I want to check on some banking services but that’s another story. Then I’ll come home.

Early this morning I figured out how to add Amazon book images to my sidebar. I think I might place it over by the other side of the main page because that side is getting to busy. I already have “currently reading” and coming up next. Since I took out the wip bars it seems like “Books I recommend” should be on the other side. “Or recommended reading.” I also want to have a recommended listening as well.

Anyway, it’s –23/31 out there. So I’m not looking forward to that 10 min wait or so in the cold. That’s the only thing I’m not looking forward to doing this morning but once that bus comes by, then fine. I’ll go over to Tim’s get the staff donuts and then I’ll get myself a breakfast sandwich walk across that frozen parking lot and into that warm office for 4 hours. Then I’ll do my stuff after work and come home for a couple of hours of sleep while Anne is out doing her thing.

Oh the Oilers won as well last night, 5-1. Good job guys.

Don't think I'll have enough time to move this over to my website this morning. Later when I come home and grab some sleep.

That’s all for now.

e.Jim

2006-11-24T14:09:00.000-07:00

I was
in bed by 3an but I couldn’t sleep of course, so I got up for a bit and worked on “F” some more and some website stuff. I think it was around 5am I finally went to bed after I did the cbi thing. I had a similar sleep experience as yesterday. I got up around noon and slowly made my way to the couch. I was dead tired. So I slept a bit on the couch for half an hour and that helped substantively.

Having my first coffee of the day. It’s a good one.

So, this afternoon I’m going onto work and I’ll be listening to the Oiler/Chicago game on the radio. JT usually puts it on and it’s a short 3.5 hour shift. After that, I’m considering heading up to Chapters again to see if
They have the sequel to Pandora’s star in stock. If not my alternative is Julie Czerneda. They’ve got book 1-2 of the Species Imperative series there. It’s easier to get to Audrey’s and I don’t have to be standing out in the cold waiting for a Chapters bus. I think I’ll go to Audrey’s tonight instead.

Speaking of the weather it’s currently –19/32. The windchill is bitter mostly because it’s a clear day out there making it even colder. I’m not dreading that early morning wait for the bus in the morning when I have to go in. I’ll be wearing my gloves for sure.

So that’s about all for me today.

e. Jim

2006-11-23T12:58:00.000-07:00

I stayed up
listening to the whole Coast show last night and after that I did the cbi thing and went back to bed. Again I’ve been up making hourly trips to the bathroom. I think this is a prostrate thing going on. So, I’m trying to not drink anything today but I need a coffee. Maybe that should be nothing to drink after 9pm.

Not much going on this afternoon. Its pretty cold out there –17/20 and we got some snow over night as well and the weekend we’re going to get a few days over –20. I haven’t seen –20 yet during the middle of the day but it’s coming.

My first coffee of the day, ok, I’m trying to read Neal Asher’s Gridlinked but I find reading anything like a novel, tough until I get this vision cleared up. To read email and websites I need reading glasses but to write in my diary and see the letters on the keyboard is okay. Well even the keyboard letters look a bit blurry. I’m typing this in Comic Sans MS 12, which is almost like bold without being bold. I can see all right to get around but for work most names on the screen I need these reading glasses on and they’re hard on the eyes as it is. Anyway that’s about it for me for today.

e,Jim

2006-11-22T12:47:00.000-07:00

I tried
to access the JFK newsgroup again, but the news server blocks me out allowing me to read posts only. I’ve been down this road before.

Yeesh, I didn’t get to bed until 3am and I had trouble sleeping. It was 4 am and I figured I’d get up and fool around online for a while and read some of my blogs. Catch up on that reading. The cause of my sleep troubles mainly was all that extra sleep from the day before and a couple of cups of coffee at the office where I work last night. I finally ended up in bed after I did the cbi thing, which was about 5:30am.

When Anne and I were at the specialist’s office Monday the receptionist was sending me back to my Doctor. I heard her say book a Yag, which is the laser surgery they do. They wanted to book me in for Thursday but I was missing time from work. Now I don’t know if this is just a follow u from the last time so he can continue the pre-yag work. He most likely has to take some readings to set things up etc. I could have the yag in his office as early as Monday’s visit or as late as next month. It’s hard to tell with these kinds of things.

I’m up earlier then usual for the, can’t sleep thing mainly. But I’m onto my first coffee of the day. Not that I need it but I’m enjoying it.

I still haven’t tried to call Compaq tech support yet as to how to get my other system back. I think it’s lost. What bugs me about it is I have a years worth of diaries and some stories and other stuff online including the reworking of NW plus almost 100 or so photo’s mostly of cats and home life. All of those are gone as well. I’m never going to get a Compaq again. The best computers to buy are the ones a friend builds for you if you don’t know how to do it yourself at least in my experience. That is if you don’t mind spending a bit of money on the operating system and the components. Your, not going to be saving much money because if your friend is building a computer from scratch for you, chances are he’s doing this out of his business. Also, chances are he has a volume license on his operating system. What this means is that you will get a recovery disk. Of course all of this is in some cases. My problem was I didn’t back up when I should have. Next computer I get, I’m going to make sure it’s fast and the clerk shows me how to back up step by step.

Another cold day out there here in Edmonton. Right now it’s –17* out there, More like –17/-20 the other number on the right of the temperature reading is the dew point, opposite to the humidex reading in the summer. How hot it feels. In this case, it’s how cold it feels. Similar to windchill, so when I write –17/20, it means the temperature is –17 degrees Celsius but it feels more like –20. I don’t care what the temperature reads. I care how it feels. Right now its –17/20 out there. I think this has been the coldest day of the season. Tonight when I came home it’s going to be a lot. Even going to work a lot colder then it is now.

Also, last night I began the character sketches for some of the main characters in “F”. I should have them fleshed out by the end of the month. I hope to be writing the rough draft by Jan 1^st if all goes well. I should have the rough draft completed by the end of March. It’ll be done when it’s done is all I can say. And as that work is being written, of course I’ll be designing characters for my space-opera series but this is a long-term project.

Well, the Oilers won last night, 2-1. Good stuff, they beat the Flames and ended their winning streak. That’s a good thing. The Oilers play Chicago on Friday night and don’t play again until the 28^th. Anyhow, that’s about it from me today.

e.Jim

2006-11-21T11:59:00.000-07:00

Still reeling

from the best possible outcome from yesterday’s doctor appointment with the specialist. It feels real good knowing that I don’t have MD and there is no diabetic damage to the retina.. Before the year s out I’ll have my vision restored and back to normal.

Last night I was in bed by 1:30am. I slept and barely heard Anne come in. I clocked her coming into bed just before 3am. I passed out and slept until 7am. So I got 6.5 hours from that. I stayed up a bit after the CBI thing and worked a bit more on “F” and reading a bit more on Marshal. I need a book on subplots. I know what they are and their purpose I just don’t know how many per viewpoint characters. Is a VP character it’s own subplot? Is that all a VP character is for is to advance the subplot? I don’t think so. I tinkered around with this for a while and about 7:40am I went back to bed and slept until 11:20am. That’s another 3 hours 20 min. So I’d say about 10 hours al in all, to make up for yesterday.

Not much on my plate today. I’ll be tinkering around with “F” and then Anne and I will go into work and JT and I will be listening to the Oilers at Recall Place Hockey game. They are hosting Calgary tonight and the Flames have been on a 7 game winning streak now. The Oilers are sitting at 21 points on the season and 4 points away from Calgary under the play off cut. So any night the Oilers play Calgary is an important night. And the City will be adding extra cars onto the trains as well. Wuu whoo.

Pardon me here if I get into the philosophical rant/mode here but over the weekend we’ve had 2 murders by knife stabbing and the same guy that looked like he stabbed one guy in a Whyte Ave bar stopped a truck at an intersection pulled the drive’s door opened it and stabbed him and drove off in his truck. Then there was another tragic stabbing of a 17 year old having a private birthday party at a community hall and 4 knife-packing teens killed the kid and took off. There was another stabbing in the City as well over the weekend. These make it Edmonton’s 34^th homicide of the year. What’s gotten into this City anyhow? Just about every weekend someone is getting killed. I know what the problem is. One common denominator is responsible for it all.

But I’ll leave it at that.

e.Jim

2006-11-20T22:26:00.000-07:00

Raw wasn’t
bad tonight. I think the best match was the ladder match for the Intercontinental Championship. Jeff Hardy won that one but what a match. On a scale from 1-10 I’d rate Raw tonight about a 6. Not great but not bad either.

Anne got short changed $15 bucks at the Petsmart store and recovered it abd came back with our Pizza just at the time of HGWT. After Pizza I had a 2 hours power nap. I needed it badly. So, I’m good to go tonight.

One thing that has been lacking since my vision problems over the last few months has been reading time. I’d like to spend at least an hour/day reading books. When my vision clears up Ii hope to be doing just that. I figure if I can read 100 pages/week, that’s not bad. I can read 1 book/month. What with my writing and other items/work etc, that’s not bad.

But the best news is my vision is ok. It’s not 20/20 because of my right eye, but having the posterior capsular haze thingy is the best possible news that could happen for me. And if this is just a Doctors office visit then I could have the laser surgery done next week but I think it’s a hospital visit and I have 2 more visits to work with including next week. But at least my vision can be restored to its post cataract surgery phase. And that’s splendid news.

e.Jim

2006-11-20T13:21:00.000-07:00

whew! ! ! !
So, Anne and I boarded the bus out here just after 8:30pm and we got to the Coliseum station and then we boarded a bus to Kingsway Mall and another bus to the Royal Alex hospital and the driver let us off where to go, easy to get to one block in. So we went to the 7^th floor and to the Doctors office. I checked in and we had a long wait. It was just after 10am when one of the nurses gave me some eye drops to dilate my pupils. It was 10:15am and no “James Shannon?” It was about 10:45am before they called my name. I went right away to this little room and the same attendant that out the drops in my eyes made some initial eye tests and look into the eye chart type thing, then the laser scanning machine. “Look into the eye piece. Look at the green dot.” I saw a laser beam shoot up at various angles and smaller dots. The nurse checked into the monitor as she was doing this. I had to get another nurse to use a cue top to keep my left eyelid open. Ok. “Here’s some literature we give diabetic clients,” That was done back out to see Anne again, after a brief wait I was called in again and this time to see the “big guy herself.” The head honcho, She did some scans and said there is no retina damage. So I confirmed, “do I have what’s called a posterior capsular haze?” “Yes,” And I’ve got another visit 20^th to my doctor in the building where I work. This time it’s an afternoon visit. And they are going to book me for a Yag. So, long story short, my vision is fine. No diabetic damage. Matter of fact I think after that visit my Doctor will probably book the Yag sometime early next month. And probably before the staff Christmas party my vision will be restored where I can read normally again. But let me tell you that it was quite a scare. I though I have macular degeneration but there is, no damage to the macular. Whew! ! ! What a relief.

e.Jim

2006-11-19T15:32:00.000-07:00

last night
I watched the Oiler game here at Rexall place playing Detroit. The Oilers won in a shoot out. Good stiff. But mostly as I was flipping back and forth between channels I was watching TNA wrestling. I love TNA. Excellent stuff. I also fleshed out the middle of “F” and working on what scenes I can expand on in the ending portion. Having a great time. I’ve got 5 more scenes to go and I’m just about ready to do the character sketches and that’ll be fun. Then come scene timing, each scene in chronological order. Scene one Ten am Wednesday type thing and some of the scenes will change depending on what I come up with for the various vp characters. But I’ll be working on “F” for the balance of the day.

So, this morning I went to bed about 2:15am after having that gravel pill and

I passed out in due order. Other then waking up to use the bathroom I slept well until about 7:10am. I did the cbi thing and went back to bed and slept until 1am. A good 6 hours and 5 hours before that. A good 7 hours sleep. Wow.

Also last night I began the early preliminary work on my Space Opera. I’m planning a 10 vol. set. Each book will be around 155k, 120 scenes in each book. I might just write the whole thing before I release any of it and work on my other projects.

I’m still working on my website as well and that’s a work in progress.

Tomorrow is the big day. I’m not looking forward to going in but I hope I get answers right away. If I am in the early stages of MD then I’ll face up to that. Like I have a choice, If all I have is that posterior capsular haze thing, then I’ll be breathing a sigh of relief. I’ll have an update tomorrow afternoon. Right now my vision is hazy. Strait lines are strait. I can read this from 12 inches away. It wasn’t as bad as before where I had to get right up to the screen and read, But MD is mostly an age/hereditary thing. Diabetes can be a factor in MD as well and that’s another condition I have.

e.Jim

2006-11-18T19:24:00.000-07:00

I tried
going back to bed after that but no such luck so I figured I’d get up, have a coffee and play around on the computer for a while.

So, then today I’ll be heading into work just before 9am and I’ll get the staff donuts and one for my wife and I’ll get my breakfast sandwich and settle into work.

What’s after “F”? I’m going to work on my space-opera series I call EOS

Going into work was easy. I got the donuts for the staff and a breakfast sandwich for me. I got a donut for my wife and a non-glazed one for me and I ate my breakfast sandwich, Very tasty. I had a great start to
the first half and slower in the 2^nd half. JT was there providing some entertainment. By the time the last hour was upon us I was feeling wiped out. I was glad to get out of there and home. Anne hadn’t even been out of bed at all and I came in and we talked for a while then she got up to go out to do her stuff and I tried having a nap. I don’t think I got very far though, Perhaps an hour.

Tonight I’m watching the Oiler/Detroit game and some more work on “F” and that should be about it. I’m kind of worried about Monday.

My email is slow and behaving erratically all week. I’m gradually receiving emails from Markus. Right now working with blocks. He seems to think that individual Topics in automatic Topics menu can be changed. The blocks determine the overall structure of the page. But that’s only for blocks in the block management area not for individual Topics because he went and changed the front page to a 3 column layout for me and now everything is in 4 columns.

e.Jim

2006-11-17T13:08:00.000-07:00

Ok, I got
up just before 6am and did the cbi thing. I answered Markus’s 2 email and shut off the computer and went to bed, I think I got maybe 4 hours of sleep in after that, I’m alright for now. I won't post my big adventure from yesterday here but you can read it on my other Blog titled "What a day" as I slowly phase out of Blogger.

Anyway I’m onto my first coffee for the day.

I’ll be going into work on my regular time with my wife and after work I’m heading over to Chapters and picking up a couple of books. There SF selection is a bit better the Audrey’s but not by much. Of course Audrey’s mixes their SF with Fantasy and their 2 different genres in my opinion. Fantasy (Lord of the Rings) is not Science fiction or even speculative science fiction. Some even think Star Wars is a Fantasy. Not. So, I’ll be going over to Chapters and maybe pick up the first 2 books in Stephan Baxter’s “Destiny’s Children” series or possibly try out Julie Czerneda’s books. Nut if I’m going to get series I’d rather start the series from the first book not pick up something in the middle like I did with Baxter. But I really prefer stand-alone novels. Any author will say oh they can be enjoyed as a stand- alone book, (sucks you into buying the series,) Another thing I don’t care for as far a retail stores go, is that they don’t stock older works. Like, I’d be very surprised if Chapters has anything by Clifford D Simak or Andre Norton. One thing I like about Audrey’s is they at least can special order for you at $1 more/book. But I’m going to Chapters tonight to see if they have that Clash on Broadway CD there. There’s a used cd place just down from where my wife works and I can get used CD’s there. But I’d be surprised that Chapters even has it at all, if they do. I doubt it but we’ll see.

e.Jim

2006-11-16T12:16:00.000-07:00

I was in
bed by 3am and I don’t mind that. Coast was pretty good, on UFO’s and I like shows like that but I’m not going to be up until 5am. I’m up at about 6am and I think I got 2.5 hours before I did the cbi thing and up until 7am checking out my website from the new link Markus had given me.

And I find that my email client is blocking my email inadvertently. Now I’ve got to give them a call and ask them to correct that. More headaches. So I think I slept form maybe 7:30am until about 11.00am. I’d still be in bed if it wasn’t for my wife restless and up now doing a bottle run. I don’t mind that so much as I minded the cats but it was just one thing after another and my Markus email being blocked, I’m not in a good mood this morning. Normally I’d love to be snoring away in bed.

Anyway, I’m having my first coffee here.

It’s a nice looking day out there. Tomorrow night I’m thinking about going to Chapters again and buy a few more books. I might even be able to get myself that breakfast sandwich from Tim’s as well Sat morning. Nice.

But I still have to contact my isp and find out what’s going on with my email. This is really annoying me because I want to be able to do some more website stuff with Markus this weekend. I really like GL because it’s so easy to use except that text editor is lousy. I’m thinking of a 3 column layout for the front page of my website and the Blog 2 column the way my Blog is laid out now. Everything else 2 column and all in the same color scheme type thing, I also added this morning My top to SF TV shows, Even though I didn’t watch the show very often I thought Babylon 5 was by far the best SF tv show of the 1990’s.

Also, I worked on more scene expansion for the beginning of “F” and I’ll begin work on the middle today, All that’s really needed is to go with the scenes that have a lot of detail in them already and expand upon them, So the beginning, middle and end look something like 28/56/28. So if I need to make this work, 8/16/8. This makes it to be 112 scenes in all. With 6 Viewpoint characters, that breaks down according to Marshall, 67, 9, 9, 9, 9, 9 scenes. The bulk of these scenes are of course the lead. Now the minor characters don’t need full blown scenes in themselves. I can always have their scenes a scene within a scene but the sequel will always be left for the hero and the villain. Only the villain and the hero get their own scenes. The secondary characters I think I’ll have them with scenes but no sequels. I’m not sure yet but the above will be the basic layout for “F”

But that;s all for now

e.Jim

2006-11-16T00:44:00.000-07:00

For some
reason my website is down and I wanted to go in and play with it. I think this is because Markus transferred everything over to Iowa, most strange.

So I emailed Markus about this. It’s probably 9am over there in Germany right now since they are about 8 hours ahead of us. I’ll get more info when I get up around noon.

I took a ride out to the end of the lrt line. Very nice out there It’s about +4* but was +6* around 11pm. Just as nice heading out this afternoon.

I waited for a bit so Rob would be out of my hair. I went in and there was Tony and I just said something like how the appointment went okay yesterday and it could be one of 2 things, Macular Degeneration or Posterior Capsular haze. Tony even said that he has a friend with MD and he can see to get around, he just can’t read unless he blows everything up. I can live with that. So he had us tap shooters over to the other side and I did okay, $220 and the top total was $400 something and that was Jeff, one of the new guys. It was really nice coming home and I caught the train. The City had extra cars on the train tonight because of the Hockey Hall of Fame game we did on tonight art Rexall Place. Looks like they had a good crowd on hand.

e.Jim

2006-11-15T13:00:00.000-07:00

I’m blogging

at my website and Blogger for the time being. Yesterday I managed to get a stat counter project going to view stats so that’s a good idea.

Anyway I got to bed about 2am and slept off and on but got up again about 5 to do the cbi thing. I took a bsl reading last night, at 15.3! Yikes. I haven’t had it that high in a long time. I went back to bed after the batteries were charged up in my battery re-charger. The green light was off. So now I can start using my digital camera again. But what I need instead of books this pay cheaque is back up disks. I might be able to buy one book and a set of back up disks. On this computer I’ve got one folder for everything. I went back to bed around 5:30am and slept off and on all morning getting up to go to the bathroom. But I’m sufficiently refreshed now as it is.

I’m finishing up my first coffee here.

Just a short Blog entry today as I also want to go onto work more on “F” and post this to Blogger and then to my website.

e.Jim

2006-11-14T13:32:00.000-07:00

I ended up
not going to bed when I wanted to at about 2am. Instead I was fooling around with my website now that I can get access to

the admin area again. I wanted to stick with OS Empire but I’m not getting the kind of support I’m getting with Markus. So, when I get my holiday pay taken out I’ll put the request in Dec 22^nd and I should get the full amount added onto my pay cheaque Christmas week Dec 28/29^th. Most likely on the
28^th depending on Christmas being a Monday and how head office issues out
Cheaque. If I get it on that Thursday night then Friday afternoon or Saturday afternoon, it’s probably better if I do the WU baking thing that Saturday afternoon. After work, then I can go to Chapters and pick up my Christmas present. So, if all things work out well, I will be moving this blog over to my website, This morning I already transferred most of the links over.

Also last night I was able to move some Amazon book covers over and I almost had a bit of a scare when some of the code pushed my whole front page over. I’ll still keep Blogger up and running, as it’s not costing me anything. Almost everything that goes there to Blogger is being typed on my msword account anyway.

I also want to get Msword Student Teacher edition and have a copy of that I can move around between systems and I hope to get that asap.I’m onto my first coffee.

Anne and I were talking today saying that because I didn’t sleep very well over night and she’s off tonight, I’m going to have tonight off. So I’ll be going over to Bo Didlies call Tony at 4:45pm and let him know my diabetes is acting up and I’m not feeling well. Which is true, I’m not. But I’ll surprise him and show up Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday afternoon, Saturday as well.

Sorry for the inconsistencies here folks but ms word and blogger don't mix very well.

e.Jim

2006-11-13T13:33:00.000-07:00

Anne’s been
doing laundry and vacuuming all day and not having a very good day of things, accidents do happen. On the other hand I’ve been having a relaxing day, watching the Oilers lose and watching then the West semi finale.

After that I went to work on the rest of “F” and I have the outline completed at last. I still need to do character sketches and I’ll be doing the lead Character Paul. Donna is the love interest; the sidekick is really Paul’s younger brother Billie. The bad guy’s name is Jonathan. Paul plays a detective as the story is set in present day. Oh there is also Donna’s sister Stacy. The theme of the story is based on transhumanism. The novel is slated to be 100k but I might even make it around 140k so it might not be done just yet, but that’s about all I’m willing to say on the story. I might have about 112 scenes in the story by the time I’m done. I think I’ll be working on the character sketches this week and I hope to have them all completed by the end of the month. I’m really thinking that 100k is too short. Most SF novels it seems are about 100k-150k. I like shorter novels myself.

It's 12:40pm as I write this. I woke up this morning about 5:30amm and did the cbi thing. I was ready to go back to bed but I got some nifty ideas for not only expanding the story but while still keeping with the original theme turned it up a couple of notches. I wrote this stuff down on paper. I went back to bed about 6:30am and got up as more ideas came to me. I think I got up about 3 times. By 7am I had enough and I went back to bed for good. I got up to use the bathroom a couple of times and Anne left to go to the meat market and I think that was around 8:30am. She probably had enough sleep as well. So I slept until 12:30pm and Anne was home doing her stuff. She closed the bedroom door and I had a great sleep from 8:30am 12:30pm. That was a solid 4hours plus the 2 hours after Coast. I think I got enough sleep.

I’m only now having my first coffee on the day.

Okay, some news finally on why my blog woes and why the sidebar is all screwed up. I got a reply from Thur over there at Blogger forum. I’m known as Envaneo and most other places on the web. Anyway, Thur suspects it’s a browser issue. Firefox doesn’t display css as well as IE, which is why things like the weather pixie and my stat counter and other stuff are at the bottom of the page. So until I go back to IE, I’m pretty well stick with this.r>

Snowing out there. Nice. I like snow days. Drivers don’t but I do, as long as I don’t have to shovel the stuff.

But this City is cheap. Seniors bow have to shovel their own walks in front of their homes in the winter when its snowing. In the past if they didn’t nothing and the City went out there with a bobcat backhoe. Now the City will fine them for leaving their walks unattended and won’t remove the snow. A lot of these people can’t do the job so they get relatives or do it themselves if they’re able. The snow isn’t so good on that respect. When I was living over there at the “villa Maria” Tea the caretaker was out there constantly shoveling the snow from the front sidewalk to the street sidewalk. It’s the City’s sidewalk they should maintain them. This City is cheap. At 9pm the university students one stop before the end of the line get on heading towards Clairview and the people that work downtown in Call Centers like me get on and the City only puts 2 cars on the trains to handle all that traffic. From Sept- the end of June when the kids get out of school the two car/train is full to the rafters and many tomes, I’ve got to stand from downtown to Clairview. The only time the City will have 3 cars on the train is when there’s a sporting event like the rodeo in town or an Oiler game. Sometimes they will when there’s a concert. But this City is cheap.

Anyhow, this afternoon Anne and I are going into work. I’ll put my 4 hours in and Greg will have the hockey game on as the Oilers are away in Denver. Then I’ll come home to watch wrestling and that will be my evening. Sp I’ll have a full plate this evening.

Damn this Blogger compose window sucks. Its not behaving well. I can't align left in some cases. I'm likeing Gl more and more.

That’s all for now.

e.Jim

2006-11-12T18:34:00.000-07:00

We went
to bed about 2am and listened to a bit of Coast. Art Bell made an interesting announcement from a news article that scientists have been able to restore sight in mice and has nothing to do with Stem cell research but the treatment won’t be ready for another decade so Art read from the report. I read the report as well and it didn’t give a timetable for when transplanting cells can be used in humans with eye disease. Stem cells could play a part in this later on of course. But I would say Art’s Timetable for when this could be available for humans is at least 10 years away. I’d say sooner.

Anyway, Anne and I shared a beer and I was asleep by about 3:30am and passed out. I woke up at 6am and went back to bed. I think I got p just before noon and watched the Oiler game, I think a brief break from that to answer Markus’s emails. There’s a good chance that I will be moving away from Blogger because I want a website and a blog all in one presence. Plus the tech support is better. So I returned to the Oiler game and had a nice egg benedict brunch watched the Oilers lose. After that I watched the West CFL semi finale Saskatchewan at BC Lions. It was all BC. So it will be BC at Montreal for the Grey Cup next weekend.

Anyway that’s been my afternoon. It’s been mostly sports. Hockey at noon and football after that, it’s been a good day what with that marathon writing day yesterday. I’m up to scene #62 now and on the way to finishing up the outline. Then I’ve got to work on character sheets for the characters. I won’t be ready to write this thing until Jan. 1^st anyhow. That’s a long weekend.

If I do decide to go put the website up and move away from blogger it wont be until the New Year anyway. I’m considering a Wordpress template and I won’t need to worry about any FTP. What I will probably end up doing is making an announcement on my blogger site and provide the new address as my last blogger post. If I can.

There’s also the possibility I have the early stages of macular degeneration and I won’t know for certain until next Monday on the 20^th. But in the event I do, and I will be losing my vision central vision, I can still use my computer. Widows has, Jaws for those with vision problems like mine. I can answer and compose email etc even though it’s brail supported. I can probably use a brail keyboard and with speech recognition software, I can still use MS Office and it’s applications. So I want to set the website up ASAP before (if) I do have MD. Again, I won’t no for sure until the 20^th. But if this is just something they can do with lasers and its just scar tissue on the membrane then I’ll be okay. I hope.

There are lots of things to consider and at the same time I don’t want to take on a major project like a website that will tie up a lot of my resources. Not like $100 bucks a year is a big deal. But I’ve got to consider the real possibility that I could be going blind. Even MD is not total blindness. If I can see peripheral vision blurriness like I have now maybe I can live with that. And wait 10 years for the possibility that the treatment for restoring sight may be available in my lifetime? And on it goes. The other thing I think I have is posterior capsular haze and this happens to about 40% of cataract patients months or even years after and this what I think I have. The reason why I think I have this pch is because MD is an eye disease that is genetic or related to aging. Other factors play into it as well such as smoking diet etc. The reason why my Doctor sent me to the retina specialist was because he couldn’t see back there inside the retina because (I think) it has to do with this pch thing. Also being diabetic might play a roll in MD as well nut diabetes is not in my family.

Anyhow that’s all for now.

e.Jim

2006-11-11T19:36:00.000-07:00

Anne came
in an hour ago and brought me Chinese but she wasn’t very happy with it. Since this was the first thing I had to eat today, I appreciated the meal.

While I was working on “F” this afternoon Anne had left the TV . Music videos. Sure enough Rap but then I heard another band and it was something interesting “Black Parade” My Chemical Romance. I liked the video. Then, the Killers. I have hear of them but first time I listened or seen them. I like them and another band called Billie talent. Good music. Yellowcard I like and bands like them. I was really impressed with MCR though and The Killers. There is some good music out there if you can sift through the Rap. I was going to go get a haircut tomorrow but I’ve got the hockey game on at noon and I want to watch that and work some more on ”F”.

Speaking about ”F” I got up to the end of the middle of the book all “scened” out. From scene #1 - #60 and I’m not done yet. More work on that tonight and tomorrow. I have another 20 scenes left to go. If all works out well, I might be able to start work on this Dec 1^st.

Sometime maybe last year I can’t recall but Anne had bought me this terrible product: A paste like substance that is supposed to remove scratches from CD’s. I tried it on all thereof my Clash on Broadway 3 cd set. Even when I bought it in the early 1990’s it was used. I applied the paste on all 3 CD’s and as per instructions tried to remove the paste after it dried. I put the CD’s in my cd player on my computer and all 3 CD’s won’t work anymore. They were ruined. I was resigned to maybe never getting the package again. Until I stumbled upon Chapters and they have it there According to their website. Excellent. It’s a $40 item. So I think what I’m going to do as a Christmas present for myself is to get, The Clash “On Broadway,” My Chemical Romance, “Black parade” The Killers, and Yellowcard. So that’s 3 CD’s and some books. With the other half I’ll sign up for Markus web hosting and turn my GL site over there but so far he’s not really doing anything.

Blogger Beta is really awkward to use right now. This is not a clean system.

e.Jim

2006-11-11T13:11:00.001-07:00

Hows that
for sleeping in late? We got to bed about 4am and listened to a bit of Coast. I had taken the gravel pill about 2am. I ate those sandwiches and Anne had something to eat. It was getting on to 5am so I figure I may as well stay up until 5am and then do the cbi thing. A bit after 5am I was asleep and I slept well up until I had to get up several times to use the bathroom. I only got out of bed about 12:25pm.

I’m waking up with my first coffee here.

Well, the Sun is out probably the first time all week.

I worked some more on “F” last night and I know the direction I’m going with the next 15 scenes of the story up too the 3^rd crisis point. I don’t get into shock value like J Alan Erwine does but that’s his style even though he says they’re done not do this for gratuitous reasons but I think the reader would get board with too many of these shockers fast.

Anyway it’s Remembrance Day out there in the City.

The Oilers won one last night in Columbus 4-1. Good stuff. It breaks a 4 game losing streak and they go into St. Louis Sunday to play an afternoon game. They are off to about the same start they had last year. I’d be happy if the Oilers just make the playoffs this year.

e.Jim

2006-11-11T01:32:00.000-07:00

work went
rather well last night. I walked in business as usual and everything reset back to normal. I brought my cash with me to go to Chapters to get my books. Overcast about –7*C, I did $236 something like that. I caught the train to the University and a bus down Whyte Ave was waiting for me. I got off on a 105^th st and crossed the street there by Canties and upstairs. Their SF section was about the same size as Audrey’s for all the good it did for me to go out there. I bought 2 books. “Grasp the Stars” by Jennifer Wingert. I made sure there it wasn’t part of a series. Then I bought “Transcendent” by Stephan Baxter. It didn’t look like a series either. I felt happy as I paid for my books and after a long wait outside I Caught the bus to the University and then after a long wait for the train I caught that out to Clairview and a wait at Clairview and home. I got in at about 10:20pm as Anne had misplaced her keys and was waiting for me for 10 min. When I got inside and got comfortable and counted my change and all I looked over my books and I got sucked in again. The “Transcendent” book is book 3 in the “Destiny’s children” series. I should have looked inside. Live and learn. So next time, I’m going to look all through the cover and back cover for any indication this is part of a series. I should have asked the clerk if it was part of a series. Live and learn. Not only that but this Chapters has escalators. 2 floors. Even the kids corner was larger then the SF section. I’d say the SF section was about 5% of their overall store. But they have a music/dvd section and Starbucks.

e.Jim

2006-11-10T13:53:00.000-07:00

Not a bad
day out there even though its overcast and most likely pretty cold. If you call –7 cold.

Last night I was in bed by 2:00am and past out by 2:30am. I woke up at 6:15am I had just over 4 hours despite being in a bad mood. I’m over it now though. I decided to stay up until 6:45am and work on my outline for “F”. I’m about half way done the outline for the novel and onto my 2^nd crisis point of the story. Good stuff. I slept a bit around 9-12pm when I got up and. I got my coffee and here I am. Sort of.

I fired up my computer and checked my email and I got one from Markus. It seems my ejimshannon.com is canceled. Markus can host it for me for the same price as what mark was hosting and Markus doesn’t mind helping me out. So, I think I’m going to set things up with Markus, not Mark.

Also, I may be faced with the realization that my Compaq files etc are gone forever. I think I’m going to stick with W98 until I can save up for a fast laptop next year.

So tonight I’m going to go to Chapters on the South side and pick up a couple of books and come home. I won’t be able to get my hair cut until Sunday because everything is closed Saturday because of Remembrance Day. Well except Walmart and other American companies.

e. Jim

2006-11-09T22:26:00.000-07:00

They. I got
an email from Markus. Good stuff. I hope we can work together on building my website.

So, my wife and I went into work just fine. I got my cheaque and a $30 bonus. Pat, Tony and JT were picking me on all night but I ended up putting my headphones on and ignoring them, listening to my music. I ended up doing $707. Not to shabby. Anyway, I was happy I left and I was in a bad mood leaving but I understood its source and tried to forget about it, I’ve been home for like maybe 20 min or so. I’ve got to go back tomorrow and then the weekend. Friday night after work, I’m heading over to Chapters and I’ll be picking up some books and a nice weekend.

e .Jim

2006-11-09T12:57:00.000-07:00

That kid
upstairs is still at it. Like a fucking wind up toy, you think I can get any sleep around here with that racket going on? It's not really their fault though because just before they moved in above and the older couple moving out the caretakers put in a sub floor in their suite. Whatever that means. JT knows more about that then me but the people upstairs don't know this. I think it's a tactic to get us to move out because we've been here so long and they can come in gut the place and up the rent by a couple of hundred bucks. We've been here for over 10 years and me here for 6 and we barely heard a peep from the couple upstairs until the family with a toddler moved in.

The reason why 2 days are missing from my journal is because I bloged my journal. For some reason Bloger/betta wont let me paste onto the compose area. It changes all the time of course. I don’t see any real value in blogger beta personally. They didn’t really improve it much. Okay I can past now but I get this space between the date and my title in blue.

Anyway, I didn’t go to bed right away. I turned in about 5am after the cbi thing. I wanted to work on “F” some more is what kept me up until 5am. I slept until 9am when that brat upstairs began running around all over the place Anne and I getting up a few times to go to the bathroom and the cats roaming around.

Anyways I’m onto my first cup of coffee.

My wife got her pay today and I’ll get mine later. Plus we had that GST cheaque that came in handy. So that’s $600 or so just this week alone. Not bad.

I was also up looking in Fantastic fiction around 4am as well to find some books I’d be interested in over there at Chapters. After I post this, I’ll be browsing in that and calling Chapters from work and asking them about titles. I’m very picky about my SF reading preferences. I don’t like series. I don’t particularly like military fiction. I don’t particularly like hard sf. I don’t like young adult, I don’t like alternate earth history novels. I don’t like SF comedy. I also don’t like long SF as well. The longest book I’ve read this year has been Robert J Sawyer’s mindscan. I’m currently reading Neal Asher’s Gridlinked. Not much dialogue in it but it is fast paced and I'm enjoying it. So, I’m rather picky on what I like to read.

Anyway, that’s all for now so for any typos as I'm still trying to get a handle on Beta and of course my vision woes.

e.Jim

2006-11-08T22:09:00.000-07:00

Good grief,
what a night. We we're doing MM and I wasn't doing to badly. I think I got about $145 on that. I got into a tirade there with some of the people I work with. It was kind of a fun tirade but I was also being serious because I was wondering out loud why do smokers get to go on x2 5min smoke breaks when us non smokers can't? But I'm going to have a rants page on my website and just link to my rants for anyone interested for my opinions. Why I don't know. So I got to thinking maybe I should start that now. I went over to my website (see sidebar) and my friend Markus in Germany has helped me last year doing some website stuff blasted a message to me.

Hey Markus, I hope you got my email. :-)

Alright that said after the break we had a bit of a shutdown problem and JT and I listened ot the Oilers hockey game from Detroit. They got beat badly 3-0. Ouch. We did CCSD and I ended up with $585. I ws glad to get out of the office. Extra cars on the train tonight. I got my bus and home. Yeesh. Weird night.

Okay, the reason why I want to move my rants to my website is because I want to be known for my fiction writing not for my opinions, such as they are. My opinions don't matter anyway, and my rants are only references to observations in my daily life and the things that affect me. But I'm going to utilize my website more fully and that's what I'm going to do as I'm planning this novel.

e.Jim

2006-11-08T12:19:00.000-07:00

Here we go,
I was in bed by 2:30am listening to a bit of Coast. Not my kind of topic on psychic development. Pretty lame stuff. Tonight is a lame topic as well on US economic forecast. But they got a good show on Thursday night before open lines, on "Aliens and Giants" before another open lines show. Anyhow I went to sleep and woke up at 6:30am and fed the cats. the ol cbi thing. I think I got about 2.3 hours sleep and then I went back to bed and I slept fairly well until noon. Other then getting up a few times to use the bathroom. I think I got 7 hours sleep.

Sometimes over at WWE on Raw, "rapper" Kevin Federline has been boasting how he's married to Britney Spears and bla, bla, bla. and seems to have a "vendetta" on John Cena and challenges Cena on Raw the other night. Big fucking deal. "K-Fed" is a little weasel anyway, the guy is a braggart. Why does the WWE even give this guy any attention? I had to laugh last night when on "Entertainment Tonight" it was announced that Britney Spears has filed for divorce from "K-Fed.". citing "irreconcilable differences." Can you say prenup K-Fed. "Ching ching." Normally I don't pay much attention to Hollywood but because there is a wrestling cross over storyline, I had to mention it. I like John Cena. Even when he was a rapper because he never took himself too seriously unlike this "K-Fed" idiot. That's why I had to laugh about the divorce news.

Speaking about music (uh-oh I feel another rant coming on. Read at your own risk.) but since the emergence of "Rap/hip-hop there" hasn't been a new musical genre since 1990. Not that I consider Rap, real music or anything. Lets take a brief look at pop music.When "pop music" as we know it today first emerged on the scene in the 1950's. We can go further back then that according to Wikipedia. But for the purposes of my observations pop music began in the 1950's so we'll start there. The emergence of pop music contained musical acts like Buddy Holly, Elvis, that sort of thing. In the 60's we had the British Invasion and the hippie generation. I roll that as one category. In the early 70's, we had the 60's hangover and pop music softened. Then we had Disco, Glam and Punk/New wave. The 80's had a distinct sound unto itself and basically the 70's party continued. Music in the 80's was great. So in the 70's we had three different musical styles, Disco, Glam, Punk/NewWave. Then in 1990 kids started wearing baseball caps backwards and running shoes with the shoe tongue over the pants and in 1990 Rap "music" came out with MC Hammer and that opened up the flood gates. It's been Rap ever since. From 1990-2006. 16 years of the crap. The artists that I liked were still doing their own thing, like Midnight Oil, Kansas, Alan Parsons etc. I first heard about Ska in the 1990's and I was hoping that Ska would break the back of Rap but it didn't. So I ask myself if there is ever going to be a new "sound" that will sweep Rap music under the rug of time like Glam and Disco. Why do I hate Rap? For one thing it disenfranchised me as far as contemporary music was concerned. Rap/Hip-hop was/is mostly a black thing that grew out of the Bronx in New York.There is no musical "talent" involved as the "music" is mostly sampled. My generation did it better in the beetnick period but even back then it was underground. Rap was still underground for many years but since I'd say about 1998 or so Rap is now mainstream. Not that there was any great musical talent in 70's Punk but everyone knew this. The lyrics in Rap turn me off as well, as they are mostly about drugs and Ho's and crime and guns. Wow, something to aspire to. The music of the 60's and to the most part of the 70's was about sex, drugs and rock n' roll. We didn't think how cool it was to knock off a 7-11 or gun play and selling crack. Music of my generation was fun music. God, Now I'm sounding old. But music of my generation wasn't about glorifying crime, guns and Ho's. Rap is not nice "music" I'm not trying to sound like a preacher here and pardon me if I am but its my Blog. When Rap came along, music died and it's still dead other then a few artists that are trying to make real music like the Dixie Chicks, Prince, U2, Franz Ferdinand, Green Day. Thank God there are still bands out there making music. The Who and the Rolling stones, haven't sold out to Rap music, even though the Stones did a discoesque Lp track "Miss you" in 1978. I think Prince has done one Rap song and has flirted (rarely) with rap but him and Michale Jackson I have a lot of respect for because they haven't sold out to the Rap crap "genre". Good for them. They have more or less stayed true to their roots. I'm not saying that some Rap artists anent good singers. They are and some even play their own musical instruments. Even our Rapper where I work, Will has an excellent voice. There is a lot of talented people in Rap imo languishing their ability on such nonsense.

Anyway, that's my rant for the week, and my blog post for the day.

e.Jim

2006-11-07T21:41:00.000-07:00

You just
never know who your going to run into on the phone where I work.Today I came across a name that sounded familiar. Egyptian. And so I enquired to the other party as to the etymology of the word and I realized who I had on the phone. Could it be Anna? David's Anna? "Do you know a David M?" "Yes, who is this?" I identified myself and we had a grand old time chatting away about the old days. She's still with David after all these years and she said she saw Eugene about a month ago but not active in anything OTO anymore. So I have her email address and the 3 of us might get together just to go through old times. I wanted to let her know what happened to Russel.and if she knew anything about Richard. I spent a good 20 min on the phone but we agreed to meet, all three of us as she works downtown she said.

Well, the thing is that was a good news story but didn't help my evening at all. I think I had the lowest total in the room pulling in a measly $305. I beat out Doug's low total yesterday :-) I was glad to get out of there.and I caught the train home.

It was nice and mild weather coming home on the train. I got home 20 min ago.

Also, I asked Rob what's going on for Remembrance Day and we're taking Saturday off and I'll get the stat pay he said if Sat is my regular working day. Which it is and I work the day before and the Day after type thing. I then called Chapters 82nd Ave location and they are open on Saturday, the stat holiday. Good stuff. That way I can buy some more books. Chapters has a better selection then Audrey's and it's easy to get to Chapters. I take the train to the University station, take the escalator up to the street level and board any bus heading down Whyte Ave and I'm there.

Other then my total I had a pretty good night tonight.

e.Jim
.

2006-11-07T12:42:00.000-07:00

The folks at
Blogger help forums have got my request for some technical assistance on how to correct my sidebar and profile. I also want to clean up all the spaces in the the profile and sidebar as well. One of the main culprits has been the "Works in Progress" bar. I've never been able to use that successfully. I can get the program from the owner and I was going to do that last year but some stuff came up and I never got around to it and I don't even know if Blogger beta can accept it. (if its something built into the Template or a program/code external to it.

We were going to go get our hair cut today but the weather report talked about freezing rain and that stuff is hard to get around in so at 11am I opted my wife, we should do this Saturday, after work. Might even go tomorrow instead as I don't know whats open or closed for Saturday's Remembrance Day holiday.

Raw was pretty good last night. On a scale of 1-10, I rate the show an 8. Good stuff.

As for last nights show on Coast, I listened to a bit of it. I was so exhausted I just went to sleep about 2am and I woke up at about 5:30am did the cbi thing and went back to bed. I slept until maybe 8am when the cats started to roam on the bed again disturbing my sleep. I just dozed in and out of sleep from there. I think I got 7 hours, I'm not sure.

One thing I'm considering is getting a Satellite radio. XM radio to go. It would be better if the units had a record feature like Pogo radio. I've been following Pogo radio for the last few years. It kind of looks like an Ipod and has am/fm local radio and has an external speaker and head phones great for hockey games. I don't know yet if this is something I want to commit to right now.

I do know that if I can keep my health going and work I want to save all my vacation pay like I'm doing now, put some more hours in and save up enough for a new laptop. Of course by the time I'm ready to buy, Jan 2007 all PC laptops will be Vista ready. But I'm going to do more buyers guide research on the next machine. When I bought the Compaq my buying decision was based on the price was right. Well, a bit more then that. I bought the Compaq because it had Wxp preinstalled and a 5 in 1 media card reader. I also bought it because all the USB ports and speaker connections were up front on the case and of course the price was right. But the Compaq was the slowest computer I've ever owned and the noisest. I've owned 5 computers since the Compaq. My first computer was the Atari 130xe. I had to plug it into my tv set to use it. Lol. I bought that from Curtis at "Electrolights" in West Edmonton Mall and I recall making weekly payments on a layaway plan basis. Actually Rob and Crissy with my last payment I gave them to give toCurtis the store owner and they brought it to work for me and drove me home after work. Very nice of them. I don't think I had any software when I bought it. Oh wait, I think I bought an Ssi game called "Wizzards and Warriors" something like that. I couldn't as far as I know do any word processing on the xe. I did buy a modem a few weeks later and I was able to do some bbsing on Bulletin boards. This would have been Dec 1987. Then the following year I bought the Atari ST. I bought a word processing package called ST writer and I wrote "Gems at Oriel's bridge." and "Meltdown" on that computer. I would use the ST for the next several years until I traded it to Uve's son for the 386sx. But on that computer I was able to do some word processing. I used that up until 1996. I'd take the 3.5 floppy disk into AVC and use their computer labs and print off my stories. When my father passed away in 1996 I got my first real computer and a monitor. It was an AMD chipset. I think it had a 10GB hard drive with W95 as its os. This was my first Internet computer as well. I used that right up until I got married and upgraded it with a CD burner. Big time. After that in 2000 I got the Wme machine from Mark at OS Empire (See sidebar) but that bombed out on me a few years later and gave me the "blue screen of death." I'm still using that PC but with W98 which he installed for me. I'm still using that PC from 2000 and it works fine since the Wme us removed and installed with W98. Fastest computer I've ever owned. I think it uses SD Ram. Then prior to my signing on with Blogger I got the Xp Compaq machine. I love Wxp. Great OS. I have had very little complaints with any of Microsoft os's. Other then Wme. Shudder. What a headache that was. This is why when I'm going to buy the laptop (hopefully) I'll do my research. First priority is the laptop starts up fast. I don't want to wait around 20 min before I can gain access to my desktop like I did with the Compaq NAV. Secondly, I want as much Ram as possible. I'll even take a preinstalled os if I have to. I also want the memory card reader as well, a dvd.cdwriter optical drives etc. Probably a high end graphics card but that'l drive the price of the laptop up. I want 100gb hard drive. That's about standard these days in a a laptop. A 17" display. USB 2 etc. But I will not buy a Dell or a Mac Although I'm considering the Mac Minni for other purposes. I'm also going to research the battery as well. For obvious reasons. Also, where I plan on buying the computer. I don't know about Future shop yet. Just because it's right across the street from me doesn't mean anything if buying the Compaq from them is any indication of things to come. I think I'm prepared to spend $1000-1800CND on the laptop. I'm even considering asking to boot it up out of the box before I buy. And I won't buy a refurbished item as wellor anyting buy mail. But this won't happen if I can't keep my health as in my vision going.

Anyhow, that's all for now

e. Jim

2006-11-07T01:12:00.000-07:00

Basically I know
I have a problem with my sidebar. I hope to have it corrected by the weekend, which includes my profile as well.

Raw was excellent last night. The aftermath of Cyber Sunday. On a scale from 1-10, I'd rate last nights show a 7. Good stuff.

I actually like the beta version of Blogger. I don't like tagging the Title of the Blog because the title sticks out like a sore thumb. But I like everything else about the beta version. It's still in the fine tune angle.

e.Jim

2006-11-06T22:10:00.000-07:00

I had a pretty
good evening for a Monday night. We were doing M&M and had a pretty good list to work with. I ended up with $653 and a $50 credit card. I felt good leaving and the air felt nice once I left and walked towards Carona station.I got a seat to myself on the way home and I re wrote the opening scene idea for scene #1 for "F" Now I'm about ready to watch Raw and wind down the evening.

Tomorrow, Anne and I are going to go get our hair cuts and maybe a little treat as well for lunch. I might have enough to by a couple of books even. But I still plan on putting in a couple of afternoons this week. Most likely Wed, Thu, Friday.

e.Jim

2006-11-06T12:43:00.000-07:00

Didn't sleep
to well over night what with cats jumping on my feet and getting up to use the bathroom almost every hour on the hour. Add to that my wife doing the same, getting up all the time. So by about 11am I had enough and I went to the couch and put my feet up and dozed off here and there. Except for the noise upstairs, I slept fairly well even though I have a slight headache.

I don't know what my place of employment is going to do for Saturday, what with it is Remembrance Day and all. I'd like to Not work Sat and get paid for it and work the day before and the day after like we usually do for a stat Holiday. Have a weekend to work with. What with all the controversy with our troops dying at least one/week in Afghanistan lately, showing some respect for them seems appropriate on Remembrance Day. Well, any day really. I have a lot of respect for our troops and they are doing a great job in such awful conditions. I think we'd take a lot of flack because if we opened up our call center Saturday morning. So, I elect to take the day off. If it were up to me that is.

I got up at about 4:45am and I did a cbi thing and got a good idea for an opening part for the first scene of "F" and I wrote that down.and read some more in Bickham. Fascinating stuff.

Then I went back to bed and that's when the cats started to visit. I got some sleep but not a full 7 hours or anything like that. But I'm onto my first coffee and soon to Blog this and work a bit more on "F" and get ready to go into work for tonight. JT will be there and we'll talk about last nights Cyber Sunday and wrestling etc. No hockey on tonight but the boys play in Montreal Tuesday.

About Friday nights Oiler/Dallas game which Fans and local media are still a buzz about the misplaced call by referee Mick McGeough. Some people say, big deal it's only one point. Well, last year the Oilers got into the playoffs barely by one point and look where that one point got them. Right to the Stanley Cup finale. And here's the kicker, because Oiler Coach Craig MacT said something on camera as a reaction to that bonehead call MacT got fined $10G for his comment. I mean what was he supposed to do grin and bear it? He stood up for his team like players do for their team mates. The league does not like the Oilers. These types of referee shenanigans have happened before. There was another misplaced call as well during the Stanley Cup finale itself that could have cost the Oilers that Stanley Cup itself. And then McGeough apologizes for the call after the game. How big of him. Meanwhile, Dallas still was able to walk away with the win. Nothing against Dallas. I bet McGeough can sleep better tonight. What do we want? For one thing at least award a point for an obvious goal that tied the game with just under 5 seconds remaining in the game. That's good for starters and how about some accountability from the on ice referee's? The other thing is we want to have an second opinion and the ability to review the goal. They do that to a degree when the goal is up for review but not for miscalled goals like this one. was Okay, Jim..get over it.

That's my Rant for today :-)

The good folks at SF Signal (see sidebar) wants to let us know of their top 20 favorite SF films and they've got a pretty good list of them to. Just as an aside here's my list of my Top 20 SF/F films.

Woo Whoo. I got my gst rebate cheque in today

e.Jim.

2006-11-05T20:48:00.000-07:00

We were
talking about it for a couple of weeks now about ordering WWE's Cyber Sunday. So I mentioned it to my wife about 5:30pm and she ordered it for me. She made me a nice supper and I really enjoyed tonight's show especially the main event. Frigen K-Fed. Rap music bores me to tears. I'd rather listen to country. I hate Rap. One of these days I'm going to open up a Rants page and just link to the things that piss me off. Also, my wife ordered me a big old bag of smokey bbq chips and I ate some of them and just enjoyed the show. On a scale of 1-10, I'd rate tonights Cyber Sunday a 7.5.

Earlier before supper I was looking at the Future Shop Website for Laptop computers. I want a Media Center PC laptop that has a built in memory card reader and loaded with software. That is if my vision ends up being okay. I want to use my vacation pay towards one, so I might just end up saving my vacation pay for a whole year, 2007 and take it out just at the end of the year and work a full last week and then collect it all together and wait for the Boxing Day sale week and buy. I still want to get the printer and MS word of course as well.

I also worked on a few scenes in "F" and I'm going back to that after I post this.

e.Jim

2006-11-05T13:37:00.000-07:00

I went through
my earlier posts before I transfered onto my W98 computer. I no longer need to go into edit mode to color the title of the Blog and bold. I can do it like I used to before my earlier posts this week and cleaned them up lots of typos. Least this way makes me look half assed credible

Also, last night I went to Bythor's blog and it's been updated a bit and he mentions that their circle upholds the Gnostic tradition which means he's still doing the Gnostic Mass. Good stuff. I really enjoyed going to those when I did but since I got married it's hard for me to justify to my wife me going to the Mass, when I sometimes won't get home until 1am or later. She can accept me going to the lodge because it's a guy thing but the Mass is mixed singles and couples. That's what Wicca's membership is composed of. No doubt they had a Mass there last night.

e.Jim

2006-11-05T13:19:00.000-07:00

Another thing
my other stuff like stat counter Weather pixie is all shoved down at the bottom of my blog page.There's a lot of stuff as well that's changed but I updated my browser yesterday as well. I now get a bandwidth bar at the bottom of my screen.When I use spell check, after posting and I view Blog it shows the correct spelling change in non bold. Just some minor problems but I got other things to do today.

e.Jim

2006-11-05T12:42:00.000-07:00

Well I'm
back in Beta but I lost the paste feature. I wrote a journal entry and copied it into my browser and after a bit of a shaky start to get here Beta won't let me paste a good page of material from my diary. But at least I'm back to normal, more or less. I still have to go into the edit mode to change things so if your looking at this and see just a few words, it's being edited

I'm onto my first coffee of the day.

Last night around Hogan's Heroes and my lunch I took the gravel pill and by 2am I was in bed. I listened to the part of the breaking news on Coast how they tried Saddam Hussein for crimes against humanity. He will hang. When that will be, I have no idea.People are saying the Sunni's will rebel but I think after the aftermath of all this, it will be business as usual.

I got up around 7am and did a quick cbi thing and read a bit more on Bickham. I learned how and where to change viewpoint characters in a scene. Some excellent stuff. That kept me up thinking for awhile but I fel asleep about 8:30am and woke up shortly around noon. So I had a good 8 hours sleep.

Other then that, not much is going on.

e. Jim

2006-11-04T17:30:00.000-07:00

I went
into work tired but feeling okay. I got the donuts and their sausage breakfast sandwich and into work. I put the donuts in the lunchroom and got myself a coffee and ate my breakfast sandwich or BF from now on. Very nice, I really enjoyed that and I’m going to get another one next weekend. So, this is what I’m going to do, work a full afternoon shift/week, next week, Mon-Fr. I think we’ll be having Remembrance Day off but nothing has been verified. That will get me 34.5 hours and toss in the stat pay that should get me about $310 after taxes. Anne gets $149 of that; I keep $10 for expenses. That will get me $170. Then next week, I’ll do the same and put in 38.5 hours. That should get me after taxes I should have about $319. Less $140 and I’m left with $180. So, that’s $530 between the 17th and the 24th Then, I plan on getting the printer and MS Word. That’s of course I find out what’s going on with my vision on the 20th. Then I’ll know what to do with the money I earned. Anyway, we started doing HHF and I sold a family pass/sponsorship on top of the tickets, $100 sale. I got a few $50 sales and I ended up with $245 before they realized our line hour was dropping. This campaign is done. So we did WCS and I got a bit more out of that. Then we had some technical trouble and Edgar and I had a great conversation about politics etc., which I won’t go into here. We ended up doing 3 campaigns. I got X2 large sales and ended up with top total,

I was glad to get out of there. That crazy woman wasn’t there and hasn’t been there for the past few days. Thank God, I got home and Anne was waiting for me outside there and went inside with me. She had some of her shopping done. I went and had a nap. I think I got an hour snooze and I’m more or less refreshed and awake. No hockey tonight. Were having a “Chinese” kind of a dinner, dried ribs chicken ball and rice. I got a fresh container of coffee we got out rent paid bus pass lots of food things are looking good. Tonight I’m going to work on the “F” and have a relaxing evening. I think tomorrow I’m going to try and recover my desktop on my old machine. If everything works out all right, I should have my new printer and MS Word by the end of the month. That way I can save up my More later.

e.Jim

2006-11-04T08:28:00.000-07:00

Uggh, I’m
feeling sluggish this morning. Suffering from just a few hours sleep. I knew I should have tried to sleep when I was in bed the first time. This is going to be a long day. Well, I think this weekend I’ll be back using my Wxp machine. Start up on this computer is so fast.

Overcast day out there, I think its about –12* or something like that.

If I can get my desktop back on my Wxp machine this teaches me several things. Firstly, never do an improper shutdown and never do an improper shut down and always back up my files. But after I get some sleep I’m going to email the story Template for “F” to my Xp email and this diary. Then go through the Compaq recovery sequence and see if I can get my system back. If I can even at the risk of losing all those files, I’m going to keep into a steady habit of backing up.

More later.

e.Jim

2006-11-04T03:04:00.000-07:00

We had
a rough ride into work my wife and I. We had a bit of o a blow up and it got ugly there for a bit but I went to work and got my cheque and put my 3.5 hours in. I walked up to where my wife works and I handed her my pay cheque. We;re all right now.

Big trouble with the Oilers last night and the referee. The Oilers thought they had tied the game up at 3 against Dallas and the goal was dissallowed. The fans were livid. But later on the ref apologize for the miscall. Oh well sh$t happens. Lots of people over reacted.

I had a nice lunch and Anne got the bus pass and I have enough to get myself that little breakfast treat.

So I'm up unable to sleep. That;s what I don't like about going in on Saturdays. Anyway, I saw my bank and I made bonus again bringing in $2,300 for the week, Not bad part time. So, I'lll geet a bank bonus for that.

Next week I want to work the extra hours and save up enough for a cell phone.

Thanks everyone for putting up with me. This format here is only temporary until I get my other computer back online but before that happens, I'm stuck with this.

I'm still working on the outline for "F" and I'm getting some good stuff as the story is slowly taking shape. I think I should be ready to write this Dec 1st. If I Can hold the goal to 10K/week, I'll have the first draft completed by the end of Jan. More later today.

e.Jim

2006-11-03T14:00:00.000-07:00

The new
unemployment figures came out today and we’re sitting here at 4.1% here in Edmonton. That’s down from even last month. I keep saying this but I’m really going to make an effort to go in on Monday for the afternoon shift. If I get enough sleep overnight Sunday I’ll be asking my wife to make me a lunch so I can be out of here at 12:30 and on the lrt platform by 12:45pm and “out of the chute” by so I can be there for 1pm. That way I can secure my dialer and week the afternoon/evening shift for a total of 7 hours. I want to do that for next week and the week after. I really want an extra copy of MS Word and the only way to get that without spending a bundle on Office is in MS Works, or Student & Teacher edition. However the Price is a bit steep.

Anne stepped out again. Looks pretty chilly out there. –3 but there’s, a wind chill to make it a lot colder then that. I’m glad I don’t have to wait over there by Money Mart for sometimes 20 min out in the cold after coming up those steep steps on Saturday mornings. It’s a five-minute walk across the parking lot behind first Edmonton place and I’m there in the office. I want to go all next week Monday-Friday the full 7-hour days because I think we could be off Saturday for Remembrance Day.

I don’t know if I’ll get to lodge this month at all because of my eye appointment on the 20th. The emergent meeting is on the following Saturday after the Remembrance Day weekend and before my eye appointment. I can’t justify taking Saturday off and Monday off. One or the other and my vision is more important then the lodge.

Last night I ended up working some more on NW. I think I’ll most likely get Word 2003. When I get that I’ll move it onto the new computer and find out how to back up all my files. Since MS Word is a $199 program after tax Word will cost me $210. But MS Works suite has MS Word 2002. Now I can get a copy of Word from anywhere one of my working buddies and it’s “legal” until I upgrade from that source but I want to own the license. The other option is to buy Word Perfect and it’s Canadian own. Also Word Perfect is half the price of Word and I might go with Word Perfect yet. The whole Word Perfect Office suite is $110! Good deal. Anyway, got ot blog this and go. That's it for now.

e.Jim

2006-11-03T01:53:00.000-07:00

I didn't
get to go to lodge tonight. All I could get was Neils answering machine. Not a good day yesterday.

Now I can recover my windows desk top from the Compaq system recovery and they warned me that I could lose all my data. The computer would be reset to original factory settings, Meaning I lose everything. I lose the NW novel, my "F" project synopsis, 6 months worth of diaries and hundreds of photos and some music as well. It's heart braking but this teaches me a valuable lesson. Back Up.

But speaking of "F" I began a synopsis earlier and I'm well on my way to actually completing it. I'm going to try and reach Compaq and see if there's still away I can recover my last know Good settings.

If not I'll start over.

Time to go to bed. Coast is on.

e.Jim

2006-11-02T12:58:00.000-07:00

Might be
off line for awhile as I'm having some computer trouble. If this is the best I can do for awhile, sorry for the inconvenience. I'm using Fire Fox on this machine and it doesn't provide half the options as Wxp does. I'm just glad I have the 2nd computer.

Seems every time I have vision problems I have computer problems. The worst part of this is I have no system recovery disk. That's the whole trouble when you by a computer with Windows/OS pre installed.

You've got to get 10 blank CD's and put the OS onto that. I'm never going to buy a pre installed OS system again.

Anyway, if this publishes alright, I'll be back on a semi consistent basis.

e.Jim

2006-11-01T13:15:00.000-07:00

Now, I went
to bed by 3am and asleep by about 3:30am. I woke up to use the bathroom and noticed it was around 5am, so I did a rush cbi thing and went strait to bed. I slept from just after 5am to about 10am and I dozed off here and there after that. I think I got 7 hours sleep. Maybe.

I read a lot of Bickham last night and ignored Coast.

Coffee time and I’m running low on coffee here but I get paid Friday and I’ve got enough to last me until then.

Speaking about coffee, I pass by Tim Horton’s every day going into work. Or Tim’s as we call them here. A great Canadian success story. That’s where on Saturday mornings I pick up the staff donuts from Mike's $20 he hands me the night before. But they’ve been promoting their breakfast menu lately and they’ve got this sausage/egg/cheese, McMuffin thingy on a biscuit type bun. I’ve been wanting to pick one up but they don’t have any hash browns. I could go to Burger king across the street and pick up their little tater tots but they’d get cold fast by the time I brought them into the office. I don’t like BK much at all. McDonalds about the same gets a thumbs down from me. Except their breakfast menu. Though McD’s fries are the best fast food fries out there. I like Wendy's and Harvey's though.
But since I go by Tim’s the next time I go by there when I have any cash, I’ll pick one up.

I’m excited about seeing the latest James Bond, Daniel Craig looks pretty good as the new Bond. But I liked Pierce Brosnan as Bond, best of them all. Better then Moore. I found Brosnan was tough yet showed a soft human frailty about him in the bond character he played. Brosnan's Bond was not always a super spy and had more human characterization about him. But Craig looks pretty good. I thought they were going to cast Rupert Everett as the new Bond. I’ve seen him act as Sherlock Holmes and he did an excellent job. But the best Holmes Actor was Jeremy Brett. He had a style of grace and arrogance about him I liked. Too bad he passed away. Holmes and Bond are two of my favorite fictional characters because of their specific place and time and I can identify with both of them for some reasons I can't explain. Place wise more so of Bond then Holmes because Bond is really all over the place. So, if I have my vision restored I’ll be seeing the New James Bond film as soon as it comes to the dollar theater. Probably in the Spring.

Speaking of movies and such, I think a first run movie here in Canada is something like $12 bucks. That’s incredible. I can recall vividly paying $5,50 for a movie back in 1983 when I watched “Return of the Jedi” at the Jasper Theater. I paid for myself, Charles and Ellen and Helga. $22.50. I was looking at the ticket in my old diary at the time recently. I had just moved into Trudy’s basement suite about a mile south of the theater on the same street. Hard to believe that was 23 years ago here in Edmonton. I was 31. Of course min wages at that time here in Alberta were still $4.50/hour. Now it’s $7 but very few places if they want to keep employees will pay $7. Even our place starts people off at $8. Even then $8/hour is peanuts. Most people can’t even live off of that. I make a bit more then $8/hour but not by much. Still, movie ticket prices seem to reflect the hourly wage of the times. Well for me at least. Still $12 bucks a ticket is pretty high for a movie ticket.

Speaking of wages here in Alberta on my way home last night on the crowded train I heard some 20 something year old with his buddy talking on his cell phone about his job and how he’s getting $13/hour. Most call center firms start people off at $10 bucks an hour.

Anyway, that’s about it for now.

e.Jim

2006-11-01T00:44:00.000-07:00

Hollowe’en is over.
I went into work with Anne and I walked across a very icy parking lot behind First Edmonton Place passing by the ye old Hobbits Fantasy Shop location now only an empty lot for parking patrons. Sigh, and into work. The shift was just changing as I got inside and I claimed my dialer. JT was there. We did Wheelchair Sports. I ended up doing most of my sales on WS and, I stepped outside to get some air for a few minutes. I brought my camera along to take a few photos of the staff and a full shot of me. I sold a family pack as well 4 tickets and I got a 20 sponsorship on top of that for $100 and a $10 credit card. Also, the left over “Hollowe’en O’ Rama” candy grab bags. I got 4 of them for Anne. I got outside to try and take a few night time shots but they didn’t turn out very well. I had an uneventful ride home and Anne wasn’t in. But came in the door as soon as I had my coat off. She appreciated the candy. I downloaded the images I took and did some internet stuff and Anne made me a nice baked pasta and we watched the news and here I am. So that’s all for tonight.

I’m not listening to Coast. Well maybe.

e.Jim

2006-10-31T13:44:00.001-07:00

My wife must
have gone out earlier for groceries or something. She was gone when I got up around noon. Since it’s Toney Tuesday for KFC, she’s probably going to treat herself to that today.

Last night I didn’t get to bed because of al the sleep I had recently and all. So why not work on F? I put together an amazing 13 scenes in this mornings session and I came up with some pretty good stuff I think as well. I wanted to stay up longer but I was getting tired and around 4am I watched OPP but it was a repeat and I turned that off and went and did the cbi thing and went to bed.

So, Im having my first coffee trying to wake up.

Seems like a nice day out there. Currently -5 and sunny.

I’m considering a rants opinions page over there on my Geeklog website but I don’t want to get to caught up in that. But rather then long preambles, I can just direct people to a link, I wan to do some website stuff once I have a better handle on my vision woes,

Speaking about which yesterday just as I was starting my blog rounds I came across Robert J Sawyers blog (my opening blog rounds) and he had a post about his friend Howard Miller. What Mr. Miller did was inspiring and gives me some hope if indeed I go blind. A prospect I may be faced with if I have MD.

Anne is back from her excisions. Out feeding the birds.

Our staff Christmas party is Nov. 22nd. This year at the West Coast Terrace in. Anne says she’ll come along with me it’s on a Sunday. but we don’t know what the times yet and weather there’s tickets or not or other pertinent details

Tonight, there’s no wrestling even though I did enjoy Raw last night. They’re going to have their Cyber Sunday coming up this Sunday and I’m looking forward to that. Also, last night on Raw, they introduced something new, voting for their main event over text messaging on the cell phone. It was John Cena against big Show, King Booker, the Coach. So over a million votes just prior to the main event. Cene against Coach. As far as I know, this is the first time since the cell phone generation during a live event that people got to participate in the direction of the show. I think instant messaging is used in some of the other shows as well as part of the show outcome. It’s kind of like taking a poll. People use them in blogging as well (polls). See SF signal. Interesting stuff.

The Hubble Space telescope will get an extended life as a shuttle mission will be launched to upgrade the telescope but that wont be until 2008 sometime.

Some medical news recently about anesthesia awareness. This happens when anesthesia doesn’t work. There ws a case here on the news where a fellow was going through nasal surgery The anesthesia apparently didn’t work and he was awake for most of the operation and apparently blacked out from the pain. Anesthesia affects 1-3000 cases and is very rare. This one woman in London England had stomach surgery and anesthesia failed to work on her and she was aware of the whole 2.5 hour ordeal going through all the pain from the operation. Pretty scary stuff. My little Hollowe’en story for today.

Anyway, have a safe Hollowe’en everybody. See you later.

e.Jim

2006-10-31T01:03:00.000-07:00

Raw was
pretty good last night. So it's off to bed in about 30 min and listen to Coast. The only good show on Coast this week is on Thursday. UFO's and the Military. Mainly because it's Halloween week.

Sigh.

e.Jim

2006-10-30T22:12:00.000-07:00

Coming off
Carona station there it was very icy. Work was slow and hard the first half but I bounced back in a slow tough "Magic & Miracles" campaign. This new woman across from my dialer was racking up the totals left right and center as most of us were struggling. We think shes writing wood. Sending out “information.” She’s been asking everyone for money to borrow. Finally she asked me,. I said. “Do I know you?” and she was p'od at me. Like I got money t burn? Yeesh. Now I can see it for people I knowand if I have it to lend. But of all the nerve. At break I was $112 bucks, It wasn’t until after I did well, semi taping the semies. I was glad to get out of there when I did with $307 by the end of the night. I walked around the other side of Jasper Ave and came out that way back to Carona and home.

Earlier just before my shower I did some more work on the latest novel. “F” I don’t like to reveal the title until the rough draft is done or at least until when I’m there to send something out. When I break out as a pro, then it’s okay to reveal the title. But I improved the story a bit more. I try to make t stronger each time. But for now it’s time to unwind and watch wrestling. If it’s on.

e.Jim

2006-10-30T13:41:00.000-07:00

I was in
bed by 1:40amish and listened to the rest of Coast. Good topic. I don’t know if I believe in alien abduction. Though there have been some suggestions that after abductees have been taken above average amounts of dust has been found in their house after the incident. Then I have to ask the question, why would an advanced civilization travel many thousands of light years to spend billions of ET bucks, just to abduct humans? Doesn’t make sense. Sure, I can appreciate an ET society that might want to make contact with earth to figure out how the human body works to be able to live on this planet so they can (ET) do it to, Or maybe they just need the information so they can make physical contact with us.

But there have been hundreds of cases over the many years of abduction. Is it the same alien race doing this or others? If abduction is real, then this is a National Security issue of immense scope and proportions. But the same race of ET’s that have the capacity to travel all these light years and to spend the money to get here must have the technology to perform scans without abducting? Or have the ways and means of finding what their looking for without these crude methods. To travel here these many light years these ET’s would have to be at least a type 2 Kaku civilization. So why employ type 0 (us) methods to gain information about us humans? Doesn’t add up.

Anyway, I was asleep by 3am and I got up at about 6am to do the cbi thing and I went right back to bed and to sleep. I got up at10 am when one of the cats jumped on me but I got 7 hours sleep and I can’t complain about that. Right now I’m enjoying my first coffee and my wife has the day off. I’d like to have the day off as well but I’m going to the lodge Thursday night.

I also added yesterday to my list of blog reading links “Dial B for Blog.” I love comic books and I wish I had more money to spend on them even as a middle aged adult, I still love the art and the stories are pretty good too. But the last time I bought a comic book was many years ago. Most likely in the early 1980’s. It’s not that I’ve outgrown them its just that I couldn’t keep up with the many titles that have flooded the market and other things in my life over the years have put comic books on the back burner. Also the expense has been a concern. I couldn’t keep up with the rising prices back then. A comic book here in Canada today is what,$2.50? I had about 50 titles when I was reading them in my early 30’s. I was spending $62/month back then I believe. Now if I bought 50 titles/month today, That’s about $125/month. That’s (if I had one) a car payment. And that’s not even counting the gst. So today, it’d be mainly the expense of keeping 50 titles going at any one time. Or even 30. Hard to justify picking up the hobby again but I like to keep that link with my comic book past and that’s why I included Dial B for Blog in my list of links.

Yesterday I was able to get another scene in for NW. Scene #50. I’m learning some good stuff about writing fiction in Bickham. He talks about a scene shouldn’t have anymore then 2 Viewpoint Characters (VC) at any given time. I don’t know about that. In some of my scenes I’ve got a lot of people that are in the scene but they’re not doing anything. They’re not involved in the main conflict just along for the ride. For example in one of my scenes I’ve got it where the main VC is behind a billboard sign and the lead character is in huge trouble on the wharf below. She’s the one talking but the main VC is just listening because of the sign, the main VC can’t see what’s going on because the sign is keeping her hidden. Of course that’s her main plan. Until she’s ready to expose herself to the lead character in the next scene. This a speculative fiction story. In the next scene the VC changes and the VC will become the lead character and so on. But there will be other decisions and changes to make when I do the rewriting.

So, that’s about it for now. I want to post this and make my blog rounds as I’ve got about another hour left here before work. See you later.

e.Jim

2006-10-29T13:51:00.000-07:00

I took
this image about ten minutes ago
showing the aftermath of the

snowfall we had over night. There's a good four inches of snow on the ground which is really unusual for this late in October before Halloween. This shot was taken right behind our place. To the left is our apartment building.

It was still snowing when I took this image.

e.Jim

2006-10-29T12:07:00.000-07:00

I went to
bed about 1:30am ( after I fast blast Coast) about what I thought EVP’s are. Basically there’s nothing Supernatural about them. EVP’s are snippets of time. in the space time continuum. They are more or less restricted to their locale. What the guests of Art’s show were hearing were voices from the past in our own real time. Kind of like a bubble or portal I like the bubble concept. So even though the incident took place maybe 100 years ago we are experiencing it in real time with equipment we have to day they didn’t have. Since they (EVP’s) don’t have this equipment they are unaware their own time/EVP’s exist. Same thing with ghosts. I think ghosts are really blurred physical images in the space time continuum. Ghosys images could exist even long after their dead counterparts because the image is captured in the bubble of the space time continuum. Anyway, that’s my explanation behind EVP’s and to some extent ghosts. This isn’t anything new I thought up. One of Aleister Crowley’s contemporaries, Alice Bailey wrote extensively on this topic many years before me. A word about her work: Its deep stuff but very interesting if you can get past some of her “racial overtones.”

Anyway I didn’t listen to much of the show. Tonight is on alien/et evidence. Good stuff and there is a UFO show coming up this week. I slept from about 1:20-5am and I did the cbi thing, groggy I went back to bed and I slept until 11am.So, I had 3.5 hours and then another 8 hours after that plus the nap I had yesterday afternoon. I’m all slept out.

Good, my wife’s doing laundry brunch coming up soon. I’m having my first coffee trying to wake up here. So, I’ll post this and make my blog rounds and see what’s up in the blogsphere.

e.Jim

2006-10-28T22:46:00.000-06:00

I got
out to a snowy early winter morning and took the bus to Clairview lrt. Some sops and starts in the subway tunnel and I got to Tim’s and ordered the 3 dz donuts. It was kind of tough going across the parking lot but I slowly made my way to the office. Success.

Work went by just fine. Edgar was their even Carl. Carl and I got into talking music and he said he turned 55 in May. Someone my own age there at last.

Hey, hey. The Oilers won again tonight and have a 6-0 record at Rexall this season. Best start in 20 years. 4-0 as Roly got the shut out and Ryan Smith led the scoring. Not only that but Calgary lost. Hehehe. Other then the snow, a great weekend. I had a nap when I came home and slept for a few hours and I feel pretty good right now. Bedtime about 2am and Anne and I will be listening to Coast. A very nice way to round out a stressful week.

Also, I had a pretty good day on the job making line hour and just $25 away from $800. Not to badly. Other then the snow and my vision woes, this week was alright and this weekend looks okay well.

e.Jim

2006-10-28T06:54:00.000-06:00

Didn’t think
we’d get our first real snow so early. I woke up 30 min ago as my wife was watching movies all night on the couch. That’s okay she doesn’t have to work for a couple of days. She’s a bit annoyed where she works. Nobody talks to her there. She needs a new job. Most of the people there are younger then her anyway and she understands that. So she went back to bed and I got up having had 9.5 hours yesterday and 5 hours of sleep over night Fri/Sat. So I figured I’d get up a bit early have a coffee and read Bickham for awhile.

My main project this weekend is to install Shaw secure. Once that’s up and running I should expect a flood of a weeks worth of backed up email due to issues I'm having since I installed NAV. Probably too many firewalls competing with each other is my guess.

Then I’ll be doing more work on TBC and fleshing that out. I might not be ready to write it until December 1st or even into the new Year. January first most likely or during the Christmas break. After that I’ll write S-O. I’ll be hard at work with NW anyway over the next few months. I’ll probably begin work on the third part of AV and add more to RB and work that for the remainder of the year.So no doubt I'll be writing TBP and S-O in the first half and AV and RB to round out the rest of the year.

As for today, I’ll be heading out of here in a few hours and into work to pick up the staff donuts and work out the 4 hours and home by about 3pm. If I’m up to it I’ll be installing Shaw secure and get that out of the way in the afternoon. I was going to save the last few scenes of NW for a long weekend but I think instead as I’m closing in on the finale leg of the novel, I’ll be writing the rest of the scenes for NW this weekend. Also there’s an Oiler hockey game on tonight.

Speaking of sports and stuff, I watched ECW just before bed. My wife had a big project cleaning out the aquarium tank and that’s when she decided to watch some movies all nigt/morning. When she was coming back to bed, I got up for my day.

If I end up with full MD then I probably won’t be able to watch much TV if all I have is my peripheral vision but if that’s clear then its better then nothing. I’ll be able to still go to lodge and even read out of the corner of my eye. But I don’t think it is MD as my vision is just blurred. I think its that scar tissue built up on the membrane is all. I'm not a Doctor, so I can't say for certain. But if it is MD, I’ll even be able to watch some TV out of the corner of my eye. Hockey will be hard to follow because it’s so fast paced. But if I can see the whole TV screen even though my central vision is gone I might even be able to see at least the edges of the picture and still get bits and pieces of what’s going on. It might be like watching a tennis match. Same with wrestling.

I recall back in 1989 when I was working at Rainbow productions before computers took over telephones in call centers. There was this woman, She was visually impaired as well. I can’t recall her name but she used this large over head magnification screen. Of course at that time Rainbow productions had all their files on index cards, nothing but scribbles and years and dates of a crossed out confirmation of a sale. I don’t know how long she continued to work there because I was over and done with Rainbow productions in the spring of 1990. I think I worked there for a year and most likely Mike is still running that campaign somewhere. That was the year I was trying to get out of call center work and on AISH. No such luck. Also too, I could still work on the phones, I’d just work hard copy and dial manually. But if I do get MD I’d rather be on AISH. AISH would even pay me more then CPP and cover all my diabetic expenses. Of course AISH is no substitute for losing my site. So, that's about it for now.

Anyhow, more latter

e.Jim

2006-10-27T22:34:00.000-06:00

It was nice
going in. We did Alberta Easter Seals. I was training and ended up doing $435 on a slow Friday night. Anyway, I was glad to get out of there at 8:30pm and it was raining when I got out and through the parking lot. I waited for the train. Three cars on the train tonight, because of the last Eskimo football game of the season. First time in 34 years they failed to make the playoffs. When the train got out to Clairview just after 9pm the weather was a mix of rain and snow. To warm to keep on the ground.

I came in the door just after 9pm.

I was informed at work this year we could claim bus passes and bus tickets. I spend $60 month on a bus pass, That’s $720 year on taxes. I think we can still claim it as long as we’re not being audited. That also goes for bus tickets as well. My wife uses 2/day. Anne tells me she spends $9.month. This is $1200 year we can claim on our taxes. Plus I can claim out of pocket medical expenses. I spend $60/month on insulin, that’s another $720/year. That doesn’t mean we’ll get that back, it means we get a % back. But if it puts 2-300 back into our pocket in our tax return, then excellent. I’m all for getting an annual tax return.

That’s what I like about where I work we get to meet some interesting people. I met my wife this way.

Another thing I discovered are prepaid Visa credit cards. These are relatively new as well. I’ve never bought anything online before but this is a great way to do it. I’d only buy anything online if I trust the vender. Also, obtaining a prepaid Visa improves my own credit rating. Something to think about.

Anyway, that’s all for now.

e.Jim

2006-10-27T13:57:00.001-06:00

We went to
bed this morning about 2 am. I fell asleep by 2:30am and woke up suddenly at 4am. I figured I might as well get up and put my feet up on the coffee table and watch OPP. Another repeat. I dozed in and out of sleep and I woke up to GT 2 minutes in progress. So I had an hour "sleep" on the couch did the cbi thing in between commercials. Topic today was on Grand Forks in the Kootenay’s. The town is still functioning with just over 4000 people today. I didn’t stay up for the 2nd show so I went to bed at 5:30am and slept until 12:30pm.That gave me a good 9.5 hours sleep. Wow. Now watch, tonight and over night I’ll be wide awake.

Anyway, I’m onto my first coffee

Looks like a nice day out there +6* We’ll be heading off into work at out usual time and I’m off work at 8:30pm (big deal) One things for sure, I’m staying away from those donuts Sat morning.

Also last night I worked on some more scenes for TBC. I was considering changing the title to Zyphrium Rising. That was the title of the first novel I ever tried to write on my little portable typewriter at Cobogo and home in 1986 I believe. So here’s a bit of a short history on me: That was when Chris and I were trying to become writing partners before she got mixed up with Rob Stevens (now dead since 1999.) In 1989 I wrote Meltdown and I still have about 250 pages of that lying around here somewhere on hard copy. I’d need a scanner to scan that back into the computer. “Meltdown” was a convoluted mess anyway that went nowhere. In 1990, I wrote another novel called “Gems at Oriels bridge.” But then I got distracted by Mary. Then in 1991 I got involved in submitting short stories to “Writers of the Future” contest and had a go at that for a couple of years until about 1993. My first story got accepted but never saw print was “Earth Tones.” The magazine was a black and white zine but if the story did appear in print and I had the capability to get it there would have at least if anything stroaked my fragile ego at the time. I was really turned off by the long convoluted contract. Anyway Chrisy and I never did get that writing partnership off the ground. I submitted a story to a market (can’t recall the name) but I got a short scribble from Orson Scott Card, on the rejection letter, which surprised me.

I got mixed up in Amway in 1996 and ruined the next 3 years of my life. My Amway sponsor kept telling me because she was brainwashed herself “You can write when you go diamond.” What a bunch of crap. I was unemployed and she abandoned me in the business in 1999 and I was left on my own. I continued on. In 1998 I got my picture taken and on the front page of the Edmonton Sun newspaper Dec 12th 1998 but that's another story. In 1999 it was more important for me to find work and I ended up with Alberta Job Corp. I put Amway on hold and subsequnetly my writing on hold as well. AJC was little more then a make work project for people on Welfare. My writing stalled. Everything stalled. After that I found employment working for a security guard firm that laid me off in Feb of 2000. This is when I should have migrated to where I am now.

I got hired on to where I am now and that was in Sept 16th 2000 and that’s where I met my lovely wife. The best thing that ever happened to me was marrying her. I officially quit Amway in 2001. In 2002 I got into Freemasonry and took my EA degree, 2003, FC, and 2004 MM. That’s when I had developed cataracts and diabetes.

Anyway, that’s all for now.

e.Jim

2006-10-26T22:58:00.000-06:00

Anne and I
went into work. I met her just coming off the bus and we went to catch the train into work, I got my pay cheque and had a pretty good night, doing $470. I got a $175 sale as well and last year it was on a credit card. No such luck this time. The Health Sciences train came bt and I caught that heading to the South side and I caught a glimpse of the train coming my way and it had two cars on the tracks. Mine had 4, So I think they alternate them, 2/4 kind of thing. I got home just before 10pm.

So I’m going to watch the news have some lunch maybe uninstall NAV and get Shaw Secure up there instead. So that’s about all for tonight. Oh, I got my pay cheque tonight and a $20 bonus in there as well, I wasn’t expecting. At least all our bills are paid up and we have the rent covered for next month.

My vision at work hadn’t changed at all and that’s a good sign. Also, I can get stronger reading glasses as well in the meantime. The ones right now, aren’t too bad but my wife says they got stronger ones at the Dollar-Rama across the street.

e.Jim

2006-10-26T14:36:00.000-06:00

This is interesting
MD is a long term (in most cases) effect over many years. It doesn’t happen over night. If indeed I’m diagnosed with MD. I still think it’s a Yag laser treatment and my Doctor is having trouble seeing back there because of the Yag thingy.

Anyway, that’s all for now. Sorry for any typos.

e.Jim

2006-10-26T13:16:00.000-06:00

Last night
we got to bed about 1:20am, and I fell asleep about 2:30am listening to a bit of Coast. Good show. Now tonight we get ghosts stories and open lines. So I think I got a few hours sleep and I woke up just around 4:30am to watch some OPP and both shows of GT. I was in bed by 6am but I got a headache. I think partially this was due to the strong lights the Doctor flashed in my eyes and the eye drops etc from yesterday.

I worked some more on TBC last night before bed and my wife is right, that’s a lousy title. For the novel. After all, it's a working title only.

If worse comes to worse and I end up going blind, I can still write, I can get the program called Dragon Naturally Speaking. Lawyers and professional people have been using it for years. I’ll probably have to find a way how to convert that to Brail. But that’s the ultimate worse case scenario. I really think all I have is scar tissue built up on the membrane and a Yag laser treatment will take care of it. The best news yesterday is the Doctor said it that what I have wasn’t urgent, which accounts for why the appointment is Nov.20th.

Ahh, coffee time. My first coffee of the day.

Now it seems we’re going to be going back to daylight savings time after all. We set our clocks back Oct.29th. So instead of the Sun setting around 6:10pm here, it will set around 5:10pm. The Sun sets at its lowest point Dec 21st. After that we gains 2 min of light each day. That’s the way it should be. I’m used to that None of this late Nov stuff so all of North America is on the same page.

So Anne got her pay cheque today and her sisters money and I’ll get my cheque We got 3 cheques today. Woo Whoo. I love it when everything comes together. I just need to work more hours now that my future health wise is a little uncertain. If this is full MD then I’ll have some challenges ahead. As long as I have some vision left, I’ll still be able to go to lodge. But if I do have fill blown MD, I might get an AISH pension. So, I’m going to post this and try to find more information on MD.

More later.

e.Jim

2006-10-25T20:55:00.000-06:00

Okay, they're
tied at 1 each in Anaheim. The Oilers are looking pretty good. So in between hockey periods my wife has got the daily vacuum cleaner going.

I was thinking if worse comes to worse and I end up getting full macular degeneration, I'll at least have about 20% of my vision. I can still write even though it would be a huge hindrance to do so. It be like looking out at the corner of your eye all the time.

Another thing, as for my NAV woes, I'm going to let NAV 2006 run out its last 10 days here and then I'm going with Shaw's Secure. They have their own security services equal to Norton . I knew of it before but I didn't think my systems requirements (when I had my old W98 machine going) would support it. I didn't think I had enough Ram. I can certainly support it now. Not only that but it's a "free" service built right into the cost of my ISP bill.

The Oilers are in trouble, down by 2 in Anaheim. But never count the Oilers out.
That's all for now.

e.Jim

2006-10-25T15:56:00.000-06:00

We went into
see my ophthalmologist and he said I might have early symptoms of macular degeneration. Maybe. He’s not sure but he’s sending me to a Retina specialist Nov.20th. It’s not urgent. Basically is an eye disease that blocks out central vision. So it’s like I would (assuming that’s the problem) have a blind spot in my central vision. Not good. But there are ways and means to treat it and even slow it down. It’s not a returning of a cataract because cataracts do not return. I think it’s that Yag laser treatment. It’s hard to say at this stage. But anything is possible.
Anyway, we came back from the office and got that taken care of. It’s really nice out there. I’m a little worried about my vision but I’ll know more details in a month from now. But whatever the Dr suggests I’ll have to do.

Okay I didn’t get much sleep. I went to bed about 2am and dozed off as I tried to get back to sleep but failed. Worried about the appointment didn’t’ help. I wanted to stay up and listen to Coast for the first hour about the Hubble Telescope. It seems Nasa has approved a mission to have it serviced with new cameras etc.

I was kind of hoping there would be an Oiler game on tonight but it’s not until Thursday night.

Anyway, that’s all for now.

e.Jim

2006-10-24T22:29:00.000-06:00

It was
really nice heading off into work Temps about +13C on the way in. So JT was there to keep me company. I had this Plem in my throat and nasal area all night bugging the hell out of me. I ended up doing $310. Most of us were really po’d with Rob raising the line hour up to $300 making any bonuses out of reach. So basically that’s $1200 on mostly semies all night. Even the front 20 had their line hour increased to $75 and that’s $300/night. So in other words no bonuses. JT made a good point to me in that he asks for credit cards because he takes some pride in his bank. I like that.

Anyway, I was glad to get out of there a bit. That place is really annoying me. I’m just glad I’m off tomorrow and I don’t have to put up with that bs anymore until Thurs. The only thing we get is bank bonus and I’m sure Robs trying to see how he can screw us out of that. Tomorrow is my Doctors appointment at 1pm. I’ll try and get some blogging in before I head out.

e.Jim

2006-10-24T13:39:00.000-06:00

I took the
gravel pill just after wrestling and I was in bed at 2am. I fell asleep by 2:30am. I slept from there until 6:30am and I got up to do the cbi thing and I went right back to bed. But during those few minutes during the cbi thing the drowsiness from the pill wore off and when I climbed back to bed getting sleep after that was tough. I mostly rested and dozed off here and there. If I didn’t have to get up to do the cbi thing I would have slept right through. It’s that little extra change I do to get up in the morning to do the cbi thing that ruined my sleep. I think from now on, I’m going to take the pill after the cbi thing which I usually do about 5am.

Anyway I‘m still working on TBP (working title.) and I‘ve almost got the first 20 scenes more or less down. At the moment I’m having trouble with my NAV program. It says I have 12 days of use until I activate the program but it wont let me get beyond the activation screen where it says Next. I just get the mouse cursor hourglass on the dialogue box. The mouse cursor will let me close the dialoged box but when that happens I get another dialogue box that pops up saying to send a program not responding to Microsoft. The NAV box meanwhile is still “processing” the Next step. It lets me continue with my regular work on the computer but it won’t let me activate the program. And it’s not just me. Amazon reviews of this program are saying pretty well much the same thing. I’ve got their toll free number here (well I think it’s toll free) but since we don’t have a phone just my wife’s cell phone it would take up a lot of time to get their tech support ar Symantec to resolve the issue. Even then I’ve been reading about how people are having huge problems with this program. I’m trying to save up some money so I can get $ NAV 2007. A word of caution NAV fans. Don’t buy this product. I used NAV 2005 and it worked great. I don’t know much about 2007 but that’s the one I’m going to try and pick up. In the meantime I’m going to try and download “AVG Freeware.” It’s good for 30 days free but after that it gives very limited functionality. So at least in the next 30 days, I can try and save up the cash for the NAV 2007.

Raw last night was pretty good. They’re getting ready for Cyber Sunday. Kind of like a Taboo Tuesday where the fans make the matches. I liked the match against Spirit Squad and Rick Flare last night. Rick brought down Sgt Slaughter, Piper, and Dusty Rhodes of all people. There were many NWO signs in the front row and t-shirts. NWO coming back? JT at work thinks it’s going to happen from what he’s read. I think they will come back on Cyber Sunday next month.

Anyway, I’m going to Blog this and go back to work on TBP and see if I can put a couple of scenes together. Start date is still Nov.1st.

I hate this beta version of Blogger. When I try to bold my font in the non html compose window it reads it as html and rejects my atempt to publish. So I have to remove the html tags and go back to compse and it still rejects my blog. I think it's time to move over to a Live Journal acount. I understand they have lifetime membership Blogger really sucks now folks. It's a shame too because I was really beginning to enjoy it. Okay, to bold font you need to go to the edit mode. That works. I'll stick with Blogger until they get the bugs worked out. I like Blogger because of it's unlimited use of Blogs and photo's.

e.Jim

2006-10-23T13:32:00.000-06:00

I went
to bed around 1:30amish slept until Anne came in and got up because I couldn’t sleep then. So I figured I ’d watch OPP and they were repeats. I did the cbi thing around 5am and went back to bed, but all I could do was lay there. I was wound up and couldn’t sleep. I almost feel like going into work this morning but that’s going to toss Anne’s ‘what she wants to do today’ off.

Anyway, I got into listening some more tunes from You Tube before bed. I discovered they even have Television. Was a New Wave band that played at CBGB’s. But I got some good video especially what blew me away was their Marquee Moon live. Tom Varlain and Richard Lloyd. Awesome. The drummer was excellent as well, Billy Ficca. This guy ranks right p there with Topper Headon and Clem Burke

So I went back to bed about 8amish and same thing all I s=did was toss and turn but I think I got a bit of sleep. Maybe 3 hours at best. I felt terrible. I remember Anne getting up saying something about going to the market or something like that. I think she left about 10am. So I got up and went to the front room. It was noon. I still had that too much sleep over the weekend hangover. I sat on the couch with my feet on the coffee table to watch the news. I opened my eyes here and there and before I knew it, The news was over and local network was back into the soaps. I slept for an hour. I feel somewhat better right now.

I’ve had since yesterday afternoon a little tickle in my throat. I hope I’m not coming down with another cold. I just had one last month. Anyway, it looks like another really nice day out there. That’s all for now.

e.Jim

2006-10-22T23:28:00.000-06:00

I've been
doing research all afternoon on the location of my next novel. TBP. SO will be after that. I'm going to try and write TBP Nov. 1st.

Other then research, and some scene notes, I didn't get a lot accomplished today. I've been having problems with my NAV 2006 program. The Amazon reviews seem to support the same problems I'm having with this program. I don't want to tell my wife this because she'll have a fit. Next time I have some cash at my disposable I'm going to by the 2--5 NAV program instead and renew my subscription. NAV 2005 was a beautiful piece of work.

The other thing I want to do soon is to buy some more Ram for my computer. It came with 256k making it slow as political campaign promises. A local establishment has my kind of Ram on sale for $65 for 512k. I'd ideally like to have maybe $250 and then go get the Ram and maybe a couple of books all on the same day. JT might give me a loft as it could be on his way on a Saturday.

I'm seriously considering getting a game console. All work and no play makes Jim a dull boy. But the only games I'd really like to play are D&D/Everquest type games. World of Warcraft is apparently coming to the Xbox 360 and add that to Oblivion, that might make it worth while to get an Xbox. Maybe. I wouldn't mind getting a souped up video card but I don't thin my little PC can support it. For all the trouble of obtaining a video card which I may or may not support, I may as well get a console.

e.Jim

2006-10-22T13:08:00.000-06:00

I was in
bed by 1am and I listened to a bit of Coast, "Life after Death" or something like that. At least the guest had some substance to a dull topic. I got up at 4am to see what was on OPP but they had their Prairie farm report on instead. i don't mind watching that but even that was a repeat. SO I went back to bed and slept another 2 hours and got up at 6am to do a quick cbi (feed Cats, Breakfast, Insulin--cbi) thing and I went back to bed and slept periodically after that. But I think I got about 8hours and I feel alright.

Anne went across the street to Superstore for some things and I'm having my first coffee. I don't know what I'm going to do today. Last night I was doing some research for my next novel project. TBC. I don't know if I'm going to do SO, I'll do that latter. Also, I'll be doing more gender changes on AV etc. and clean that up but I can't really do much without a printer. It's hard to make changes other then small editing ones on the screen.

Also this week (Wednesday) I've got that appointment with my optomologist. So that's going to be interesting. See what comes out of that. i just want my vision restored so I can read clearly without these reading glasses. they do the job but I can't wear them for long.

Looks like a nice day out there. +5* the Sun is finally out and temps should climb to double digits. If the weather can stay like this until the end of the year, I won't complain. We had it that way last year right up until January 1st. Maybe this year would be a repeat of last year. Except without the prosperity cheaques of course.

e.Jim

2006-10-21T22:49:00.000-06:00

Those Oilers
never cease to amaze me. They won 4 strait at home.
Anyhow I got my lodge dues covered and my security covered. $150 gone in 3 days. One more major obstacle to overcome on Wednesday and I hoe I an get my vision cleared up, but that's all for now.

e.Jim

2006-10-21T17:21:00.000-06:00

I went into
work and picked p the donuts and had a pretty good shift. Not spectacular or anything like that but I did $750. I had the credit card bonus within my grasp but the calls were coming in really slow. I ended p $50 away from the $800 LH and failed. I was just glad to get out of there 20 min early. A train ride to the South end of the line and then out to Clairview and a bus home.

When I got in, Anne wasn’t sure if she had the right Norton program for me. So I checked it was 2006 version. I wanted the 07 version but I figured 2006 would expire Jan 31st, I went all the way up to Walmart after Anne left out of here all mad and upset with me and they said it’s still good as it’s just a Version of the previous program. I got home and installed the program. Works fine. Almost. Anyway, I’m back online. At last.

e.Jim

2006-10-19T16:06:00.000-06:00

Feeling sluggish
this afternoon. I got up early anyway and watched my two episodes of Gold trails and ghost towns. Or just GT as I call The first episode was about the K&S railroad line. The 2nd show was about Rock creek. Most of these places are not even on the map any more. New Denver is of course and so is Kaslo.

I’m having my first coffee this afternoon.

Doesn’t look like to bad of a day out there. At 5:20pm I’ll be calling Neil to see if I can get a ride. Otherwise its just a train ride to Coliseum Station and to catch the #8 there. Splendid. I can wear my old outer street jacket there over my suit and tie. No worries if I cant get a hold of Neil for a ride. It cuts into my festive board money. Not by much though. FB is still $5 and all I need is a couple of pops. The FB when I first got to the lodge was $2. But like everything these days prices go up. Lodge dues stay about the same.

Greg brought that nice little laptop of his son’s to work yesterday. I should have bought a laptop and I think I will eventually. But I need one with a memory card reader built in. I think Future shop has them for about $1200. Probably next January. I’ll save my vacation pay

Basically if I can just 28.5 hours or even 31 hours, I could say even put in 29.5 hours xmy hourly rate, In one year that should be about $830 add a couple of good pay checks onto that. Nov Dec and I’ve got the money. Best time is the first week in January. Trouble with this machine is it came preloaded with a min of 256 Ram and Wxp. When I get the laptop I want to make sure it has plenty of features. The computer is mostly used for writing but I’ll want to use it for other things as well. My current PC isn’t bad. It’s just slow and I think that’s mainly because of lack of Ram and the way I have Norton initially set up. Also, a laptop is easy to carry in case Anne and I get a chance to move out of here. Hopefully within 3 years.

Right now the economy is hot here. Or bad depending on your point of view. On one hand there are a lot of jobs here but on the other hand it’s tough to find a place to live here in the city. Rents are through the rough. Some folks have to move back from where they came from because they can’t find places to live here. Apartment units are going up all the time. People are employed and in some cases living in tents in empty lots, basically out on the street. We see the homeless all the time on the way into work. They’ve got tents in the bushes in empty lots all over the place. I’ve never seen it this bad before. Hostels are full up. It’s bad. The thing is though the price of a barrel of oil is dropping and that reflects on our local economy here. If oil drops to below say $40 bucks then we may see some changes. It’s a good thing to have of course.

I'll be offline tomorrow but back Saturday as I'm doing some systems house cleaning. Sorry about that.

e.Jim

2006-10-19T01:00:00.000-06:00

Tonight was
slow going, But around 2pm Anne had made an appointment to Dr. M for me for next Wednesday. So I ended up with an $887 total and $140 bucks worth of credit cards on the night. Rob and his rising expectations. $300 tonight for a line hour. Crazy. Edgar was the only one that did it. I walked out shortly when Pat did after they called my totals. That was enough. Anyway other then that, it was a pretty good evening. I caught the train home and found the front door key was jammed so a note on the door to use the back door. Rather a nice evening out there.

Still working on AV gender changes for the opposition character. Its going not to badly. I’m about half way through the initial changes before I rip the thing apart by scenes. In some places I have 2 scenes meshed into one Chapter. But since AV is going to be a trilogy so is RB. But I have book 1 done and book 3 done. It's going to take some creative jujuggling to get book 2 in there for each series. A lot of work ahead of me. But I work on it everyday a bit at a time.

e.Jim

2006-10-18T03:58:00.000-06:00

So we
went into work and we did MM again. I had a great night doing $1,350. That got me a $10 bonus. The vest total I had in months. I had a couple of credit cards as well. I got home and walking across the street as I tried to get my keys, I couldn’t find them being lost in the tearing of my pocket lining. I buzzed Anne but she wasn’t answering. I found them. Whew. When I got upstairs her shoes were there on the floor and her backpack. She had popped in home and out again.

I worked on AV and really getting into it. About 200 pages. More later.

Some 6 hours later. I was sleeping until Anne screamed at the cat for scratching the walls. That woke me up. I'm not very happy but I'll get over it.

So later today this afternoon I’m going to get my wife to call Dr, M's office and make an appointment for me. For Thursday afternoon. If this is indeed scar tissue that is built up on the inside of the lens and can be removed with lasers like that fellow said then great. But I won’t know until I go into Dr. M's office. I hope to know this week what’s going on. I hope nothing fatal.

I was reading about cataract surgery and something about YAG laser treatment. It seams that 3 out of 4 people develop a 2nd cataract months or years. It’s where scar tissue builds up inside the membrane. It’s like a 2nd cataract operation. So I hope I can go in and maybe it just consists of an office visit. He’s probably done this thousands of times. I never did go for the original follow up operation I should have gone in for back in August 2004. So a year later, no problems. Six months later last Feb I began experiencing small blots but nothing serious. It only began to get serious about a month ago. Basically the retina needs more light in the lens. It’s a procedure that is easily correctable.

Okay, I’m going to watch a bit of OPP and maybe some GT later as well but were starting to get into the repeats now.

There’s a good chance I’ll be going off line Friday until I get my Norton subscription renewed. Anne saw the program at Walmart for about $48 so about $50 after GST. We budget the thing for the $50 range. She’ll pick that up for me Saturday while I’m at work and I can install the program and get back online.

Also, management at knows I’m off Thursday night I have $100 bucks. Enough for my dues and a bit left for me for the festive board. So Thursday evening should be all fine and well, in other words, a good time.

Good stuff.

e.Jim

2006-10-17T06:11:00.000-06:00

We went
into work a bit stressed out and all but I had a good night at work as we began “Magic and Miracles.” Mostly small taps. I got a credit card and $559 top room total. Not that I got anything to show for it. But it was snowing when I left the building which was kind of nice in the evening.

Greg at work brought his son’s lap top pc with him to play around with. I like this unit. It’s a Compaq, same brand as mine and running Wxp but man is this thing ever fast. My PC takes me 20 min to warm up after Norton is checking for everything. Some 10K files later. Of course I only have 256Ram. His machine probably has 2Gb of Ram. I was really impressed with it but my vision is so blurry these days its hard to see clearly all the features in the brief time I had with it.

Anyway, I got home to watch the 3rd period of the Oilers at Vancouver and the Canuks beat the Oilers 2-1. Both teams will meat each other tonight at Rexall place. The Canucks clearly outplayed the Oilers all night and it showed more so in the last period I was watching. That’s when Anne came in and she made me some lunch and I watched Raw. It was good tonight. I would rat it a 7/10. So in about an hour I’m heading off to bed.

The above I tried to post about 1am but Blogger was down. I got lots of dead links lately. So the above is posted now. Anyway, it's back to bed for me. I just did the cbi thing and I watched GT.

AV is going well. I' m over 100 pages in the gender change part of the story. I tried doing this once before but failed. All I'm doing here is getting the story where the villain's gender needs to be changed. At least I had the good sense to separate the # scenes in each chapter. That's all for now.

I should have done this a long time ago. I decided to place a link to my story "Crosshairs" in Sciencefictional. As more stories get published I'll be placing links so you can go read some of my fiction. Crosshairs isn't a bad story it suffers mainly from poor formating choices I made initialy in its submission. On a scale from 1-10 I'd say it's a 5. Good but not great. I submited the story because it was the only story I had cyber ready on this machine. I've got a bunch of other stories I sent over the other day and I might get some more out there yet. Stay tuned.

More later.

e.Jim

2006-10-16T13:05:00.000-06:00

I went to
bed about 2:00am and listened to a bit of Coast and went to sleep. I woke up at 5am and did the cbi thing and went to bed but I couldn’t sleep. My wife was coughing keeping me awake so I got up and worked a bit more on AV.

I’m in the process of trying to change the gender of the antagonist because the antagonist sounds too much like an English actor. Or in other words stereotyping. I’m trying to make the villain go from male to female so a lot of changing around she and his. There are a lot of scenes of course where I don’t really need to do that due to the scene pov character. Trouble with AV is there are to many characters. Anyway, back to bed.

Up again some 5 hours later. We got our first snowfall here in the City. Its not much on the ground either. So technically its our first snow of the season. Oct-April. It wont stay on the ground for very long either. If its still here by later this afternoon I’d be surprised. I really don’t mind winter. I like winter actually. I just don’t like sever winter like -20. I like anything -10 to +20, anything in there. The worst part of winter is the wind. But we seldom ever get any big snow these days. I think the worst winter I’ve seen here in all my 28 years here in Edmonton has been 1995. I remember some days we had ice crystals in the middle of the day. -30’s at 1pm. Snow midway to the knee. We’re “lucky “ we get snow up to the ankle that stays. Most winters when I'm out and about since 1999 I’ve been wearing running shoes all winter! Except lodge nights of course. Last winter we got maybe one or two days where the temps have been -18 in the afternoon. Most evenings in the winter are in the -20 range anyway but that’s standard.

Anyway, still working on AV. It’s not going to be as bad as I think. The villain is only in 3-6 stand alone scenes anyway. I’m going to have to rewrite these scenes but there’s two full length novels here. I'm still ready to rewrite the last of NW Most likely this weekend and work on AV. I began AV 2 years ago and the 171k story has been sitting in my files since that time. I don't have it in hard copy yet and it's going to be a few more weeks before I can get some ink for my printer. But I'm also at a crossroads because the printe I'm currently using is crap and I'd rather spend the $100 towards a better printer.

I'm considering getting one of those all in one modles, that can scan and print and maybe do color. But the thing with the all in one printers is the scanning is ususally pretty slow as to a stnd alone scanner. So the reviews of these all in ones tell me. I can get a good laser printer for just under $200 and that's half the cost of an ink cartridge. Color isn't really important to me anyway and scanning is a low priority item. So I guess I made up my mind on printers.

Anyway, that’s all for now

e.Jim

2006-10-15T18:56:00.000-06:00

I went to
bed about 2am and passed out until about 5:40am, I fed the cats and went back to bed. I slept from there until 9am and took my insulin and was in bed by 9am and I slept until around 12:30pm I think I got 9.5 hrs of sleep.

So I figured I’d try and clean up that AV novel and I realized I had the whole document on my other W98 machine plus other stories. So I had the energy and I hooked up the old computer and emailed the whole AV book which sat around 171k I need maybe another 30K and I’ll have book #1 and #2. There’s a lot of work that needs to be done on the story though. I also emailed RB and a lot of stories still in the rough draft. I had some trouble getting the copy of the email over to my current word processor and Open Office doesn’t have a word count feature in it--that I could find. So I tried Abi word and that wouldn’t accept a long document like that. I tried Jarte and then into MS Works and it took the whole thing. Even RB is 145K. With a little work I could make RB into 2 books.

Other then that it’s been raining all day. I haven’t been out at all just in the apartment here relaxing and working on my fiction. At least I got the other stuff over from my other computer to this one and I’ve been wanting to do that for quite awhile now so I acomplished something today.

e.Jim

2006-10-14T20:03:00.000-06:00

My wife
went out on one of her afternoon shopping excursions and left me there to sleep. I got 3 solid hours in and I feel pretty good right now. I don't know if I want to work on NW right away. I'll get into it more tomorrow instead.

I went and fixed up my blog links and I added Locus Online and Fantastic Fiction. Two websites I go to on a regular basis and I took out Joe Haldeman and inserted Neal Asher Amazon links. Sorry Joe. I'm sure Camouflage is a better read.

I don't know if I'm going to watch that Oiler game on TV. I would like to work on SO instead and go back and forth to check on the progress.

It's tied at one in the 1st intermission in Colorado. Also, Calgary lost so that's good. On the other hand Toronto beat out the Eskies, 28-25. That broke the longest playoff qualifier run in Professional sports. The Edmonton Eskimos have made the playoffs for 34 consecutive outings since 1972. That all came to a halt today. Also In Hockey, Mats Sundine (Toronto) scored his 500th goal. It's been a great day for Toronto sports fans. The only saving grace for us today here in Edmonton is that Calgary Flames have lost and the Oilers have a chance to beat Colorado tonight. But it's in the 2nd and the Avs are leading 2-1.

e.Jim

2006-10-14T08:45:00.000-06:00

I woke up

at 3am when my wife climbed into bed. That wasn’t so much the problem as the humidifier she put on that turns the room into a sauna instead of cool, the atmosphere I need to sleep in. I tried to sleep but it got so hot in there I couldn’t continue sleeping but I’m up with a bit of energy and I think I’m going to sleep in the living room the rest of the morning because of that damn humidifier.

Anyway, I had to put down Joe Haldeman’s Old Twentieth. There’s no dialogue in the novel and it jumps around all over the place. Well very little dialouge. I picked up his Camouflage after looking in it for dialogue and it’s a different kind of a book but Joe Haldeman seems to write military fiction. Nothing really wrong with that but I can't get into something like that right now. So I’ve opted out for Neal Asher Gridlinked. I’ll change the link in my blog as well later.I don't like to abandon a book. I gave it a chance.

Feeling like death warmed over right now. I figured I’d go back to bed maybe she had that humidifier off by now. No way. So I dozed off here and there on the couch. I got maybe 2 hours sleep. If that. So, I’m onto my first cup of coffee right now. Anyhow off to work. Uggh.

I don't take a very good photo and this one isn't very good anyway but it's a rare photo of all of us together. My threee buddies. The family. Pledges is the orange guy and Silky is the dark angora. Pledges doesn't get along with Silky at all but in this shot they are co existing. This shot was taken yesterday afternoon at 3pm they are. Anyway, more later.

e.Jim

2006-10-13T21:58:00.000-06:00

Kind of a hazy
afternoon on the way out to work earlier. Anne apparently wanted to get off at The Bay and go into work saying that her voice was going. So I went in and I had a pretty decent night doing cancer recovery foundation. CRF. I did $350 in a 3.5 hour shift which is line hour. That’s a $100 line hour. All they wanted was $65/li. Anyway I got out of there at my 8:30 ish or so and it was kind of smoky in the air but I still had to wait almost 20 min for the train so it wasn’t getting out early for me at all. More cars on the train tonight. Maybe they had something going on at Rexall.

When I got into the apartment here half expecting Anne home she wasn’t here. But she talked about getting a Pizza but I can’t recall if this was for tomorrow night or this evening or even Monday. I don’t remember. Oh well. Coast tonight is open lines but Richard Hoagland will be on talking about artifacts on the moon around 3am. Might be too late for me.

So Friday the 13th 2006 is almost over. We had 2 Friday the 13th’s this year.

That’s all for now.

e.Jim

2006-10-13T13:26:00.000-06:00

Well I ended
up lat night discovering the joys of YouTube. I stayed up until 2:45am watching The Clash videos. There were tracks in there from 1982 Tokyo where they did Armageddon Time and that was an awesome number. Many more great numbers as well. I’ve barely scratched the surface if this YouTube. I’ll probably explore more of it after I complete NW. If I can.

Anyway, I got up about 5:20am. I had about 2.5 hours sleep I got up to do the cbi thing and watched only one show on GY and I was back in bed by 6am. Anne got up at 8am and went to get me some McDonalds breakfast. I love their sausage egg McMuffin combo’s. She had to go back out and I finished breakfast and went back to bed. 2 more hours. After I got back to bed again, I slept until 12:20pm. I slept from about 9:20am until 12:30am so I had 7.5 hours sleep. Maybe 8 and I’m still tired. Getting up all those times. Since I became diabetic I haven’t had a good sleep strait through.

I’m onto my first coffee here. Trying to wake up. While waiting for Anne to come back as I thought she’d be maybe half an hour at best so I began to read more out of Old Twentieth and Anne came in with my breakfast. I think I read a whole Chapter of the book.

So last night I’m on a nice train ride home and at the news on sports I want to hear the Oiler/Sharks results. Cheechoo got a hat trick and the Oilers looked like they were going to lose 4-1 at Rexall Place. Then in the third Ryan Smyth scores 3 goals late in the 3rd period of the game beating Wayne Gretzky’s record of 3 goals in 2:11 min. Ryan did it in 2:01 min. Incredible. Never say never. The Oilers won 6-4. Next up they’re in Colorado. I just have to give my head a shake. What a game.

This weekend I’m going to try and finish NW and work some more on SO.I don’t know what I’m going to do with D. I don’t think D is even a story. Maybe there is one in there someplace but I might have to put it on the shelf for another time. Im considering AV next. Hard to say.

Anyhow, time to blog this and do my blog rounds before work.

e.Jim

2006-10-12T22:09:00.000-06:00

Heading into
work was a bit stressful but after the dust settled I had a nice walk to work and met Greg in the parking lot. I got my pay cheque. No bonuses but that’s alright. I ended up doing $330 by the end of the night. We had 7 tap shooters but were left with 2. One got sent home two left early and dropped out. Just Edgar and myself to carry the shift and I closed on money at the end of the shift I got a sale. $330 for the night on a TD multi file.

That's all for now.

e.Jim

2006-10-12T13:33:00.000-06:00

Those people
above us have their kid running over our heads. It sounds like we’re living underneath a bowling alley. It’s not being considerate to any body else. You don’t yell in a library, or tap on an aquarium tank.

I was going to go over to use the pay phone to call Dr. Morgan’s office but I’ll do that instead for tomorrow and make the appointment for Monday. I think I got maybe an hour sleep and up again about 4:20am too watch OPP. And both shows on GT. I’ve seen these ones before but I still stayed up for it as I couldn’t sleep anyway.

The kid stops for a bit then runs again. Right now it’s quiet.

If I get enough sleep this weekend I’ll finish NW and get that out of the way and hopefully work on more of SO. I’m looking at beginning the rough draft of SO Nov.1st

That’s all for now.

e.Jim

2006-10-11T22:53:00.000-06:00

I had a
much better evening then last night. I think I ended up with $432 and the top total for the room. I had a much better night then last night. But after I got off the train I ended up heading up to the 7th floor to Dr. Morgan’s office. He’s still there. So tomorrow I want to leave out of here at 1pm so I can get there by say 1:30pm and maybe he can see me right away but I doubt it. If he can do it Friday okay. Then I’ll go to work and get on a dialer and work the afternoon shift. From 3pm-9pm. I want to try and get 21.5 hours in this week,

That’s all for now.

e.Jim

2006-10-11T12:41:00.000-06:00

I tried to
sleep listening to a bit of Coast but couldn't. I got up for a bit later and stayed with my wife for a bit and then we went to bed and I think I got an hour and a half sleep. It was a bit after 4am. Maybe 4:20am. So I watched an episode of OPP and both episodes of GT. I liked the first one when they were at a creek actually demonstrating how to pan for gold. The nuggets if any remain lay under the bedrock. They got a few flecks of gold. Not an ounce or anything like that. A shot glass of whisky is an ounce and youv'e got to do an awful lot of gold panning to get an ounce of gold. Not to mention that it’s back breaking work. They got a few flecks with the first attempt. Maybe a thousand panning attempts later they might have earned an ounce of gold. And that segment took five minutes. And you’ll rarely find that ounce in the same spot. So maybe in about 8 hours of back breaking work you might be able to get an ounce. Maybe. Here’s the other kicker: Most of these creeks is on privately owned land. The natives own the land they were demonstrating on how prospectors mined for gold. But I believe there are gold panning excursions you can take offered by touring companies, There are gold mining concerns left but these are huge operations by big companies and most of the land is staked out and even then miners and prospectors went over this land more then a hundred years ago.

I went to bed after that but I couldn’t sleep. I tossed and turned about. I might have dozed off here and there but I stayed in bed trying to get some sleep. But surprisingly I don’t feel to badly.

It’s a cooler kind of a day out there and for those that went into work this morning it was about -2. I was thinking about mornings but it seems they have HHF in the mornings. So the same people we are trying to reach in the evenings the morning staff go over the same thing. Before I do any mornings there, I want to get out of this current campaignwe doing right now. No matter how cold it is. If management puts me on Taps mornings, I’ll do a mix of mornings/evenings. No matter how cold it is. I wouldn't mind doing a few mornings/week.

e.Jim

2006-10-11T00:20:00.000-06:00

It was raining
when I left this afternoon. I got the front of the train to go to Audrey’s I had three selections and everything I wanted was a series. Book 2 of this, Book 4 of that. I’m very particular in what I read. I read very little if any Fantasy. I don’t read series. I don’t read Post Apocalyptic fiction, Historical science fiction, or military science fiction. Maybe David Drake or (Joe Haldeman) nor do I like spy/sci-fi cross-overs as well. What’s left? Strait up Science fiction/speculative fiction, hard or soft. Good old Space opera fits in there as well. Add to that, that Audrey’s doesn’t have that great of a selection to begin with. Anyhow, I had a lousy night on the job I got one sale and that was within the first half hour, Then I got the other sale as my last sale. $75! LOL and I didn’t feel to badly leaving. Well just a little bit. Anyway, I’m about to have a bit of lunch and watch the news and work some more on SO. One of these weekends, I’m going to wrap up NW just to get it out of the way. When I get some printers ink I’ll crank out a hard copy and begin the initial edit and then B/S the book. I’m going to make several paces at it.

Since I haven't been to bed yet, it's still Tuesday for me. Otherwise, I had an okay kind of day. I got a new book to read for another time. I don't know when I'll get to it as I want to read Charles Stross next after "Old Twentieth." Very little dialouge in this book.

e.Jim

2006-10-10T14:09:00.000-06:00

I was in
bed by 1am. My wife already dozing off so we listened to a bit of Coast. Not bad. Talking about myths and legends and big birds. I was asleep by about 1:40am. I got up about 2:am when Anne got up suddenly and crashed the touch lamp on her way to the bathroom. I tried to sleep after that when she came back to bed but at 3:30am I decided to get up and do some reading until my show came on. OPP and eventually GT. I read “Old Twentieth” until 4:20am or so and decided I’d had enough and went to watch a a bit of OPP. “Okanogan People and places.” I watched one show of GT on Sandon. I believe. And I enjoyed that. I did the cbi thing and only took 8units instead of 18 because I’m not sure I have enough to last me the end of the week. I think if I can conserve today and tomorrow, then I should have enough insulin to last me until Friday. I hope. After Wednesday, I’ll go back to full units.

I’m having my first coffee, waking up slowly.

Speaking about my insulin and all, I took a bsl reading and sitting at 10.3. That was at 20 min ago. My blood sugar levels will come down over the next hour or so. Since I’m not on a medical plan, other then Alberta Health Care, I have to pay for my insulin out of pocket. Same with my needles and lancets. To break it down insulin is $720/year , Needles are $329/year and lancets are the cheapest of items at $38/year, I use the sane needle/vile of insulin. Probably not a good idea but I don’t share the needle so that’s a plus. Another plus is the test strips. I’m supposed to test 4 times/day. Now The Alberta Monitoring (AM) pays for only monitoring diabetes nothing else. A package of test strips x2 50 containers cost $100. At shoppers I get club points towards other merchandise at Shoppers drug mart. But I don’t test myself 4 times/day. Like I should be doing. I barely test my blood sugar once every other day. My Alberta monitoring account is from April 1st to April first. So far out of my pocket I’m paying about $1,130 year. Now if I was ro test myself 4 times daily like my Doctor suggested I do, If I tested my bsl 4 times/day my $550 AM fund would exhaust itself in six months. So add another $550 onto that., is $1,270/year. And I’m supposed to be taking something called Metforin (MF) and I have no idea what it does. MF is another expense. I should ask Pat who’s diabetic at work and ask him how much he pays Lets round it up to $1500/year. Out of my pocket.

Now before you go off saying I’m complaining, I’m not. I cut corners. I don’t take MF and I use the same needle for one container of insulin and I use the same lancet. Now I have no idea what these cost saving measures are doing to my health but for now, I don’t feel to badly. I know over time the effects will tell but for now being a relatively young diabetic as of July 2004, it’s too early to tell. Okay did I ask to become diabetic? Yes. I drank Coca-Cola like it was water in my 20’s and 30’s heading against advice. You get what you pay for. I drink diet Coke now and even then I try to monitor how much of that I drink. I’m not into alcohol but I’ll have a beer maybe once a month. If I’m lucky, But Alberta Health Care doesn’t cover this stuff and I’m working just a bit over 20 hours/week.

Still with Anne’s job and my job and the bit of black sheep money she gets once a month since we’ve been married over the last 6 years life has been comfortable. Working part time like this allows me the time to write. To read and sleep. I don’t do much of that now. Now I could work full time at the job. But I have other issues as well besides being diabetic. My scoliosis, which seems to be all right. Thank god there’s no medication for that. In BC they give you a (or used to ) an AISH pension for that. Until you turn 65 that is. I think it’s ASIH Assured income for the severely handicapped. I tried going on it here in Edmonton back in 1990. They paid back then $800/month and covered all of your medical needs. You were also able to work and earn $200 pt time over and above your AISH income. My brother is on it for his scoliosis in BC but he has 2 children (they don’t have it) and Stephanie and Patrick are in their 20’s. I would have loved AISH back in 1990, My rent was something like $250/month for a cute bachelor apartment. 9710 156th St. Here in Edmonton.

You can do a Google Earth search and it’s still there. The building beside the house with the white picket fence but in the Google earth shot you can’t see the fence but the building beside it was where I lived from 1985-1995.. I moved to the L shaped building right across the street in 1995 when I got kicked out of my nice little bachelor. But that’s another story. I wish I could attach a URL to the Google earth shot. Speaking about the GE shot of my little bachelor apartment. I faced the street. The apartment is still there obviously and it’s the one just right of the sidewalk leading into the building. Closest to the corner house.

But getting back to Alberta Health Care, I’m subsidized for that. So it’s not out of pocket. If you can get your T4s in early enough. It’s a headache to go through every spring. The other alternative is to work full time. I can work those hours 1:30pm-9pm and work Friday morning. Ideally that’s what I’d like to do. But My wife likes me home because she doesn’t like being alone here in this place. She can’t work full time as she has issues of her own. So for now, we’re stuck in this situation. For now,

The other thing I don’t like working for time although, afternoon/evening full time is a lot better then working morning/afternoon full time because that’s when Rob the boss is around giving people stress. The afternoon evening is easier. Less Rob, little stress except during those 3 hours in the afternoon. But the afternoon shift is harder then the evening shift to get sales. But since I’m a tap shooter now (the “elite” of the company) I get certain advantages. It's not that Rob is a bad guy or anything but he has his days.

Anyway, more on that later. This has been a huge blog entry to say the least and I want to go off and make my blog rounds.

I was able to catch a bit of Raw last night and it wasn't bad. On a scale from 1-10 I'd say it was a 7. Nice to see the "Million Dollar man" and "IRS" The 4 horsemen. it was their season opener and their family reunion. Sorry for the extra long post. Oh well. I'll check for typos later.

That’s all for now.

e.Jim

2006-10-09T21:55:00.000-06:00

A pretty
good day today. I got 13 scenes done and most of the middle of SO more or less accomplished. It’s still rough around the edges but this is just the big picture not the details. I’ve still got to get the main characters done as well.

Raw was apparently a 3 hour show and I thought it began at 8pm but it was also their “family reunion” show. I saw “The 4 Horsemen” and it was nice to see The Million Dollar man and IRS. But I missed two hours of the show.

I miss my evenings off. And I think I’d like to do a few morning shifts. Many times I get enough sleep and I’m up early so for those times I’d like to get up early and go into work and have the evening off. I might even do that Wed/Thur because I want to go into see Dr.Morgan and see if there is any way I can get rid of that scar tissue on the inside of my eye lens. If indeed this is the problem. Firstly lets see if he can do something for me.

The people upstairs have had their kid running around up there all day. If the caretakers were in our position, you bet that wouldn’t last long. Yeesgh, what a weekend.

e.Jim

2006-10-09T12:42:00.000-06:00

I was in
bed around 3am and maybe I got an hours sleep but I woke up from there and watched 34min of OPP and the 2 GT. I did the cbi thing and went to bed around 6am and slept until noon. Anne had got up earlier and I’m here onto my first coffee.

Right now I’m just getting into Joe Haldeman’s “Old Twentieth.” At least the weather is good. We’re supposed to gt up to 10 degrees today for this time of year isn’t bad.

So for the rest of the afternoon/evening until Raw, I’ll be working on SO right after I post this.

Happy Thanksgiving everybody.

e.Jim