The Hot Tub Time Machine Party

We had a fun party at the Manor on the weekend. (Here are the flickr photos, 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13). I brought my new friend, Kim, along to meet all the gang. She got rather drunk — I was even trying to follow a friend’s advice (ie. that couples should try and stay at the same level of inebriation) but alas, she did a shot or two that I didn’t get in on and next thing I knew she had lost her impulse control and began a journey to flirt with anyone that would respond. I took it in stride — I’m actually not that worried about it — it’s already a complicated situation, but it was embarrassing because it was in front of, and sometimes with, my friends. Shannon upon leaving the house happened to find me putting on my shoes (we are shoes off in houses in Canada) and told me in no uncertain terms, “Dump that woman!”. Yup.

Still I had a great time, despite the embarrassment, and aside from getting my sleep schedule back on time things are great. I didn’t even have much of a hangover — either I’ve learned how to handle my liquor or maybe it was not having those two shots on the booze luge that saved me.

Yesterday I slept in and though I’m trying to get back to my routine, I’m still tempted to take little cat naps throughout the day. I played around on the google reader for most of the morning, then in the afternoon I watched a couple of episodes of 30 Rock. I made myself a pizza for lunch and then later watched the hockey game with Eric. He shared an amazing pasta dish with me that he brought home from the restaurant. I really like that. He asked (as he often does) if I wanted to go out back and ‘smoke’, but as usual I turned him down. Montreal won the hockey game and tied the series 3 to 3.

After the game I headed over to the University for a swim and it was quite refreshing. I finished my main workout in 17 minutes which is actually 20 seconds slow for my usual target time 16:40 (50m every 50 seconds). It’s still not a bad pace time at all. I stuck around a bit longer doing a few more laps, helped pull ropes for the lifeguard on duty. She’s a cute little blond girl but I would have offered to help any of the lifeguards, since it’s much easier to swim ropes across than it is to take all the trouble of walking each one around individually and I was just there swimming anyway so what did I care?

I steamed it up afterward; I really love the steam room and then on my way out I chatted up some girl that I recognized from water polo. It didn’t take long for my Mormon radar, my Mordar, (if you will) to go off. I told her that I grew up Mormon but that I know longer am and she asked what they all ask, why did you stop? So I gave her my typical and very brief answer that I could no longer suspend my disbelief. She asked what I believe now and I told her science. She laughed and said something like, well that’s not a bad thing to believe in.

I jumped into my jeep and discovered the engine light is on. A quick browse in the owner’s manual let me know that it’s ok to drive but that I should take it in to get checked out. I’m guessing this is related to the issue it was having the other night where the engine didn’t quite sound right.

And that brings me up to now. I can’t say I’m keen on not seeing Kim anymore so I’m not really looking for confirmation that that is what I should do but I really like her and she’s moving away for the summer in about 10 days, so I’m just going to hang with her until she leaves.

As for today, I took the bus over to the university to work out what I need to do to apply to the Education Faculty and to go for another swim. A couple of my female friends complimented me on my “rock hard stomach” at the party (and one of them told me that all the ladies were admiring me) so those compliments have given me an extra boost to want to work out even more. Ah, it’s nice to be in my prime. Life is great.

Grand Canyon Skywalk is a Sham

Grand Canyon Skywalk

Some people don’t love the experience at the Grand Canyon Skywalk. The folks at travelonthedollar go so far as to call it a sham. They have a list of reasons why it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. Here are a couple:

2. Parking at The Skywalk is provided but access to the Skywalk is only permitted by supplied coach buses. The cost of the coach ride $30, which will take you the Skywalk and two other viewing areas. There is also an additional fee of $45 for being on Hualapai land making the total cost $75 per person.

3. No personal equipment is allowed on the Skywalk and lockers are provided. No photographs may be taken by visitors on the Skywalk! However, up to three photography stations are installed. Photographs taken may be purchased in the gift shop at $29 each.

No photos is a deal breaker for me.

(previously)

Earth Day Photos

In honour of earth day, the Boston Globe has a great collection of photos well worth checking out: Earth Day 2010 Photos.

The Earth

The most detailed true-color image of the entire Earth created to date. Using a collection of satellite-based observations, scientists and visualizers stitched together months of observations of the land surface, oceans, sea ice, and clouds into a seamless, true-color mosaic of every square kilometer of our planet. Much of the information contained in this image came from a single remote-sensing device—NASA’s Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer, or MODIS. Flying over 700 km above the Earth onboard the Terra satellite. (NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center)

Hockey

“I went to a fight the other night, and a hockey game broke out.”
-Rodney Dangerfield

I am almost ready to give up on the playoffs. With the obvious exception of International hockey, the teams I cheer for so rarely get to the finals. The Calgary Flames didn’t even make the play-offs this year. At least the weather is getting nice so I will be out playing Ultimate and road hockey a lot this spring.

Incredible Air Video App Streams Videos to iPhone with Ease

Air Video Screen shots

I downloaded my first purchased app for my iPod touch this morning. Air Video streams videos straight to your iPhone / iPod Touch, and converts them on-the-fly. Every video I’ve tried so far streams with no problems. I used to have to convert videos with Handbreak (a pretty great program), download them to the iPod, and was then able to watch them (I can hook my iPod up to the big screen in the living room directly). Now I can just stream movies directly to the TV through my iPod. It’s totally worth the $2.99 price tag!

See details on iTunes

Alternatively, you can get the free version, which works great too, it’s just harder to browse your files.

Lethbridge Woman’s Space Funding Cuts

For the first time in 25 years, The Lethbridge Women’s Space was denied funding by the federal department for the Status of Women.

The CBC has the story.

We were status of woman funded for the last 25 years and we were very shocked when our application was denied because we have a very good relationship with Status of Women. We were [continuing] a previous project where we had served so many women with financial literacy services and we were shocked that it was denied because financial literacy has been identified as such a priority by this particular government.

A friend of mine, Shannon Phillips was interviewed on CBC regarding the loss of funding.

If you’d like to learn more about Womanspace, visit the Womanspace website. If you’d like to help, their site also links to those you could contact.

David Logue on Quirks and Quarks

One of my good friends, David Logue, was on this week’s episode of Quirks and Quarks.

The interview is about cricket songs. We tested the H that aggressive signals mitigate the costs of fighting by muting and looking at a population that had lost its song. Turns out they fight like crazy if they can’t signal.

Quirks and Quarks April 17, 2010

From Quirks and Quarks Website:

Silent means Deadly

When crickets fight, there’s a lot of noise. Not just the clashing of mandibles and the clicking of legs, but the cricket equivalent of “trash talking” as well. Dr. David Logue, a biologist at the University of Puerto Rico and his colleagues from the University of Lethbridge in Alberta, were interested in what would happen when the crickets couldn’t make the sounds associated with their fights. What they saw was mayhem. Crickets, who were either naturally silent or had their noisemakers removed, fought viciously, longer, and more violently than those full of sound and fury. Apparently, these insects use bluster not to provoke, but to avoid violence.

http://web.archive.org/web/20130618233607/http://www.cbc.ca/quirks/episode/2010/04/17/silent-means-deadly-caterpillars-walk-the-talk-mysterious-eclipse-devon-ice-cap-loses-its-cool-the-a

Last Week of School

I’ve only got one more week of school before the summer. I hate to talk about how posting has been rare lately, but I have been feeling guilty about it — hopefully I’ll get back to regular blogging when I finish up my final projects.

This summer looks to be very exciting for me, I’m headed back to Quebec in July to learn more French.

And I’m Back…

I had a great birthday weekend but things really went downhill yesterday. I always think it’s pretty silly when people get thrown off by the time change, however, it turns out I’m now one of those people. My iTouch had the correct time on it, but the alarm clock beside my bed was an hour slow. When I figured things out I had less than a half hour to get ready for school and make it to class. Lately I’ve been doing my part for the environment (not to mention saving money on gas) by taking the bus to the University, but since I was late, I had to drive. Since I don’t drive regularly, I parked on the street, and since I was late, there were no close parking spaces — oh except that one with the “no parking” sign. What are the chances they’d give me a ticket? It turns out, the chances are pretty good.

A ticket for parking without a pass at the University works out to about $8. That’s less than some people pay for parking at regular price. A ticket for parking beside a no parking sign? Sixty @#^^ing dollars! (With a reduction of $19 if paid within a week). Argh.

It also turns out that I forgot to renew the jeffmilner.com domain name when I paid to renew the hosting plan. The stress caused by the fact that I might not be able to get my web site back easily made me pretty mad and I found myself racing home from reffing water polo with the pedal to the metal. Knowing full well that if I wasn’t careful I’d end up with a speeding ticket too, I calmed down and slowed down. No sooner than I slowed down to the speed limit, someone’s cat darted out in front of my vehicle and if I hadn’t taken a moment to simmer down, I would’ve taken that cat’s nine lives with nothing more than a bump.

I thought, this might make for an interesting story to post on my blog. Oh… right.

Luckily, LUCKILY, I was able to renew it when I got home last night and once again all is well in my universe — oh except for that nasty parking ticket. What was I thinking?

It Turns Out

When I read Douglas Adams’ The Salmon of Doubt, I really liked his take on the phrase “it turns out” and have attempted to incorporate it into my lexicon.

“Incidentally, am I alone in finding the expression “it turns out” to be incredibly useful? It allows you to make swift, succinct, and authoritative connections between otherwise randomly unconnected statements without the trouble of explaining what your source or authority actually is. It’s great. It’s hugely better than its predecessors “I read somewhere that…” or the craven “they say that…” because it suggests not only that whatever flimsy bit of urban mythology you are passing on is actually based on brand new, ground breaking research, but that it’s research in which you yourself were intimately involved. But again, with no actual authority anywhere in sight.”

Here’s a great little blog post from jsomers.net on the usefulness of the sneaky phrase, “it turns out“.