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| Wednesday, October 27th, 2010 | | 7:11 pm |
5070
So, that was an interesting subway ride... I got on the train at St. George station. As usual, I wanted to be the last one onboard because at St. George station, one boards from one side, and all the remaining stations have platforms on the opposite side of the train. This meant that If I boarded last, I could stay in the doorway and secure myself a good leaning spot. As we pull into the next station, I feel a [shift] sensation in my back. I think "Hmm, my jacket must've been pressed up against the door in a funny way and that was just my body moving inside it. Everything's settled now." Next station, the same thing happened. And I noticed a sudden increase in the volume of tunnel noise at the same time. Hmmm.... Is there a draft in here? As we approached the next station I tested my slowly-developing theory: I gently nudged the door and it opened about four inches. We weren't even in the station yet, let alone stopped, and the door was on the non-platform side of the train. I thought "Hmmm... I think that this probably should not be". On the way to the next station I gave it my all. In the tunnel at full speed, the doors were rock-solid. But when the train decelerated into a station or acceleratied out, the doors easily slid open to nearly two feet wide. Let me reiterate: I'm not talking about the side of the train that's coming up against the platform. this is the side that should never be opened: the one with the third rail, the signal towers, the dirt, and most of all THE ONCOMING TRAINS. Got out at my stop and managed to get the attention of the door operator before the train left. I told him he's got a set of doors on the wrong side that are sliding open while the train's in motion. He thanked me, seemed interested, and then calmly let the train proceed. Since then, I've seen no updates about delays or trains being pulled out of service, so I assume he ignored me. The moral of the story? Don't lean on the doors of car #5070 if you're on the Toronto subway. | | Thursday, March 25th, 2010 | | 9:50 am |
Begging From Strangers is Hard to Do.
Ok, so I was on my way to work this morning, and as I was standing in the subway station with the train about to pull in, suddenly my nose started bleeding. This never happens. Ever. In my entire life, I've only had maybe about six nosebleeds and the worst of them was a tiny drip that lasted for maybe a minute. However today it seemed that my entire brain was trying to exit through the middle of my face. As is typical with nosebleeds, the only way I discovered it was by touching my face, which meant that my hand was now covered in blood. I had no Kleenex on me so I had nothing to wipe my hand or face with. What options did I have? I ended up having to approach other commuters with blood all over my hands and face, and beg for tissues. It was sweet. One guy gave me a lot of crumpled cocktail napkins that said Marriott on them. My first thought was "Thank you so much" and my second thought was "Why does this guy steal hotel bar napkins?" Then I continued to work and with remnants of blood all over my hands and face, I proudly walked into the fourth day of my brand new job. I hope I impressed them. | | Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010 | | 9:27 am |
| | Tuesday, June 16th, 2009 | | 8:19 am |
It's Spigotkitty's Fault That I Logged In and Posted
The Hawaiian alphabet has a smaller set of consonants than English. Hawaiian does not include the letters r or s, for example. Additionally, while English allows for many consonants to be clustered together (look at the end of the word "sixths", for example), Hawaiian requires that each consonant be followed by a vowel. This is generally shortened to just saying that it follows the form of consonant-vowel, or C-V. So, if a Hawaiian speaker wants to say an English word or phrase, he or she (let's say she, just for the sake of being different) will have to do so with a phonetic inventory which is less broad than English, and with phonological rules that require the addition of vowels where there are two or more consonants in a row. Bear with me, this is where it gets interesting... If our Hawaiian speaker encounters an English consonant that doesn't exist in her language, can she just substitute any sound she likes? No. There are clear and standard substitution rules which apply, even if the speaker isn't consciously aware of doing it. A speaker encountering an English consonant which doesn't exist in Hawaiian will just substitute the closest sound from her own inventory. For example: English R doesn't exist in Hawaiian, speaker will use L, which does exist in her language. English S doesn't exist in Hawaiian, speaker will use K, which does exist in her language. Now for the fun part: Take, for example the phrase "Merry Christmas". Well, spelling is a terrible way to talk about language. Let's look at the pronunciation. Without using IPA phonetic symbols, the phrase is roughly pronounced as: MERI KRISMAS So let's now try to find the sounds that don't exist in Hawaiian. R and S don't exist, so: MERI KRISMAS can't be said with the Hawaiian phonetic inventory. So we substitute the appropriate letters from the phrase into their Hawaiian equivalents, according to the rules above: MELI KLIKMAK And do you remember that rule about Hawaiian requiring that all consonants must have a vowel following them? Well, we seem to have some consonant clusters here. Let's insert vowels after every consonant, if there isn't one already there. Let's arbitrarily put an A in there. Not a hard A, like in hat, but more of an a that's pronounced farther back in the mouth, almost an "ahhh" like in the word "part". And we get: MELI KALIKAMAKA Now put on your best Aloha shirt, Get out your Don Ho 12-inch vinyls, and dance around to his sweet voice, with the smug knowledge that none of your friends realize that he's not singing in another language, he's just using Hawaiian pronunciation on an English phrase. | | Monday, October 27th, 2008 | | 9:26 pm |
| | Thursday, January 11th, 2007 | | 10:48 am |
Long time no see
Wow. It's been about half a year since I've posted anything of substance. In my absence a lot of things have happened. We've moved back to the USA and hopefully said goodbye to Kitchener for a long time. I'm especially happy with the birthday gift i received from ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=92.1) cybershaz. She gave me a hella-big gift certificate for an online music store and i spent the whole thing on new pickups for my guitar. Originally, the guitar looked like this (well, not exactly like this because it isn't a pic of mine, but it's close):  And this is what it looks like now:  ...Probably not that big a deal for most of you but it makes an amazing difference. It's like owning a K-car and suddenly turning it into a Ferrari. The thing is now BLAZINGLY HOT. I can play EXTREME HEAVY METAL like all the Nordic gods planned. Anywayze, I hope my next post will be a little sooner than my recent record. | | Tuesday, October 31st, 2006 | | 9:58 pm |
Extended Absence
Wow. Getting close to three months since I last posted. So as you already read on Cybershaz's page, we went to Susur for dinner. Unbelievable food. Maybe I'll update later. Maybe | | Sunday, August 13th, 2006 | | 10:20 pm |
i need to post a subject?
weekend... geocaching... dark... fast driving... can't do it tonight, maybe later. /they won't allow liquids on board anymore but I hear SNAKES are still okay!!!!! | | Monday, July 24th, 2006 | | 7:58 pm |
Weekend Getaway
Last-minute snap decisions can really pay off sometimes. A week ago, cybershaz was booked to go to Milwaukee for work and asked if I felt like coming. I really hadn't thought about coming to visit since I had work and would only be able to be there for the weekend, but I figured it'd be better than anything I could come up with if I stayed in Canada. I got a flight that was quite affordable, considering I booked it only 4 days before flying, and I headed out after work on Friday. It was easliy the best last-minute decision I could have made. I had a stopover in Chicago, so between going and coming back I was on four flights this weekend. Exactly zero of them were on time. The airline staff were the opposite of courtesy too. Very unimpressive performance by AA. Anyhoo, I arrived in Milwaukee late in the evening and went straight to the Palms for dinner with cybershaz and Abby. The Palms, while it's a decently classy restaurant, has always been for me a great place that's always been relaxing (I'm sure the two martinis didn't hurt my relaxation that night). Wonderful way to wind down after a week of work and a half day of travel. Saturday began with an early trip to the store for a ridiculously large number of shrubs, plants, trees, and other gardening crap that we got at a decidedly non-crappy price. Seriously, the whole lot cost the same amount that one of the shrubs would have cost at our last place in Canada. Then the next six hours were spent in the blazing sun planting everything and trying to get it all done before the Main Event™. By about 5:45, I had sweated out at least 80% of the moisture in my body, had a bit of sunstroke, could barely stand upright, and was having trouble lifting anything heavier than about 15 pounds. Honestly, I was so tired that walking 40 feet from the garage to the house felt like a four hour marathon. Even today, two days later, I'm popping Robax Platinum backache pills as though they were Pez. What did I say to myself after all this work? "Time to start hosting a seven hour party", I said! People started showing up literally two minutes after I finished in the yard; right before 6. I didn't keep track but I think there were 14-16 people total. Not bad for only five days' notice. Most people arrived within the first half hour, which meant that of course the scorching hot blazingly sunny day had to turn into a torrential downpour between about 6:15 and 6:45. Hail the same size of macadamia nuts was coming down. Heaviest rain I'd ever seen in that house (granted, I haven't really lived there for that long). Rain ended by 7:30 so we fired up the BBQ and went crazy with it. Everybody went outside and made a point of walking on the wet freshly cut grass so they could track the maximum amount of clippings back into the house (I keed, I keed, we actually expected a much bigger mess. You guys kept the place way clean). The party went on well into the early hours of Sunday, and I had such a great time with everyone that I wished it could have gone for days longer. Sunday started off the right way with a trip to Comet for brunch. MMMmmm... a huge plate of food covered in gravy. To drink was a bloody mary that contained Guinness and for which the waitress asked "Do you want bacon in that?" and my answer was "Please!". Yup. A huge thick slice of bacon comes with the bloody mary. I stuck it in my drink for about 8 minutes and it was still stiff enough to use as a swizzle stick. I was really mad that I had to leave before 5pm because Comet's menu said that any drink over $2.50 purchased after 5:00 (which means anything except the absolute worst cans of piss swill they have) comes with a free basket of bacon. Yes, that's right. Drinks come with FREE BACON! Buy a drink for as low as $2.50 AND get free bacon! My arteries are hardening with joy just thinking about it! Alas, 'twas not to be. I had to leave before happy hour. After a "questionable" payment episode at an airport restaurant, I was on my way home on another two delayed flights. Finally fell asleep around 2:50am and started Monday morning bright, early, and exhausted. And what did I learn from this weekend? If you're going to steal your neighbors' wireless internet signal, the bandwidth might not be reliable enough to stream music for a party. | | 1:46 am |
'Cos Ronan Says So....
Unfortunately I was stuck in Canada at the time and couldn't be there, but a couple of very very nice friends of ours were working on our behalf and managed to persuade Mr. Ronan Harris, singer of the world's best band (VNV Nation, you should check them out), to join the political movement that's sweeping Milwaukee in trying to get our work visas back. I even have proof:  Thanks Ronan. I owe you some drinks next time we're in the same city, whatever city that may be. | | Thursday, July 20th, 2006 | | 5:55 pm |
| | Saturday, June 17th, 2006 | | 4:16 pm |
saturday football
wow. three red cards so far, USA and Italy are tied 1-1. 30 minutes to go. (4 min later): and now a goal called back. cray to the zay. and speaking of soccer, every nerd needs one of these:  | | Saturday, June 10th, 2006 | | 10:04 am |
| | Friday, June 9th, 2006 | | 8:58 pm |
| | Tuesday, June 6th, 2006 | | 9:09 pm |
Back in the USSA
Well, that was a busy weekend. Went to Milwaukee on Friday. The house was nice to see again but the yard was a disaster. The garden had weeds everywhere, some even taller than me. I made the Home Depot quite a bit richer and worked in the garden both Friday and Saturday and only managed to get about half the work done that I wanted. Went to La Fuente on Friday night for Mexican. Fun times. While we were there, their other clientelle included Jackie, Teri, Sam, Laurah & Wim. I was thoroughly schooled in Dutch when I tried to speak it to Wim (Hij spreek heel snel, en Nederlands is zijn eerste taal. Ik heb slechts een semester van de taal en het is mijn derde taal). A couple hours of hanging out with friends at home, and it was game over for the night. Saturday was terrific. Five hours of working in the garden and then it was off to the wedding of Abby & Bill. Ultra funky, ultra hip time. Very them. Got a chance to spend a lot of time talking to people I'd only briefly met so far in my brief life in Milwaukee, and I really got to know a lot of them better. Can't wait to spend more time with them. Bill and Abby also went ridiculously overboard with their gushing over our showing up which got really sappy really fast. Gotta see them again SOON. Sunday was lighter. Brunch at Trocadero with the evil gang, always nice. Then just a bit more work in the yard and before we left I enjoyed my first trip to the Palomino in ten months. I can't believe it had been almost a year since I'd been to my favorite place. And they don't have meatloaf on Wednesdays anymore either. I missed its last stand by two weeks. Hopefully if enough of us mention it whenever we go, we can convince them to put it back on the menu. Then we flew home. Bleh. After living in apartments for over a year, I had a great sunny weekend to spend outside in a yard of my own. I hated having to leave that behind and return to our temporary place. Hopefully I'll be back sooner than later. | | Friday, May 12th, 2006 | | 5:10 pm |
My Apartment Building. Occupancy: One Less Than This Morning
An interesting afternoon to say the least. I was on my way (in our second vehicle) to the Chrysler dealership to pick up my car, which had been worked on today. Because of the layout of the road, I had to overshoot the dealership, turn around in a restaurant parking lot, and come back the other direction to get to the mechanic. As I was going through the restaurant's lot, an SUV passed me with its front wheel sticking about 8 inches farther out at the bottom than the top. The driver obviously knew something was wrong so he pulled into a parking spot and got out. When he saw what it looked like i thought he was gonna throw up. I offered him a ride and took him home. Hey, it was 10 minutes and saved him about an hour of walking. My good deed for the day. Then I went to Chrysler to pick up my car. Good as new. Well, the car's not exactly good as new, but the part I took it in for is. And it seems that the quote they gave me over the phone included tax. That was a nice surprise. Either that or it just cost less than they expected. Either way, it was nice. So I took the car home. As I got close to the building I noticed that in keeping with their usual routine of doing annoying things to us tenants, the building management had put up caution tape across one of the driveways to the parking lot. I guess they were repaving it or something. For the last few days the garage door to the underground parking was out of service, meaning that there were about 40 spots (normally for visitors) that had to serve for about 500 apartments. That or we could wait outside the "exit" door and when someone came out from the underground parking, we could rush as many cars as possible in before the door closed. Lots of fun. Anyway, the caution tape was a bit of an annoyance. I also noticed about seven cars parked together on the street, which was weird because it's a no-parking street. And they were all Chevy Impalas (or is that Impalae? I'm not sure). All of a sudden, I realized they were all unmarked police cars. Another look at the building and I realized that the visitor parking was full of police cars, police vans, and even the mobile forensics lab RV. So it wasn't caution tape after all, it was police line strung up all over the place. There were uniformed police everywhere, plainclothes detectives taking statements, investigators with metal detectors combing the grass, and one of the tenants' cars had a tent over it to keep the rain off and two guys in sterile suits and paper masks were going through it with tweezers and fingerprint brushes. Apparently one of the other tenants in the building was murdered today. I know, for my American friends this is no big deal. You guys are used to being able to set your watch to seeing your neighbors shot (Oh I keed, I keed) but around here it's about as common as Ashton Kucher winning an Oscar. From what I've heard, the shooter's plate number was picked up by witnesses and police saw him on the highway in Toronto. Took 5 cars to box him in and he was shooting at the cops as they were trying to stop him. it's in the news: http://www.therecord.com/breaking%20news/breaking%20news_4265960.htmlAnd of course I had to run outside and take pictures! First, from the balcony:    And then from the ground:     Please excuse the lack of consistency in the pics. They were all taken the same size but for some reason Photobucket likes to resize some but not others. | | Wednesday, May 10th, 2006 | | 5:31 pm |
nevaeh ot yawriats
This guy from Holland is amazing. He memorized Stairway to Heaven phoenetically BACKWARDS, sang it backwards all in one take, then reversed the video. Granted, his singing isn't perfect but he deserves SERIOUS credit for being able to do this. I can't even remember the lyrics when the song's played normally, and the song's written in my first language! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDBp01ft7gw | | Wednesday, April 26th, 2006 | | 9:24 am |
Happy April 26, Everybody!
. Yes, it's been another whole year already. Time sure flies. Enjoy the day, whatever your celebration plans are!  | | Saturday, April 22nd, 2006 | | 5:15 pm |
The one thing i hate - People.
So I made a big mistake today... I went to the mall across the street from my apartment. Normally, the mall is sufficiently irritating. Today, Canadian Idol was holding auditions for the upcoming season. It was SWARMING with about two thousand 14-to-25 year olds dressed in stupid outfits thinking that they have a gimmicky unique look, while the whole time they all look equally ridiculous. Never in my life have I seen so many annoying kids with numbers pinned to them, walking around with such an undeserved sense of entitlement. The only thing that improved my mood was the Beatles shirt I found. | | Wednesday, April 19th, 2006 | | 6:08 am |
test
just trying out a new avatar. that is all. |
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