Hey, I know: how about a show called Video Game Killer Investigations?

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Now that the carnage at Virginia Tech is past and the identities are known, I have another fear: that useful reactions to what happened will be ignored in favour of the irrational. My wager is that politicians will be scared to raise gun control as an issue, but that some bright light will call for the FBI/police to monitor creative writing assignments to screen for violent content, just as calls went out to restrict video games after the shootings at Columbine.

Interesting note from Wired: 8 hours after the VT shootings Reuters had raised the spectre of video games once again.

.:.

Still in a betting mood, I’ve got $20 that says the Globe’s Andrew Ryan is right about the inevitable creation of a CSI channel. I think maybe it’ll start out as a Law & Order/CSI channel; twice as many episodes that way. And hey, maybe they could add on Cold Case and Without A Trace and Crossing Jordan and just call it the Vanilla Predictable Investigation Channel. Their tagline: don’t think too hard.
[tags]virginia tech, gun control, creative writing, video games, csi, law & order, cold case, without a trace, crossing jordan[/tags]

Je suis fatigue

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Oh dear, I’ve forgotten to blog. Packing up your life into cardboard will do that, I s’pose. The cats are digging it ’cause they can scale the piles of boxes and crawl into the empty ones. The Dandy Warhols cover of “She Sells Sanctuary” is not as good as I would have thought. Is this week over yet? As nuts as it sounds, I’m kinda having fun ’cause we’re throwing out a whack (a metric whack, not an imperial whack) of stuff. Speaking of that, Duarte, come get your printer. Mogwai‘s Barry Burns thinks it’s high time Keith Richards dies and I can’t say I disagree that strongly. I’m surprised Trom hasn’t called me for more maple leaves yet; he was pretty much mainlining them by the end of the day.

OK, must sleep. I have four hours of meetings tomorrow and (yay) more packing to (yay) do. (yay)

[tags]moving, dandy warhols, mogwai, keith richards, (yay)[/tags]

It's like a puzzle, but with heat

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One of the things we’d noticed in the new condo was that the thermostats display in Fahrenheit, not Celsius. Personally, I have no concept of Fahrenheit temperature so that had to go. We tried playing around with the settings, fiddling with buttons, looking for switches, but to no avail. It stayed in Fahrenheit.

Tonight, going through some documents, Nellie found instructions on how to change it. It reads as follows:

  1. Bring the heat setting down to 52°F.
  2. Press the up and down arrows at the same time until the screen clears.
  3. Press the up arrow twice and then press the down arrow once. Then press the up arrow again until the setting changes to Celcius.

Well, my face is red. That’s so intuitive; how could I have not figured that out on my own?

[tags]thermostat, fahrenheit, celsius[/tags]

t-minus-8

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

Busy day. I reviewed & submitted my term paper, went for a run, went down to see Nellie at the condo, bought groceries, cleaned the apartment, threw out all the old food in the fridge, packed up all the books and DVDs, answered a bunch of work emails and watched the Raptors beat the Knicks.

Something else I finished up today was loading Nellie’s old MP3 player with country songs. She’s giving it to her mother,who wouldn’t know how to loadit with music, so I pre-loaded it for her. It is the first — and last — time that Alan Jackson will ever touch my hard drive.

.:.

On a completely different note, go read this post by Dave at The Galloping Beaver. It’s the most troubling and illuminating thing you’ll read today.

[tags]moving, the galloping beaver[/tags]

I am Jack's [li] tag

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My life is very, very point form right now. Nellie’s down at the new condo painting while I clean up the mess that has become our old place and write a paper for my class. We were up at 6-something this morning to pick up the car (from Autoshare) and drive to home depot, so the only thing keeping me awake right now is a steady Diet Pepsi drip.

Meanwhile, I have these for you:

OK, back to work.

C'est Irish PJ

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After dinner at the BeerBistro we swung by the condo with CBGB and MS, just to let them see it for the first time. It looks nice at night.

GB and I had met up before dinner, first at the Irish Embassy (too full), then at the BeerBistro bar (also too full) before settling on P.J. O’Brien. It was our first time there, and could become another nice addition to the local selection (along with the IR itself, and C’est What of course).

Tomorrow the painting, etc. starts. I cannot properly convey my excitement.

.:.

My I Hate Your Kids t-shirt arrived in the mail today. Let the angry glares begin.

Next treat expected in the mail: my blog cards.

[tags]irish embassy, pj obrien, cest what, i hate your kids, gaping void, blog card[/tags]

And now: a brief bullety interlude

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I’ve had a busy day, so point form is all yer gettin’:

OK, back to work. I have a term paper to write before all the packing can start.

[tags]pixies, mogwai, anteaters, nova scotia legislature[/tags]

Honeybee blues

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I guess this is why there’s a sign at the Nova Scotia border saying that no honeybees are allowed to enter the province.

With a mysterious disease or parasite ravaging beekeepers’ hives in New Brunswick, honey producers in the region are in for a tough season.

It’s been going on in the U.S. for a while, and has obviously spread to eastern Canada. I suppose the isolationist honeybee policy might pay off.

.:.

Memo to Bell: fix your bloody ‘Simple Move Form’ application. I don’t know what the userid is for my digital voice application, and it doesn’t appear on any of my bills. You also shouldn’t ask me to reply to two questions with one radio button. Finally, when people give up on the form and call — as most will — keep your call center open later than 5 PM.

Seriously, what is it with Bell? I’ve never seen a company — a technology/internet company, no less — change their website so often without ever actually improving it.

[tags]honeybees, new brunswick, bell canada[/tags]