Bet you didn't know that medical "snake and staff" picture was called a Caduceus. Well… now you do. Don't tell me I don't teach you how to gooder your English.

I can't think of anything to blog (blogh if you're Irish) about. I'll just tell you about a little incident I had with my doctor. This happened several years ago.

I'd just come back from a bike ride, and was relaxing in the tub. As usual, the water was probably a little bit hotter than it should be. I kind of like to lobster boil myself in the tub from time to time. I'm lying there, mostly submerged. Even my ears were underwater. I could hear my heart pounding away in my head. Very relaxing.

Well, very relaxing until I heard it skip a beat. Thump-THUMP, Thump-THUMP, -----------, Thump-THUMP. That opened my eyes pretty wide. I'd never read the manual, but I was pretty sure that wasn't normal. I lay there listening, half convincing myself I hadn't heard it, uh, hadn't not heard it. Then it happened again. Thump-THUMP, Thump-THUMP, -----------, Thump-THUMP. That's enough bath time, then.

Cut to the next day. I'm sitting in the doctor's office. A little worried.

In walks the doctor. He asks what's up. I tell him that I heard my heart skipping beats.

I half expect him to yell CHARGING! CLEAR!, but he just calmly says, "Mmm hmm. Coffee drinker?".

"Well, sure," I say, "I have the occasional pot every once in an hour."

"That's your problem then. Don't worry about it. Just call me if it doesn't start back up."

So there you go. Just what I needed. A doctor with a sense of humour about my imminent demise.

Apparently caffeine has the nasty effect of screwing around with your heart rhythm. More precisely, if you let your normal caffeine level fluctuate, your body reminds you that you're addicted by stopping your heart as a teaser.

I even asked if I should cut down. The doctor said I could, but it wasn't particularly necessary if I enjoyed it. If coffee was my worst sin, I was in good shape. I was just to be more careful maintaining my caffeine level. I wasn't to go drinking a lot and then skipping a day. Who knew?

Time to stop reading blogs for 30 minutes. Get out and vote! I know, I know. Nobody good to vote for. That doesn't matter. It is important to vote, even if you think it isn't. It doesn't take long, and gives you the right to years of bitching pleasure.

Update: It's a Liberal minority government in Canada now. That should make for an interesting year. Minority governments always make for dynamic chapters in the history books. It's pretty much wrapped up now. The numbers are about:

  LIB 137 CPC 93 BQ 55 NDP 22 OTH 1  

This month's stolen Maxim joke:

Q: How many women with PMS does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
A: One. One! And you know why? Because no one else is this house knows how to change a light bulb. They'd sit in the dark for weeks before figuring it out, and then they wouldn't even be able to find the damn light bulbs despite the fact that they've been kept in the same fucking cupboard for the past 17 years! I'm sorry… what was the question?

I just spent the day shopping. The mall sure seems to bring out the worst in people. It certainly brings out the worst in me. I feel the need to rant. Rant about that which you know, they say. That's some sage advice. I know what I hate. If you read my rant then you'll know what I hate as well…

Saturday Night Live has been pretty crappy in recent years, but I must admit Janet Jackson in the vineyard "Cork Soaking" sketch was pretty darn funny.

It has been deemed "Blog it Forward" day again. This is a day where we pick an entry from our blogroll that deserves particular attention. This time, I'm going to select:

Ritilan

It's one of those blogs that contains a bit of everything: humour, interesting links, word du jour, and assorted other kibbles and bits. Stop by and take a look.

A post on Jon's blog reminded me of an incident from my own past. (That's blogger-speak for "You know that Jon guy? I'm going to blatently rip-off his idea because it's way better than whatever crap I thought of").

I used to work for a fertilizer company. Ammonia fertilizer is made from natural gas. We had what is called a "gas shed" where the three 24-inch high-pressure natural gas lines were metered before they entered the plant. The place always reeked of gas because of the way the DP cells (pressure sensors) were set up. It wasn't unusual to have a little venting.

The most poorly trained monkey from the most shoddily run laboratory would walk into the shed, see the 3 bright orange pipes, smell the stink, and immediately think "Wow. There's is a whole fucking amazing amount of natural gas pouring through here!".

I hired a contractor to install a PLC into the gas shed. When I walked in on him later that day, he was screwing the PLC cabinet next to a rather obvious, and to my mind, redundant, no smoking sign.

Yes. You've guessed it. Lit cigarette in his mouth.

How absolutely brainless do you have to be? He was obviously fired and blacklisted. I mean, really. If it had gone off I'm guessing it would have taken the entire plant and probably much of the town with it. Still pisses me off.

As I feared, it's getting a little hard to post frequently. I'm pretty busy. What time I've been spending on the blog has been behind the scenes. I dropped the Link Dump and Photo Spot. They don't generate much interest (both for myself and in terms of "hits"… you may not even know what I'm talking about). I also cleaned up some things that have bothered me in my template. All this you don't see.

I've realized I'm going to have a bitch of a time when I relocate. I'll be changing ISPs, so the location of my images is going to change. In Blogger that'll be a pain-in-the-ass. Each of my posts has that little icon deal that I do, so I'll have to re-edit every single post after the move to fix those links.

From what I can see of 'Atom', it's an XML API that might allow me to automate this. I can't find any libraries for Perl (my preference) so I'd have to write something from the ground up. It would probably be faster to do it manually.

One thing I just thought of is posting all of my images on a photoblog. I could then link to them in this blog. I could get Blogger to host my images that way and it'd be free. If you use Blogger you may not even be aware that they joined forces with a utility called 'Hello'. It's not obvious at all that Blogger hosts the images when you use that utility, but they do.

I'm going to email Blogger support and see if that's "legit" first. Both because I really like Blogger and don't want to do something that bends the rules, and because I don't want to have to move them again in the future.

One of the things I'm going to miss when I relocate is the bus route that I'm on. Yes, it's a horrible bus filled with psychopaths, under-medicated societal misfits, over-medicated societal misfits, and (worst of all) high-school kids. That being said, it's an unending source of material for my blog. Today took the cake. Well, almost, but that last time was scary. This time was just amusing.

I got on the bus a little late this morning. That means it was filled with all the high-school kids that get a spare first period. They're your basic bunch of pathetic future leaders of the global economy. You know the type. All metal studs, crotches around their knees, and make-up inspired by photographs of domestic violence.

I sit near the back of the bus, and there is a guy colouring on his backpack. He's been working on the backpack for quite some time. It's covered in doodles espousing the graces of his favourite bands (Canker Sore and Kill-Your-Parents, or something like that). It's actually pretty good doodling, considering the media and the environment in which he works.

Let's see what he's working on now, shall we. Ah. He seems to have taken up with the less savoury factions of the underworld. He has drawn some disembowelled things, and an anarchy symbol. Brutal; but well laid-out. He has an eye for balance and form. He's almost finished colouring in the title of this new masterpiece. A nice gothic script that arcs across the entire back panel of the backpack. Let me just lean over inconspicuously and read what it says...

Uh-oh. It seems he's made a little spelling error that might prove fatal once he arrives at school: 'Minion of Satin'

I always thought these lists were kind of lame and boring (and a little gay… not that there's anything wrong with that…). At the moment, lame and boring seems like just the ticket. Lame and boring has the benefit of being quick to post. And, regardless of my opinion, they do appear to be popular.

For those of you that really hate those blog "50 questions" things, I've hidden it. You have to expand the blog entry to see it. That's your opportunity to go elsewhere without even having to view this dreck.

Would you look at that... this is my 150^th post.

There's been a big shake-up at work. Bunch of folks given their walking papers, etc. I'm being relocated. Luckily, I'm being relocated to somewhere I've been asking to relocate to for a while. Don't tell them that, though… they're paying for my move.

It does mean I probably won't be updating my blog as often for a while. Too much to do. Banks, lawyers, and realtors, oh my!

On another note, I just saw a commercial for New Kotex Security Tampons. Forgive my ignorance, but a lot of problems with having your tampon stolen is there?

Not being female it's hard for me to understand. Personally, I think I'd prefer the occasional hijacked tampon to suddenly having an embarrassingly-placed warning siren going off while I'm swimming, riding my horse, or doing ballet splits in my blindingly white leotard. That's just me though…

A difficult time is approaching for Canadians. June 28^th is election day. In years past, Canadians had to weigh the pro's and con's of each party. The decision was made difficult because each party leader presented a strong argument. Wise voters had much to ponder, many factors to consider. This year, things are different.

I feel more like a Fear Factor contestant deciding if I'd rather eat a pound of sautéed chameleon vulva or drink a dung-beetle and maggot milk shake.

Besides having a selection of Candidates ripped from the pages of Deliverance Banjo Monthly, I live in the west. What does living in the west mean to a concerned voter? It means that even if all of the western provinces collaborated to vote for a single party, they'd still be pretty much overwhelmed by the population of the eastern provinces. This renders our efforts essentially meaningless.

Still, I will be voting. Why? Because we Canadians are going to have plenty to complain about in the coming years, politics wise. I want to take part in those complaints. I believe if you don't vote, then you better just keep your damn mouth shut when things turn to shit. Your vote is your ticket to bitch.

My predictions for this year? Well, the poll results will be announced across the country as soon as they become available in each time zone. In years past, the results could only be released once all the polls were closed, Canada-wide. I predict that will impact the vote. As the polls open in each time-zone, a good chunk of the voters will just vote the same way as the majority seems to be voting. I also predict that the Green Party (our non-contender) will get record votes as Canadians use them as a way to spoil their ballots in protest.

Oh, well. At least we don't have the possibility that Bush is going to be re-elected hanging over our heads like a sword of Damocles. Actually, I suppose we do. Every time he succeeds in chipping away at peoples rights and freedoms, we feel the impact up here. Still, my predicament pales in comparison to being voter in the US right now.

Retro humour:
Politics (n.) põl´ i - tïks: Derived from the root words POLY, meaning "many", and TICKS, meaning "blood sucking parasites"

One of the things that you get as a Blogger.com user is access to the Google GMail beta. I just found out I have 3 invitations to give away. If you'd like a GMail account, but don't have any way of getting one, leave a comment. I'll be giving away two of my invitations. I want to keep one of them for future use.

It won't be first come, first served. I'll be basing my selection on the outcome of a careful examination of some goat entrails.

Oh… and before I forget: if anyone has a used goat for sale, leave a comment, too. Thanks. I'll give him a good home. I think I'll call him… "Stew".

Being a child actor is cool and all. Most even got their start in commercials, so you have to give him credit for that. Even so… I imagine this boy must be the most beat-up kid in his school. You must know the child I'm talking about. The one that does the bed-wetting commercial. He's standing their, talking about it like it's chemotherapy:

Bedwetting.
I'd really like to stop that.
My parent's wouldn't care so much, 'cept I usually sleep-walk into their bedroom and climb onto their night-stand before I do it.
Pisses right on them… I mean… pisses them right off.
So now they buy me: Depends Pull Ups for Tiny-bladdered Teens.

I bet he even bragged about getting a commercial for weeks beforehand so all his friends where watching for it. Then he shows up for filming and they bring out the wet sheet and plastic underwear.

Hmm… I wonder if they have an Humiliating Commercial Protection Program that renames these kids and transfers them to a new school…

I recently added stuff to both The Link Dump and The Photo Slop. Take a peek.

Blogger has added free audioblogging now. I've got to say I like the changes that have been made since Google took over. Don't get me wrong though, it was great pre-Google, too. Google just has lots of disk space to throw at things like free photoblogs and audioblogs.

Does that mean I'll start audioblogging? Probably not. Nobody wants to hear my voice. Anyway, I doubt there are any local numbers. You leave an entry by phoning a number and leaving a "voicemail". I'd probably be all ums and ahs. Uploading an MP3 would work better for me since I could edit first.

The first time I heard an audioblog was Wil Wheaton's. His audioblog entries are pretty amusing, and it doesn't hurt that he is/was an actor and does radio work.

Our guest host today is Terry. He has a sense of humour similar to my own. Poor bastard. Don't hold that against him, though. He has a great blog you need to visit:

Sanity Adrift

So, without further ado, onto Terry's entry.

---

My first ever guest host spot. And I must admit, that it is quite an honor. I imagine that it's probably how Jay Leno felt when guest hosting the Tonight Show for Johnny Carson. Of course, the major difference here being that Jay is talented, humorous, rich, and intelligent… but I'd really rather not dwell on all this right now.

Now, with the guest host spot comes a major responsibility. For a brief moment, I have the opportunity to leave my mark. A major impact. Send out a message of great importance. So to prepare, I felt the need to educate myself on the pressing topics of the day. Naturally, this led me to the newspaper. What better way to pick a topic then to read through my daily periodical? So I sat down with the paper this morning and prepared to read it from cover to cover. But it seemed pretty thick. So in the end, all I actually ended up reading were the baseball standings and the comics.

Still, I needed to get up to speed on the national issues, and besides, newspapers are so very old fashioned… I needed something more technologically savvy, which led me to the internet. Deciding that I would use today's forum to weigh in on my thoughts concerning further space exploration, I went to Google and typed in "Mars" to see what I could find… and what should appear before my eyes but a site claiming that there is life on Mars! 'Babes on Mars', to be exact. Clearly, this was a site which needed my attention. Well, let me tell you, those Mars Babes are incredibly hot! And judging by their lack of clothing, I don't just mean hot in a "perfectly sculpted bodies, ample breasts, and closely shaved areas" sense, but in a temperature sense, as well.

As I'm sure you're well aware, when in the pursuit for knowledge, time just seems to fly by. And before I knew it, I had spent over three hours studying up on Mars. By now, I realized that I was in a pinch. Here I was with my golden opportunity to really get across some important message, and I had nothing! I frantically made a mental list of all the things that I know a great deal about which consists of old Bugs Bunny cartoons and candy bars… when suddenly, it came to me: drugs!

     They are bad… VERY bad!

Perfect! A valid, well argued point. I must admit, I now know how Billy Crystal must feel after he aces one of those Oscar shows that he hosts… the good ones, I mean… not the ones that sucked. And to think, I almost wasted my big chance by making absolutely no point whatsoever! Man, I'’m glad that I work so well under pressure.

---

     This entry was created by Guest Host Terry, of:
          Sanity Adrift
     Show your appreciation: Leave a comment & visit his blog.
     This posting copyright © 2004 Terry of Sanity Adrift

Last Thursday I was heading home from work a little later than usual. Sitting on the bus (sitting; one of the benefits of leaving late, I guess), and absent-mindedly looking out the window.

We're slowed down by a car turning into a tight parking lot. Down the road about a half-a-block, I can see a guy standing with one foot in the road. He's looking right, waiting for a break in traffic so he can run across the road instead of crossing at the corner.

We start moving again and pull forward. About a second later, the guy sees the break in traffic he was looking for and starts to run across the road... and straight into the side of our bus with a loud thwack!

He staggers back, unhurt, and looks at the bus like, "Where the fuck did that come from?!"

People like that who have actually reached their 20's absolutely amaze me. I mean, if a huge fucking bus taking up your vision's entire perifery can't jump-start your amigdala, how the hell did you survive your youth?

Pure dumb luck, I guess. The key word being 'dumb'. One second earlier and his epitaph would have been "Screech! Thump-thump. Thump-thump."

You know, I've had the same blogroll for ages. All the entries are good, but it's time to add some new blood.

Unfortunately, finding good blogs is hard work, and if there is one thing I will expend a huge amount of energy to avoid, it's hard work.

Sooooo... if you know of a really good blog, other than your own, leave a shout-back message would ya? Just one blog suggestion per person, please. I want cream-of-the-crop stuff here. Leave your own blog as the 'URL:' link in the comment window, I will check all of those too, of course.

I am particularly interested in those little known blogs. You know the ones. They're gems that nobody seems to know about but really deserve a huge following.

Anyone at all can post a guest entry on my blog!

If you're a regular reader, you know I've been soliciting for a Guest Host. I was going to pick a "lucky individual" from the people that sent in an email. It dawned on me that someone who has taken the time to email me shouldn't then be subject to an arbitrary selection process. I'm thrilled that they responded and that should be enough to guarantee a spot. Therefore...

From now on I will always be accepting requests from guest hosts.

If you'd like to post an entry on my blog, send me a quick note introducing yourself and your proposed topic. I'll get right back to you. That's all there is to it. You'll be famous. Ok. No you won't. You'll be in Google, though. That's something.



I promise I'll reply to your email. If I don't, check back and make sure the address hasn't changed. I change it if it starts getting too much spam.

Here are the so-called rules:

1. It's free... of course. You don't get paid... of courser.
2. I do reserve the right to refuse a post, but I doubt that'll ever happen.
3. You can write about anything, and your post can be of any length.
4. Keep it text-only. If you have an image that you'd like me to turn into one of my article icons ask me about that possibility when you send your email.
5. As part of my introduction to your guest post, I'll blatantly plug your web site or anything else of your choosing. Almost. Rule #2 applies here too.
6. Try your best with the spelling and grammar. Avoid AOL-speak (words spelled with numbers) at all costs.

Based on the traffic I was getting when I posted these rules, your post should be seen by at least 150 to 200 people before it rolls off the page into the archive. Your milage/kilometerage may vary.

If you don't want to create a whole guest entry, but do have something you want me to post, send me an email. I might include your note as one of these "aside" boxes instead.

---

Past Hosts:

• June 6, 2004 - Terry of 'Sanity Adrift'
• February 3, 2004 - Charlie of 'Where the Hell Was I?'

I must have a very strange demographic. I'm trying to quantify it, based on the number of comments I get when I post a particular style of entry. I think I'm getting close.

I have a large group of readers that like humour. No surprise there. Unfortunately, they seem to have some form of narcolepsy that causes them to sleep through about every fourth post.

I have another large group that likes the technical stuff, but only during the fall and winter months. I guess during the summer they go outside and apply their newly acquired technical skills to the development of remote-control swing-sets or something like that.

The biggest chunk seems to base their like or dislike of a particular article (and therefore their desire to leave some sort of comment) to the outcome of a complex fifth-order polynomial that I have yet to figure out. I'm pretty sure it somehow involves rip-tides, and the colour chartreuse.

The last group visited in huge numbers, but only during the few weeks I was away. They decided it was a dead blog (or, closer to the truth, a dead blogger), and never returned.

Not that this information helps me at all. I guess it does reinforce my conviction that I should just post whatever the fuck I feel like and let the cards fall where they may.

Here's a one-liner to memorize in the hope that you'll get to use it some day. I heard it on Fraser.

"Why won't you go out with her? she can't be that bad!"
"Let me put it this way: years of chewing tobacco have seriously discoloured her tooth."

And yes, I'm still hoping for more people to offer to be a guest blogger for a day.

Slashdot recently had a post about the rebuilding of Colossus. Colossus, operational 1944, was the first electronic programmable computer. This is probably contrary to what you've heard about ENIAC. ENIAC was operational two years later. Previsions for war secrets kept news about Colossus quiet until 1970. It was built by the Bletchley Park team in Britain. This was a think-tank comprised of all of the notable British code-breakers of the time. If you've read Cryptonomicon then you're familiar with much of the story.

One of the key players at Bletchley Park was Alan Turing (Google). Most geeks genuflect when they hear that name. He's almost universally accepted as the father of modern computing. It was his concept of the "universal computing machine" that lead to computer and artificial intelligence science and theory. It also lead to the development of much of the computing equipment at Bletchley Park. The equipment, and the team that used it, are thought to have shortened the war by several years by rapidly decrypting much of the German radio chatter.

Turing was gay, and was "outed" at the end of the war. At the time, this meant he was suddenly considered a criminal and a security risk for the military machine and country to which he'd devoted his life. It wasn't long after that he took his own life with cyanide. He was 42. You have to wonder what discoveries the world lost with him. He was just starting to apply his intellect to quantum mechanics and relativity.

The links in the Slashdot article are great reads. They show you a glimpse of some pretty incredible minds. Some say that sort of genius comes with a price. Though it doesn't mention it directly, you get a clear feeling from Cryptonomicon and other biographical sources that several of the team exhibited strong autistic traits.

I've heard the theory that the term Geek could actually be identifying a group of people with various levels of functional autism. I wouldn't doubt it (and I consider myself a Geek). The inability to filter out distractions, less than stellar social skills, exceptional ability in a narrowly defined skill-set, and intense concentration once set on a task are all classic symptoms.

I'm still accepting emails from anyone who wants a chance at becoming a guest blogger here for a day. Go on... go for it.

One last note about Alan Turing: he was also an Olympic-class runner.