Leap Year Day

I always thought that since the Leap Day came only every four years that something should be made more of it in terms of celebrating its arrival. So far, for me it has a bit of a negative connotation, because it makes the bleakest and dreariest month of the year even one day longer.  It should signify something better.  At the very least it should be made a statutory holiday.  People who were born on the leap year day, I feel, should by rights have a four day long birthday celebration, starting February 29^th and lasting until March 3^rd, to make up for those lost years when their birthday couldn’t be formally commemorated with a date.  There should be some kind of traditional numerical theme involving the numbers 29 or 366.

I heard that in some countries that the leap day was the traditional occasion when women could be the ones to propose marriage.  That idea doesn’t bode well for me, but I do think that it is a day when people should try to do something unconventional and spontaneous. Just for the sake of helping ourselves to get unstuck out of our midwinter’s mental ruts. Wear a colour you wouldn’t otherwise dare to. Try doing the opposite of whatever it is that is your normal impulse to do. Maybe the Leap Year Day mascot could be George Costanza from Seinfeld. It might be a great day to challenge yourself in trying to confront things that give you anxiety and phobias, or daring to take a step forward in making a dream come true . . . taking a big leap ahead of some sort. A Leap Year Day feast should comprise of some kind of weird food that you have never sampled before in your entire life.

If there are gifts to be exchanged on this day, they should be centred around health and beauty products: because hey . . . you are given an extra day in the year to age through, you better do something to cover it up.

I’m open to other suggestions for creating and marketing this into another Hallmark holiday. Perhaps we’ll see something develop from here in another four years from now.

Twenty Other Countries ...

Twenty other countries (and their cities/municipalities/regions) where I’d probably like to live*

1.       Ireland (Dublin, Cork, Kilkenney)

2.       New Zealand (Auckland, Christchurch)

3.       Australia (Brisbane, Cairns, Perth)

4.       Sweden (Stockholm, Uppsala, Malmö)

5.       Holland (Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague)

6.       United Kingdom (Southampton, Bristol, Edinburgh)

7.       Denmark (Copenhagen)

8.       Germany (Berlin, Cologne, Munich, Frankfurt)

9.       Norway (Oslo, Bergen)

10.   France (Marseilles, Lyon, Nice, Valle Loire)

11.   Switzerland (Geneva, Zurich, Lucerne)

12.   Austria (Vienna, Salzburg)

13.   United States (San Francisco)

14.   Belgium (Brusselles, Bruges)

15.   Argentina (Buenos Aires)

16.   Spain (Barcelona)

17.   Portugal (Lisbon)

18.   Finland (Helsinki)

19.   Italy (Florence, Tuscany, Lombardy)

20.   Japan (Kyoto)

*- That is if ever, for some bizarre reason, I couldn’t live in Canada any longer. It’s nice to have options.

Night Shifts = Bad Mojo

I’ve noticed that I’ve been developing a strange little ritual that happens on the mornings of those odd days when I’m scheduled to work my night shifts. It involves totally cleaning up my place in an intensive and thorough manner, from ceiling to floor, room by room. I suppose I do this with hopes to exhaust myself enough such that I’m able to nap in the afternoon before the shift; also to clear away all else that may distract me after I return home the following morning, so there is a sense of having absolutely no chore, no obligation, nor any other reasons for me to stay awake once I do get home, so I can just march straight into bed and go to sleep without giving anything else special attention. It’s good in theory, but in reality, this ritual is turning out to be an exercise in futility. I still don’t get any (real) sleep at all before or after any nightshift I do. Nevertheless, I still do all this to at least gain some solace and satisfaction in knowing that things are being tidied up and put in order. I’d like to believe that an uncluttered household equates to having an uncluttered mind. However, mine doesn’t seem to be uncluttered enough to switch over my sleep patterns accordingly. I’m still searching for a non-pharmaceutical method of doing this.

Moreover, the dates for night shifts are also heralds for bad luck. I’m beginning to think that I’m cursed somehow.  Some forces of evil are seemingly working together to completely disallow me the chance for any revitalizing slumber. This kind of shit happens just too often to be coincidental. I suspect that poltergeists or gremlins triggered a car alarm in the parkade directly below me once on one of those days. I believe that the Illuminatti was once involved in a sinister plan to have a company of tree-pruners trimming the elms along my street with the loudest friggin’ chainsaws and wood chipping/mulching machines in existence. That happened one morning just after one of my night shifts. I’m sure another past incident happened starting with mysterious, anonymous phone calls being made to the city’s sewer maintenance department; then shortly after, screaming, jet-engine powered, cleaning pumps were hauled over and operated in conspicuously close proximity to my bedroom. It’s something that I could have accepted on any of the other 27 mornings of the cycle of the non-night shift dates I work, but no, it had to occur that day to thoroughly aggravate me. I don’t think I’m just being paranoid. Someone out there is out to get me.

This time around, I had to cut short the shift tonight due to some strange spinocervical pain that was really bothering me. Given what I already mentioned, I could easily conclude that there’s probably some voodoo doll of me out there somewhere with needles driven into its back and neck. Anyway, of course, that discomfort wouldn’t allow me to get much sleep at all, despite being up for 21 hours. And just to be concordant with the crappy fortune I can expect around a night shift date, I tried phoning this morning to get an appointment for a chiropractic treatment, only to discover that the fates again have conspired against me. It turns out that my practitioner is out of town for the rest of the week. Goddamnit! So now, I’m reduced to using night-time Advils in the meantime.

Whatever the case is, this recent exercise of the home cleaning ritual I’ve been doing certainly has not been proving itself to be any sort of feng-shui-esque service for getting rid of these intervals of bad karma, or bringing me good sleep. No other advice or method, no matter how well-intended, from my fellow full time co-workers or other sources, about conquering insomnia and adapting to shift work has as of yet ever worked for me. I’ve only become less capable of tolerating it all. I’m resolving to do more about all this. I’m looking more into alternative ways, like meditation.

Convention Crashing

I finally feel like I’m starting to ditch this cold, or whatever bug this is. I realized since the New Year began that I haven’t been really anywhere else except work and home, and doing a bit of shopping only for the essential and practical because I have been either sick, or stressed with fixing stuff. I only had one rendez-vous for a quick belated birthday lunch, but that’s about it: almost no extracurricular social-life whatsoever since the year started.  I thought I better do something about that.

After some strange discussions and revelations that were aired yesterday in a couple of conversations, I’ve come to realize that one of the nice advantages about living in my area of town is that I’m close to all the action when the more interesting conventions, trade fairs, expos, and other odd flea markets or concerts are scheduled at the Prairieland Buildings. I live close enough that I don’t have to drive to see any that interest me, so it’s a hop, skip, and a jump there. Also, when sometimes such events are licensed, it’s a convenient and reasonably safe stagger, trip, and a fall back home if I ever do risk being over the legal limit.

I’m not an overly-social person (obviously), but I think conventions/trade shows/expos are great, because one can walk in there as a total stranger, and generally find some common attraction of interest for sensible discussion for like minded people to chat about. It’s a far more organic affair and natural way of socializing and networking for me than sitting around a stupid bar/ lounge under some pretence of “relaxing” amid music blaring too loud for to have a comprehensible conversation, watching other people make a drama, argue, and bitch about work or life in general, as they (not so) gradually lose more inhibition to alcohol. At a bar, it seems that you’re relegated to be constantly alert and active in dealing with someone who is trying to bullshit you, or with someone just plainly being an asshole; plus you’re more likely to be seen as and treated that way yourself in a bar. I can’t be bothered. It’s hard for me to meet and interface with people in any bar. There are no cool bars around for me anymore. I mostly enter and leave them as an anonymous stranger. If it's a casino, I usually just end up leaving as a much broker anonymous stranger.

I find that’s less likely to happen at a trade show or expo, even when there has been copious alcohol consumption, at least at the past events I have attended*. Whether it’s listening to a lecture or seminar, formally discussing business and making queries with promoters/sales reps, or informally chatting with other interested attendees, I generally find people at such conferences respectful, open, likeable, and most importantly, and genuine and honest about what like want and like in business/work or leisure life. There are, of course, conventions you would never find me attending. The antitheses of the kind of people I like finding at conventions are: the sanctimonious personalities who fall easily into self-delusion; hence you won’t catch me anywhere near a political convention, or religious jamboree of any sort. Religious fanatics and political activists are some of the worst of the toxic bullshitters around; usually none of their topics are of passionate interest to me. I also wouldn’t be convening with the typical people in the crowd you’d find at a Megadeath/Mötorhead concert**. These kinds of concerts, (plus the Ex in general) attract a lot of the social riff-raff. When these types of people amass, it’s doubtful that anything good comes out of it. That’s one downside of living so close to Prairieland Centre.

I regret missing the last Health and Wellness show that came here last week because, ironically, I was just too sick. Of the future events I’d like to see/attend there are: the next Top of the Hops, The Sports and Leisure Show, and any running/marathon training workshops that may be there (or elsewhere in town). I plan to crash a few others too for the sake of novelty. Doing so would satisfy many of the objectives on my Things I Need to Know How to Do Better list I made in the New Year.

*- Top of the Hops is an awesome Expo for those who love sampling different beers, wines, and spirits. Check it out in May! It’s so much fun, and so entirely civilized considering how much liquor is there.

**- This was just a convenient contemporary example to use. They played here yesterday (Feb 16^th). That means there were probably one or two totally empty trailer parks last night around Saskatoon. My neighbourhood was probably swarming with (wannabe) bikers, dope heads and dealers. I did hear lots of sirens last night. It could have been worse; I should be thankful that this didn’t occur while it was summer on the outdoor stage. It’s not so much the band(s)/genre that I despise, since I have and play some metal tunes myself. However, I think that a person would have to have a really polluted psyche if metal was/is/will be the only genre of music they ever like or listen to. It’s also disturbing and pathetic to see guys in their 40s and 50s being metal band groupies. Grow up for crissakes guys . . . and get a bloody haircut!

[TV Commercials] + [Neo-Citron] = WTF???

I wasted almost an entire weekend watching TV, since I was pretty much too useless to do anything else as I sat around here all loaded up on Neo-Citron; I sure had a wildly different viewing experience when I was in this state though. Typically, I watch pre-recorded TV from my computer hard drive after I come home from work, and I generally skip through all the commercials.While the TV is on at work, my mind is usually somewhere else, or I'm too distracted by other tasks to give them any analysis for criticism. Here is just a bunch of random questions and observations that burbled up into my cold remedy addled mind, mostly inspired by the commercials I glimpsed.

I noticed that there were lots of repetitive advisories on one channel about Depression Awareness. Should I find it amusingly ironic, or fittingly appropriate that Valentine’s Day occurs right in the middle of the month of the year that generally has the highest number of diagnosed cases and medical treatment of depression in Canada? With love (or lack of it) and depression mixed together, it makes me think that this month should be renamed Emo-bruary. Of course, there was a preponderance of pharmaceutical ads for anti-depressants amidst that lot. If our society was indeed more optimistic; given the occasion coming, you’d think there would be more Cialis, Viagra, and K-Y lube commercials.

I don’t know if it’s just the medication affecting me, or if it’s more subliminal suggestion, or something else going on to create some better memetic device to accord with the coming of Valentine’s Day, but I’ve noticed that the phrase “hot and juicy” has been especially salient in fast food commercials.

When the hell did advertisers, or I guess the media in general, think that it was a great idea to make it a general characteristic for beavers to be speaking with British accents? I noticed that on a Netflix commercial, and also I remember seeing a beaver speaking that way when I saw one bit of The Chronicles of Narnia movie in passing as well. This is highly improper because, a.) beavers are native to North America and, b.) the beavers are often steadily engaged in what can be construed as doing physical labour, quite unlike the British who do speak with the upper class, intellectual, Queen’s English accent. Yes, how very unbecoming. The beavers should rightfully be feeling insulted. I suppose the key thing to making a product or service seem more reliable in the world of North American television advertising, is to anthropomorphize animals such that they speak like Jeeves the butler, or something. The Geicko gecko is another example. I wonder if that trend is somehow reversed for some of the TV adverts in the UK. Maybe their version of the Geicko gecko sounds like Billy Joe Bubba the septic tank cleaner.

If it only takes a few cents a day to feed a child in Africa, wouldn’t you think that more there would be more parents from here sending their kids over there?

“. . . the best tasting dog food your pet will ever eat.”Who were the people who went out of their way to determine this? Are these results from some kind of testing that they performed on prisoners, or thehomeless?

I discovered the hard way that I can’t watch Canada’s Worst Handyman on the DiscoveryChannel while I have a respiratory affliction. Laughing at that kind of idiocy sends me into uncontrollable and painful coughing fits.

When I see hip-hop gangster hamsters, squaring off with break-dancing robot soldiers, and a KIA Soul automobile all within the same commercial space, and knowing that there is some producer of this commercial out there thinking, “Yes, so it’s obvious that the general public will see the correlation!”, I can only conclude that the crack babies are all grown up now, and have taken careers in television advertising. Maybe they should try out Neo-Citron.

Thinking of Running. . . Stuck at Home Coughing

Earlier this week, I received a very early birthday present. A friend registered my name in for a half-marathon race coming up sometime in August of this year. I’m sure other people would question the status of their friendship with someone if such a friend’s ‘gift’ was an entry fee/registration for doing a 13.1 kilometre long run in the middle of the hottest days of summer. However, racing in a half-marathon competitively was something that I was going to dare myself to do anyway sometime this year. This friend just provided that extra push to make me commit to that goal. All I have to do is the training for a few months, and then show up for the race and do it. I’m thankful. I have six months to train for it; I could feasibly do it in three. My training research link.

However, my plans and ambitions to do some preliminary training for long stretch running this weekend have been dashed by lousy weather and goop-filled lungs.  The bronchitis seems even more worse today than yesterday , and even just thinking of the effort I’ll need to get out of here just to get some groceries is tiring enough for me, never mind thinking of the discipline I’ll need in the future for this race. Right now, breathing in the below -25°C air outside instantly makes me double over, putting me into a furious fit of coughing, as I found out the hard way when I tried to walk the dog outside yesterday.

So, I’m sick again, irritable, bored at home, having no bodily energy and stiffness throughout; a restless, yet headache-clouded mind.  A situation like this usually never works out well for me. I’ve given thought about relieving myself with symptom suppressing sedation, but I favour lucidity, and really have no desire to ride into Looneyville on the crazy train that is Neo Citron. Not when I look around and see all the desk work, bills, and other correspondence I have to catch up on now that I have a fully functioning computer. That will only take an hour and a half to do at most, I’m almost half finished that stuff now as I drift between that and writing paragraphs here. I’ve re-considered heading out for groceries now: it’s pointless to waste energy to shop for food, or to cook, when I have no appetite anyway.

I thought I’d try and cure myself by using some thermotherapy in the sauna downstairs in the recreation room, but then I saw a notice that the rec room has been booked for the day for someone’s private function.  I suppose I’ll continue reading the last of Stieg Larsson’s novel of the Millennium trilogy, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest. If I can’t use a Scandinavian spa utility to sweat this bug out of me, then I’ll try sweating it out using Scandinavian suspense literature. With the suspension of my television service coming soon for spring and summer, it’s probably a good time to figure out some more options to put on my reading list as well.

The Thing That's Too Well Built

I’m ending my week in a grouchy mood. Right now, I am spending the first day of my three days off trying to battle what appear to be symptoms of bronchitis.  Before that, I have been storming around to eight different centres in town, and even more online, for the past four days searching for and trying to get a printer and/or computer parts, which even by the advice of so called ‘experts’ has been an enormous feat of trial and error. I finally have working results, but I shouldn’t have had this much difficulty. This is sort of the endgame to my ranting on Techno Scrap.

Weary of all these hassles just for simple tech repairs, and considering the rate of obsolescence and usage life of today’s typical consumer products, my mind began to drift around wondering what is out there on the opposite end of the spectrum. That is, I'm talking about a powerful piece of technology, of any product, that has been around during my lifetime, that has had a huge global impact, and was manufactured perfectly right off the mark with little or no revision, and has a proven to be high in the standards of durability, ease of maintenance, and ease of use by even the stupidest of people. I recalled some past articles I’ve read, and one glaring and disturbing example came to my mind of something that was made just too well.  That would be an AK47 assault rifle.

Thinking aside from its ability to crudely blast bodily organs out of people, it pretty much fits those criteria I just mentioned. It was made back in the good old days when Stalin was trying to make communism universal. So, competitions came about to satisfy the goal of developing a powerful, utilitarian, cheaply manufactured, and super-durable weapon that functions in all climates and which even the most dim-witted soldier could operate and maintain with minimal effort. A Russian gunsmith, Mikail Kalashnikov, won out by designing and developing the AK47. Amazingly, he has no patent on this thing; so its design has been copied into several derivatives without the red tape of patent infringement and licensing issues in the world of arms manufacturing. Of all assault rifles, this one survives the greatest of extremes of cold, heat, dryness, moisture, and exposure to environmental contaminants. It’s been field tested by being immersed in sand, dirty water, and even drove over by vehicles, and still has a high likelihood of being able to be fired after such abuse. It's a highly effective relic of low-tech, Soviet/Iron Curtain mass production; ironically, that’s its success of defying obsolescence, because of the common and standardized interchangeable machine parts made in a system didn't make huge leaps in progressive change, thus its specs haven’t changed much since it was first made in 1947. Someone could probably take one model of this gun made in Russia in 1947, another from China made in 1954, another from Romania made in 1968, and one made in North Korea in 1996; take them all apart, shake up all their components in a gunny sack, dump them all in a muddy ditch, and then recover all those pieces and re-assemble them into four different chimera rifles made from each others’ parts, and there would still very likely be four fully-operational AK47s. By comparison, on the stupid side of computer peripheral technology, I needed one stupid simple print head for my printer, which was one of several kinds made by the same manufacturer, but which seemed to be phased out of production, and wasn’t conveniently available, or feasible to acquire cost-wise if it was used. I was replacing the fan for my desktop tower, and I had to go through the trouble of finding three different models, each of them claiming to be allegedly “universal” before I got the right one that worked. That’s odd, because my old fan was removed with simply turning four screws; one of the new “universal” replacements I got (exchange number one)would have required me to completely disassemble my tower to extract my motherboard to change things to mount the damn thing properly to have contact with the CPU. That doesn’t sound universal to me. Another “universal” fan didn’t even fit into my tower casing at all, despite the insistence from one shaggy tech-head prick that it would. Between my old printer, my replacement fan, and the assault rifle competing for the category of having “universal” manufactured parts compliance, sadly the AK47 wins.

And cheap . . . Cripes! At first, I thought I was getting a reasonable deal (after a lot of time doing exchanges) spending $16.50 for a fan, and then a hell of a deal after finding a replacement printer for under $50.00 . . . that is until after I did a bit of fact finding on this subject and found out that the AK47 wins again. I discovered that in some Third World nations, an AK47 assault rifle can be purchased for as little as $6.00, or traded for a couple of chickens or a sack of grain. In the tech world, I can’t even buy a decent length of simple HDMI cable for six bucks, and I sure as hell can't get one for a bag of grain or poultry! How can a fully automatic weapon cost cheaper than a bag of groceries?* But seriously, it’s sickening to know that, either unwittingly or unscrupulously, poorly monitored or unsecured shipments of humanitarian supplies going to such places as Africa are occassionally intercepted and seized by warlords, who in turn barter or sell this stuff through the black market to acquire weapons; chiefly, the most favoured and coveted ones being sought are AK47s. In cases like this, especially in Africa, it’s a sound guess that the majority of these guns are then distributed and going into the hands of guerrilla fighters or soldiers who are very likely in some regions there to be under the age of fifteen.

That’s the other issue. As far as assault rifles go, an AK47's design has been made so practical and simple that an illiterate child can take it apart, re-assemble it, and operate it. And that’s when you know that there is such a thing as too much bloody simplicity: when the most powerful and devastating kinds of weapons start becoming too readily capable of being handled and made accessible to people who are either too young, or ignorant/stupid to know how to read. Sure, it is disturbing to watch some periodic news story about the Taliban, or some other radical terrorist group members running around with cheap, yet powerful weapons like Kalashnikov rifles, but what is a hundred times more disturbing to me is knowing that there are entire generations of people in countries like Liberia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda, or Sierra Leone, regardless of religion or politics, who have been trained to kill, or have killed others since their childhood with the most powerful weapons available that they can physically handle. Sadly, this is the stuff that doesn’t make it to the news too often. Too many people seem to be ignorant about this.

The AK47 is the most mass-produced automatic firearm on Earth, so it is a pretty established format in terms of weapon arsenals. More than 75 million AK 47s and 100 million AK derivatives and variants have been manufactured worldwide, totalling about 175 million: approximately one AK rifle per 40 people on Earth. I’m guessing they are most popularly used in nations where there is less than one TV set per 300 of its citizens, like Mozambique, whose flag actually has an image of an AK47 machine gun on it as an emblem.** I was thinking of another example of a real politically anarchical shit spot on the face of this globe, and for some reason I instantly thought of Somalia. In the city of Mogadishu alone, according to UN reports, there are estimated to be about 1.3 million AK47, or AK type assault rifles in possession of its citizens. That’s double the number of cell phones in use in all of Somalia.*** When machine guns are more than twice as likely to be available than a normally common form of communication technology, then you know you’re really in a fucked up place.

It’s shameful that devastatingly low-tech/low brow methods of carnage and destruction seem to be more universal and consumer "friendly" than products that are supposedly educational, creative, and constructive high-tech/high brow solutions to things. It shouldn’t be easier and cheaper to buy an assault rifle in the Third World than it is to get an education or medical aid there; nor should it be easier to get a gun there than it is to get one's computer fixed here****.

*- Simple answer. . . if you were starving to death and were desperately becoming indifferent or ignorant to the value of things, you might sell your assets, including weapons, for dirt cheap too. 
**-Travel advice: if you see a weapon of any kind proudly stamped on a nation’s flag, it would probably be in your best interest to STAY THE HELL AWAY FROM THERE!
***-Statistics compiled from NationMaster.com
****-Addendum, Feb 11, 2012: Discovered that the scanning utility on my cheap new 3-in-1 doesn't work. Another goddamned trip to return/exchange shit. . . GRRRRR! I think I'm ready to get my own AK47.

Techno Scrap

After coffee with my friend yesterday morning, and listening to all the activity she is doing, and realizing how badly I’ve been slacking off, I felt obliged to get my rear in gear. It’s hard to stick into words the unique aches I’ve been having since I worked out yesterday, but I survived. Today is a good day to just relax. If I get ambitious, I’ll start acknowledging and doing something to rectify the new warning messages when I turn my computer on. Apparently, the CPU cooling fan in my desktop unit is not working; I have to add that to my growing list of tech repairs. The fan repair gets primacy. Realistically, it's a rapidly moving part that is subject to wear. It's easy enough to repair by myself, and I reckon it will cost only 20 to 40 dollars, plus it will probably extend my tower's life for couple more years. At least for now I can still use my laptop. However, a few days ago, I discovered that the print head on my 3-in-1 printer quit working. I know what’s wrong with it. I left one of the empty cartridges out of it too long, and the residue ink dried inside the print head and botched it . . . stupid me.

The printer issue really flares up anger in me. Before, I was able to be totally MacGyver in the past with this same issue I once had, using a bit of isopropyl alcohol, a coffee filter, and maybe a clean toothpick to fix such a problem, but now systems are too intricate for that kind of jury-rigged repair job. I tried to, but failed. After researching online, a replacement print head is more expensive than the cost of a new printer. I shopped Ebay and other sites for used models of my printer to salvage the print head from it. The used printers themselves were far cheaper than the new print head, but the shipping costs were outrageous. I had no luck locally on Kijiji. It looks like I’m screwed into shopping for a new model. I really hate this kind of waste. Sure, I could try to sell this old one on online myself as a parts only unit to recoup losses, but again, it still pressures me to consume more than I want to; pushing an exorbitant and unrealistic shipping cost onto someone else for a near obsolete machine, which only a real idiot would do. Realistically, for the lack of one small piece, an otherwise perfectly functional printer goes to a garbage dump*. I love technology, and some of the reasons why I love it are for saving time, space, energy, and money. I start to dislike it when I see instances where somehow it fails to systematically do any of that. This is one case where that is so.

The only other reason I would even bother to get a new 3-in-1 is that I may have a little eagerness to see what kind of technical enhancements have been made since this last model, which I don’t believe have been very significant in the world of printer technology. People aren’t so eager to create waste of room and resources by slapping things down onto a hardcopy anymore. For a world trying to use technology to get on the greener side of the environmental fence, printers are the absolute antithesis to this means of progress. They use paper after all. With the world ditching paper on an increasingly broader scale, one would think that R & D for printer technology would be ironically to cut down on paper-use itself a bit. My lack of printing actual paper pages was probably part of the problem as to why the ink dried up in my print head. The only thing I think would be of any interest to me in a newer printer would be streamlining content and power efficiency: to have one that could be networked such that it can pull stuff directly off the Cloud, eliminating the use of another power-sucking unit to process a printout. To be able to crop web pages instantly so that you aren’t wasting extra ink printing the superfluous material that you don’t want on a page would be a great feature to see as well. I see HP has Smart Print that can do some of this stuff.

*- Even, when taken to a recycling centre, like SARCAN here in Saskatchewan, only a small volume of the weight percentage of an average electronic appliance is collected for reuse. The remainder is still a lot of toxic plastics that are destined for landfill. The itch to replace obsolescence really affects us negatively.

A Longer February This Year. . . Blargh!!!

How quickly a month goes by. I am grateful that I slid through this first twelfth of the year without too many hassles.  Incidents of bad news improved to become something better; other good discoveries enhanced themselves to become something awesome. There is still a lot yet to be done in getting some other affairs in order. I’m also thankful that I’m only at work for four hours today, because there is so much I’m trying to burn through in terms of catching up with steps of things I initially wanted to accomplish before last month’s end. And now I've let things lapse into February, the worst stinking month of the year for me. I'm quite discontent that it's another day longer for this year.

My scheduling spreadsheets aren’t even started yet for this year. This is one thing I can’t fall behind on. I may need to swap shifts just to get free time to get it all sorted out. I wish it were as simple as copying and pasting from an old template. However, with 2012 being a leap year, that one extra stupid day has complicated the whole process. My mind is being tossed around between bothering to upkeep this old system, or to dare myself to revamp the whole damn thing altogether. Maybe I’ll fluke out, and manage to get the thing to sync with my iTouch calendar apps.

The ambitious changes in my life I’m trying to make now are actually things that I’m trying to cut out of my life. Those things are mindless wastes of: my time, my space, my energy, and my money, because I sure as hell will need every scrap of those four things in the months ahead. The wild paradox is that it seems I have to use more time, space, energy, and money to regain any of these things back.

The space reclamation project has been pretty successful so far. My office/studio area has had a bit of an overhaul.  The to-do list on my whiteboard in there seems perpetual. It’s just the kitchen, my other major household work centre, which still has to be organized better.

My annual cable service cut off time seems to be advancing month by month each year. Last year, it was in March; this year it will happen in mid February, and then get switched back on in mid October. The only things meaningful to watch that I’ll miss at home during that time might be some highlights from the Summer Olympics in London. That’s eight months of some sort of yet indeterminable quantity of savings of time, energy, and money.