senatorhung's pad
ramblings of an information troubleshooter
ramblings of an information troubleshooter
you're wearing on my mental health
Sunday, 10APR2005:a knock at the door woke me up today. twas someone from stats canada administering a health survey. was it a bad time, he asked ? well, duh, i'm rubbing sand out of my eyes in my underwear, what did he think ? do people actually figure that going door to door for information surveys is actually welcome ? i still had laundry drying all over the living room ! so, i told him to visit me at work on monday and shut the door.
didn't feel like going back to sleep, so i spent the rest of day listening to mixes that i had traded for on aotm and browsed for other potential mix trades. how geeky, right ? but y'know, i get so much enjoyment from music and i hardly invest any time into finding new stuff anymore. just because i've bought a lot of music over the years doesn't mean i should be so jaded and closed off to potentially great new music. anyway, i did manage to hook up a couple more trades, so i'll be busy preparing those mixes this week.
i'm a guitar hero with mortgage equity
Monday, 11APR2005:got my income tax refund notice today and the amount of my refund is suspiciously close to my RRSP contribution limit for 2005. hmm, do i go on a spending spree, or close my eyes, pretend the money never went into my bank account and just toss the money into the retirement fund ?
spent a bit of time trying to figure out how to mask the URL of this site since the current directory path includes my name. i exchanged emails with my ISP's tech support and he set up a static IP address for me. i then called up my domain name registrar to figure out how to relate zzz.ca to that static IP address. the URL forwarding features that they had didn't work exactly the way i wanted, and changing the DNS servers really wonkified things. i decided to let it stew for a few hours overnight and i'll take another look at it tomorrow.
- interesting link of the day: an article from the oct.2004 issue of wired argues that businesses that will thrive in the future are ones that are able to give up their singular focus on hits to profit from the long_tail of demand.
- IP idiocy link of the day: michael geist
eviscerates
the myths about how P2P file sharing is having a detrimental
effect on the livelihoods of canadian musicians.
- big-box retailers are gaining music sales market share from traditional record stores and are more 'hit'-focused, only stocking the best-sellers and ignoring catalogue sales;
- big-box retailers are paying record companies less per cd;
- number of releases per year has gone down;
- cannibalization of shelf space / discretionary spending by dvd's; and
- declining economic conditions
never calculate the currency we've spent
Tuesday, 12APR2005:so i went for the RRSP contribution instead of splurging on a skidoo. i bought some stocks with the proceeds. first i doubled my stake in Cumberland Resources (CLG) for their gold mine outside of Baker Lake. i'm in the economic pessimist camp (thank you mr. bush) and the gold play is a hedge.
i also topped up my units of Northern Properties (NPR.UN), the real estate investment trust (REIT) of my landlord. The REIT spins off a distribution each month - i almost prefer to see it as a discount on my monthly rent :)
now, normally, dividend income should be taken outside of an RSP due to its already lower tax bracket, but since my employer pension plan haircuts two thirds of my RRSP contribution room, i'm using the monthly cash flow to slowly build up my pool of liquid capital in the RRSP.
volunteered for my second shift at the community tax clinic. paul showed up at the library with a laptop (yes !) so i didn't have to fill out the tax forms manually like last time. 3 clients came and we did 4 tax returns - you do the math. everyone went away happy that they were getting a refund (even the late-filer). it was nice to help people on an individual basis.
i'm gonna keep drinkin' until i'm petrified
Wednesday, 13APR2005:the day started off blustery, with the schools closed thanks to the snowdrifts that had built up overnite. managed to get to work just in time to find out that we were getting shut down for the morning until conditions improved. since i was there already (and since i walk to work), i decided not to risk another back and forth journey so i just got settled in to my work day.
broomball chronicles:
team white: julian, mark, martha, siobhan, greg, me
team black: denis, kevin, alastair, gavin, jacques, carine
there was a bit of jockeying for players after team white went ahead 2-nil. denis and i swapped teams to even things up a bit, but team white still dominated the scoring, if not the play. this was the last game for denis, who ships out for newfoundland tomorrow, but he put on a good farewell show for the boisterous crowd.
the next game will be on the 27th after toonik tyme. we were thinking of promoting it as 'the rookie night', where those who have expressed interest but haven't shown up, can get a chance to try it without too many of us veterans around to hog the ball or look down our noses while they lose their footing :)
a group of us gathered afterwards at the qamotiq where we intended to see denis off in grand fashion .... but they ran out of beer. so, most of the group headed up to the storehouse to drown out their misery at his impending departure. having already had a busy weekend at the local watering holes, i decided to take a pass.
instead, i decided to wander over to todd's to scope out the card table action. unfortunately, on the stroll to the four corners, i slipped on the slippery little ridge built up between the graded roadway and the piled up snowbanks on the side of the road - and this just after a car went by. i managed to bang my knee worse than any injury acquired from playing broomball, but was still able to limp around. we'll see how it feels tomorrow.
anyway, todd managed to stare down peter for his second tourney win, and also the second time that they've finished 1-2. the next big match will be on the 23rd, so save up your pennies!
you make the darkness seem so far
Thursday, 14APR2005:at lunchtime, david and i walked over to the IBC studios to check out the open house for a mockumentary production that will be shooting in town for the next couple of weeks during toonik tyme. the show will try to explore the differences between how inuit and qallunaaq see the world. also attending were annie, patrick and thor. we wrote our contact info down and had our pictures taken and were told to show up at the college on saturday for a crowd scene.
after work i delivered the final technical report for the banff mountain film festival, plus the final invoice for the technician, to pauline at the red fed. then went to deb's haircuts to get my regular 6-weekish buzz cut from scotty. then i went home and crashed for 3 hours - guess my late nites caught up to me.
got back up to start working on the springtime / road mix that i'll be making for the Burn It - Spring 2005 Edition mix exchange. i'm torn between using songs with a 'road / car' theme and just ones that feel like springtime. maybe i'll mix in a bit of both ... ? oh, and it turns out that malcolm is one of my mix exchange partners so we'll both save on a bit of postage.
- link of the day: baby names and what they mean
like a spider on the wall, i get around
Friday, 15APR2005:got home around 6 and again crashed for a few hours. sue was hosting a pre-legion party, but i figured that some sustenance was my first priority. slid over to the legion at 10 to meet up with david, tanya, andrea and anna at the quiet lounge. also hit up alec for some advice on how to handle myself i were to find myself in a casino poker room on my trip south. after one round, we headed out to the dance section where we ran into malcolm, sara, sue and olivia.
david introduced me to his friend heidi who plied me with poetry by maya angelou and plans to visit peru next year. at another table were greg, bella, molly, jeffrey and maxine. lots of co-workers were there too, so it felt like i was back at a university dance where i knew bunches of people but all from different campus spheres.
at closing. kevin and i got the best seats in the house next to the exit. besides scanning all the shapes that had been gyrating mere moments before on the dancefloor in full light, we were nearly enveloped by a 2-on-1 fight that spilled over the chairs next to us. once we got outside, we observed some girl-on-girl pickup action, before heading for home.
since the film production for saturday morning had been cancelled, i accepted kevin's invitation to visit. we ordered supper from the snack and played the first few stages of 'crimson skies', a pretty neat aerial combat game. around 5 in the morning, we called it an evening and i stumbled home to bed.
maybe we'd watch the sun rise
Saturday, 16APR2005:slept until the afternoon and then hit the navigator for saturday nite karaoke. others at the head table included judith, iain, kathleen, brad, david and norman. brad stole the show as always, charming the entire bar with renditions of 'kansas city', 'bad bad leroy brown', 'new york, new york', 'personality', and his signature tune, 'stagger lee'. me, i stood up to sing willie nelson's 'always on my mind' and busted the speakers on the far side of the bar.
from there, i accompanied judith, iain, david and norman to the quiet lounge of the legion for a couple more rounds. then david and i went to circulate and see who was out dancing this saturday nite. i realized too late that wearing a turtleneck and windpants might be alright for karaoke, but they're murder on the dancefloor.
anyway, we hung out with joe, lisa, maddy and angie, and were introduced to elisapee and tanya. too soon, the lights came on and we were ushered out into the cold evening, trying to figure out where the post-legion party would be. clambering into a station wagon cab, with people stacked like cordwood in the back, we hit one advertised party to find the shades shuttered, so the cabbie suggested jeff's as the evening's hotspot.
jeff's place was already hopping by the time we unloaded ourselves from the cab. his dog, bailey, was a rambunctious sort that welcomed every guest with a flurry of fur. joe complained that it felt like a high school party where all the kiddies are trying to live up to the legendary antics of their just slightly older predecessors.
to wrap up the evening, we had an impromptu throat-singing demonstration. the cabbie who took me home at 5 a.m. (errgghhh) was looking forward to leaving town in 2 weeks to hang out with his grandkids after spending the last 11 years in iqaluit. with weekends like this, we'll see if i last that long ...
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