senatorhung's pad
ramblings of an information troubleshooter
ramblings of an information troubleshooter
behind the scenes at nuliajuk
permalink Sunday, 04DEC2005:the final run of nuliajuk played before another near-capacity crowd. since diego managed to stay in town for an extra day, he once again took charge of the music so i had time to snap a couple of pix before the show started.
found out afterwards that diego has been previously nominated for a juno award ! you can find out more details on diego's website.
the black scrim at center stage would go up and down to separate characters in different areas of the stage. the white backdrop upstage center had images projected onto it from above the audience, while the sheets to either side were used for feature lighting and doubled as actor blinds.
strike afterwards only went totally smoothly, only going until 12:30 so i won't have any excuse to skip out on work tomorrow morning.
who do you believe ?
permalink Monday, 05DEC2005:happened to wander by the cadet hall around noon and was just in time to help load up michael's sound equipment. said farewell and good luck to steven.
in the evening, i trudged into the bitter wind to attend the ndp candidate selection meeting. amanda ford-rogers was willing to let her name stand and we rallied behind her. from the press release:
Ms. Ford-Rogers, 35, was raised in Whale Cove. After a being a Canada World Youth participant in Uruguay she returned home and worked as a Tenant Relations Officer with the Housing Association and as a Community Health Representative at the Health Centre. Amanda, her husband Terry and their three boys (now 12, 10 and 6) moved to Iqaluit in the summer of 1999. She worked as a Finance Officer for the Nunavut Wildlife Management Board and as a Health Liaison Officer for the Qikiqtani Inuit Association before becoming the Constituency Assistant to Hunter Tootoo, MLA for Iqaluit Centre.after that meeting, i hit the astro to take in 'derailed'. clive owen was slyly troubled as usual, giving off panther vibes from beneath a mostly bland exterior. the twist in the plot is pretty good and when clive's character stares down aniston's, it's chilling how much the sense of betrayal is captured by the camera.
i then stayed up even later to conduct a 2-hour phone conversation with my brother in calgary who had to vent about his recent trip to china. he had a bad 'volunteer' experience at the tennis tourney that my sister helps to organize each year. he says that he's written his experience up for his blog, but hasn't posted it yet.
huddling around candles
permalink Tuesday, 06DEC2005:the weather was bitterly cold again today. in the afternoon, i attended a candlelight vigil at the parish hall to remember the 13 women who died at l'école polytechnique. since the heat didn't seem to be working, we were all shivering even tho we were sheltered from the wind. as usual each year at this event, i wore my engineering jacket because i think that it's important to remember that these women were killed not *just* because they were women, but because they were women in *engineering*, a field which has been traditionally male-dominated. their presence challenged the prejudice that women could not be engineers and should not be.
i was an engineering student at the time of the killings and was involved with a committee to encourage enrollment in engineering. one of the issues that we had to deal with was the macho culture that permeated the college - turning off both men and women. things have changed quite a bit since that time and women are now a much more significant and welcomed presence at engineering colleges across the country.
i was going to check out 'shopgirl' afterwards at the astro, but given the frigid weather conditions, that fell thru. this was probably a good thing tho, as it allowed me to catch up on my blog, do some laundry, wash the dishes and dive into my comic shipment that had also arrived in today's mail. oh, and i got an email to let me know that my poker chips have shipped. the email indicated that typical shipping is 2 days to western canada and 4 days to eastern canada, so i expect that they'll be here in northern canada in about 2.5 weeks ... perhaps just in time for xmas ?
floral arrangements as record-breaking innovation ?
permalink Wednesday, 07DEC2005:iqaluit broomball chronicle:
team white: mark, marco, siobhan
team black: kerry, jacques, julian, me
mark departed halfway thru with the score being around 10-5 for team white. at that point, julian switched sides, but his scoring drought continued. marco managed a double hat trick plus one while mark pummelled 5 goals in. the rest of us on team black scored 2 each, while siobhan also tossed in another single for team white.
- ip idiocy link of the day: the
most
prolific patenter in the u.s.
makes floral arrangements ??:
For more than 50 years, Thomas Edison has been considered the nation's all-time most prolific inventor. He has 1,093 patents to his name, including the electric light bulb and phonograph. He is to American innovation what Thomas Jefferson is to American politics. However, Edison is apparently NOT the top American inventor. He has been bested by Donald Weder of Highland, Ill. - a man who, in contrast to the stupendous impact of Edison, has mostly used his inventive powers to give the world better floral arrangements. This is as deflating as finding out that Joe DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak has been surpassed by a stadium peanut vendor.
people wranglers at work
permalink Thursday, 08DEC2005:walked over to the igluvut building to drop off my donation (of my october SWMSC honorarium) to the nunavut food bank. unfortunately, jen had just gone for coffee, so i visited with lori while i waited. erin had sent lori a copy of the cbc stories that shannon had filed about our playback workshops and i volunteered to convert them to wav and mp3 files so that lori could add them to the photo cd that she is making up.
there is a holdup on the sale of my snowmobile, as the bank that is lending to my intended purchaser found a lien on the machine. i had no clue, but i'm glad that joe is working it out for me so that the sale can go thru. serves me right for buying my first vehicle without making sure everything was in order first ...
attended another SWMSC meeting this evening and was impressed with how the chair managed to defuse a tense situation that came up. one minute it felt like the room was going to explode and the next minute it was like all the hot air just rushed out of the room. i gotta get me some of that finesse formula !
shooting your leg off because you can't stand to limp
permalink Friday, 09DEC2005:spent the whole day catching up on the looseleaf filing so that the stack that will await me in january won't be nearly as imposing. i'm taking the last 2 weeks of december off from the office, and i know from past absences that the deluge of mail can be quite overwhelming. to reward myself, i headed up to the storehouse for a supper of pizza. while i ate, i also devoured 'nana', a shojo manga book that i had received this week with my comics shipment.
chatted with eepeebee and jay about potentially succeeding me in my job before heading down to the cozy area by the fireplaces to meet up with bella, joanne and odile. we talked about the place of objectivity in journalism and concluded that bias is generally more in the story selection than skewed writing in any particular article. still, to me, i'm much more comfortable accepting info if the bias of the author (or publisher) is clearly laid out. i compare stories from different sources and decide for myself what makes sense. should i feel good about being categorized as an exceptional reader and that most people will buy whatever paper has the most diverting headline ? how sad ...
after the gals wandered out into the cold, i stuck around to play darts with JF, yoan and daniel. i went toe to toe with yoan for awhile, but lost when i couldn't hit the bullseye again after my initial burst of serendipitous wrist action.
- ip idiocy links of the day:
- cenobyte bemoans her encounters with the wedding photographers and i throw in my 2 cents on the further developments of canadian copyright inanity
- the music publishers association
is now going
after lyrics websites for
alleged copyright infringement.
Amateur guitarists and bass players have long copied popular songs by ear. The internet has become an alternative source for when they can't figure out a chord. Keiser called for closing of sites that share guitar licks and lyrics and recommended jail time for site administrators who don't comply.
heck, i used a couple of lyrics sites today for a couple of presumably 'illegal' transactions. first, i found out that a tom waits song that i was planning to use on my latest mix (that i had tentatively titled 'save it for a rainy day' - damn those d.j.'s who don't tell us the names of the kewl songs that they play) was actually called 'martha' and was from his 1973 album, 'closing time'. i also looked up wilco's 'say you miss me' to find out that the track was from their 1996 double album. i *ordered* both of these from amazon when i got home, sales that likely would never have materialized if i didn't have handy access to those lyrics sites via google.
along with those cd's, i also ordered a live album by the old 97's, cringing as i did so, not because of the band (whose music i adore), but because it was released by sony (of XCP infamy). however, as amazon didn't indicate that the cd was copy-protected, i took a chance and will return it unopened if it should happen to be afflicted with that aberration.
good things happen when you go to the net
permalink Saturday, 10DEC2005:stayed up until 7 a.m. this morning working on my latest mix. it had started off as one thing, but gradually morphed into another thing and i kept finding new tracks to demo. every time i thought i had a 'final' playlist, another thought would occur to me and i would start shuffling the tracks around again. stupid perfectionist tendencies.
iqaluit broomball chronicle:
team white: marco, jacques, kerry
team black: mark, julian, karin, me
broomball this afternoon was very fun, as everyone who showed up scored at least one goal. mark delivered another hat trick while marco and i both doubled up. karin scored once in her debut appearance, while jacques, kerry and julian all got singles. this meant that julian broke his nearly month-long scoring drought. marco explained afterwards that he had thought that his side was way ahead on goals, and he wouldn't have taken it so easy on us if he had known the actual score.
in the evening, i attended an xmas party at the nav for the office down the hall from mine. like last year, their function coincided with poor weather and we barely had time to top off our plates before brad announced that the taxis were going off the road due to the near-blizzard conditions. lucky me, i only live a couple of blocks away, so i happily cleaned off my plate before braving the elements. it did help that i was walking with the wind at my back on my way home :)
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