Thursday, November 29, 2007

Yes, I'm crazy

So, I have a question:

Do people think that I can knit four of these and the rest of this: in approximately 18 months? (click the picture... you really need to).

Actually I know I can. However let's add passing 3B and fourth year too.

I was afraid of that...

The shawl centre is somewhat odd looking because I didn't really bother blocking it much (I'm sure you can figure out why not). It seems a little small, but I haven't even finished the first thing of yarn (but it might not last out picking up new stitches), so I guess this is less than a quarter of the finished shawl.

I'm off to start courting insanity picking up stitches for the border. Toodles!

Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Mother Nature is Beating Me Up

So being quite dedicated to my bike (read: lazy) I decided to bike home today despite the heavy wind warnings from Environment Canada (I think the wind was down to a steady 50 km/h with gusts in the mid-sixties). I was ok leaving work, and then turned so I was biking across the wind. I work out where it's open enough that I get major cross-winds. When I hit the main highway I'd say I was a good 20 degrees off of vertical just to stay upright. I even managed to keep moving forwards when I turned into the wind. Things were going well.

Unfortunately (and you all knew that that was coming, even without the title), I had problems with the cross wind. I reached the part which is less industrial park and more just outskirts of town (or whatever the town equivalent of suburbs are) without too many problems. However, after the traffic light and the second time when I was almost blown into the curb, I decided that enough was enough. However, a victory apparently wasn't good enough for the weather. I signalled a stop and hopped onto the curb.

I actually hopped rather quickly onto the curb. You know, like when a fire truck comes by. Put one foot on the curb, pull the other leg up and over the bike then pull the bike after the outside leg. Notice that I skipped the "move the outside leg out of the way" step. It never really occured to me before that this was a step. However, I never brought the end of the handle of my bike up into my knee as it was coming down before.

Oh well, live and learn

Sunday, November 18, 2007

Well That was a Bust

I just need a way to make the below threat stick to me.

Friday, November 16, 2007

Fascinating New Study!

Psychologists have recently discovered more information about etymological amnesia. Specifically, it has been determined that, while the effects can be predicted with great accuracy, there still is no known cure or preventative measure.

This suggests to me that there is simply no way to avoid that the fact that the next person to prematurely mention the w-word to me will completely slip my mind when I’m writing out guest lists.

Thursday, November 15, 2007

What the Rabbit Heard as we Watched the eDAQ Output

"So what's the voltage now?"

"4.76...7...8... it's still going up."

"What about now?"

"5.37...8...9... still going up."

"That's odd."

"Oh?"

"Yeah, I just unplugged the ground."

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

No Bigger Than a Pebble on a Gravel Road

I will not deliberately fail PDEng as a protest.
I will not deliberately fail PDEng as a protest.
I will not deliberately fail PDEng as a protest.
I will not deliberately fail PDEng as a protest.
I will not deliberately fail PDEng as a protest.
I will not deliberately fail PDEng as a protest.
I will not deliberately fail PDEng as a protest.
I will not deliberately fail PDEng as a protest.
I will not deliberately fail PDEng as a protest.
I will not...
screw that. Sleep is overrated.

Monday, November 12, 2007

At Least it Wasn't Sobeys

Although it was almost as bad.

I had a short shopping list today - cereal, soy milk (to go with the cereal), peanut butter (my landlady only stocks the sugary kind), some fruit and perhaps check out the tofu products, see what the fruit ones were like (quite affordable, healthy, filling, but a little too sweet and just odd. It grew on me though). It sounds quite simple. At least to me. (And this is considering the fact that tofu is always hidden in the veggie section).

First of all, some self-pity to get out of the way. There was a "veggie block", basically a new kind of fake cheese. And it was cheddar flavoured, which is nice because the one I can get is pretty gross in the cheddar flavour. Unfortunately the second ingredient was casein. Yes, I get fake cheese anyhow (not often), but it's waaaay down on the list for that stuff. So I'm going to mope.
Just so you know.

Now on to the ranting!

I was heading for the soy milk (yes, get the heaviest thing first, that's me, always sensible) and noticed aisle-end displays of peanut butter. These displays weren't the ones directly at the end, more the ones that stick out a bit into the aisle and are at the side. They had crunchy and smooth both, one on either side of the aisle. Now, I'm rather gullable. (I'm sure you've all already figured this out), so I made the assumption that that aisle was the one with peanut butter. Nope, no such luck. Neither was the peanut butter to be found on either side of that aisle (i.e. anywhere NEAR the display). It was about as far as it was possible to be, two aisles away (at the far end of the food aisles), and at the far end of the aisle. At least they had what I wanted (but only in the 1kg jars, and I know that the small ones are evil, but they're convenient when you're only around for 2 more months).

So I found peanut butter interestingly enough it's one of the few foods that I buy without looking at the price. I bought one of the others today too - apples. While there is more than 100% variation in the price of apples they're all fairly cheap. And most of the expensive apples are from the States anyhow. Which brings me to my criterion: local fruit. (I have almost completely weaned myself off of bananas. Aren't you all so proud?) I think that grocery stores need to learn geography. Frankly if an apple is labeled "Canada" it's even odds that it's from BC. At that point, the Washington apples are just as responsible. Fortunately the stickers will often say. I'm still not sure where the plain ones are from though (I've seen BC ones and I've seen Ontario ones). Actually I didn't see any BC stickers today. And only one set of Ontario ones - on MacIntosh apples. The which I am not fond of. The bag of apples I ended up getting though, says Ontario on the bag (and no, that's referring to the apples, not the bag). Shame that it barely fit in my knapsack (yes, I need to think about this stuff BEFORE I go through the cash).

From there I hit the tofu, where I had the disappointing experience with the fake cheese. However, as I mentioned, the dessert wasn't too bad. The only thing they were short on was actualy tofu...

The cereal wasn't that big a deal, I just grabbed on because I was tired after price-checking the soy milk. Said price-checking actually turned out well. Actually, I wasn't paying that much attention to the price, more to the nutritional info. And I ended up (deliberately) getting some unsweetened soy milk. I've tried some already, and I think that I shan't bother sweetening it at all, it's pretty decent. It's only 3/4 the calories and about 1/3 the sodium, and has all the good stuff I want. So I'm quite pleased with that, and will pay the extra 70 cents that it normally costs over the PC brand stuff (which has the most sodium of any I checked). Oh, and it was on sale. So today I only paid 20 cents more.

*happy soy milk dance*

What the Rabbit Didn't Hear

I just couldn't come up with a way to turn this into a "What the Rabbit Heard".

After having been out on the floor for probably 15 minutes, covering three strain gauges with a butyl rubber coating (quite fun) and chatting with the test engineers and the shop guy who were showing me how to do this and actually doing the work...

*touches face*

"I'm not wearing my safety goggles"

*head for door*

"Yeah, good call"

Sunday, November 11, 2007

What the Rabbit Heard Before Mass

"So when they assigned this seminarian here they told me to put him to work. So he'll be preaching today."

*insert panicked look on said seminarian's face*

"No, don't worry, I"m joking. He'll be sitting on various committees and helping with different ministries."

Saturday, November 10, 2007

Because I Forgot My Camera Yesterday

I'd warn that this is a picture-heavy post, but really, all of you have high-speed. And besides, the title gives it away.

I took Sophie for a walk today. Doesn't she look thrilled?
(Ok, she looks confused about the fact that we're not moving, but close enough, right?)
We went out and looked at the harbour. Since you're (largely) engineers I figure that the towers from the salt mine are appropriate. As you can see, the colours aren't as cool today. But they show up on a computer screen better.
We later continued walking out towards that river I mentioned (the Maitland).
It has a cool bridge going over it. This former rail bridge has been repaired and is now part of the Maitland Trail. The (now pedestrian) bridge has little alcoves off the side so that you can get a great view of all the people standing below in the river fishing. And of the fish that are swimming around laughing at them.

Friday, November 09, 2007

Wish I'd had a Camera

On my way home tonight I decided to get somewhat lost. Now, in Goderich this takes some doing (by the way though, I actually succeeded! I thought I was getting more lost and ended up heading home. I'm so proud of myself). And, of course, we need to take into consideration the fact that I'm lazy. So my technique involves missing a turn or two going home, rather than going in the wrong direction. I must say though, that this works quite nicely, because all the best places to get lost are in that direction - the river and the lake are both past where I'm staying if we're talking relative to where I work.

This trick worked quite well today. I turned off the highway early and just kept riding towards the lake. It's a perfect day to stand at the top of the bluff and look out over Lake Huron. It was grey and somewhat misty all day - I even used my light on the ride home, not that I think it actually made me any more visible. Somewhat dreary days apparently make for the best time to look out at the lake. From a distance it was difficult to see where the water met the sky. But from atop the bluff the water took on delicate turquoise and blue colours, and lapped calmly at exposed sandbars and old shipwrecks - a beautiful contrast to Wednesday when the waves had stirred up the bottom enough to make the water cloudy and more of a grey as the waves battered the shore.

I really wished I'd had a camera so I could share this with you. But it's probably better that I didn't. Now I have to properly remember.

Thursday, November 08, 2007

City Kid

So I was out at the track running some tests today. We're right at the edge of town. Fairly literally actually... to the North it's semi-industrial park, to the South and East it's fields and bush. It's just open enough to make me FREEZE while I was out there, this being the cold time of year - just warm enough to be damp, and we're still used to summer.

So anyway, I was out at the track when I hear a sudden bang. I wasn't too worried about it, because we weren't running a test at the moment, we were in fact backing the graders up after running a test. However it's still not normally a good thing, and this was from the direction of the bush - the only thing between me and it was graders, so I couldn't think what else could have caused it. I asked the test engineer, who looked markedly unworried (another good sign). I'm sure he was amused when he told me what the noise was.

Hunters.

Monday, November 05, 2007

Ce que je crois

C’est privĂ©e. Je ne comprends pas des gens qui veut me dire qu’est-ce que je peut croire.