This ad appeared on the bottom of my blog the other day (where my largest AdSense is located) and I thought it was just beautiful. I am not allowed to click my ads, so I didn't even though I am interested in learning about Chrome. I don't think I would ever download it though as Firefox has been good to me and I have enough stuff installed on my computer that I never use. But you have to admit that the graphic image used in the ad is simply breathtaking.
Yan turns 27 today!!What is the furthest you traveled from home as a child? Describe the experience.
My parents were not the traveling type. We went on a few vacations but never very far, usually just Toronto for the theme park or random places where ball tournaments were being held.
I remember when I was in grade 10 my best friend at the time and I went on a road trip with my Dad up north. We traveled up the Trans-Canada Highway to Cochrane and then took the Polar Bear Express to Moosonee. I had made the trip before when I was much younger with my family, but didn't remember much of it. This second trip was really great, except for the fact that I got terrible heat stroke when we were on Moose Factory Island.
When I was in grade 2, we went to Disney for Christmas and it was wonderful! We drove down, which took two days, and apparently I requested we stop at every state line to take a picture, but I don't remember this. You would think I could look at the pictures, but my mom opened up the back of the camera to change the film before rolling the previous one, so they were destroyed. Oops. We spent an entire week in Disney. We stayed in one of the hotels within the Disney property and rode the convenient bus into the park each morning. It was a really great trip, that I remember pieces of, but not entirely.
Since then, I haven't traveled too much, obviously there was my London trip and the annual Cottage trips, but other than those no real vacations to speak of. Dave and I have planned and have started booking a trip to Florida this upcoming February though. His parents have given us a very kingly gift of 4 days (3 nights) in Disney plus tickets to the permanent Cirque show within Disney (La Nouba). We are spending two weeks in Florida, so that we will have enough time to enjoy ourselves both in Disney and at his parents place down there as well. We have a few plans other than Disney like Busch Gardens and Sea World, but nothing too concrete. We want to relax and just be able to enjoy ourselves as much as possible. As we are using our vacation time so early in the year, I don't really know what it will mean in terms of any other 2010 vacations, but I am sure we will figure something out. I am really excited for this trip and can't wait for it to come. We have ordered our plan tickets and the Konings have already gotten the Cirque tickets and are currently getting the Disney stuff set up - it should be a really awesome vacation!!
Write about a time you purchased something "on a whim". How did you feel about it later?
I usually think out my purchases. In fact, I usually think them out far too much. But every once in a while I will buy something "on a whim". The last thing I can remember that I bought like this would be the complete series of Buffy.
I had wanted this DVD collection for quite some time but could never rationalize it (not that I ever really did). One day Dave and I were talking and I decided that I wanted it so I got it. A few days later it arrived in the mail and it was beautiful. Dave and I watched the incredibly geeky series over the next few months, it took longer than I thought it would as we would get distracted with other seasons of shows and random activities that would come up. I do not regret buying it at all, it was something I wanted and could afford, and I got it.
For the last two weeks our friend Justin was staying at our place. He arrived the Thursday, Oct. 29 and whipped up some costumes then went to the Halloween parties with us. We spent the rest of the time, generally hanging out and playing a tons of computer and PS3 games.
He stayed until two Saturdays ago when he had his convocation from Carleton University. He graduated from the computer engineering program there and is now back home in Kingsville. 
It was a lot of fun having him around again. Since he left back in April, Ottawa had been a little less nerdy and Dave and I have had one less person to hang out with. Hopefully, he will be able to come back again soon.
Mondays get a pretty bad wrap. Everyone hates them because the weekend is over and you have to go back to work/school. Though I also dislike Mondays, they happen to be the day of the work week that goes by the fastest.
Most of the morning is spent preparing for or attending the Monday Morning Meeting and then the afternoon catching up on things that I should have done on Friday. My bosses are completely preoccupied doing the same thing, so if I really want to I can slack off or at least slow down. During the evening I have class (for now) and then it is time for bed. Mondays, and their associated badness, fly by!
The above image is Kevin from the movie Up. Recently I was watching some classic Looney Tunes, specifically Hare Way to the Stars (1958), and noticed that the bird-like alien in that episode looks kind of similar to Kevin. Or rather, Kevin looks similar to it as it was obviously drawn first. I wonder if this is a coincidence or intended?
If you would like to watch Hare Way to the Stars, go here. Unfortunately embedding was disabled so I can't just include the Youtube clip here.
"He felt that his whole life was some kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it." - Douglas Adams (1952-2001), The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
Please let me know if I am getting carried away with these features. But for now, here is a bi-weekly one - Way Back Whenesdays. I have seen it on many other blogs, mostly ones revolving around stay at home moms and therefore have pictures of their children when they were little, or even themselves. I find them really interesting and want to do it myself as well - with a little difference that is. My Way Back Whenesdays will be of things that remind me of my childhood - movies, toys things of that nature. I won't rule of pictures from my childhood, but the ones I have lined up so far do not contain any.
Today I was on Erin's Blog, Always a Mess, and saw that she had changed her label type from list to cloud. This has been a feature on other people's blog through other blogging sites (ie. not blogger) that I thought was neat. I had wanted it here, but it was not really an option. That is, I didn't think it was an option. Apparently Google Blogger has changed the capabilities of their labelling and though I learned they had upgraded it a little while ago, I didn't see they had added this.
The cloud label lists all your labels in alphabetical order still, it just makes it more of a graphic representation by enlarging the text of the most popular ones. I have changed it on my blogs and am going to spend the next little while seeing which I prefer - though I think I already know the answer.
From what I understand, Dave's family didn't really do Hallowe'en growing up. They stayed in and watched movies as a family, didn't even give out candy. Things are different now, and Dave loves Hallowe'en. Every year we put many hours and probably too much money, into our costumes - primarily his. He decided what he wants to be, usually some sort of anime character who uses a massive sword, and we get to work accomplishing his goals. For the most part, I put together the clothing and every year it is getting closer and closer to a 'from scratch' costume. I spend hours cutting, sewing and stitching together random pieces of fabric and/or clothing found at Value Village. Dave spends this time assisting me and making whatever weapon is needed for the costume that year.
Dave spent the hours in which I painted his costume fashioning home-made wings out of wire for me and I threw some fabric on them at the last minute and went as a fairy. Unfortunately, the wings were eye-gougers and were deemed unsafe for party use.
2007 was the first year of the anime costumes. He was as Cloud from Final Fantasy VII. This costume was primarily made of things found at Value Village and a hockey chest guard. As a side note, never try to sew through chest guards, it is very difficult and leads to lots of blisters on your fingers, even when you drill holes through it first.
My costume as pretty much pre-made in a few seconds in Value Village. I found a dress that sort of fit and then got some gloves and a staff and voila - a warlock. Chris then decided to go as my succubus minion and we were giant losers for going as WoW characters.
Last year Dave (2008) went as Ichigo from Bleach. Once again this consisted a fancy sword for Dave to make and lots of sewing for me. We found an old coat at Value Village and I tailored it to fit Dave and added many new aspects of it. The coat should have had tears on the bottom, but it was so pretty and it took so long to make that I couldn't bear to rip it all up. I also learned how not to make pants from scratch as the process to forever. It did result in the perfect looking pair of pants for the outfit, but I am certain there was a faster way to do it.
Since the costume was incredibly intensive, and we didn't start making it even remotely early enough, my costume was once again thrown together at the last minute and turned out to be rather boring. I was a photographer. We found a silly crocodile Dundee type hat from a Hallowe'en store and sewed the buttons from Dave's coat onto it since they looked a little like teeth. I wore beige pants, a brown shirt and a beige vest and my beige pashmina as it was cold and carried my camera around all night. In reality, I looked like me, especially since I stopped wearing the hat after an hour or so at the party because I don't like hats.
My costume was a little different this year. It changed at least three times as I was making Dave's. I determined that as the complexity of Dave's costume increases, so does the simplicity and thrown-together-ness of mine. In the end, I decided to go as a wood elf. The robe was made using the same pattern as Dave's with a few less modifications. We added some gold details to it to make it extra special and then Dave let me borrow his bow for the evening. We bought elf ears and I wore neutral clothes that I already owned beneath the robe. Unfortunately there are no photos of me wearing my costume as when we did the retake of the costumes, there wasn't enough time to get my ears back and as they took quite a while (and hurt quite badly coming off).Whenever I play the Sims, I have a tendency to create a new game and then play it until I am on the second generation or so. It is all fun and games (pun intended) until I inevitably get bored. My Sim family will be too good. They will be going to work/school every day, able to meet their little goals, do homework and get their needs into the green before the next work/school day. I stop playing that family.
I recently determined what my problem was - I always make my Sim good. I make them go to work and get their stats up and live happy little lives. I also have a tendency to pick the perfect traits so that they are excellent at whatever career I want them to have. I make them Genius and family oriented, I make them good and neat - these all result in boring games that are easy to play and generally uninteresting later on. My most recent Sim looks pure and innocent but she is downright EVIL. She is so evil that her lifetime goal is to be the Emperor of Evil. She amuses me greatly. Every once in a while she will cackle or laugh maniacally - it is great! She wants to give money to take charities down and she even wants to steal candy from a baby! 
Upon doing any of her evil desires she gets the above trait: Fiendishly Delighted. To be honest, I am starting to get a tad bored of her and want to make a new family, but she lasted longer than other Sims and I didn't want her to die (so I could play her evil children) as quickly as I did other Sims. This has sparked a new interest with the game for me. I am started a family now where the main character wants to see the ghost of his rich wife - in essence he is a gold digger! Sims 3 is such a wonderful game!!
Have I mentioned lately how much I love spreadsheets? Well, in the off chance that I haven't, I love spreadsheets. I just finished creating one for my blogs - that's right a spreadsheet for my blogs. I have started so many features and as such have a ton of scheduled and partially started posts that the edit posts page in Blogger is becoming rather cluttered and hard to read. My spreadsheet will help me keep track of the posts I have scheduled for my different features. It is also helping me keep them regular instead of just random days throughout the month or clustered all in the same week (for my monthly features that is). It also makes it extremely obvious if I start slacking with my posts on any of my blogs as each past day is coloured in one of two colours - one for a post day, and one for a non-post day. The Great Abyss and Stephanie Beach Photography are pretty regular (in the past month and a half) but Road to a Better Me is pretty sporadic. I want to try and remedy that - possibly with features, possibly just with more regular updates, etc, I haven't quite decided.
"Strength is the capacity to break a chocolate bar into four pieces with your bare hands - and then eat just one of the pieces" - Judith Viorst
I get asked how to do this at least once a week by either co-workers or a friend. Every once in a while, Windows will switch from using the English keyboard to using the French one. You will not have asked it to, nor will you have any need of it but Windows has decided to switch the language randomly. It could even happen halfway through a sentence. The ? turns into É and the > turns into . - that's right, you now have two ways to make a period using the exact same key!
So, how do you fix this you ask? How do you turn the language back to English from French?
Right beside your clock are tons of little icons (they are different for most computers, but they are always there in some capacity). Next to these there should be a little keyboard symbol.
When you click on the keyboard icon you will be given your language options. For Canadians, the options will be the same as mine, though they may be different in other countries - I am not sure. Either way, since French has kicked in, Canadian French will have a check mark beside it. To correct it, select US and all will be fixed.
Now if you are like me, you will want a Canadian English so that colour is spelt correctly, etc. You might think that Canadian Multilingual Standard would do that, but you would be wrong. For all intensive purposes, Canadian Multilingual Standard is the same as Canadian French. I don't know why they are both there - another wonderful Windows feature I suppose.
Of course, this technique also works to switch to French. I hope this has helped some people - I know it frustrates a great number of people in my office on a regular basis. Now, if I could only figure out why it randomly switches then I would be a true office hero!
Another new feature I have been thinking about for a while - this one also a monthly one. How-To Tuesdays! There are quite a few things I do that I would enjoy sharing with my readers. This idea started with How to Wrap a Baby Gift, which I posted last month. I thought of starting it then but figured I would not be able to think of enough things. I have already written a few and therefore figure it could work. Topics will likely range from sewing projects and gifting ideas to random computer functions - perhaps even some Photoshop techniques. I will try to document them with photographs and/or screen captures as much as possible as I find this helps me when learning new things.
What nervous habit(s) do you have?
I have a few nervous habits, all of which I would really like to stop. Firstly, I bite the inside of my cheeks and my lips. It leads to not only painful and unsightly lips, but I get a wee talk about it every time I go to the dentist. Secondly, I bite and pick my nails. Usually I do this under a desk where no one can see and then throw them into the garbage, but it irritates me that I do it nonetheless. There are some others, but those are the two big ones that I do when I am nervous or bored. Oh, I fidgit. I play with pens or my iron ring, whatever is around.
This morning when I logged onto the computer and routinely opened up Google, I found a great big Cookie Monster greeting me. It is the 40th anniversary of Sesame Street and both yesterday and today Google has been celebrating it with special Google headers. Yesterday was Big Bird's legs as the L, and today, as you can see above, Cookie Monster is eating the cookie Google. I really love this one as Cookie Monster was my one of my favourite characters. My dad also did (and likely still does) a really good Cookie Monster impression.
"An inability to stay quiet is one of the most conspicuous failings of mankind." - Walter Bagehot.
Dave and I work and deal with asbestos (and asbestos abatement) on a pretty regular basis. DST does a great deal of asbestos surveys and abatement monitoring and we as juniours tend to do a great deal of the field work and report writing for these jobs. I recently completed a course on Asbestos Fibre Counting and can now do even more with asbestos.
I created a Flickr account the other day and have since started uploading some of my images to it. I think this will be the best way for me to share larger numbers of photos at one time (eg. Holiday photos of family and friends). I will let you know when I post a large group of photos there both here and on my photography blog, for those of you who only visit one but might still be interested. They are of course, edited to some degree as well as signed and resized. If you are ever interested in any of my photos, just let me know and I will gladly discuss whatever it is you want to discuss.
A new poll question has been posted that I once again would appreciate your opinion on. I am doing research on a topic that has a couple different questions to be asked so there will be a couple more about computers, etc in the near future - please bear with me as I think it is a really interesting topic/idea. I intend on making one of those free surveys but expect little to no participation on it, so this how I am approaching it for now. Thanks everyone!
This month's Blog of Note is Awkward Family Photos. Basically it is what the title says, a collection of really awkward, yet awesome, family photos. There are also some really great taglines for the photos. Seriously, check this one out.
Fat Princess is a Playstation 3 game (PS3) that Dave downloaded and started playing a little while back. Essentially it is capture the flag but instead of a silly, boring flag you need to capture and/or protect a princess who by eating cake fed to her by you and your teammates can get very, very fat.
You are placed on either the red or blue team and need to rescue your princess from the opposing team while keeping their princess captive in your castle. You can do this by being as of the following classes: warrior, ranger, priest, mage and worker. There are different maps (or levels) and to be honest, you can play different types of games than the basic capture the princess type, but in my opinion, it is the best.
When Dave heard about this game and showed me the trailers, I though it was a good game - for him. I knew he would really enjoy it and could spend endless hours mastering each of the classes. I never really thought I would get into it as it isn't really economy based or time management or the type of game where you focus on your own character, leveling it up and gaining better skills, etc. That being said, after watching Dave play for a little while, I was definitely interested. He handed me the controller for the first time when he needed to eat some food and didn't want to stop playing. I collected cake and fed it to the princess and ended up getting him a trophy for doing so. I ended up playing on my own account and am now in love.
I have been playing the game for a couple of months now and have really started to perfect one strategy. I start of playing as the worker and collect wood and ore (the two resources in the game) in an effort to upgrade the worker and then the priest. Usually I have to collect enough resources to upgrade (each class is upgradeable which gives them a second 'hat' enabling them to perform a second ability) at least three classes as I am not the only one trying to upgrade their favourite class. As you may have deduced by my previous statement (and the large graphic to the right), the priest is my preferred class. Once it is upgraded it can heal as a white priest or suck health from the opposing team members as the dark priest (wahahahaha). I enjoy running around, sucking people down to their last little heart (health) and then whacking them with my stick (as you cannot actually suck their life completely). I also enjoy switching hats repeatedly throughout the battles and healing as necessary. I find that I am getting really good at it, and tonight's games proved that more so. I won (placed first over both teams) in three consecutive games. I then handed the reigns over to Justin who is now playing and focusing his efforts in learning the ranger, which is a class that I have never really been drawn to.
At $15 dollars the game is pretty cheap. It is also pretty easy to get as you merely download the game from the PS3 store. The only expensive part of this game is the actual PS3, but lets ignore that factor for now shall we? You can play the story, and the maps themselves on your own (ie. with computers players comprising the remaining parts of your team and the opposing one) but I find the online games are much more enjoyable and rewarding. There are many PS3 trophies to obtain so the game, which force you to try different classes and strategies and in doing so, you learn different strategies for winning each level. A patch was recently released that fixed a few bugs and brought into play a new map, which is quite large and in my opinion different than the other maps - but that is likely just because it is new to me. I think everyone who has a PS3 should purchase and install this game and start playing right now - go feed the princess!
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