Monthly Archives: August 2008

content

Posted in everyday kimli by

I am content.

Yesterday Ed and I braved the insane border crossing with Miranda, Shan, and Gillian in tow, with Josh following behind on his motorcycle. The US border guard laughed at us, asking why we didn’t own an SUV and if we were sure we didn’t have anyone else crammed into the trunk – I don’t know what he would have thought if we let on that we made a 6th friend follow us on 2 wheels, but it was funny. We made a beeline for Mi Mexico and feasted on delicious Mexican food, eating ourselves just shy of a coma. Then: shopping.

We tend to make these little pilgrimages to the US whenever the guys are desperate for work clothing, so we built the road trip around that excuse: the menfolk needed pants. I don’t care if Target is just a fancier version of Walmart; we love it so – and we all came away with an assortment of US goods and gum. Operation: White Bra was also a smashing success; I managed to get myself two white, one beige and one purple bras and a handful of underwear for a silly price due to some magical coupon work by the girl behind the counter.

It was fun. After we managed to smuggle our booty back into Canada, we crashed into Richmond to meet up with Reilly, who was finishing up at a wedding. A quick decision to hang out at Dadeo’s was made, and we all met up again for a late dinner and unwind before heading home, exhausted.

Today was a complete 180 from yesterday in that I did nothing whatsoever. We slept in until 11am, then sat around the house watching tv/playing video games/napping/goofing off on the internet. The weather played along with the plan, pissing down tremendous amounts of rain until almost 6pm and making it generally an unwise idea to go outside if you wanted to stay dry. I feel no guilt about my inactivity today; rather, I revel in it. I’ve been naked all day! It’s been awesome!

Good lord, the Canadian Olympic uniforms are ugly.

Time for more nudity and relaxing now!

pre-teen druglord

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When I was seven, I was really into the whole “arts and crafts” thing. I didn’t really have much talent or many ideas, but I liked cutting pictures out of magazines and making colleges and decorating it with yarn and glitter. I had any number of projects on the go at once, and I would usually work on my art before bed. I didn’t have a desk, so I would pile my supplies on or under any surface handy.

I could have turned my talents for glitter/yarn art into something spectacular – this generation’s Warhol or Mapplethorpe – but because of my suspicious, insane mother, I never got the chance to blossom.

She did, however, introduce me to a world of mind-altering substances.

All my playful arts and crafts came to a screeching halt one day when my mother, just looking for something to fly off the handle about, found my stash of supplies “hidden” under the small table next to my bed. Everything was in plain sight – the yarn, the construction paper, the vials of glitter, and the bottle of Elmer’s glue. Ignoring the obvious conclusion a sane person would come to after analyzing the items under my table, she immediately assumed the worst: that I was a 7-year-old freebasing heroin addict selling my (barely) pre-pubescent body on the corner of Suburbia and Little League for my next hit.

Wait, what?

My mother snatched up the bottle of Elmer’s glue – the old school kind; white and thick in a white bottle with a red twisty cap – and shoved it in front of my face.

“ARE YOU SNIFFING GLUE?????”, she shrieked.

Wait, what?

Until that very moment, I was blissfully unaware that glue COULD be sniffed – and at only seven years old, exactly WHY you would do that was still several years beyond my understanding. I had no idea why my mother was so angry and accusatory, and why she would think I was doing something so stupid. The part of me that would grow into the jaded cynical busty husk of a creature also spoke up (wisely in the depths of my head only) to think “is she fucking stupid? Does she not SEE the glitter and yarn and magazines?” but it was no use. Convinced I was sniffing glue to achieve some sort of nascent high that would undoubtedly lead to reefer madness and a life on the streets, she confiscated all my art supplies and wouldn’t let me have them back.

My burgeoning career as a textile artist was over before my 8th birthday.

I could have been a fantastic artist. I could have been a contender. I could have been somebody instead of a bum which is what I am, let’s face it. I could have been Marlon Brando.

To this date, I have never sniffed glue. The closest I ever came to sniffing illicit substances was with those smelly markers, the ones that smelled like watermelon and root beer and licorice. Those were awesome, but didn’t make you high.

If I had done even a tenth of the things I have been accused of over the years, I would have had one hell of a life.

i didn’t want to go anyway

Posted in everyday kimli by

Importing my archives by hand has forced me to read through them chronologically, and it’s given me a lot to think about. For starters, I think my writing has improved a lot – I tend to use fewer exclamation points, anyway. That can only be a good thing, even if I’ve traded those happy points of joy for dramatic pauses in the form of the almighty dash.

While I wrote a little less back then than I do now, I also think I had a lot more fun. It seems that almost every entry was a recap of some fun, exciting thing I had done – whether it was driving out to Banff to play in the snow in the middle of August, or going to Edmonton for a LAN party, or getting one of my many tattoos – there was just an overall sense of doing. I like doing. It makes me feel very accomplished.

Another thing I can sense in my words from Back Then is just how close a friendship Ali and I had. We were very, very close – for two friends living almost a thousand miles apart, we were damn near inseparable for many years. It brings a funny little pang to my heart to realize that we lived so far from each other but saw each other monthly – and in many cases, damn near weekly – and now that we’re only 3 hours apart, we often go 6 or 7 months without seeing each other without a second thought.

We’ve both changed, of course. We run in different circles now, and her life is almost the complete opposite of mine. I don’t think either of us would change that for the world, but for a few years there, we were practically the same person – and now we’re really quite different, and the gap seems to widen every day.

My back hurts, so I’m feeling all introspective – you’ll have to bear with me, okay?

All the thinkie thoughts I’ve had about friends and relationships in the last little while sort of came to a head this afternoon, when reading about Ali’s upcoming dinner adventure. I’ll readily admit that my insides deflated and went “oh, boo” when I read about the big dinner out with friends both local and afar, because Ed and I – once among the bestest of friends – were not invited. I don’t begrudge either Ali or Doug that at all – let’s face it, we aren’t as close as we all once were – but in trying to think about it in a constructive way, I realized something important:

I don’t WANT to go; so there.

I love Ali and Doug. I love Seattle, and dinners out. However .. I don’t love people I don’t know. I don’t love pedicures. I don’t love small children .. and I don’t love being completely out of my element. Ali and Doug invited close friends, people with similar lifestyles and interests. I don’t know most of their friends, and from what I saw at the last New Year’s party, I don’t fit in with the ones I DO know very well. I haven’t changed very much since the days of yore – my priorities are still the same: have fun, ride a scooter, drink Diet Coke, get tattoos, live in Vancouver. It’s awesome – I like my life very much – and yet I know that the people who did get the birthday dinner invite have vastly different priorities from my own.

That doesn’t make them bad people and it doesn’t make me an irresponsible twit (shut up), it’s just .. different. And they’re what Ali and Doug need right now: people who are like them, who have the same goals and lifestyles and hopes and dreams. I don’t fit in with that crowd very well, and it’s rude to roll your eyes when people are animatedly discussing potty training and summer homes out in the country.

I love you guys and always will, but I don’t want to go to your grown-up dinner party. It’s good that you didn’t invite me, and I really do mean that. Ed is a different story – I have my sneaking suspicions that the man I married would much rather have that life than the one I’m trying to steer him towards – but it’s okay. We’ll still be here when the diaper smoke has cleared.

Diapers DO smoke, don’t they?

Anyway, I’ll be over here in the corner, playing video games and eating popsicles for dinner.

:)

short on words

Posted in everyday kimli by

Meat and cheese left out overnight are probably not the safest things I could eat, but it’s in pizza form so that should hopefully negate any festering germs that might have settled. Besides, I’m hungry. Leftover pizza for the win.

It’s been a very quiet week. Lousy weather means we’re less inclined to do things, and the overcast cloudiness of it all has made me very sleepy. Our evenings have been spent watching Olympics coverage (Ed) and alternating bathing and playing video games (me). Two nights in a row now I’ve fallen asleep long before my usual bedtime of midnight. You’d think the extra sleep was doing me a service, but no – I wake up in the morning more tired than ever and have to literally drag myself into the shower to start my day. The rain is good, I suppose, but I’ll be glad when the skies clear and I can scoot to and fro without having to carry extra pants.

I honestly have nothing to say. I’ve had blog blocks before, but always managed to dig a story or two from my past to fill in the creativity holes. My residual weariness from the week is making me draw a blank, though – I have no more stories. Did I run out, or can I just not remember any? This is scary.

Wait, I think I have one: have I told the story about the glue before?

bad kimli, no biscuit

Posted in science by

Things it is time to do:

  • Straighten up and fly right
  • Buckle down
  • Apply nose to grind stone; hold
  • Work hard for the money (so hard for it honey)
  • Find a way to translate “if you’ve got time to lean you’ve got time to clean” into an office setting – current contenders include “if you’ve got time to chat you’ve got time to install Red Hat” and “if you’ve got time to stalk your former crushes on Facebook, you’ve got time to take a look (at this month’s QA report)”
  • Climb inside box; think of things not presently in box with me
  • Burn a candle at both ends
  • Attempt to catch worm
  • Find book; fly by it
  • Get with the program

My boss inquired as to my working hours today, as he spotted me come in late and leave early yesterday. I’m routinely late – I have an issue with mornings – but I never leave early unless I have an appointment (as I did yesterday; new hair) and I don’t take lunch breaks so .. it all evens out, in my own head. Still, the stench of inquisition is upon me and I must change my ways to appear timely. I have a good thing going here, and I don’t want to fuck it up because I can’t get out of bed 30 minutes earlier.

My bra is incredibly uncomfortable.

iphone woes

Posted in angst, nerd by

The rain helpfully stopped before I left for work this morning. I even had sunshine and a rainbow, so all things considered it could have been worse. Any day in which I do not have to change my pants when I get in is a good day.

The rain also brought out the snails! There were two baby snails on the fence this morning that made me squeak in glee. I would have taken pictures, but my camera batteries died and I was already late so I didn’t have time to replace them. Hopefully they’ll still be there when I get home. Snails don’t move very fast, so it shouldn’t be an issue.

I got a little too much sun this weekend, and I’m looking blotchy. It was a pretty awesome couple of days though, with lots of scooting and hanging out and just generally enjoying life in Vancouver. Stuff is good. Sure, I have some inner angst and an overwhelming desire to be naked outside, but stuff is good.

My iPhone, however, is not good. I’m having some pretty serious issues with the network that results in my missing calls and messages – my phone will be eerily quiet for days, then I’ll get 25 messages all at once. Calls aren’t coming through – I’ve missed a half dozen calls that I know about, and people are complaining that they go straight to my voicemail when trying to reach me. I’m on hold with Fido support right now and I REALLY hope this is fixable because right now, my iPhone is a fancy calculator and that makes me sad.

Fido’s hold music sounds like low-budget porno music. I would be amused if I wasn’t so annoyed at my inability to get on the 3G network.

music is my imaginary friend

Posted in nerd by

I might have a small problem.

I ran the new Zune through some tests, comparing it to my arsenal of other portable music devices. Verdict: it’s pretty dang cool.

All three devices are using the same background image. While the new Zune screen is very small, it’s also very sharp – you can really see the difference here. The old Zune’s screen isn’t as clear, and you can see the refresh rate. Compared to the iPod though, the new Zune’s screen isn’t as bright – which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I watched videos on all three devices, and it looks great across the board. It really just depends on where your priorities lie:

  • Old Zune (not available in Canada): Bigger HD (30GB), but also huge by mp3 player standards
  • iPod Touch: 16GB, thin but biggish, glass screen, does many other things
  • New Zune: 8GB, very compact and light, great basic mp3 player, has a radio

What else should you consider? Well, how about software?

  • iTunes: Love it or hate it, it gets the job done
  • Zune: I have to be honest here – this is the biggest drawback for me. HOWEVER – this is only because I mastered and quite liked the original Zune software. Around the launch date of the new Zunes, they updated the software for all devices to make it more “intuitive” – except I was used to the old way which made perfect sense to me, and this new method was just weird. It would probably be great if you took the time to learn the idiosyncrasies of the colourful GUI, but it kind of just makes me cranky.

Controls are another thing to consider. The original Zune is very tactile – I believe the scientific term is “clicky”. You click a direction to make it go backwards or forwards, change the volume, stop and start. The new Zune is also clicky, but they added a scrolly interface – the large black center is a touch-sensitive surface that will allow you to quickly scroll through the items on the screen. Nice touch, as holding the down clicky was slow and prehistoric.

Some might enjoy the clicky, though. A common complaint of the iPod Touch is that you don’t get a good sense of the device response, and I’ve found from personal experience that you can quickly give yourself one hell of an earache if you’re not careful when swiping the volume controls. Clicky would be good there. Same goes for pocket use – with the Zune you can feel your way around the options, but with the Touch you’re sort of groping blindly and hoping for the best, much like those dates in the back seat of your dad’s car. Me, I don’t listen to music while on the move – something about earphones and scooters that just don’t mix – so I’m happy with looking down at my mp3 player to skip over the Journey to get to the Rapture.

Okay, okay – how do they SOUND?

This is definitely more an accessory thing than a device thing, but I tested out the three earbuds that came with Old Zune, New Zune, and iPhone because I couldn’t find my iTouch ones.

*disclaimer: I don’t use any of these; I have tiny mutant ears that will not keep earbuds in place

Old Zune earbuds were made for giants. They’re HUGE. I can’t even get them into my ear, they crashed and burned at the Dance Test (putting the buds in, playing a song, and dancing around like an idiot), and they don’t sound very good. Old Zune earbuds are an epic fail, unless you have large deep ear canals. Like, massive. Large enough for a strange sort of fetish I do not want to give much more though.

iPhone earbuds had great bass, but were again freakishly large. They’re also uncomfortable, and if all those alarmist news stories are correct, wearing them will get you jumped on your way to grandmama’s house and your device stolen because it’s obvious you’re packing iPod heat. They passed the Dance Test, but just barely – the right earbud fell out as soon as I stopped dancing.

Surprisingly, the New Zune earbuds were the clear winner. They fit my test subject (Ed) like a dream, sounded fantastic, passed the Dance Test with flying colours, and come with interchangeable coloured foamie things for extra comfort and fashion appeal. A little less bassy than the iPhone buds, but that can be changed with the settings and isn’t necessarily a bad thing unless you’re listening to something with a lot of bombin’ bass.

How about price? According to Future Shop’s website, an 8GB Zune will cost you $189.99 ($139.99 for the 4GB), whereas the 8GB iPod Touch is a cool $278.99. That’s a little steep if you want a device that just plays music and does it well, so the Zune is the clear winner there.

Oh, I almost forgot: compatibility. The iPod runs on both Windows and Mac, but the Zune does NOT work with anything but a Windows PC. It might work on a Bootcamp’d Mac – I’m not sure – but right out the box you’ll run into issues. One might say that a Mac owner probably wouldn’t own a Zune, but I know of several – myself included – so it’s an issue. I’m lucky in that I have too many goddamn computers and can just use a Windows machine for my Zune setup, but others may not be as obsessive as I am and could have trouble.

This is a great many words, so I will stop soon. The new Zune is a pretty nifty device if you’re looking for something without a thousand bells and whistles, and does have an FM radio which most mp3 players do not. Price wise it’s much more affordable than the iPod Touch, and size wise it just can’t compare – the new Zune is friggin’ TINY.

Final point:

The New Zune comes with a spot for a Danglie! Clearly, it is the overall winner. Take a hint, Apple – I may be a shameless gadget tech whore, but I love having stupid things dangling from my phone!

nostalgia

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I’ve almost missed this – there’s a huge fight going on outside our building. Actually, the fight is over – we’re watching the cops sort out the bad guys from the stupid guys and also tend to the guy who got maced or bear sprayed or something. Fun! Ed made me shut up though, because I was beaking off – something about my not believing the “we were bringing cakes and flowers to grandmama when we were jumped out of NOWHERE!” story being given.

Now that I’m on a real computer, I can wax more poetry about the situation. It’s the same old story – group of guys innocently walking down the street minding their own business when they’re attacked by a large group of natives for NO REASON. Except I’m more than just a little skeptical at that story – I was awake, and heard the screaming back and forth. “Innocent” doesn’t mean “well yeah I was yelling back and calling them all faggots and shit”, it means being the bigger person and walking away from it. It doesn’t mean starting a fight then running down the street to your buddy’s building, waking up the entire place with screaming in the hallways and talk of getting knives to jump them guys that done you wrong. FUCK those guys. The idiots upstairs – who actually had no part in this; it was their friends (again) – do this all the fucking time, and I am so sick of it.

After most of the drama had ended, we were treated to a long, rambling diatribe by the head boy scout who didn’t seem to have much of a point other than it was everyone’s fault but his. He royally pissed off the native girl who lives downstairs by being a racist asshole, then got pissy at her when she tried to say “actually, not all First Nations people are like that”. She couldn’t get a word in edgewise, so she just walked away while Beaky McInnocent kept spouting out more bullshit.

Fuck those guys. They’re storming down the stairs right now after having told everyone within earshot that they’re going to go after the gang that attacked them – “watch, in two hours it’ll all happen again”. Why’s that, you goddamn moron? Why don’t you just fucking go home and take the fight THERE instead of it always, always being here? You don’t even fucking LIVE here, you son of a bitch. Fuck you and fuck your friends and fuck the whole frat boy “I deserve to be drunk and obnoxious and who are you to tell me otherwise” mentality.

At first I was amused, but now I’m just pissed.