I'll be Home for Christmas

And by “home” I mean my home. My new* home. The one I just purchased. The final papers were all signed this afternoon so all I have to do now is wait for the keys. Well, and finishing my packing.

Exciting times, for sure! I take possession in a little over a week, on the 14^th, which just happens to be a little over a week before Christmas. What a nice and expensive present I bought myself this year. I hope the rest of my family isn't upset that I spent vastly more on myself than on all of them combined...

It's hard to wait. Last night I was wishing I could already start moving some of my stuff in, to clear out some space over here in my current place. Since the place has already been empty for who knows how long that technically could have been a possibility, but I'll just have to be patient and wait until it's officially mine.

Also, there are so many things I'd like (or need) to buy, but I've been telling myself to wait until after I've moved in to buy anything. Not only because I'd have to find a place to store it in this mess until then, but it would be a good idea to have a few days to let the layout, colors, etc. fully sink in so I can buy stuff that I'll know will look great there (not to mention the possibility of some great Boxing Day sales). But that hasn't stopped me from going to stores and browsing, though.

The one exception was a new box spring and bed frame. Since I'll actually have a spare bedroom now, having a bed to go in said bedroom would be a plus. And fortunately a friend said I could store it along the wall in his garage for a couple weeks, and we even went out in his van to purchase it. Of course, I'll use the new bed myself and leave the old one for any guests I may get. Don't worry, I did also purchase a new foam top for the old mattress so it hopefully won't be that bad... Maybe I should spend a few nights on it just to see how it is before anyone else has to use it. Worst case scenario, I do have a rather comfy air mattress that could be used.

I honestly can't believe how fast things have gone. Now I'm counting the days until I get my condo. And as soon as the actual time of day when I'll get the keys has been arranged, I'll have to start counting down the hours. If I assume, for now, that my realtor and I will meet up as soon as I can after work that Friday, then that means at this moment I only have about 212 hours to go!

* And of course, by “new” I actually mean new to me, not a newly-built condo. I did check out the pricing on one out of curiosity, and found that a smaller one bedroom unit still cost a whole lot more than my two bedroom one. New would have been nice, but I didn't want to pay anywhere near what they were wanting.

Catching Flies, Part 2

This morning when I got to work I decided to build a fruit fly trap that would hopefully work better than simply setting out a bottle of malt vinegar. Incidentally, the lid full of vinegar worked better than I thought it would. When I dumped it out, I found there were almost a dozen fruit flies that had gotten into it and sunk to the bottom. It turns out that bottle of vinegar also had some liquid dish soap added, which I heard from several places helps in its trapping ability. Apparently the soap breaks the vinegar's surface tension, making it so the fly would actually sink in rather than be able to sit on the top and fly away to safety.

But the downside of something like that is that it still primarily just attracts the flies, and doesn't really trap them. It's only the few that are foolish enough to go right up to the vinegar that meet their demise. Hence the reason for a trap. I grabbed a disposable plastic cup from the closet at the office, then poured a bit of the vinegar/soap mix into it. Next I took a piece of card stock from my recycling box, cut a rough semi-circle from it, then rolled and taped it into a cone shape. After cutting the tip of the cone off, I put it into the cup and put tape around the edge to both hold it on the cup and make sure it was sealed. The important thing is that the only way in or out was through the hole in the cone.

And it worked great! It seems that after the flies are attracted into the trap thanks to the vinegar (I've heard that apple cider vinegar works best though—I'll have to bring some in tomorrow morning) they are simply too stupid to exit through that same hole they entered through. Seriously, throughout the day I watched several of them crawling around the cone inside the cup and go right up to the hole—then turn around and head back the other way. Eventually they either fall into the vinegar or try to land on it. Even if they didn't, they still would be stuck inside the cup rather than flying around annoying me.

At the end of my work day I picked the cup up and looked inside, and counted 35 flies that I could see. Since I could only see what was around the edges of the cup due to the dark malt vinegar, I'm sure there were more in there that I didn't notice so I've been assuming there were around 40. 40 fruit flies trapped, after only 8 hours. In comparison, the filled cap only trapped about a dozen, in 16 hours. Triple the kill count in half the time. Not bad! I wonder what it'll be like when I get back to work in the morning...

Catching Flies with Vinegar

There's an old expression, “You can catch more flies with honey than vinegar.” Not true; I tried it.

I've had a bit of a problem with fruit flies around my desk at work lately, and even have my bananas inside a storage container to keep them away. This afternoon I noticed the container had a couple dozen fruit flies crawling all over it. They couldn't get inside at the bananas, but that didn't stop them from congregating there anyway.

One of the guys at work recently dubbed an old bottle of vinegar to be a “Fly Trap” bottle so I opened it and sat it on top of my banana box. Then, remembering that expression, I grabbed a plate, smeared some honey on it, and set it up next to the vinegar. Well what do you know, after several minutes there were flies all over the bottle, and only one crawling on the plate (and it wasn't anywhere near where the honey was).

It would appear that whoever first came up with that expression had no idea what they were talking about.

But attracting flies and catching flies are two different matters. It doesn't seem like simply setting out vinegar will actually catch them, and it'll need to be just part of the bait in some other sort of trap. I poured some vinegar into the bottle's lid and, while lots of flies were crawling on it, none actually ventured into the vinegar itself where they would drown. So now I'm worried that, tomorrow morning, I'll have a really massive infestation around my desk thanks to the vinegar. Fortunately I've found several promising fruit fly trap ideas online that I'll have to give a try in the morning...

The 70s Come to Korea

I just stumbled across the song and music video “Gangnam Style” by South Korean rapper Psy. I enjoy watching Japanese music videos because some of them are quite... creative. And Korean stuff can come close. I watched this video several times, not only because I found the song catchy, but because I got a good laugh from both his dance moves and the suits he wore in the video.

Once suit in particular seemed very familiar. Well what do you know, that appears to be almost identical to the tuxes that my dad and his wedding party wore. Back in the mid-70s. I guess it's true what they say about fashion, how everything comes back in style eventually.

Run, run, as slow as you can...

I have gotten quite out of shape over the years. While I was never into sports or other physical activities beyond walking, I did get a fair amount of walking done while I was in school. And then during the times while living in Surrey that I didn't own a car I had to walk to and from the bus when I went to work each day. For a while after the office and I moved to Abbotsford, I even walked or biked to work, which was a good 40 minute walk each way.

After I finally got another car, that stopped but I still made a point of walking to the stores or mall, which are a 20-30 minute walk away, and had the occasional walk at the park or around the neighborhood. Eventually, though, that all seemed to fade away and the extent of my real physical activity became just occasionally moving around boxes and containers at work and any chores I did around the house. But my fingers certainly still got a good workout from all those video games!

But that has to change. I'm certain that most of my health concerns would fade if I took better care of myself. Part of that involves eating better, which is always a struggle for a single person who doesn't often enjoy taking too much time cooking. Another part would be making sure I get any medical assistance that would help improve my quality of life.

But I think the main thing is to finally start getting more active and getting back into shape. Fortunately, it's much easier when it's such nice weather out like we've had here lately, and I find myself looking for any excuse to be outside (for example, I'm even sitting out on my patio as I write this). I started out by taking a good 20 minute walk around the neighborhood each night this week. But even when walking at a faster pace and for that amount of time, it didn't feel like my heart was getting that good a workout. That's when I remembered a nice outdoor track I've seen that I heard was open to the public.

So I swung by this evening to check it out and see what I could do. Well if I didn't know it before, I know now that I'm definitely out of shape. Each lap appears to be 500m, and I decided I'd had enough and switched down to a walking pace before completely finishing two laps (the RunKeeper app I have indicated my "almost-2-laps" was 0.83km and took 5½ minutes). But it certainly gave my heart a good workout! I might have been able to keep jogging a little longer, but I didn't want to overdo it on my first try. Plus I probably would have been completely out of breath before being anywhere near finished the third lap anyway.

So my challenge to myself is to go back to the track every evening between now and my vacation in just under two weeks. And hopefully while on vacation I'll have a chance to do some jogging too, or at least I'm sure there will be a fair number of walks. And playing with my two young nephews is bound to give me quite the workout too.

But since the weather is supposed to continue being really nice for the next couple weeks it shouldn't be too hard to make sure I do it every evening. I'll hopefully see a decent improvement in just that short time. And who knows, maybe if I keep this up, by the end of the summer I'll be able to do 10 laps rather than almost two.

Honey, I Shrunk My iPod (and the price tag)

April 21, 2001. I bought my first portable MP3 player, a Creative Labs Nomad Jukebox. It was only slightly more bulky than a typical portable CD player, and had 6GB of storage space. The total cost including tax worked out to $93.86/GB.

6GB seemed like a lot of space, but as I ripped my music library to my computer over the next while I found I had close to 18GB of music. So, I took my library of 192kbps MP3s and had them batch re-compressed to 64kpbs WMA files. Cutting it down to ⅓ the size let it fit my Jukebox just perfectly. But let me tell you, even with Windows Media Audio files having better quality than MP3 at low bit rates, I could still clearly notice the difference in audio quality but I just lived with it. Until...

Backin Up

I apologise in advance... but thinking about backups has brought this song back into my head.

Backups Are Your Friend

If I were to provide one piece of advice to computer users, it would be to always have a backup of your data. I can't speak for Windows, but on Macs anyway, it's super easy and convenient. Just buy and plug in an empty external hard drive and Time Machine will automatically do periodic backups of your data. With Time Machine, it even does hourly backups for the past day (then after a day, it only keeps one a day for the past week and then one a week). It's easy to think that you'll be fine and never need a backup, but you'll never know when something will happen and you'll be extra glad that you have that backup, and happy you spent the money on that extra hard drive.

Like if you accidentally delete every album in your music library that starts with the letter "T". Which just happened to me. And yes, that includes "The" as well. One click in the wrong place and it was gone. All gone. Not just the entries in the iTunes library but the actual audio files on the hard drive themselves, too. That's over 60 albums total.

After a moment of panic and frustration that I could have done something so stupid I remembered my backup and began the restoration process. It was 7:40 and my last backup was at 7:06. I'd lose about half an hour's worth of the library cleanup and updating that I had been doing, but it sure beats the considerable effort of rebuilding that part my library that would have been required had I not had a backup handy. Sure, iTunes now lets you re-download old purchases, but not all my music came from iTunes. A significant amount of it is still from old CDs that I would have had to take the time re-ripping (not to mention digging through the boxes in my closet to find them all first), and a bunch came from other digital music stores that I couldn't re-download them from. Plus, I'd lose all the play counts and last played dates. I really like having statistics like that.

And the really crazy thing is that I recently signed up for iTunes Match so I could have re-downloaded every one of those albums (most of which I was going to re-download anyway, so I could get them in higher quality that way) except that, when I deleted it all, I had also checked off the “Also delete these items from iCloud” box. That wasn't an error, since I had intended to check that. The problem was that instead of having one song selected, somehow the entire playlist got selected.

So, to restore my library there were two places I had to go using Time Machine. First was the Music\iTunes folder under my home directory. There were a number of iTunes Library files there that needed restoring. Fortunately, those were small and restored quickly. But then I needed to restore my audio files. I decided the simplest thing would be to restore the entire Music folder. Sure, it meant 65GB of data and 40 minutes of time, but it was far easier, and probably quicker as well, to restore everything than to go through each individual artist subfolder to see if there were albums missing, and restoring just those albums.

After waiting for everything to get restored, I was very glad to see that the process worked perfectly, and all my "T" albums were back and the handful of tracks I played at random did indeed play. Three cheers for backups! Now tomorrow I had better remember to bring home my “off-site backup” hard drive from work so I can update that one too.

Chicken Head Tracking

Chicken Week Day 5 - To close out the week, here's something a little educational for you...

Chicken Police

Welcome to Chicken Week, Day Four!

A Japanese Man. Yodeling. About Chickens.

Kid Scared of Chickens

Either this kid isn't going to be able to go near another chicken his whole life, or he'll get a job at a chicken processing plant to get even.

Classical Chicken

It's chicken week! Day One:

This Post May Not Be Suitable for Children

While loading up the cartoons from my recently purchased Looney Tunes Golden Collection set into my computer, I noticed text similar to the following on the back of all the cases:

“The Looney Tunes Golden Collection Vol. 5 Is Intended for the Adult Collector and May Not Be Suitable for Children.”

What's the deal with that? Not the Capitalising Every Word in the Sentence (although that does make me scratch my head), but that it “may not be suitable for children?”

I grew up watching these cartoons. My parents grew up watching these cartoons. Some of these cartoons came out when my grandparents were in their teens. And it was always considered to be good, wholesome family entertainment. But all of a sudden, it's no longer deemed to be fit for consumption by the next generation.

Is this a sign of how sanitised and paranoid our society is becoming, where people are afraid that seeing a cartoon duck trying to drop cartoon anvils on a cartoon rabbit will turn children into serial killers or something? Or is it simply not educational enough (I beg to differ... Thanks to Looney Tunes, I know not to waste my money buying anything from the Acme Corporation)?

I guess another possibility could be that some of the older cartoons do portray racial stereotypes and prejudices that would not be considered appropriate to show young children nowadays¹. They tend to imitate things they see and hear, so I guess in that regard it might be good to keep them from seeing certain cartoons...


¹Every disc from volume 3 on even starts out with the notice, “The cartoons you are about to see are products of their time. They may depict some of the ethnic and racial prejudices that were commonplace in the U.S society. These depictions were wrong then and they are wrong today. While the following does not represent the Warner Bros. view of today's society, these cartoons are being presented as they were originally created, because to do otherwise would be the same as claiming that these prejudices never existed.”

Weirdest Shopping Trip Ever

I've always found Costco to be an odd store. Primarily, because they charge people to shop there. I find it hard to comprehend that they think requiring a membership to enter the store is good for sales. Wouldn't they get a greater number of people checking them out and potentially making purchases if they didn't have to buy memberships?

But in any case, I received a Costco gift card for Christmas which provided me an opportunity to experience the full Costco shopping experience last week, since using a gift card is one way you can actually get in without a membership or using someone else's. And it definitely was a weird experience.

Baby on Board

You can fairly frequently come across a car or van with a “Baby on Board” sign in the window. Homer Simpson even wrote a song about them. But I frequently wonder what's the point?

Seriously, are people going to go, “I was going to accidentally rear-end that car, but OH NO! There's a BABY ON BOARD so I guess I can't!” Or maybe it's just a type of bragging. “Look at me, I have a baby and you don't!”

Just as dumb, in my opinion, are those decals I've been seeing more and more lately with stick figures of all the family members. Although I admit I found it hilarious when I saw one that was one stick person and a whole bunch of stick cats.

In the event that I ever have children at some point down the road, there are not going to be any signs and decals on my car...

Not Exactly Nail Trimmers

A number of years back I bought a big box of Q-Tips. I don't know what manicures have to do with Q-Tips, but this box included a free bonus manicure set. There were some tiny tweezers (I still can't figure out what tweezers have to do with manicures), nail clippers, a couple other things I had no clue what they were for, and a pair of scissors with a curved blade. I've always assumed that they were for cutting fingernails, probably for getting more clean and precise cuts than the clippers would provide.

Lately, the screw holding it together wouldn't stay tight so I decided I should buy a new one. While out at the store I checked out all the nail care supplies they carried. I found them, but was surprised to see them labeled as cuticle scissors. One package even specified, “For trimming cuticles and hangnails. Do not use on fingernails as this will dull the blade.”

I don't know what exactly a cuticle is or why you'd want to cut it. I'm not sure I even heard the word until a few years ago. Obviously it's nothing terribly important or obvious, like hair or fingernails, as I seem to have survived the past 3+ decades without ever trimming my cuticles. Maybe it's one of those things that only some people ever do (like guys shaving their chests. I find it funny how boys are told things like, “Eat your brussels sprouts and it'll put hair on your chest,” and when they do actually have hair on their chest they feel compelled to remove it), but there's enough of them to justify including one of these in all manicure sets. Like those other strange tools also included that I can't figure out how they're supposed to be used, but obviously someone out there knows.

But I figured I could save myself a few bucks and skip buying a new one, since apparently I was never supposed to be trimming my fingernails with those scissors anyway. And it gives me an opportunity to do a short research project, to answer the question, “What are cuticles, and why would I want to cut them?” Hmm, my Google search for "why cut cuticles" brings up pages with titles like, “Is it bad to cut your cuticles?” “Is cutting your cuticles healthy?” and, “Should you trim cuticles?” I'm going to go out on a limb and assume the answer is “Don't bother.”

Ready for 2012!

This evening while out for a short walk, I decided to pop in to the dollar store by my house. Unfortunately I didn't even find what I was hoping too, but I did find a 2012 calendar. And it was only a buck twenty nine. And it was of cats. How could I resist? Last year I didn't even get a calendar until near the end of January, and this year I already have one mid-October. And did I mention it's of cats?

Only question now is, do I use it here at home or bring it in to work for all my co-workers to enjoy too...?

468

I'm #468! Hooray! Well, I assume Rogers has separate queues for each iPhone type, so if that isn't an overall position, then at least of all the Rogers customers who reserved a white 16GB 4S this morning, I'm 468. Reservations from Rogers started at 3AM local time (other companies started at midnight... I wonder why the difference?) and what do you know, I just happened to wake up in the middle of the night around 3:30 and made my reservation since I was up anyway!

Of course this doesn't mean I'll get a new iPhone on release day next Friday. Even if they get 1,000 so I get one from the first batch, I think they're going to have them go to the stores a day or two later. They'll be busy enough with people lined up, and getting a cell phone is a little more complex than popping into the store and buying any other electronics. It'll probably be better, actually, going in later when they're not swamped. Much better service when they're not focused on getting as many people through quickly as possible and dealing with a huge crowd that all wants the same thing. And I didn't reserve an iPhone 4S just to try and ensure I'd get one on release day, anyway. I got one to make sure I could easily get one without having to spend hours in lines, running around to different stores all the time, and/or waiting weeks for stores to actually have it in stock.

I, for one, am looking forward to having a new iPhone, in spite of all the hate the 4S got when it was unveiled. I'd wager that all the people who were loudly complaining about it either already owned an iPhone 4, or weren't going to buy one anyway regardless of what was changed and just like to nitpick about everything. I saw pretty much the same thing after the iPad 2 was announced—loads of “It's not good enough. No way I'm getting one to replace my iPad!” whiners. I read an article earlier this week that I think hit the nail on the head. Sure, there's no massive hardware changes between the iPhone 4 and 4S aside from it being faster and having a better camera so iPhone 4 owners will be less likely to want to upgrade. But iPhone 4 owners are not the target audience.

People with an iPhone 4 are most likely still in the middle of their contract, and would have to pay a lot extra to upgrade their phone now. Instead, it'll be owners of older models, who are no longer in a contract as is the case with me, or those who don't own one at all who are most likely to get it. Sure, there's the handful of people who would pay anything to get a new Apple product if it was a whole lot better, but the majority of people will wait for the end of their contract before getting a new phone.

True, the iPhone 4S may be physically identical on the outside to an iPhone 4. Loads of people were complaining about that. But to me, that's actually a huge plus. The second I walk out of the store with my new iPhone, I can go practically anywhere and buy one of probably hundreds of cases and/or screen protectors available for it. When I bought my iPad 2 on launch day, there was just one choice. Apple's Smart Cover. And since I did not want one of those, I had to wait weeks for the first third party case to make an appearance, and even then, there was only a handful to choose from. Fortunately the first batch of iPad cases included one that was exactly what I was looking for.

So now, I have to patiently wait for the arrival of my iPhone. Maybe a week, or maybe two. Hopefully it won't be long before Rogers starts sending out the status emails they promised. But until then I guess I can pass the time browsing the case shelves in the stores!

***BREAKING NEWS!!!***
I just checked again out of curiosity, and now I'm up to 463. I guess 5 people canceled their reservations since this morning.

Feeling Hot! Hot! Hot!

Over the summer, I paid closer attention to the temperature inside my apartment. Mainly, because I had the patio door open as much as possible, but made sure to close it before the temperature outside surpassed what it was inside. I have two thermostats—one in the main part of my apartment and one in my bedroom. I soon noticed a curious phenomenon, where after spending more than a few minutes in my bedroom, the temperature there raised by 2-3 degrees.

Very curious. I know that when you pack a whole bunch of people in a room it can get quite warm and stuffy, but I didn't think just my body by itself gave off enough heat to warm a whole room. But that's what appeared to be happening, and only in my bedroom. I figured the rest of my apartment was large enough that the heat I gave off wasn't enough to raise the temperature noticeably there.

Then finally, sometime last week, I came to realise what the real cause of the apparent heat gain was. What was I doing all those times I was in my bedroom? Doing stuff on my computer. Which can give off a fair amount of heat when it's working hard. And is located about half a foot from the thermostat. Mystery solved! And here I thought maybe I was just such a super hot guy. Oh well.