Calvin's Weblog

Happy Hallowe'en!

You know, a little over a month ago I was talking to someone from Florida who was coming up here to work with me for a week, and typical of those southerners, he asked how much snow we had. That day it was in the 20's still, and I told him that the weekend before we had hit 90 yankee degrees - and that it's not all igloos and dog sleds here. I did however, qualify our awesome summer with the caveats that this ws the hottest, longest summer on record, AND that we get our first snow on Hallowe'en about every second year or so.

Well, today's hallowe'en day, and there is absolutely zero chance of precipitation, and NO humidity - it's bone dry.
HOWEVER - today is the first day that the temperature is BELOW zero.... it's negative two right now, to be exact. So, while it may not be our first snow, and it's to dry to have our first frost, it's certainly cold enought for both.
-2 degrees ... I suppose that's abour 28 yankee.
It sure is a crisp clear morning though. We've had so much wind lately that the sky is clear of smog and a beautiful blue... well, right now it's pretty pink actually - sorta looks like a maternity ward: powder pink and baby blue.

I had my first rehearsal as a guitar player in the cover band last night - it sure is different! I guess there are about 24 songs I'm supposed to know, and I know six of 'em. I faked my way through another 3 or 4, but you can't fake it on guitar like you can fake it on bass.... you hit the wrong chord on guitar and EVERYBODY knows it. Well, I guess I should view this as an opportunity to learn and to grow. Besides, it IS kinda like a promotion... bass guitar to rhythm guitar.... maybe someday lead guitar, and from there, they put me on 'Fries' I think...
Oh - I kinda got a promotion at work too... well, more of a lateral move really, and no extra pay, so fine - it's not a promotion, but it's a department that I'm much rather be in - so I'm happy... but this also means I've gotta lot of learning to do here as well.

One last note, David's in Calgary as we speak, and will be starting his assessment in just over an hour. If we ever needed your prayers, now is the time! Thanks everyone!
PS - you've probably noticed, I've stopped using the spell checker again.

Cold Snap

We haven't seen rain in a couple days, and right now it's a beautiful blue sky - but it sure was a shocker to wake up to 3 degrees! This cold snape came out of nowhere... it was 17 degrees on Sunday, and now we're expecting our first frost on Hallowe'en night.
We had an amazing wind storm last night. Gusts of over 100 km/hour blew trees into house and limbs and branches are all over the roads. Over 100,000 residences had no power last night (we were fine!) and cleanup crews have been BUSY today. A couple of houses in Kamloops even has their roofs blown off!

Last night we were supposed to have dinner with Caroles brother and his wife, but David was havng a really bad day and couldn't even get out of bed. He's back in the hospital today, getting a transfusion - hopefully that'll give him enough energy, because tomorrow he's supposed to be heading to Calgary for an assessment at their cancer clinic. Vancouver has already refused to offer any more treatment, so Calgary is pretty much his last shot at this point. We're all very much on pins and needles for the next couple of days, because everything is hinging on what Calgary says...

Please wish us luck!

Oops...

It must've been a better Friday night than I thought....
All that stuff I said about Friday night, was actually on Saturday night.
I can't even think of what we did Friday.... I know we saw "Kill Bill" last week, but that wasn't Friday. Hmmm... Oh yeah, I remember! Rehearsal with Scarecrow Balcony! It was awesome - we finished a new song, and it's super-heavy. Our heaviest yet! It's going to be our closing number at the Cobalt on Dec. 13th - that much is already decided...

Anyway, it's a busy work day, so I'm gonna get back at it. If I see any freaky accidents out my window, I'll be sure so write all about 'em.
Ciao!

Now That's what a Friday Night should be like

Ahhh - I can't tell you how great it feels to just go out with friends, and shoot the shit over a few pints while chowin' down a heaping plate of 50 crab legs on .99c crab leg night at the Two Parrots Pub. We breezed though the crab, some calimari, zuchini sticks, and our beer while the Marlins were snatching the world series from the Yankees on the big screen TVs.
Afterwards, we all made our way to the rehearsal space, where we jammed and drank while the girls danced and laughed - a good time was had by all.
Ron pulled out all his nifty gizmos - disco ball, multi-coloured music-triggered rotating light array, and fog machine - it was like the best party ever - loud live music, the company of friends and not a care in the world.
We pulled off some songs that none of us had ever played before, and some of us didn't even know we knew - but everything sounded like we had been doing these songs our whole lives. I played AC/DC's Sin City on guitar, and I've never played a note of the song in my life, but it came out awesome. Wayne pulled a few really old Metallica songs out that came out just amazing, with Colin from Strange Days on drums. Colin grabbed the bass for Sweet Child O' Mine with me back on guitar, and we actually got about 3/4 of the way through it... pretty kewl! Some old Black Sabbath, KISS, Judas Priest, Alice Cooper, man it was fun.
I don't know exactly what time we left, but it couldn't have been much past midnight - but it didn't matter - the night ended on a high note, and it was awesome.
Now that's what a Friday night is supposed to be like!

Few and Far Between

Geez, I'm barely getting time to scrape 5 minutes together every few days to write a blog entry... life certainly be a tilt-o-whirl...
David's in the Paliative Care wing of Vancouver General Hospital now, and we went to visit last night, and ended up watching The Bourne Identity on DVD in the Paliative Lounge. Okay... now picture this - this quote-unquote "hospital" is on the 16th floor of the new Jimmy Pattison wing... that's the penthouse. The quote-unquote "lounge" has a panoramic 180 degree view of the North-West-South city. From this penthouse, you look down at most of the city, and straight across at the north shore mountains. It's the most amazing vie wof Vancouver I have ever seen -it was absolutely astonishing. Inside the lounge are a host of soft leather recliners and lazy-boy's, surronding a fireplace, and 60 inch flatscreen, wide-aspect digital TV, with DVD player, VHS, and a sound system. There's a piano, gazeebo, automatic window shades, huge fish tank, and atrium. Seriously, I would live there. This place was classy. And by the way, David seemed to be doing really good. It was a nice visit, and we were home by 11:30PM.

Work has been mental the last few days. Yesterday morning, my team was pushed from one business unit to another, so we're now in our 4th different organizational unit of the year, and reporting to our 7th different manager in the last 12 months. Yay fun - all new rules and procedures to learn AGAIN...
I've also been on a course for the last two days, but have still been responding to server problems before and after the course, so my last two days have been 10 hour work days... I'm exhauseted! I've got a full hour now that I'm home before I run out to rehearsal - and I haven't had a single chance to practise those new songs I was supposed to know for tonight. Argh!

PS - still got houseguests - they stopped bringing me beer, but at least their cooking for me tonight... good thing too, 'cause if I had to do it myself, I'd probably just skip another meal - how busy do you have to be before you're too busy to eat, anyway???

Another great Thanksgiving!

Last night my parents dropped by for leftover mock-turkey and thanksgiving dinner. Apparently my first attempt at stuffing was a huge success - Mum says it took her quite a few tries before she got such a quality stiffin' ... so that make me feel pretty good. We also opened a bottle of Recline Ridge's Marachel Foche, which was, if you recall, my favorite B.C. Red. After apple pie and ice cream for desert, we were definetely satiated and satisfied.
Mom was given boxes of grapes from a local vinyard that I guess were not ready at harvest time, and missed the bottling - so their proprietor friend just stated giving away crates of wine grapes.... my mom squished 'em all up into juice and brought me about 8 litres for me to attempt to make wine with. So after they left last night, I dumped half the juice into a carbouy, added some sugar, water and yeast.... I guess we'll see in a couple of weeks whether that'll come out as wine. Let's keep out fingers crossed - if this is successful I think I'll get about 6 bottles of Calvin's Vintage 2004. I'm sure it'll be in high demand, so place your orders now!

Belated Thanksgiving

Carole and I decided this weekend that we really missed having a Thanksgiving dinner last weekend. I was supposed to cook, and have family over, but one by one everybody cancelled as stuff came up - so we just ended up eating leftover Chinese for dinner that night. Besides, at the time it didn't really seem like we had a lot to be thanksful for.
But over the last week we've come to reallize (or at least I have... Carole always has a positive outlook) that we really do have a lot to be thankful for, and it would be a terrible shame to skip this once a year tradition because we were bummed out - all the more reason to do it!
So we went shopping Saturday, and I cooked Sunday. I cheaped out on the turkey - instead of a 8 pound butterball for $34, I opted for a 7.5 pound roasting chicken for $5.45. And by the way, as lame as that sounds - when stuffed link a turkey and served with gravy and cranberry sauce, you can NOT tell the difference - besides the extra $30 in your wallet, I mean. I made stuffing from scratch, gravy from scratch, corm, garlic and chive mashed potatoes, breaded brussel sprouts, and to top it all off, we corked, decanted, breathed, then completely polished off a $400 bottle of 1995 Chateau Malescot St. Exupery Margeaux - a gift from Carole's gransfather, with explicit instructions on when and how to drink it. He said "don't share this with anyone - this bottle is for you two to enjoy alone. pick a special occasion and split it. Remember, once it's open, you MUST finish it. I think we did him proud.
Yesterday was an extremely pleasant day. Good food, good wine, good compnay (just the two of us) !!!

A Great Success

Hi everybody, sorry I haven't made any entries in a few days, really my only excuse is that I just didn't feel like it. I took Friday off and stayed home watching Matrix Reloaded and all the suplemental DVD stuff.

The Fundraiser was a huge success - there must have been close to 300 people there, and I'm sure a hefty sum was raised (though no offical tally yet). Kudos to Adam H. for putting together such an amazing event in such little time. There were lots of great bands, including Thor - and I finally got to keep his 'Hunk 'o' Steel... he bends an iron bar in his mouth every show and gives the Hunk 'o' Steel to someone in the audience. I also was the highest bidder on the grand prize at the silent auction, a full week stay in a Cancun honeymoon suite - so I'm looking forward to that!

All in all, I think it was a bigger success than anyone had anticipated - David sure has a lot of friends! Thanks everyone!

Fundraiser Benefit Concert

Hey everyone, I know this is really last minute, but being a family member, I guess they tried not to bother us with all the planning and details until everything was settled... BUT, better late than never.

International rap/hip-hop sensation Adam H., long time writing partner and dear friend of Carole's brother David, is hosting a fundraiser benefit concert tomorrow night at Au Bar. I know it's last minute, but if anyone would like to show their support, please come on down. There are lots of amazing prizes, an awesome lineup of performers, and it's for a really great cause - all proceeds are going to help David in his continuing fight with leukemia.
If you can't make it, but you know someone who might want to, please pass this on! Thanks.

Below is Adam's email, including all the details -

From: "Adam H."
Subject: Fw: A Fundraiser for Dave Malecot

Hi Everyone,

I am not sure if you have heard what has been going on in the music
business these past few days, but I thought I would send you all this Email
to update you on what is happening.

A close friend of mine in the music industry named Dave Malecot was in the
recording studio a couple of months back with me writing for New School,
when he started to feel ill. He went to the doctor thinking that he had a
bad case of the flu, and the doctor rushed him to the hospital where he was
diagnosed with Leukemia.

It was a shock to everyone, but he and everyone else felt that he would be
able to beat the disease with Chemotherapy. After two rounds of
chemotherapy that didn't work, the doctors told him that there is nothing
more that they can do for him in Canada, and they told him that he has only
3 months left to live.

Since then, his family and friends have been contacting several hospitals
and doctors in the U.S. and Europe to try and find some sort of renegade
procedure that might be able to save him. His parents are prepared to sell
their house for any operation that he will need, and faced with being a
helpless friend watching this tragedy, the only thing that I could think of
doing to help, is throw a "Fundraiser" to help his family with these
incredible costs.

The event is scheduled for Thursday, October 16th, at 8pm. The location is
AU BAR (674 Seymour St. - Seymour & Georgia).

If there are any items, services, or memorabilia that you might have or be
able to get, that we can auction off at the event, we would greatly
appreciate it. I know that you all know lots of people, and I totally
understand if you don't feel comfortable doing it, but if you can, it would
be fantastic.

Dave is such an incredible person, and I have been very lucky to work with
him, and have him as a friend for the past 15 years. The entire music
industry is devoted to helping him, and we need all of the help we can get.
Several hit recording artists are scheduled to perform at the event as
well, and the amount of help we are getting thus far is incredible. We have
great people willing to help out so far, including Z95, Coca-Cola, &
Sleeman's Beer. We even have an "All Inclusive" hotel package for two in
Cancun, Mexico that we are going to auction off, as well as signed items
from famous singers, actor's, and sports stars. If any of you can help us
in any way, or even attend, we will greatly appreciate it.

It's a tragedy, and if there is anything we can do to give Dave a fighting
chance for life, we will do it. The world is not ready to lose such an
inspirational person.

Thank you so much for taking the time to read this Email, and if you wish
to forward this to anyone who you feel might want to help or attend, that
would be terrific. My Email address is attached for anyone that wishes to
contact me.

Thank you again so much.

All the Best,
Adam H.

G3 - '03 - Woweee!!!

Wow.
There's really not much more to say about it, except maybe 'wow' again...
Last night Carole and I were at the G3 '03 Concert, along with about 2,000 hardcore guitar-lovin' fans, and at least six of their girlfriends.
As if Joe Satriani, Steve Vai, and Yngwie Malmsteen wasn't a shreddin' enough lineup, just get a load of the rest of the band members... Vai's keyboardist and um, 'rhythm' guitar player was none other than shrapnel gawd of the late eighties, Tony McAlpine, and they were accompanied on bass by none other than Billy Sheehan himself. Oh, yeah - speaking of bassists, Satriani's compadre was Matt Bissonette.

If I may borrow from the Georgia Straight, "That was a lot of notes!"
I had an awesome time - and I'm kinda speachless... I mean, how do you review something like that, other than to just say: Wow!

In other news, China Makes Space History Today by being the 3rd nation to successfully put a man into space - third only to Russia and the U.S. Hmm, sage is gonna grind me on this one... score: that's two for the commies, and one for the capitalsit pigs. As well, Ozzy Scraps Tour to seek treatment for his tremors... which, as we've all seen, have been getting pretty bad these last couple of years. Poor guy... get well soon, Ozzy!

Fresh Beginnings

What a fine way to start the week. First off, it's a 4 day work week - those are always great. At some point during the weekend, our water resevoirs finally reached a safe level, and we're out of the water crisis. The price of gas is 62.9 a litre this morning, down from 89.9 a mere 2 months ago. The Canadian dollar is at it's highest point in over 9 years, and every holding in my stock portfolio is in the green today - you have no idea how long I've waited to see that...
Most triking about this morning though, is the crystal clear, pitch black sky - a three-quarter moon waning, and the stars shimmering brightly. The first thing I noticed when I pulled my car out of the garage was Orion, larger than life, hanging on the horizon in front of me. Below, the early morning lights of the city shimmering vividly in the crips six degree air.
The roads are dry, and very calm for rush hour. There's no bad news on the radio... no accident reports, no impending storms headed our way. It was a very peaceful drive in.
I'm also completely stoked that yesterday I found a copy of our Wedding Webpage on an old hard drive and was able to put it back online, plus I was able to compile the webcam back into my blog. The Wedding Page was the only site we lost that had irretrievable media on it... a couple hundred pictures taken with a digital camera and uploaded directly - we though for sure they were gone. But they're not!
So, enough about me - I haven't really thought of a 'real' blog entry for today, I just wanted to say "Happy Tuesday everyone!"

A studio facelift?

Well, that's debatable...
There are lots of things that have bugged me about my home studio since I built it, from my taping/mudding disaster to the accoustic response of the room. So, I figured that with an entire day to myself, I'd re-arrange the mixing station and gear so that everything sounds better... of course, after I got all the furniture out, I realized how terrible my drywalling had been so I decided to whip up some mud and fix all my previous errors... which by the way, meant that I'd have to paint the room again before putting the furniture back. Oh, but THAT meant letting the mud dry, and sanding it. Well, long story short, I tried using a hair drier to harden the mud, but just couldn't wait long enough, so I sanded and painted anyway - without it being 100% dry. It looked fine at first... but now it looks like a war zone. I think if I ever get around to putting up the crown moulding, I'll paint the whole room again...
Some good did come out of it though, even though I've got a new franken-wall to remind me that I'm a cheap lazy bum that likes to cut corners... I spent some time on the mixing/listening positions, and found a really sweet sound. The room's now situated lengthwise such that the speakers face the narrow span of the room instead of the long span, and hense the bass waves don't have as long to envelope - the result is a much less boomier mix (sacrificed some bass) and a heck of a lot more clarity. Having a room that's wider than it is long really added to the spacial depth of the mixes and the songs now sound much wider and fuller. I'm very happy about that. One thing I had noticed previously about anything I mixed in this room was that they came out muddier and duller than I had expected, so I'm optimistic that I'll be making better sounding tracks now!

Another plus is that the new layout creates a lot more room to move, and I've even managed to fit in a beer fridge - so now there's one less reason to leave!
As soon as I get the urinal installed, I'll never have to go upstairs!

What's good for the body is good for the mind

If Friday was physically exhausting, then Saturday was the mental equivalent.
We got up up early and made our way into the city to meet Carole's brother and his wife. The Aunt from Pensylvania that was staying with us this week was with us, of course. We all made our way to the Grouse Mountain Skyride and before long we were on top of Vancouver. Of course, it was pouring rain, three degrees, and so dense with fog that we couldn't even see each other let alone the city below, but none the less it was a nice afternoon, spent in the 'Bistro' sampling some absolutely amazing tapas, and quality draft beer. Well, okay, that was me... I think everyone else was having Shirley Temples. It was a relaxing afternoon spent with family, staring our the picture-window into the fog below, and we finally lazily made our way back to David's house to relax for an hour before heading out to Hons on Robson for dinner. Hons isn't the classiest restaurant in the city, (in fact, I'd doubt if it made the top 1,000) but it's hands down the best, most authentic Chinese this side of the Pacific. Dinner was great, and the leftovers were bountiful (and made a great lunch Sunday!).
Yes, all in all it was a very nice, relaxing peaceful day spent with relatives and loved ones. Yet, by 11PM when we finally made it home, we were mentally drained. Though we were all wearing our brave faces, David hasn't been having as many good days lately, and throughout the day as his energy was sapped, his health, and our collective tempo visibly declined. We all paid a hefty emotional toll that day, the crechendo of which, was the fairwell we bade to our Aunt, who was heading out at 6:00AM to catch a plane back home. We slept late into Sunday. This weekend is going to be the first two consecutive days we've had alone in this house in quite some time...

It Friday night - so get yer freak on!

I was in a strange mood Friday night... I dunno, maybe it was the few beers I had at lunch, the six-pack I had after work, or the three I had during rehearsal... but I don't thing so. A case of beer over twelve hours barely keeps me buzzed. None the less, I had a serious case of the "poor me's" crossed with nearly terminal case of "fuck the world". My stomach had been really acting up over the past few days and I haven't even been able to keep a salad down, let alone McDonalds - I've lost a few pounds (not on purpose!) and about the only thing these days that doesn't make me hurl is Canadian... I know I can always trust my Molson...
So, in true "fuck the world" fashion, I strapped on my wireless, cranked up the bass and played my ass off for two hours. I ran outside, down the block (that wireless has AWESOME range), through the rain, around the building, up the stairs and ALL around the room. I did my best rock stance, and tried a couple of really low-hangin' bass-touches-floor crouches. Speaker leaps, metal poses, devil faces, and all manors of otherwise insane theatrics. Moral of the story? Come Saturday afternoon, I could barely move. I am sooooo sore... my ass feels like I've been doing 1,000 buttock-clenches on the hour, every hour for the last two days. My knees are making sounds much like my clutch did the first time I drove a standard. Everytime I go up stairs I keep thinking I'm hearing someone cracking walnuts.
Yup, it's official. I'm old. And not only that, but it looks like I'm at the age where it is officially geeky and "sad" to still be pretending to be a teenager. Who am I kidding? BobDog asked Scarecrow Balcony to open for his 5th anual Anti-XMas Bash on December 13th, so I figured I'd better start practicing my best endurance-musician impression - hell, Bob's my senior by at least a decade and just WATCHING him exhausts me - I wanna do him proud, so I'm absolutely going to keep at it...we've got the chops, we've got the edge, but I definately think I'll do some stretches before the next rehearsal....
Wish me luck!
Oh, and by the way - MAJORLY imporatant Scarecrow Balcony gig, December 13th at the Cobalt! BE THERE!

Huh? Courtney Love does drugs? I'm shattered!

Read the Smoking Gun Article
OCTOBER 9--Courtney Love faces up to a year in jail if convicted of being under the influence of "opiates and cocaine." The Los Angeles City Attorney yesterday filed the below misdemeanor criminal complaint against Love, who was arrested last week after admitting to cops that she broke some windows at a Beverly Hills home. While not hit with vandalism charges, the 39-year-old singer was popped on a drug count after preliminary police tests indicated that she was under the influence. Formally charged as Courtney M. Cobain, Love was released on $2500 bail and faces arraignment tomorrow. (2 pages)

Drug allegations are, uh, nothing new for Kurt's widow.

In other news, this TOTALLY cracked me up...
$200 DUBYA Bills

Some guy actually bought $150 worth of groceries and paid with a $200 bill. The clerk gave him $50 in change! Check out all the signs on the white house lawn... "We Like Brocolli!", "We Like IceCream!", "No more scandals!" - and the serial number is even "DUBYA4U2001" and the seal is "The Right To Bear Arms"...
I still think the best part is that the clerk gave the guy change for a $200 bill though.

Where's the webcam when you need it!

The strangest thing is happening right now -
If you've read my blog with any regularity in the past, you'll have heard about the 'high crash location' corner that my office window looks straight out at...
Well, just now, a minivan stopped in the middle of the intersection. No accident, it just stopped. Within 3 minutes, there were two fire trucks, 2 ambulances, and 5 police cars completely surrounding it, and blocking off all traffic around this major thoroughfare. Then at least 4 police officers piled into the van and with the exception of one who's standing at the drivers door, they haven't come out it at least 5 or 6 minutes... I don't know if someone's having a baby, or maybe is a hostage situation with a carjacker, who knows!
Oh wait, they're slowly bringing out a stretcher - maybe the driver had a heart attack? Firemen swarming around now ... geez, this is really up to the minute news here! Am I eligible for a Pulitzer?
Okay, so the stretcher's in the ambulance now - and a fireman just popped the hood of the van - that's strange...
Well, I'm going to post this entry now, and if anything new happens, I'll update it.

Absinthe makes the heart grow fungus

Who knows - maybe I just didn't have enough... but things sure have been crazy since I made that bottle of Absinthe...
Getting my server up and running has been an absolutely insane process. Like I said, absolutely everything that could go wrong did - from not being able to find disk 1 of 5 of my RedHat installation CDs (sure, the other 4 were there, but #1 was gone), to a power outage in my neighbourhood that lasted 3 hours, and started at precisely the same second that my linux installation completed, to a cascading failure of my DNS provider's servers... and they're located in Virginia! Then I get an erronious billing notification from my site redirector service that says 'this is your fourth notification, your service is being shut off." (of course, it was my first notice....), which coincided with my ISP randomly deciding to block port :80, which I'm running all my webservers on - and then today I've gone absolutely crazy for the last 3 hours because of the permissions on a single cascading stylesheet that was making everything on my server look wonky. Oh, and the mail server had stopped last night for what appeared to be no apparent reason, but turned out to be because it 'auto-upgraded' itself to a newer version, but then forgot to restart.....
Sheesh - I don't know - it's hard to blame myself for all these things that are so obviously out of my control, so I'm going to blame the only other thing that's new in my life that preceded the disasters.
I'm blamin' the Absinthe. ...of which I've only had 3 shots, but hey... I've gotta blame something - besides, I thought that this entry's title was 'real clever-like'.

May you live in interesting times...

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger - no stranger, I suppose, than Governor Ronald Reagan - and we all know how that story ends... these are certainly interesting times.

I actually just spent the last hour researching that "Ancient Chinese Curse" about living in interesting times, simply because I wanted to make the title a link to the origin of the phrase, and then make the body of this message about how 'interesting' these times have been lately. but after all my research, I'm dismayed to say that it's not an ancient curse at all - it was made famous by Robert Kennedy in 1966, but originated in a science fiction novel from 1950 - both references by the way, say it's an ancient Chinese curse, though the Chinese have never heard of it...

So anyway, curse or no curse, these are interesting times indeed.
Times when the Terminator (once credited with the highest body count ever recorded in an action film) is in charge of the fifth largest economy in the world.

Times where Water Purifier Salesmen are poisoning city reservoirs to bolster their sales, Tony Blair admits that he knew Iraq had no WMD's before the war, Roy Horn gets mauled by his own damn tiger, it's raining frogs in Connecticut, they're actually TRAINING dogs to sniff for shit, Michael Jackson is now 'officially' Whiter than White people,and BumFights II is released even though the four kids who were paying the homeless men bottles of rice wine to beat each other senseless were charged and sentenced after the release of BumFights 1.

...oh... and this is just TODAY's news.

On the home front, work couldn't be crazier, family life couldn't be crazier, and I don't think I know a single person now, who hasn't just come down with some strange illness or had some freak accident. Crazy, Crazy, Crazy - that's all I gotta say. I'm seriously considering signing up for Survivor just to hang out in paradise for 40 days with 'normal' people who have 'petty' problems...

Yup, I think I'm back - how do you like the new blog format? LOL!

They're all dead Dave... Dave, they're all dead.

"What happened to your blog???"
"It's dead Dave, they're all dead."
"And your scarecrowbalcony.com site?"
"It's dead. They're all dead, Dave."
"What about freestyleceramics.com?"
"Dead."
"And dogeatdogma.com?"
"It's dead. They're all dead, Dave."
"Even troopertribute.com?"
"Yes Dave, it's dead. They're all dead, Dave."
"Sed.ca?"
"Dead."
"webtek?"
"Dead."
"Your wife's photo gallery with those 1,800+ picures of Europe?"
"Oh, that survived."
"Really????"
"No Dave, not really. It's dead. They're ALL dead, Dave."
"Wow... SocraticMethod too?"
"Dead."
"Your wedding page?"
"Dead."
"visionaryrecords.com?"
"Dead."
"webcam?"
"Dead."
"ItsAllGood?"
"Dead. They're all dead Dave."
"What the hell happened????
"There apears to have been a radiation leak Dave. Either that or a power surge... either way, your hard-drive was smoking, and making noises akin to Kat on a Saturday night prowl."
"And you didn't have any backups?"
"Oh sure, we had plenty of backups. One was on another partition of the same fried hard drive, one was on was on a hard drive in another computer that you reformatted when it died a couple weeks ago, and the remote backup that you stored on your brother's computer... well, you remember that hacker that deleted all his files a few months back?"
"So you're saying they're all dead then. We've lost everything?"
"Yes Dave. They're all dead."
"Even my email?"
"Yes Dave."
"My three years worth of archived email?"
"Yes Dave."
"And all the clients email?"
"Yes Dave."
"Wasn't Visionary Records in the middle of booking a cross-Canada tour?"
"Yes Dave, they were."
"Geez, they must be pissed..."
"Oh yes Dave, unbelievably so."
"Weren't all their booking confirmations, lodging reservations, contracts, riders, grant applications, negotiations, rentals and tour dates all stored there?"
"Yes Dave."
"Shit... I'm dead!!!"
"Yes Dave, you're dead. They're all dead, Dave."