Calvin's Weblog

Webcam back online

Since we've got close to a foot of snow right now, I figured I'd spend a few minutes and compile the quickcam drivers into my new kernel so that everybody could see how much snow we've got up here on the hill....
The webcam stillframe is available in the sidebar of this page, or if you're not using Micro$oft Internet Exploder, you can see a live stream at this link - wow... snow falling... isn't that cool?

Rest in Peace

This evening, my brother in law David passed away after a 6 month battle with leukemia.
I didn't expect this to be my last entry of 2003, none the less, the family has been bracing for this day for some time now - not that it makes it any easier.
I think that everyone that reads this blog knew David, so you'll all know that he was a great musician, great friend, loving husband, son, and brother. Farewell Dave, the journey is just beginning.

Read an article about David

What a whirl-wind!

Ahhhhh!!!!! Stop the world, I want to get off!
I just realized that I haven't written in my blog in 5 days, and that my half-assed review of our last gig was pretty damn lame considering how awesome of a show it was. It's just this time of year - it's so busy! I really don't have time to write now either, but I've only been at work for 2 hours and have already worked on seven different projects... I need to breath! Speaking of breathing, you know that feeling when you're swiming out in the ocean (or a lake, or deep pool, whatever...) and you're WAY under water checking our some coral, or looking for the cell phone you dropped (or whatever) and you think you've taken a pretty good breath, but when you look up and see how far it is to the surface, you think "oh crap... that's a long way... I'd better start heading up now!" - so you start swimming up, and you see the surface is still so far away - and all of a sudden your lungs are bursting and you're thinking "crap, I'm not going to make it... just eight more feet, come on, come on, almost there.... you can do it...." Then "Ahhhhh.........." - the last few inches seem so far and the feeing is so intense like you're going to have no choice but to open your mouth and take a deep gasp, but you want to be doubly sure that it's air and not water - but, you aways make it. And it feels soooo good.
Well, that's how I've felt this last week... every day counting down to today at 3PM. The presure gets more and more intense, the stress getting laid on thicker and thicker by the second as I count down to my last minute of work for the year. Yup, as of this afternoon at 3PM, I won't be back at work until Monday, January 5th. Yay! But there's soooo much work to do.... Yesterday we had a meeting and our boss told the three of us (big group, eh?) point blank that there are 45 man days worth of work (each) that have to get done by mid-January. Since there are only 30 work days between now and then, the rest of the hours will be on OT. I said "we get Over Time?" - he replied "no, no, no.... that's your OWN time" - so, calculate into those 30 remaining days the fact that I'm on vacation for 17 of them, and you can imaging how busy my last week has been, and how busy my first week back will be.
Anyway, with the exception of maybe 6 to hours worth of work that I'll have to do this weekend (for a project due Monday) I don't plan on even thinking about work until the new year. I plan on drinking, skiing, gigging (we have a show in Abbotsford on Jan 7th lined up), catching up on my household stuff, reading, watching movies, and generally chillaxin'... but not necissarily in that order...
I've got a LOT of work to do on my computers at home - I've got to get some REAL content on our band website, and I've got to get some of the video from the last show up on the site. We also gotta get a band photoshoot done some time in the next couple weeks, and I've gotta get all my finances in order before the new year... oh crap, there I go again, thinking of all the stuff I have to do!!!
I guess my breather break is over - see ya later. I've gotta get back under water now.

Today's big news is no news to Vancouverites

Sanda won Survivor Pearl Islands. Yay, that was a surprise... like most Vancouverites, I spent most of the season trying to figure out HOW and WHY Sandra wins, unlike the rest of North America, who were trying to determine WHO the winner would be.
Back in September, a whole shwack of people from Vancouver went to an online betting site in Antigua and placed the maximum bet on Sandra as winner... this was before the first episode ever aired. Read all about it here. So, while I had no hard proof that these people actually knew something I didn't, it seemed pretty clear that they did - especially since nobody placed maximum bets on any OTHER contestants...
A lot of people have argued that even though the show finished filming months ago, the final result was aired LIVE last night and the only person that knew who the winner is was Mark Burnett... well, and maybe his producet... but to that, I say bull-crap. The two finalists know who they are, the whole jury knows who they voted for, and then entire film and production crew knows who the final two are. There must be hundreds of people who knew the final two, and at least a dozen that knew the final vote. If someone like, say, Rupert ever let slip to oh, I don't know... maybe his wife... who he voted for, and maybe she told a friend, etc,etc, it would be very easy to leak credible information. Since this is an even that has already takien place, there will always be those gambling types that will exploit any vulnerability to gain an edge.
Yes, it totally spoiled the show for me - and I really wish they'd stop taking bets on TV shows... as that article mentions, betters have also spoiled two previous seasons of Survivor, and the Bachelor... which, fortunately, I hadn't heard about until now.
Let's hope Survivor AllStars (starting in February) is a surprise this time!

Saddam Captured!!!!!

Read the article here:
Saddam Captured While Playing Santa In Montana Mall

or just go to CNN ... I'm sure it'll be headline news for a while...

Today, Chretien finally steps down

A decade - that's a long time to have the same leader... well, unless you're Cuba or North Korea... but then we're a democracy... Sorta. I must admit, ten years ago my vote helped Jean get in to office, but I figure all the good he did for this country was used up in the first three years, and he's pretty much benn skating through la-la-land for the past seven years. Despite my most recent federal vote, he was elected for another term... and I'm not so sure he accomplished anything since then. Well, fourty years and three terms is a long political career - power to ya, I have no doubt you'll go down in history as one of Canada's most influential leaders... even if you are a boob. bu-bye, thanks for the memories, don't let the door hit ya on your way out.

Chretien stands down after decade as Canadian prime minister
Chretien officially retires as Prime Minister
Chretien resigns, Martin to be sworn in as Canada's 21st prime minister

So now we've got a new boob running the country. Someone called Paul Martin. Sounds like a pretty forgettable name to me...

The big news in B.C. this week

The big news in B.C. this week, or at least in the lower mainland, is the job action being taken by the BC Ferry and Marine Workers Union, which has absolutely crippled the BC Ferry Corporation and held the poor people of Vancouver Island and the surrounding gulf islands hostage for the past three days.
Yesterday the BC Labour Minister imposed a back to work order, 80-day cooling off period, and mandatory mediation to help cool all the hot heads (things were escalating fast!) but here we are, less than 24 hours later and the Union is declaring that if the Government doesn't recind the back to work order, they're going to shut down the entire ferry system at noon today. I would NOT want to be on the ferry that's in the middle of the Straight of Georgia at noon today! Boy, you wanna see a mutiny? Just try holding some of those poor islanders hostage in the middle of the ocean.... honestly, I can't imagine anyone being stupid enough and mean enough to actually go through with that, but we'll see... just over three hours to go until the deadline.

More News:
Ferry workers ready to shut down all service
Striking B.C. ferry workers' union threatens to defy order

The first day of the strike, I saw a poor ferry worker on the news, being blasted by an irate mob of waiting passengers who were litterally screaming at the the guy and pumping their fists in the air, like they were going to swarm him and tear him limb from limb - but this guy was calmly continuing with his job through all the profanity and crazy insults these people were hurling at him. I thought two things: #1) Who can blame the passengers? I'd be pissed too - some of these people had been sitting in their freezing cars for 12 or 16 hours - it's just not fair to hold them hostage. And #2) I thought of what must be going through that ferry worker's mind... I know that I'd be like "Hey, don't yell at me.. I'm the guy that showed up for work today! Go yell at the 19 people that I'm covering for because they're all out on the picket line! Yes, it would suck to be that guy, because his union is probably blasting him even harder than the hostages...

So anyway, I started researching what's so rough about this ferry job that makes the union want to strike every three years, right before Christmas.... I mean, they don't ever seem to be happy with their contract, so how bad is it? Check this out:
The lowest paid employee on a ferry is a deck swab. His job? Swab the decks. His work week is 35 hours. His base salary is $41,000 a year. That's $22 an hour. But, any time spent at work in excess of 35 hours is paid at double overtime... not time and a half, and not for the hours in excess of 40/week, but all of 'em.... double time. In actual fact, Mr Deck Swab DOES actually work 40 hours a week. Everyone does.... everyone get overtime. If the company hires more employees, it has to pay them for 35 hours a week whether they work it or not, so it's actually cheaper to just give everyone 40 hours, and pay them for 45. So Mr Deck Swab is, in reality, taking home a few pennies shy of $50K a year.
Guess who the 2nd lowest paid person on the ship is? Second Line Cook. Her duties? Well, she's got two responsibilities actually... Pull the fries out of the oil after 4 and a half minutes AND put a dab of mayo on the top bun at the burger station. Starting salary? $44K. of course, that's for the 35 hour work week - but since everyone works 40 hours, she's raking in about $55K - that's fourty grand more than her nemesis at McDonalds, but then again, she DID have to grow some Sea Legs, so that's gotta be worth something, right?
So anyway, the 'Company' wants to set the work week at 37.5 and reduce the STARTING wage to about 70% of current levels. Mind you, this wouldn't affect any existing employees wages, only new employees. Instead of pulling up fried for $44K your first year, you'd have to make due on $31K. Sounds like a hefty cut, and it is... but seriously, it's just fries, dude... you're free to work at MickeyDee's if you can't handle it. The union's calling this a roll-back to wages 30 years ago. Fry cooks were making $31K thirty years ago? I know my dad was breaking his back fighting forest fires, hauling logs, building roads, and generally working his ass off 12 hours a day for aproximately $8K a year in the early seventies... cry me a freekin' river.

I'll tell ya - after reading all this, I stopped feeling sorry REAL quick - for that poor ferry worker guy being yelled at by the passenger hostages.

What? Looking for a gig review?

In an effor to get more traffic to the Scarecrow Balcony website, I've decided to put all my band related info on the Scarecrow Journal page instead of in this blog. There's a big-long write up there... go check it out... I'll wait.

You're back already? So, pretty kewl show eh? Saturday we got up at noon and completely vegged in front of the TV until about midnight. Sunday was all Christmas shopping and housework. Oh wait, I lied about Saturday... I actually had to work from home from noon 'till two, and again from six 'till eight. Emergency callouts... sheesh, computers suck some times. They make it so "convenient" to do work... so why does it take me two days to write a show review? I dunno.

Not really much to say about this weekend, other than I think I made the best spaghetti sauce of my life on Saturday... roasted garlic... you read about it, you've heard about it... but until you actually roast garlic and add it in copious amounts to your margharita sauce (along with vast quantities of fried mushrooms) you haven't really lived. I also made another awesome apple pie. this time with a strudel-top, and I attemped to deep-fry ham. This was just an experiment, mind you... inspired by Sages deep fried tempura battered scallops, I though of all the meats I've had deep fried.... chicken, pork, prawns, but never any ham... why not? I was determined to try it and find out why people don't deep fry ham. Okay, so I found out. We actually called it ham-corn as we crunched away on it, because it pops like popcorn (well, at least it does when you batter it in cornstarch) and it's like eating crunchy bacon flavoured popcorn. It actually wasn't bad, but now I know why it doesn't appear on any menus, and I likely won't be trying that again.

Sheesh... 11:30 already? I gotta be up for work in 6 hours. G'night!

Scarecrow Balcony Gig tonight

Okay everybody, I'm sure y'all know Scarecrow Balcony has a show tonight at Pub 340 with Randomblind and The Snits.

I know I don't have to remind everyone that it's going to be a hellraisin' time, and that good fun is gonna be had by all. What I DID want to remind everyone about is that you're allowed to bring a friend ... or two, or three! We wanna pack this place - we've got a whole smattering of great music lined up for ya, so if there's one show you CAN NOT MISS this year, well, that would be the Cobalt show on Saturday December 13th.... but we'd still love to see you tonight!

There's an 85% chance that our new stickers will be hot off the presses and in my grubby little hands tonight - I'm just itchin'to give em away, so come down tonight and be the first kiddie on the block with a Scarecrow Balcony sticker! Yay!

Oh Foggy Day

When I left for work this morning, from my place far above the clouds, it was so clear and peaceful of a morning that I turned off the radio and gazed admiringly at the silhouetted Mount Baker, against the stark, starry backdrop. It reminded me of the crisp winter nights of my youth, spent delivering pizza 'till 4AM as I worked my way through college. When the sky was clear, and the road was deserted, and the rest of the city was in a deep slumber, it was the most peaceful and serene feeling I can remember. Of course, wired on caffiene and cranking Slayer 'South of Heaven' on my 720 Watt boom stereo probably didn't look so serene to any passers-by, but it was certainly a time I remember fondly. Alone on the road at 3AM in the sleepy Fraser Valley, you own it. And when the sky is as open wide and crystal clear with the frost nip in the air, there is no better way to feel alive. In the 10 months I owned that car, I put 78,000 KM on it... virtually all of it, late night driving.
So this morning, as I'm driving and fondly reminiscing days gone by I thought of how I've had this beautiful BMW for 13 months now and have only put 34,000 km on it. Yeah, that's still a lot - but I REALLY used to love driving... what happened?
I concluded that it was something about being so 'awake' so late that was exhillerating... these days, I don't make it past 11PM too often. Ah, but there's something about this time of year, when you can be on teh road at 6:30AM and have a whole hour of darkness to look forward to ... of course, you also hit rush hour, so the whole 'peaceful' aspect is gone...
Anyway, the lower mainland has a dense, socked in, low laying fog right now. When I got to the bottom of the hill, I was thick in it, and the serenity was gone. A few more blocks and I merged onto the busy highway... serenity really gone now.
I started thinking about how short that moment of peace was, and truely, how narrow of a window we have at thistime of year to have these loooong nights and short days. Today there will be just over seven hours of daylight... the shortest day of the year being just over two weeks away.
Hey - that means that we're under three weeks from having the days getting longer again! Yay! Summer is on it's way! Hopefully though, I'll be able to get one or two more nostalgic mornings in before the dark days of winter have gone.

Happy December everybody!

Well, after all that flooding on Friday, it's pretty amazing that today is so beautiful - in fact, the entire weekend was warm and beautiful - but today's December first, and I don't think we could ask for much better. On Friday the freeway was closed right in front of where I work, with close to three feet of water rushing across it at some points. The lowest level of our employee parking garage had well over a foot of water at the lowest point, and it it was rushing in FAST - it probably got worse, but the level was evacuated, so I didn't get to see it after that.
Friday night Scarerow Balcony had a good rehearsal - I got to try out my new bass once more, but again, I spent most of the time on my new bass, lovin' the sound of the new strings. We're still working out some last minute glitches in our newest song, but I think we're going to have a great seat ready for next Friday - by the way, next Friday at Pub 340, it's confirmed - Randomblind and The Snits will be playing with us... gonna be a great show!!!

Saturday was an amazing fall day - a mild 10 degrees, blue skies, neat piles of of golden leaves all the way up the boulevard... Carole was sick, so we stayed in all day, but I got up early and went shopping for some baking suplies. I made an apple pie (thanks largely to the quart jar of apple pie filling my mom left us her last visit), so we enjoyed hot apple pie and ice cream while watching American Psyco, The Animal, and a couple other shows starting with 'A'...
I did some computer work, started a new client website, and drank a few beerz. A lazy day, but some household stuff got done.

Sunday started off pretty much the same, but ended a lot better - Randomblind Sage and his family invited us over for dinner and a nice visit. I'll tell ya, what that that guy can do with a few veggies and a skillet blows away any vegetarian dish I've ever attempted... thanks again Sage, we had a great time and the dinner was superb! My culinary skills pale in comparasin - I am indeed humbled.
Sage is starting a run of Scarecrow Balcony stickers for me this week, so I may quite possibly have some to give out at the Friday show - and he also gave me a crash course in "How Sage does Flash" so that I can update the Scarecrow site he built for us, without fear of screwing something up.

Geez, is it just me, or did this year go by really quickly? We're 4 weeks from 2004 and I feel like it's still only about March or April. Going back through my blog (before it crashed) reminded me that I really have done a lot this year - a trip to Toronto, a trip to Alaska, a trip to Edmonton, a trip to Kelowna, Kamloops, a couple to the island, etc... not to mention a dozen live performances with Scarecrow Balcony, another dozen concerts as 'fans', we've made some pretty major purchases, and we've had some pretty major life experiences.
I suppose in a way it's comforting that this year of health problems that have seemed to drag on forever has in retrospect gone by so quickly...

Anyway, I wanna go skiing!!!!! Who's up for it?