Oh Canada!

I just watched the singing of the Canadian national anthem for the Vancouver/Montreal hockey game and as I was standing there in the middle of my living room, yes I'm one of those rare birds that stands when our anthem is played, it occured to me what Canada is. While the singer was singing those famous wonderful words "Thy sons command..." all of a sudden he stopped singing and turned to the crowd in Vancouver and then it all made sense. 30,000+ people all singing in unison OUR national anthem, not Quebec's, not the Liberal's, not the Conservative's. Not an attack from one political party to another, no what I heard as the shivers ran all the way down the back on my neck and tears welled up in my eyes is what true national unity means, one country, one amazing fantastic huge expanse of a people that are intelligent, resourceful, brave, proud while at the same time having a worldwide acceptance and global friendship. From the hard-working fisherman on the East coast, to the Montreal restauranteur, to the up and coming young computer scientist in Ottawa, to the energetic and frenzied stock broker in Toronto, to the last of the real-life cowboys in Alberta and finally to the hip graphic artist in Vancouver, they all share one wonderful thing in common that my friends MUST not be taken for granted, we live in a wonderful, free country! I can't stress enough and particularly at this point when we are just a few days from a very important election in the history of our country, that we live in a great country that must not be allowed to sink to the depths that I have been seeing on the political ads and in the rethoric that I saw in the political debates. So on January 23rd, go out and vote, vote for whoever you want and whomever shares your point of view, that is the very essence and beauty of this country is that you can actually vote your conscience and your true feelings, that my friends is something that 3/4 of the world's population CAN NOT do! I'll get off the podium now, but thanks for allowing me this little space and my little voice to shout out.

OH Canada I love you!

"This blog has not been brought to you by any political party, but by a very pationate and great lover of this beautiful, huge wonderful country."

The MAC waiting game

Well as I had posted in my last entry I was anxiously awaiting Steve Jobs keynote address at MacWorld Expo one week ago. Well MacWorld is done and gone for another year and the world discovered that Apple will unlease their new Intel chip collaboration on the IMac and a new rendition of the Powerbook, now called the MacPro. So where does that leave the MAC Mini, that little machine that has so captured my heart as so many others? It's hard to say, Apple has announced that they plan on changing their whole line-up to Intel chips in the calendar year 2006 so their still might be a chance that the little MAC Mini that could, will even more. As for me it's a waiting game really. I was poised to buy the MAC Mini in its 1.42Ghz incarnation with an 80 GB drive, but now I find myself wondering if I should wait until the new Intel model? Certainly I would like the increased performance boost that has manifested itself in the IMac and MAC Pro notebook, however how long will I have to wait and once they release it how long will it take software manufacturers to port their software over to the new Intel binaries? So only time will tell at this point. I plan on keeping tabs on Apple's development and will post information on my blog.

In-lightened experience

It's unusual that I blog during the day, but I just had to share this with everyone. Last night I was putting out the garbage and noticed, for what seemed to be the 100th time, that the motion sensor on the floodlights in front of my home were not working properly. So armed with much patience and my trusty tuque and parka I decided to once and for all adjust the motion sensor. Now the particular model I have has two main settings, one to set the duration of how long the lights stay on and the other controls the sensitivity of the motion detector. Climbing up on a small foot stool I set out to adjust the duration to a minumum so I wouldn't have to stand in the middle of the driveway an interminably long time waiting for the lights to go out before moving again to see if the motion detector would pick up my movements and turn on the lights. I set the sensitivity to its lowest setting and proceeded to walk out to the middle of the driveway. Sure enough the lights didn't come on, so I started back to re-adjust the sensitivity when all of a sudden the lights came on. So I stopped moving and waited for the lights to turn off, which only took about 5 seconds and then proceeded once again to moving, expecting the lights to come on as they had done just just 5 seconds previously. Alas, they did not and I was left there in the dark. I approached the motion detector, turned up the sensitivity and began the whole process again, move, stop, wait, move, stop, wait. By now the neighbors were probably wondering why Landi was doing the funky chicken in his driveway, that or they probably thought that I had finally gone full tilt and they proceeded to slowly back away from their window making sure I would not see them. Truth be known, I didn't care, but it did occur to me how silly I must have looked, walking all over my driveway flailing my arms about trying to get this supposed "magic-eye" to "see" me! It made me chuckle to myself as I finally got the motion detector to succumb to my wishes. Then another thought occured to me, yes I've been having many of these and I'm going to go see someone about them as soon as possible. All these adjustments were for me and my 6 foot 210 lb frame walking about with arms flailing, but would it "see" my wife who has a much smaller frame than I, or worst would it see the diminutive figure of my daughter as she steps out from the front porch and towards the driveway. So again, there I was walking around in my driveway, this time trying to present the same height profile of my wife and my 3 year old daughter. I'm sure the neighbors were still chuckling to themselves at the breakfast table this morning.

... oh to be interesting in these days of boredom...

I was just sitting here in bed reading some blogs and basically relaxing. Only a few more days now until MacWorld Expo and when the planet finds out what Apple has in store for us as it unleashes their new Intel models. I really don't know what to think, in fact my thoughts have been almost exclusively on my new computer. I continued working a bit on my basement renovations, but really not much else. I've noticed that lately my blogs have been rather well... boring in fact. At this point in time, other than the drudgery of work and my every day existance I haven't really thought of anything more interesting than my navel. The fact is that I blog usually late at night as I am doing right now, and by this time my mind has already started shutting down for the night and it's a struggle just to type even the most simple paragraphs never mind trying to do a thesis on human nature or the impact that toothbrush technology will have on the 24th century. It's not that I don't think of things or ponder the miracles of the Universe, I do, it's just that for some reason my mind chooses to concentrate on the mundane lately and the, dare I say it, the mediocre. In fact I used to always quote that famous saying; Ï would rather die of thirst than drink from the cup of mediocrity". Drink from it, why these days it feels like I'm swimming in a pool. OK perhaps it's not that bad, we all have our bad days and these days or should I say weeks and months have gone on too long. I don't expect to become then next Pulitzer winning blogger and nor do I expect to have too many regular readers other than perhaps my immediate family, some friends and the odd poor soul that just happend to fall upon my blog whilst trying to find the Internet's version of restroom literature. I do want to write more interesting blog entries, perhaps some exploration of the human psyche or elaborate on the meaning of dreams, but alas this will have to be for another time when I have more patient and more alertness. For now dear reader I bid you farewell.

Shakespeare and the MAC

2006 is barely 23 hours old and as I sit here pondering what this new year will have in store for me I'm thinking how tomorrow is my first day back at work after having 11 days off and where I will get pulled, or rather, wrenched back into reality before noontime has come and gone. It basically only takes a few short hours for the routine to set back in and for me to feel as though my holiday break is gone and forgotten.

The return to work tomorrow ushers in a certain amount of excitement, if not only for my own personal inner circle, let me explain. As I mentioned in my last post, I've decided to buy myself a new computer this next month and I had decided on a MAC Mini as my next platform of choice. Now I say had as while doing research on the MAC Mini and Apple Computers in general over the last few weeks I've discovered the news that Apple Computers are moving away from the IBM-manufactured PowerPC chip in favour of the new line of Intel processors. This means a new line of MACs and therein lies my dilemma and one shared by many, many MAC owners and MAC switchers on the Internet, do I buy or do I wait. Hence the title of my blog and my dilemma, to buy or not to buy, with all due apologies to the barb. Luckily, some of my questions as to when the new machines will be on the market and which models and what there formats might be will hopefully be answered in a keynote speech to be given by Steve Jobs of Apple Computers at this year's Macworld Expo on January 10th at 9:30 AM (PST). So Mr. Jobs keynote will set the stage as to when I will purchase my new computer and this may not seem important to the average reader, but for me this may well be an almost life-altering experience. OK melodrama aside, I take my "digital life" pretty seriously. I'm an avid blogger, have a few podcasts to my name and enjoy reading up on the latest gadgets and technology whenever I get a chance. So given the chance to buy new hardware that will become almost like a member of my family, I cannot make the choice haphazardly nor can I really afford to make the wrong or uninformed decision. Now since San-Francisco, the location of Macworld, is 3 hours behind my own timezone you can best bet that come the afternoon of January 10th, which is a Tuesday in case you are keeping score, I will be sitting at my notebook computer, an IBM thinkpad if you must know, with coffee in hand anxiously awaiting the results of the keynote speech.

In preparation for the news and its eventual outcome I've taken it upon myself to start selling off some of my seldom used items I have laying around my home. To this end I've posted some of these items on ebay to make some extra cash to fund the new Apple purchase. So far my auctions are going well and I've already sold and shipped one item and have two more set to go on the auction block in the next few days, these are rather exciting times for yours truly and yes I live a rather sheltered life!

Once the news is available I plan to post the information and relevant links on my blog and then go about detailing the process I will use to make my choice. This is in case anyone out there finds themselves in the same dilemma. For now I bid you all a great Happy New Year, here is hoping 2006 brings you health, happiness and peace.