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Notes from a bemused canuck

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Category: uncategorized

Maybe it was a good thing that I wasn't at Heathrow this weekend…

Posted on May 22, 2006 By admin

20 May 2006. A WOMAN who arrived in London on a flight from Africa yesterday is reported to have died from the deadly and contagious ebola virus. Panic has spread among cabin crew and hospital staff after the death of the 38-year-old Briton. The unnamed woman is understood to work at an embassy in the African kingdom of Lesotho.

Before boarding a Virgin Atlantic flight from Johannesburg to Heathrow she visited a doctor complaining of flu-like symptoms. She was allowed to fly, but during Flight VS602 to the UK she suffered a violent fit which left her unconscious. Cabin crew and passengers rushed to her aid but towards the end of the flight she began to vomiting.

When the Airbus A340-600, carrying 267 passengers and crew, touchdown at Heathrow she was rushed to nearby Hillingdon Hospital, West London. Her symptoms matched those of the viral haemorraghing fever, ebola. The results of a post mortem are awaited.

Virgin Atlantic cabin crew who came into contact with the woman have been told to monitor their health. One said: “We are now terrified what we may have caught.” Deadly ebola is often characterised by the sudden onset of fever, intense weakness, muscle pain, headache and sore throat.


Edit: Having said that, this article was in the Mirror, which isn't the most… reliable or credible source of information.

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Today will not be a good day

Posted on May 19, 2006 By admin 2 Comments on Today will not be a good day

I can feel it in my bones.

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Walking in a Walt Disney landscape

Posted on May 17, 2006 By admin 1 Comment on Walking in a Walt Disney landscape

Sometimes I feel like I'm in a classic Disney film when I walk to work. This morning, between the birds chirping, the duckies waddling merrily along the footpath, the huge blackbirds walking in the gravel beds and the wild rabbit warren in the topiary, the amount of wildlife I ran across was quite impressive.

Almost made me break out in song.

Almost.

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People you do not want to piss off

Posted on May 15, 2006 By admin

The campus hosted an exhibition from the Korean National Tae Kwan Do demonstration team. That was… impressive!

They host national tryouts across Korea and take the top 100 people. They train intensively for months and then they take the top 25 of those people to tour around the world doing TKD demos. They showered the cafeteria with kindling and apple blobs for a solid hour.

In a word, wow.

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We didn't get a color-safe cat

Posted on May 15, 2006 By admin 8 Comments on We didn't get a color-safe cat

We got email from the cat breeder this weekend. It appears that our gray-furred cat is turning brown :)


He's still just too kyooooote!

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Oye como va?

Posted on May 15, 2006 By admin

Katy and I saw Santana in concert at Wembley Arena this weekend and boy, did we ever get our money's worth! The show was 3.5 hours, with the first act doing a 1h set and Santana playing a solid 2 and a half hour set without interruption!

Since the concert, I have come to a few conclusions:

1. I am offiially old, because the concert was LOUD! I should have known better, because I brought earplugs with me when I went to see Rush live and I was happy I did. I came out of the show with a hell of a case of tinnitus, but the music was kick ass.

2. I prefer Santana's earlier works better than his latest ones. I think I had a small orgasm when he played the first riffs of Black Magic Woman. The most recent stuff from his latest album is still good, but it's a bit too involved. Too much happening at the same time. He played a lot of the songs I wanted to hear though, like Oye como va, Black magic woman, Smooth, Maria Maria, Foo Foo, Put your lights on, and I'm forgetting a bunch more (like I said, it was a looooong set!).

3. The average age of the concertgoers must have been around 37. Easily. If not in the early 40s. The woman with the business suit complete with shoulder pads was not the typical concert fan, but man did she seem to be enjoying herself :)

The concert itself was really good, but tiring. We'd planned things well though. We had decided to make our way to London without any real haste, check in to our hotel (which we booked right next door to the arena), chill out by the hotel pool, have a meal at the hotel and head out to the concert. Things didn't quite go according to plan.

We thought we were booking a good room in a 4-star Hilton hotel. At least, that's what was on my reservation sheet from Expedia. We were expecting something similar to the conditions we had when we spent a weekend at the Casino Hilton in Hull when Katy first came to see me in 2004: fine dining, beautiful views, marble bathtub.

The Casino Hilton this wasn't. Hell, we didn't even see any mention of the Hilton chain.

I don't know how this hotel could be rated 4 stars. It shouldn't be. The bed was clean but lumpy and very uncomfortable. There was no air conditioning in the rooms, which were quite hot and stuffy. There was no mini bar nor fridge. The kettle was completely full of scale. The prices for room service and at the bar were quite high for what was being offered. The view we had was the side of a competing hotel and a really big parking lot. All in all, we were thoroughly unimpressed and really disappointed.

Wembley itself is like being in the rougher parts of Leicester. I felt like a visible minority there :)

Anyway, it was a good weekend, and I put a bunch of pictures online here: http://www.flubu.com/various_pics/santana_wembley/

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Another sign I'm getting old

Posted on May 12, 2006 By admin

I reinstalled my home laptop last night. I spent an inordinate amount of time watching a series of progress bars ramp up to 100% while a few gigs of software was copied.

I can't help but think back at the first time I installed my computer from scratch. Michel and I spent hours installing Windows 3.1 on my first computer in the basement of my parents' house. The endless tedium of switching diskettes. I knew every switch and setting and what it did, and how to optimize the last byte of memory on that computer. And I loved every moment of it. I was in nerd heaven.

Last night was just boring as hell. Something I had to do because the Windows Genuine Advantage popups and reminders and logos finally got me pissed off enough to reinstall everything properly. Plop a CD and listen to it spin. I still know most of the switches and settings, but I just can't be bothered these days. What used to be fun, trying to get everything working just right and as smoothly as possible, is now just trying to get everything working. The video drivers wouldn't install (but they've always been a bit flaky) and I couldn't get the advanced power management controls drivers to load to enable hibernation.

I managed to get everything working this morning before work, but that's not the point. The thrill is gone. I've done it so many times now that it's lost all appeal.

At least it's done now and should be stable for the next year or so.

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Confetti

Posted on May 11, 2006 By admin

Katy and I went see Confetti last night (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0427089/)

Most excellent movie. A wedding magazine is holding a “most original themed wedding” contest with 3 couples getting married on the same day at the same venue. One is a tennis-themed wedding, one is a naturist wedding and one is a big production singing/dancing wedding.

The whole thing was completely unscripted and they just improvised around the basic concept. It was brilliant. The actors didnt know about what everybody else was up to and were even encouraged not to talk to some of the other actors before filming so it would really be the first time that they met them once the camera started rolling, to keep it more spontaneous.


And the gay wedding planners were just too cute :)

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Big brother strikes again

Posted on May 11, 2006 By admin

This makes me ill.

The National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth. The NSA program reaches into homes and businesses across the nation by amassing information about the calls of ordinary Americans most of whom aren't suspected of any crime. This program does not involve the NSA listening to or recording conversations. But the spy agency is using the data to analyze calling patterns in an effort to detect terrorist activity. The agency's goal is “to create a database of every call ever made” within the nation's borders.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-05-10-nsa_x.htm

Also in the news-that-just-makes-me-cringe category, a quote from none other than Dubya himself:

“Brother Jeb would be great president”

Uh huh… let me break out the tinfoil hat now…

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Angry penguins…

Posted on May 10, 2006 By admin 3 Comments on Angry penguins…

The two people I'd asked to do our wedding invitations bailed because they're too busy. Understandable, but that doesn't mean I have to like that fact. One of them asked a friend if she could pinch hit. While we appreciate what she's doing, she's worried about getting sued for copyright infringement and the end product just isn't… what we want.

*sigh*

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