This is too easy! Last week Google/Picasa announced the addition of web albums to their already iPhoto-ish software. Click. Name. Upload. Easy!
It’s by invite only kids. Please. If you have a Gmail account you can apply for one. No Gmail? Now I wonder where you could get one?
Here’s my first test albums. Blasts from the past!
And I’ve added more camping pics! See the wonderment of a fire pit!
At a co-worker’s desk, I had just finished an impromtu meeting about web software and we had decided to use a scaled-down-and-dirty app that had just enough options for us to be happy.
Co-worker: So that’s the one.
Me: Yup. But it’s not pretty. We need to put lipstick on that pig.
As soon as I blurted that out (a might bit too loud, I think) I’m suddenly painfully aware of my surroundings. Did I offend someone?
I can see how it could be misconscrewed to be sexist but I don’t consider it so. Having been around drag queens and kings, done special effects makeup and lived with a super-vain boyfriend, I don’t equate cosmetics strictly with women. I only see the ridiculousness of a farm animal wearing lipstick.
I think improv class is really testing my boundaries. Especially when it comes with taboo comedy. Last night I suggested a scene where two people were workers in an abattoir. Both of the actors poo-pooed the suggestion. One was vegan the other had lived out by the now defunct slaughterhouse near Parkdale. Bah! More experience to draw from, I say.
I’ve always thought that when robots develop their own language, they will truly begin to surpass man. And it looks like my prophetic apocolypse has begun! (from Robot Gossip) These puppies have learned to decide on a “word” for common objects and have started to build their own lexicon of sorts.
Lets face it, English, or any other human language, is just too darned slow and convoluted for robots. Getting them to squeak at each other like fax machines would be far more efficient. And spooky.
Robopuppy (to Robokitten, in a high pitched squeal): We will wear our fleshbag overlords guts as garters by this time tomorrow!
Master: What did you say!?
Robopuppy: I. Need. A. Hug!
Scanning across the news yesterday I came across the story saying that Toronto is the 3rd “politest” city in the world. My initial reaction was to snort air through my nose, flop my head back like it was on a loose spring and say “yeah right.” They certianly didn’t do their research in the subway.
You can see that I’m a bit skeptical of this claim.
Last night I had to do the single most difficult thing a man has ever done. Ever. I had to try to get a refund from a computer supply store. In actuality I had put money down on a part that never materialized after 8 weeks of waiting (note to Mac-heads: never get RAM in a discount PC store. You might get it cheaper, but the hassles are insurmountable). To date, I’ve spent over $5000 in parts with this particular store so I’m familiar with the owner. He has an internalized uni-directional construct of cash flow (into the register only). So I knew I was in for a bit of a fight trying to get this cash back.
Getting to the store I had to wait for the owner to finish up with a tall lad dressed like a beach bum, purchasing more hard drive space than NASA. Suddenly the owner, bored of answering this guy’s questions, started to serve me while the Beach Bum was reading a label on a box. I hate that. I insisted that I wasn’t in any rush and that he should keep helping the Beach Bum. The Bum replies: “Dude! I’m in no rush!”
“I’m afraid I’m going to be a while with my question,” I said.
Regardless of our little exchange, the owner starts rifling through his papers to get my file. “I got you right here, Ted.”
The Beach Bum makes a deferral hand gesture so I start into my problem: I’m not happy, no calls from the computer store while I waited so I got the part from another store, bla bla bla.
“Ooooh, see Ted, we don’t actually give refunds,” the owner hisses.
“On product. In my case I never saw the product.”
“Oooh see, yeah. Oooo.” He shuffles my paperwork around as if it will make everything go away. “You’ll have to take a store credit.”
“I’m maxed out on my system now. I don’t think I’ll be buying anything new for a year now.”
Beach Bum has stopped reading his box and is listening to us by this time. “How much is your ‘credit’?” the Bum asks.
“$111. And change.” I say.
“I have that much in cash, I’ll buy it from you and use your credit towards my purchase.”
I blink. The owner blinks. Whole lotta blinking going on. It made sense. It was a nice gesture and we all won. Quickly before the owner could think of a reason this would put him out of any kind of cash, the Beach Bum hands me the money and takes my credit note. As the owner wrang us up, still fumbling over his paperwork, wondering if he’s getting the shaft because I’m certain he didn’t really understand what was going on, the Beach Bum starts to drill me about hard drive partitions. Fair dinkum, I thought, and offered as much as I knew.
The whole transaction was a fast-thinking, clever evade executed by the Beach Bum that saved my business relationship with the store owner. I thanked him and as I left the store with my cash, I thought that maybe there was some truth to that article after all.
Right by our place there is a row of halfway houses where the occupants are able (for the most part) come and go all day long. Sharkboy and I like to name each porch-sitting occupant and classify their offence:
“He’s Robbie. He was convicted for selling counterfit subway tokens.”
“That one with the meshback hat is Dwayne. He’s in for just looking bad.”
“Yonder is Pete. Got done for huffing Roots aftershave and going on a boob squeezing frenzy.”
This morning at 6:45, Sharkboy and I were passing one of these homes and a short man, dressed in an XXL tee that tented his lithe frame came bounding out of a doorway, cigarette balanced on his lips. He starts to run.
As he passes us, the baggy track pant cut-off shorts he’s wearing gives up a cheap cutlery knife with a slightly bent blade. Yeah the kind you used in high school for hot knives. It clatters to the pavement in a symphony of embarassment. Skinny turns back, grabs the knife and starts into his apologies:
“Mumble… knife is mumble… its for mumble mumble to a black guy. Mumble.”
He runs off. “Pretty good for a smoker,” Sharkboy comments.
Sharkboy and I have pretty much all the “big ticket” items in place at the campground now. We’ve got the gingham picnic table cover, the BBQ and we’re even mowing the lawn on a weekly basis (push mower, no gas or electric for these hardy boys). While we can’t afford a trailer (and thinking about it, I’m not sure I want to go that “far” with the whole “Summer in a structure that attracts ridicule and hurricanes” kinda thing), we’re having the time of our lives.
But there are disturbing moments.
Friday night, we got to the site and started to set up for the weekend. We placed our food in the cooler and finished in record time (thank god for the shed). The night was quiet and clear and the bats were doing their job of eating as much mosquitoes as possible. It was idyllic!
The next morning, I flounce into the dining tent to get some cold chicken wings I had bought for breakfast the night before, when I came across a scene of such distruction, I was certain a mini-cyclone had come through in the night. The coolers were open. Things were knocked about. And I was standing on some foccacia bread.
Racoons! Scourge of the forest! Cute but destructive vermin that have no regard for my breakfast habits, had taken, bones and all, my chicken wings.
Bones and all. Not one to be found. I find that a bit disturbing: cute raccoons eating bones till nothing remained. I thought for a moment that later we would discover a small figurine of a man, made from lashed together sinew and chicken bones, at the foot of our tent. Not event the satisfaction of a bad movie parody. The food was gone.
Pesky bastards.
Holy Bound and Read, Batman!
Lex is giving away free books! You can’t have The GRAYS by Strieber. That guy scared the pee out of me on a cold winter night…
Sharkboy and I are strolling past Club Toronto looking at all the highly sexed dykes rarin’ to get into the Pussy Palace (How do you clean out a bath house completely to switch over sexes? “Attention Men! You must vacate the building by 5pm or be innondated with estrogen!”) and suddenly Sean, runner up from The MuchMusic VJ Search zips past us. He’s well dressed in a smart sport coat-t shirt combo (very Miami Vice retro) and on his cell speaking in a normal tone.
I recognize him and do my “Wow! Celebrity!” face: a combo of Japanese School girl excitement and middle aged Canadian reserve. And before I can say anything Sharkboy yells out:
“HI SEAN!”
Without losing a breath, Sean turns from his phone and smiles wide to Sharkboy and gives him a “Hello!” in that trademark enthusiasm that got him to second place. The mask comes off and he’s back to his phone within two steps.
I’m still kind of shocked by this exchange from either one of them.
Here at Dead Robot Heavy Industries we care about your comments and enjoy reading your every thought processes. That is, unless you’re a soul-less robot script that is sent out by your miserable overlords to spam helpless blogs.
Recently we’ve noticed that some of you scripts (I hate calling them “bots” or “spiders” – they’re programs people. No moving parts!) have upped your attacks to DeadRobot’s “trackback” feature, messing up our ability to know when someone is truthfully quoting DeadRobot. As a response, DeadRobot has raised it’s comment/trackback threat level from “normal – kinda nice” to “Strong – Kinda mean”
If you have any problems commenting, please let me know. Somehow.
Spookily close to when I was 15 and huddled around a darkened dining room table with Rick Goldstien, Linda TenCate and Dave Tennant. I have to say I was the best Dungeon Master they ever had.
“We haaates them!!”