The Occasional Solipsist

St. Catharines is full of skunks.

It turns out our dog Maya isn't too bright.

We let her out for her nightly ritual last night, and about 5 minutes later the worst smell I have ever encountered came wafting in through the door, letting us know that not only had she gotten into an altercation with a skunk, but that she had gotten into an altercation with a skunk and lost.

Recently Superwife and I watched an episode of Mythbusters (on the Discovery Channel) where the guys were trying to get a skunk to spray them and they went through three separate skunks before deciding that skunks must only spray when they are really pissed, because none of them would so much as sneeze at them.

Apparently Maya has methods of intimidation that the Mythbusters don't possess.

The poor thing got doused by the little bastard, along with my entire backyard, effectively putting a damper on our evening and hers.

It was only after a very thorough cleaning of a concoction our vet told us about that she was even allowed back in the house. And that after she had to spend her first night outside in her life.

The silver lining to my poor dog getting hosed with noxious fumes: My sister came over to help me shampoo Maya, and in the proces got her clothes completely soiled, leaving me the opportunity to outfit her in whatever we had handy.

So I now have a picture of my little sister, wife of a wealthy Italian businessman, who would normally not set foot out of the house without doing her hair and nails first, in a pair of trackpants, mismatched blue sneakers and a glittery superman shirt.

Needless to say, anything she may have previously been able to blackmail me with has been effectively nullified.

Labels: family

You know that cute inoffensive game about puppies you thought you were getting for your kid/grandkid/niece/nephew/whatever?

It was actually puppy porn.

Turns out that now there is a mod called the 'hot biscuit mod' (of course) for Nintendogs that allows your puppy to do what comes naturally when the mood strikes it.

Should have gone with GTA: San Andreas. At least with 'hot coffee', there's no nudity.

Check out joystiq for the whole scoop.

Labels: gaming

It's having kids.

And catching just a glimmer of seeing things as they do.

Superwife, Trinity and I watched the gorefest that is Sin City tonight, and it helped illuminate a new thing for me: Censoring the content my daughter is exposed to. Or in this case, not censoring it.

Ok, so she's only 7 weeks old, but babies at that age do see in black & white. And this movie was mostly black & white save for the profligate amounts of blood and carnage strewn about. So maybe she couldn't really see any of it, but she was in the same room as the tv it was on.

And if there was ever a movie that she shouldn't be in the same room as, that was it.

Not that I'm against violence. I may be a pacifist, but I am also a guy, and I like a good shoot-em-up as much as the next guy. But this movie was gory just for the sake of being gory. Somebody must have thought that it made up for the Tarantino-esque series of almost related events that made up the plot.

Next time I rent movies, I'm reading the back carefully first.

Either that, or I'm hiring a babysitter for Trinity.

Labels: family, trinity

I came across a great entry on another blog about how Hell would work a few minutes ago. It was a bonus question on a chemistry mid-term.

For those of you religious types out there (and any religion will do, so unfortunately, that's most of you), you're likely to not find this funny.

So this is for everyone else:

Most of the students wrote proofs of their beliefs using Boyle's Law (gas cools when it expands and heats when it is compressed) or some variant.

One student, however, wrote the following:

First, we need to know how the mass of Hell is changing in time. So we need to know the rate at which souls are moving into Hell and the rate at which they are leaving. I think that we can safely assume that once a soul gets to Hell, it will not leave. Therefore, no souls are leaving.

As for how many souls are entering Hell, let's look at the different religions that exist in the world today. Most of these religions state that if you are not a member of their religion you will go to Hell. Since there is more than one of these religions and since people do not belong to more than one religion, we can project that all souls go to Hell.

With birth and death rates as they are, we can expect the number of souls in Hell to increase exponentially. Now, we look at the rate of change of the volume in Hell because Boyle's Law states that in order for the temperature and pressure in Hell to stay the same, the volume of Hell has to expand proportionately as souls are added.

This gives two possibilities:

1. If Hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at which souls enter Hell, then the temperature and pressure in Hell will increase until all Hell breaks loose.

2. If Hell is expanding at a rate faster than the increase of souls in Hell, then the temperature and pressure will drop until Hell freezes over.

So which is it?

If we accept the postulate given to me by Teresa during my Freshman year that, "it will be a cold day in Hell before I sleep with you", and take into account the fact that I slept with her last night, then number 2 must be true, and thus I am sure that Hell is exothermic and has already frozen over.

The corollary of this theory is that since Hell has frozen over, it follows that it is not accepting any more souls and is, therefore, extinct... leaving only Heaven --- thereby proving the existence of a divine being --- which explains why, last night, Teresa kept shouting, "Oh my God!""

THIS STUDENT RECEIVED THE ONLY "A"

Labels: atheism

1. waking up in a bad mood after thinking all night about things that I cannot immediately or foreseeably change


2. salt-based water softeners that leave my skin feeling so fucking slimy after a shower, that I'm left feeling dirtier than before I got in


3. cleaning dog shit off of a hardwood floor

Labels: rants

But I'm not feeling quite as emotionally overwhelmed by it as I was when I took the picture, so instead you get this nice short blog entry about it.

Great tree though.

Labels: everything else

I haven't yet wanted to try one for a few reasons, chief among them time. Maybe I've been waiting for the right game, but that would have definitely been FFXII, so that excuse dosen't hold up.

Truth is they kinda scare the hell out of me.

I have read horror story after horror story about jobs lost, marriages that have fallen apart, and families destroyed over these games. And I know that if I started to get involved in one, I have exactly the right mix of love of RPGs, addictive personality and cynicism towards real people to get totally lost in one of these metaverses.

The article makes some shocking comparisons to these immersive online experiences and the virtual reality world of the Matrix. And claims that either we're destined for that future or we're almost there already.

Here's a taste:

Total immersion, the kind that could really fool you, won't happen tomorrow. But as time goes on it is absolutely inevitable that the graphics will become life quality, that visual displays light years beyond monitors or cumbersome headsets will hit the market. The keyboard and mouse will be long gone, everything done by thought and voice. It is the logical end of everything game developers and console makers are trying to do today and they will not stop until they have it.

And that, my friends, will be a watershed moment in human history. The point where we can trick the senses into thinking a piece of software is real, thinking a real supermodel is in our bed or a dragon is in our front yard or our dead mother has come back to give us advice, that's when everything changes. The metaverse will still be less important in many fundamental ways. Goods won't be produced there, food won't be grown there, babies won't be born there. But in the minds of a whole lot o' people, visits to the physical world will be just brief interruptions to the "real" world as they live it, the world where all of their friends and hobbies and ambitions are.

Labels: gaming

I stood around various vehicles for three hours tonight being a passive participant of conversations about engines, transmissions, brake lines, etc etc.

There was a great deal of head nodding and uh-huh-ing on my part. Little else.

Nothing like knowing absolutely nothing about a conversation's subject matter to make you feel like a complete dumbass.

I could blame my old man for not teaching me anything about cars, but I can only take that so far. Probably a safe bet that his Dad didn't teach him either.

And there was so much that he didn't teach me that I wouldn't want to waste blame on something I don't really care to know more about.

But I think I'll take every component out of my Dell when I get home and rebuild the fucker from scratch.

Remind myself that I know something about anything.

Labels: tech

So we're staying at my in-laws again for awhile, and we have had the pleasure of meeting my brother-in-law's girlfriend's daughter, Brittany.

Sounds like a line from everyone's favourite Scifi spoof, about 'Your Father's Brother's Nephew's Cousin's Former Roommate' non?

She's a cute kid, 5 going on 25, and in her I have a small window into what my future will be like with Trinity.

She's taken quite a shine to my daughter, and is totally mesmerized by the whole process of breastfeeding. In fact, when Superwife told Brittany that it was time to feed Trin, she asked how she was going to make that happen.

She didn't see a bottle anywhere.

Today, Brittany was playing with the dogs, who were alternating between licking each other's crotches, and her hands and face. And afterwards, she made a beeline for my little girl, and I had to teach her about the wonder of purell and its cleaning applications.

So I cleaned her hands up and she sat and stroked Trinity's cheek with that blissful fascination that 4 year olds have.

About a half hour later, Superwife was petting our dog, and Brittany matter-of-factly, and deadly seriously, told her that she wasn't going to be able to touch our daughter until after she had cleaned her hands.

If our daughter is anything like this kid, cute or not, we are in for some real trouble.

Labels: family

I wonder if the person at the BBC who dreamt up that particularly ingenious plot device has received his/her knighthood yet.

But I think before deciding to leave the show Christopher Eccelston should have consulted a certain Wil Wheaton about the perils of leaving a popular tv series for bigger and better things.

Nowadays, Wil writes books that only I read, and regularly gets his ass handed to him in his new career as a professional poker player. The acting gigs that he expected after ST:TNG never materialized, and now he acts about as much as I do. Which is never.

I'm just saying.

Well, he was on CSI last year in a performance that was eerily similar to his role in the TNG episode The Game; just picture the 'Let go of me!' scene from that ep and give him longer hair and you've got it. (You are on a Star Trek geeks site, in case you forgot)

You were a terrific 9th Doctor, and we'll all hope for better things for you Mr. Eccleston, but I totally expect to see you at Toronto Trek 40, signing autographs beside Diana Muldaur.

Where was I? Billie Piper.

Well at least somebody made the right choice to stay inside the Tardis. I can't imagine what the British pop star was thinking when she signed on board to do Doctor Who, but who the fuck cares? She's blonde, cute, has a great body, killer smile, and she's on Doctor Who.

She is to scifi as Morgan Webb is to gaming.

Translation: She rocks.

Of course, she at least has a career to fall back on if she pulls an Eccelston at the end of next season.

Labels: doctor who

Ok. I understand that in terms of time, high speed internet has only been around for what, 5 or 6 years, at least for the average user.

But man is it easy to get completely dependant on it in a short time.

I've been without high-speed for all of 4 days due to a connectivity issue, well really a sons-of-bitches issue, the sons in question being Cogeco Cable, but I digress.

But since I've been relagated to the world of dial-up internet, I've come up with a startling observation: The internet sucks ass at low speeds.

Try uploading a file at 40 Kbps. Or opening a webpage that has a graphic on it. Any graphic at all. Even a small gif. That's pronounced J-I-F btw, for all of you newbs and phonetically challenged. You know who you are.

Seriously I want to know how anyone in the world can get by with only a dial-up connection.

I've been in a state of constant withdrawal for the past 4 days, just jonesing for the ability to check my rss feeds, download a few tunes, or just be able to put in a full days work without ripping my hair out.

So it is sweet relief that I now have high speed again. Although I'm now short one excuse for not blogging daily.

Well, I'll come up with something else as need be.

And I've gotten a few good new names for the wagon since my request.

I'm now adding The Lost Focus and The Anti-Shaggin Wagon (Thanks Scotty) to the list of potentials.

Labels: tech

Now I know that not too long ago, I posted about how men shouldn't be afraid to get involved in as many of the baby-related tasks as they want to be involved in.

And I'm not changing that opinion.

I take the late night shift bottle-feeding Trinity, I change, bathe and cuddle her, and I have already changed a lion's share of diapers. I am enjoying my role in this whole thing. And when I get the attitude from people that my active role somehow makes me weird, well, you can imagine the 'go fuck yourself' that's lurking behind my quiet brushoff of those comments.

That all being said though, there's something distinctly concrete about signing for ownership of a station wagon, knowing full well that I will soon be parting with my somewhat sporty 2 door pre-parenthood vehicle. I mean, I'm all for owning my share of parental resposibilities, but a station wagon?

The scratching sound that signature made seemed unnaturally loud to me.

Significantly loud.

Well at least its not a fucking minivan.

Shudder.

So what I am looking for is some help with the naming of the car, every car having to have some kind of nickname attached to it.

So far the best that I've come up with is The MyTesticlesAreInMyWifesPurseMobile. First runner-up was The HotGirlsWhoArentMyWifeRepeller.

If anyone comes up with a better name for the new wheels, feel free to fire it off to me.

Labels: family

I know I heard someone say the phrase rigoddamndiculous in the third Austin Powers movie, but I can't remember what part. If anyone could help me out, I'd appreciate it. I think it was Dr. Evil at least.

For whatever reason, the word popped into my head earlier today and its been bouncing around it there all day.

And every time I think about it, I start laughing my ass off.

Rigoddamndiculous.

What a great word.

Labels: funny

No posts for a whole week.

Well, let's get you up to speed - My daughter is now breaking out of the skinny newborn phase and is fast entering the chubby cherub phase. She gets cuter and more interesting every day.

Trinity does anything now and I'm lit up like a christmas tree, all smiles and pride. If she tries to move her head, makes a new noise, smiles, whatever.

It has fast come to my attention that she is going to have a power over me that no one else ever has. Awesome feeling. And scary as all fuck for me once she figures it out for herself.

So no beer: I'm on pills to correct a horrific hereditary toe condition. Apparently I'm not to drink while on the medication because of possible serious side-effects. Something about liver failure or something.

But that's probably not a big enough reason to forgo my first drinking binge since about Superwife's sixth month. Can't wait. Liver be damned.

Labels: family