The Ontario Science Center in Toronto had a fantastic (yet tiny) tropical garden section. Poison dart tree frogs were in tanks, and the leaf-cutter ant colony was completely dead [and thus missing until next Summer] but it was a nice stop over anyway. Here’s a video of the waterfall and fake swinging bridge.
Robert was in town today and so a group of us troublemakers went bowling. I managed not to finish in last place despite being handicapped with left-handed bowling for the second game we played in our 1 hour time slot. Saturday night bowling is expensive, at over $32/h. Among our group we narrowed the movies down to “Awake” [5/10], and should have narrowed it a little more. I managed to spend more on eating food today, than I made making it (but I was buying for two).
On an unrelated note, the Canadian Blog Awards are into the home stretch, and you can make your vote heard by visiting them too. The winners of the CBAs will be revealed way before the Bloggie winners are.
What the heck is an “Information Communication Ethics Committee”. Something tells me I’m censored in Korea already…
WARNING: Be very cautious in opening any links inside this news article. Google warns that a subpage of one may “harm your computer”.
Referring Link http://211.248.109.225/moral/decide/d_monitor_detail_view.php?id_key=3335921
Host Name
IP Address 211.253.9.*
Country Korea, Republic Of
Region Kyonggi-do
City Seoul
ISP Information Communication Ethics Committee
I can only guess they are paying attention to my blog because of my nomination for a Bloggie award. Let’s hope their “decision” about my “morality” is favourable so I can have voters from Korea stop by to read what life is like from Saskatchewan.
I was checking my bank balance, and spreading ’round the cash a little (paying bills), and noticed that the ABM charge for when I went to a non-PC/CIBC bank machine was only $1.50 when I knew the machine said it would be $2.00. “Sweet,” I thought to myself, I should congratulate PC for having such an awesome “no fees” account that they take a 50ยข hit when someone uses an ABM that gouges them. Then I looked more closely at my statement and saw that the $2 charge for the ABM was ALSO incorporated into the withdrawl.
Jan 18, 2008 ABM INTERAC CHARGE $1.50
Jan 18, 2008 ABM INTERAC WITHDRAWAL $82.00
GRRRR, $3.50 to take my cash out of the bank? Thanks for reminding me why I NEVER take cash out of anything except the “correct” bank machines.
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In other personal minutiae, Ginger got her shots yesterday, and I changed the battery in my Timex Data Link watch for about only the second time since 1997. Best..watch..ever. I’ve changed the band on the watch more than the batteries. Now I need to hook up a CRT monitor to send some phone numbers to it via the bar code reader built into the wireless watch.
UPDATE: Tonight Ashley and I watched a movie with family. “Flushed Away” [8/10] was a surprisingly entertaining cartoon about a mouse who goes on an unexpected sewer quest. I also got given a watch band for my Timex, yippee!
I spent last weekend at what can be described as the best blogger convention I’ve been to (that I didn’t organize ;-). I was fortunately contacted last year about applying for the Bloggers team on the January 20, 2008 edition of Test The Nation. It’s an occasionally broadcast quiz show to entertain Canadians both on Television and online.
I left for the airport with Ashley at about 4:30 in the morning on Friday. I asked for an early flight so I could get a jump on the weekend with some touristing. Instead of sleeping on the plane, I watched a movie about how aliens would colonize my brain matter if I fell asleep. That set the mood for the weekend — wired on jitters and adrenaline!
Air Canada was mercifully well behaved this trip, only delaying me 20 minutes on my return flight. They promised me that my Roughriders flag stick would [probably] be broken in shipment, but they couldn’t even manage to do that to me, as it arrived intact both ways. My only complaints were (I have to complain about something, it’s Air Canada!) they didn’t give me a real window in my “dead seat” for the return flight (but I switched with a better seat that had one, and they played a car ad right after the mandatory safety video. What a great way to ensure that passengers further tune out the repetitive safety courses — throw in advertising! “Watch closely everyone, you need to do these things to NOT DIE! Oh, and BUY THIS CAR!”
… skipping a lot of happenings to cover those in another post, and getting to the main event…
- I was going to be in the front row at some point, but maybe after Molly met me on Friday she realized I was second-to-last-row material ;-)
Allan’s summary, with Jesse’s [also commenting at The Tea Makers] sums up the event very well. I’d be foolish to rewrite it, but do want to point out that Rick S. won, not “Chris”. I didn’t feel apart from the group of bloggers, or most groups in the room really, but I wasn’t surprised that most people didn’t know who I was. I didn’t know about half of the bloggers on my team before hearing of them through Test The Nation. Yet Molly at CBC managed to collect a very diverse and interesting group of bloggers for the show. Unfortunately she was unable to feature enough of the unique bloggers and other personalities on the 2 hour live show, to satisfy my desire to have these people broadcast to the country. There was enough intellect and wit in the room to fill a week of TV shows, and I only got to get a taste of it all in the hours leading up and winding down from 7:00 to 9:00.
BlogTO interviews some of the stars at the show, including Samantha Bee:
My short interview with Bee took place right after the clip in the BlogTO video:
Some of the moments I wish I had on video were:
- Lorne Cardinal and I sharing a “Rider Pride” moment as he saw me waving the Saskatchewan Roughriders flag in the introduction.
- The surprisingly young Mark McIntyre grimacing as I suggested he draw me a cartoon instead of give me his autograph :-D
- A video of whoever it was that slipped a Snowbirds sticker onto the bottom of the Test The Nation trophy, as if it were the Grey Cup or something. The CBC prop guy noticed it, peeled it off, and I claimed the sticker. Now is attached to my Riders flag instead.
- “Thump thump THUMP…We will, we will, BLOG YOU” as it dissolved into a fit of giggles. The bloggers were by far the most cocky, immature, and giggly team on set. I did my best to raise the bar, but only slightly. I remember laughing when I saw a camera’s teleprompter reboot, and it had WINDOWS 98 running on it! This later made sense when I saw an old film camera in the CBC Museum that was retired as lately as the 1990s.
I’ll list more videos and photos, and stories another time. I haven’t covered the after-taping party yet.
UPDATE: And if you’ve been waiting to hear my score… I got 51/60! Not bad, one above average for my team, and enough for 85% correct.
Oh my goodness, it’s a huge honour (notice the Canadian ‘u’) to be nominated and considered for this award of Best Canadian Weblog. Please head on over and give your support.
I’m up against some pretty heavy hitters, so this will be an uphill battle for me to win this award. Astounding that two of the blogs considered are from Saskatchewan! Yay SaskBloggers!
Rannie’s blog was retired from the category because he won it too much! I met Rannie in Toronto on Sunday as we were on the same CBC TV show.
-more to come on this later, as I just found out!
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I should also note that the separately run Canadian Blog Awards are into their second and final round of voting, so head over there next.
I’ve got a Regina Car Share Co-operative meeting tonight, so won’t be posting photos from my Toronto trip to appear on CBC for a while longer. There are tons of blogs talking about it linked from here.
My official score was 51/60, and I missed a few I should have had, if I’d read all of the answers before deciding that I got it. APEC, and the cloning questions were a couple I missed.
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While on my flights I watched “The Invasion” [7/10] - big mistake - not because it wasn’t good, but because I’d had only a few hours sleep, and the movie is about turning into an alien if you go to sleep! I also watched a short Canadian funny film about a neurotic family and hair loss, and then most of the chilling “Shake Hands With the Devil” [8/10] which was one of the answers on Test The Nation!
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Let me take a moment to go all Chris Crocker on you, and implore everyone to “LEAVE HEATH LEDGER ALONE!” He died, just like thousands of people did around the world yesterday. There are more pressing issues the media should be talking about than speculating if he’s the next dead celebrity due to drug misuse or not. Let the autopsy decide what he died from instead of dragging his name through the mud, even if it is just with your circle of friends. He’s not Anna Nicole Smith, he’s not Marilyn Freakin’ Monroe, he’s right now another person who died at a young age, and happened to be a movie star.
