Author: Allegra

Born when atmospheric carbon was 316 PPM. Settled on MST country since 1997. Parent, grandparent.

How to do birthday candles in Binary

When candles are in short supply, or you don’t really want to have your age on your cake, here’s a neat dodge.

http://www.mathsisfun.com/binary-decimal-hexadecimal-converter.html

First, convert the birthday of the person to binary from decimal, using the handy converter above.

Second, light ONLY the candles showing as one.  So, for my last birthday (53) you put up 6 candles and light the first, second, fourth and sixth. 

I’m 35 in hex, by the way.

 

Well I had a lovely vacation but now it’s over

Some things that happened that I didn’t mention.

Lots of practicing, maybe a new song.  It will emerge from its cocoon eventually I s’pose.

Straightening out some songwriting stuff.

Working on the December 4 homily.

Lots of hanging out with Katie, which was marvellous.  And is. She got VERY drunk for her birthday but managed to bring home the remains of the ‘penis cake’ which Jessica La Diva made for her.  (Much consternation in the girls’ circle “How come you never made a cake like that for me?”)

Purchased a slide whistle.  I think it will be useful in the nice echoey atrium at work during town halls.  Also, a pickup for the acoustic.  Now I need batteries for all the pedals Jim E loaned me.

On a sad note, those (insert slur here) at work have still not paid me the 2500 bucks they owe me for getting Mike on board – since September, and it’s now almost December.  Could use the money, chaps.

In talks with a guy I met on Craigslist.  I am hopeful merely for civility; nothing else on my wish list seems to be practical or reasonable.

Got to go down to the Fraser and by accident (Katie Sharpeyes “contact lens edition”) saw a seal, which morphed into two seals, who promptly had a full on “Let’s frolic and leap about where people can see us” until a speedboat turned up, at which point they promptly disappeared.  Given that I had just written a song about selkies it was pretty freaky.

Jeff IS AWESOME.  The inertnets dieded for a while and he got it back up by going out to the junction box and PM’ing it.  No, not Private Messaging it.  Percussive Maintenance.  He beat its sorry little head like a gong, and it WORKED.

Helped out with coffee at church and never saw so many newcomers at once.

Watched Lost Girls last night and laughed quite immoderately…. it was a good episode and my unholy crush on Kris Holden Reid continues.

Lovely long walk in Deer Lake Park earlier this week – no achy joints afterwards, I’m loving the new anti inflammatory.

Now to make coffee and shower and go back to work.  I wasn’t ignoring you, the internet was down.

erk

God almighty.  I was two hours later and a bit than I expected getting onto the ferry.  The weather was foul and my tires are bald, and crossing the Alex Fraser the wet snow on the two tall bridge pylons was letting go in percussive little chunks.  The first pylon dropped what felt like many pounds of icy slush on my windshield with a godawful sound like glass breaking – and then the windshield wipers sedately cleared away the mess and I could see again, and me going at least 75 k.  The second pylon dropped another slushball, this one much less noisy and scary.  My heart was still leaping about like a small jungle frog when I got home.

Bwa ha ha! Signs that you are working for “My Company”

This is from 11 years ago. How much, how little has changed.

You’re half way through a meeting before you realize you’re in the wrong

one.

You know there is test equipment around, you just don’t know where it is

or who’s using it.

All the available power supplies are broken. (What do we make again?)

You can monopolize three test benches and nobody cares as long as it looks

neat.

When you meet co-workers at the bar on Friday there is always a new face.

The waitress at the golf course knows you better than your co-workers.

You go to a meeting after working at the company for three months and are

jolted out of a pleasant doze when your manager refers to you as “one of

the old hands”.

The temps last longer than the salaried employees.

Nothing makes sense, but it’s consistent.

You are told in a meeting to embrace change, and when you raise your hand

to say you’d rather fuck it doggy style, half the room nods, but nobody

laughs.

Your idea of a good joke is to send a new employee up to “The Dude We Don’t Name who used to be the CEO”  to slap him on the back and call him Mo.

Half the employees can’t make road trips to the States because of what’s

in the ashtrays.  “Better use your car, sir.”

 

At any given time, at least one of the following is down or MIA:

 

1.        The security system

2.        The bathrooms

3.        The coffee machine

4,        The switchboard

5.        The speakerphone in the boardroom

6.        The photocopier

7.        Morale

8.        Air quality

But the network is up all the time…..

 

We already know how much we could be making in the States…. the same as

now, in US dollars.

Nobody knows who’s repping what account, but somehow the orders get

entered.

You’re used to taking customer calls with nailguns going off in the

background.

The one place you can be sure not to run into your boss is the gym.

Following someone into the bathroom to continue a conversation is normal.

Following a member of the opposite sex into the bathroom is still frowned

on.

People don’t talk about cubicles…. they talk about Territorial

Ambitions.

You hate the people who can still laugh at work.

There seems to be a “Most annoying cellphone ringing contest” but nobody

has told the contestants that first prize is having a filing cabinet

tipped over on them.

 

You have 4 stages of employment:

1.        Chipper, but up to the challenge

2.        Deer in the headlights, brink of panic

3.        Full blown hysteria.

4.        Amusement at the people going through the first 3 stages.

 

In Victoria

Jesus iced Christ on a pogo stick, it’s snowing.  Or trying to. We’re here, we’re going to go to Value Village and then Radjuli.  Then tonight we’re off to Brannigan’s for dinner and the trip up Island has been cancelled for reasons of harrumph won’t get into that now.  Katie has interesting friends.

I got into the wrong lineup at the ferry this morning and the car wrangler cheerfully said, ‘I don’t care, please get on the ferry.’

So much for reserved sailings.

MUMMY I love my mother, she found me a copy of Mother’s Day, so it’s on the site now.  Oldest Homily have got.

Happy Birthday to me!

And now a word from our recently retired Comox Valley Animal Control Officer

This is from Craigslist.  It will disappear, so I reproduce it in full, spelling mistakes and all.

 
Hello kids. I’m your friendly neighborhood Animal Control Officer, and I’d like to officially tell you all to bite my butt. Before I ride off into the sunset, however – here are some parting words…

1) To all the jackasses who ask me if I don’t have something better to do than giving them a ticket for no license/dog off leash/being a douchebag. The answer is no. No, I have nothing better than to take my precious time and taxpayer dollars to write you a COMPLETELY LAME ticket for not doing what was your responsibility to do in the first place. I love nothing more than babysitting grown adults who seem incapable of wiping their own butt without law enforcement present. Thanks, dirtbags.

2) To all the jackasses who ask me why I’m not rounding up all the killer pitbulls. Where…WHERE!? Where are all the killer pitbulls that are roaming the streets and attacking your women and children. My god, the city should just issue you all SHOTGUNS to fend off these land sharks. In other news, THERE IS NO VICIOUS PITBULL EPIDEMIC. Let’s all hold hands and say it together folks, the only epidemic is misinformation, ignorance and animal neglect. Thanks, please drive through to the second window and receive a punch in the face.

3) To all the jackasses who refuse to spay/neuter, or who think they’re “breeders” because they put fido and fifi together and produced a litter of mongrels who will all likely end up in a barrel behind the shelter by the time they reach sexual maturity: Die. Diediediediedie. I wish to god that there was a mandatory spay/neuter law and that the penalty for breaking it was to be forced to spend a day working in the euthanasia room. Seriously. It’s simple fucking math, people. Every dog or cat you carelessly add into this world takes away a home for a dog or cat that is already here. So breeding means killing…so have a good day, executioners! I hope the 50 bucks you made off that puppy sure feels good.

4) There is no goddamn thing as “No Kill”. I hate to burst your collective bubble, but when you call and ask if our shelter is “no kill”, don’t treat me like a kitten murderer when I tell you NO. There are simply not enough resources or homes available to find every pet a home and that is NOT MY FAULT. Quite simply, there is no “dog whisperer” in the world who can save your eight year old Rottweiler that spent his entire life chained to a tree in your backyard. Sorry, buster – but this one’s on you. And the places that claim to be “No Kill”? They simply send the unplaceable pets across the street to Animal Control who do the killing for them. WAKE UP. Until mandatory spay/neuter becomes law, killing is going to happen.

5)You know what’s fun? Being told that I must “really hate dogs” because I’m an Animal Control Officer. Yessir. I put up with retards like you, the abysmally low pay, and this fabulously flattering uniform just so I can take all my bitterness out on your dog. That’s also why I foster animals, paying for their care out of my own pocket and using up my precious little free time to do it. Yeah, that’s it. Now how’s about you shut your mouth and put a leash on your dog you hineyhole, so I don’t have to peel him off the street later.

6) LEASHES, PEOPLE. They’re not just for the “bad dogs”. Quite frankly, dogs are carnivores – predators, if you will. When they see something furry and running fast, like a squirrel or a cat – they tend to chase after it. Next thing you know, I’m scooping up Scooby with a plastic bag…not fun. Or, how about the person who does not in fact, like dogs and has to be accosted by your poochie when they walk down the street? Or, what about the dog aggressive dog being walked safely and in control on a leash until your unleashed dog comes up and just wants to say “hi”? Dog fights are pretty ugly, and NO ONE seems to anticipate them until it’s too late. So don’t piss and moan when I give you a verbal warning for having your dog off leash…because that leads me to:

7) Your mouth will write you a ticket. Oh yeah, no kidding. I hate writing tickets. They’re a pain in the butt. I have to deal with your melt down, then I have to go back to the office and write a report about it. Next, I have to show up in court because you want to contest the ticket, even though 60% of the time YOU NEVER SHOW UP YOU CHICKENSHIT BASTARDS. So, the deal is this – if you’re nice and not eggregiously breaking the law, I’m probably just going to warn you and then go about my day. As soon as you break out the lip however, I’m breaking out the ticket book. Press hard, there’s four copies.

In conclusion. I quit! Actually, you dipshits broke me a while back and it’s been months of therapy before I could write this little missive. I still shudder when I see a pair of testicles on a dog though, so watch out.

Memory lapses

so… I wrote a song called “mythical” back in the happy days of yore when I was still living at the Augur Inn.  I got the chorus but nothing else.  Then sometime in the last year or two (I have no idea when, because I made changes to the file and thus overwrote the original save date) I a) put the Seagull in a DADGAd tuning, invented four verses for it, recorded it, and then promptly forgot about it.  I listened to it yesterday for the first time since I recorded it with a horrified feeling.  I had NO recollection of doing it.  None.  Zip, Nada, nussingness, nullity, a lack, a void, an absence and a big goose egg packed with missing.

To make life even more jolly, I had no notes about the bizarre open tuning chords I used to back the song up, so I spent a very chastened hour last night trying to figure out a) WHICH open tuning it was (Paul was very instrumental in solving that problem) and b) what the hell the chords were.  I then went to my song list and found out there were HALF A DOZEN songs I hadn’t put on the list.  My plan for the folks’ place when I go visit is to try to get some order pounded into this chaos, and perhaps write a few more tunes down.  I can’t say ‘It’s gotten away on me” because THAT would imply that I, you know, had some control over whatever you may call my proclivity for writing stuff.

sheeshkabobbers.

Put gas in the car (Ziva was down to fumes), Katie cut my hair, there’s more beer in the fridge.

I joined Lumosity.  I am so frightened of losing my mind I’m doing paid exercises for my brain now.  It’s loads of fun and I have a (Howard’s mother’s voice:) KEWPON FOR IT.  If anybody wants to sign up, hint hint.