THINK TRON!
What do you think?
Filed under: General Dialogue | 12 Comments »
Strike Contact
Posted on June 4, 2006 by Jorge
Strike Out
Employees of our city’s transit system held a strike last Monday giving little to no warning to the public at all, practically bringing the city to a halt.
In my opinion, this was probably the worst way to get support. Unless their idea of support is to have their entire ridership pissed off at them, in which case they definitely succeeded. People had to cab it, bike it, or walk to work. Unless they couldn’t, in which case they were forced to stay home and miss a day.
I had no problem in regards to work as I have a great high-speed connection from home, so I spent the day working in very comfortable clothes.
The strike was illegal from what I understand, and ended in the early afternoon.
The funniest* thing about this whole strike happened just a few days ago.
Our transit system has something called a Metropass. You essentially buy a monthly pass on a swipe card that is good for unlimited travel.
The transit system made an announcement that they would refund people money for their troubles during the strike. This sounds like a great thing. Of course, they announced this after that pass ran out. Most people usually ditch their passes at the end of the month, leaving the fate of their cards in the hands of waste disposal.
Nice job, folks.
I used to defend our transit system. Now I am not so sure.
After having been to DC, ours looks pretty shoddy.
The End of Contact
This is the last week of my show at Axis.
Come Friday I will be most likely taking my lunch break to go over there and remove everything from the walls and bring them home.
A good number of people wrote in the guest book, which is very cool.
Not sure when the next show is going to be. As usual, I will keep people updated on that. At this point, though, it doesn’t look like it’s going to be happening anytime soon.
* – By funniest I mean most idiotic.
Filed under: Photography, Rants | 13 Comments »
Rebuild Plan Inspiration
Posted on June 1, 2006 by Jorge
We Will Rebuild Him
Lately I’ve been feeling sluggish. Nowhere has this been more apparent than in Karate.
I’ve never really had all that much endurance to begin with, but lately it seems as if I have lead weights attached to my legs.
So, I started running with Mrs. J. She’s quite good, and is a lot of fun to run with because she has a reasonable pace, and is very positive.
Last night, I went on my own. I was a little worried before I began, because I’ve always had a problem motivating myself to go. I usually rely on an MP3 player to get me through the session, but I sold mine off a little while ago.
It was just me and the rain.
And the run was the best one yet!
All Part of the Plan
Not only have I been physically lazy, but I have been mentally lazy as well.
In our dojo, the mental and the physical work hand in hand. Knowledge of history and philosophy are part of the requirements to become a higher belt.
When I started with this dojo, I created two notebooks in which to take notes on techniques, history and the like. It began to get messy, as the learning is done in chunks. Several points will be revisited and revised as we learn more and more about each technique. Due to the messiness of the editing process, I became discouraged.
I recently started transcribing my notes into the computer. This allows me to edit my entries much more effectively.
The goal is to write a manual so thorough that someone could conceivably pick it up and read it and actually understand part of what I understand.
What do you think about this concept?
Inspiration
I’m very lucky to have so many sources of inspiration from which to draw positive energy.
Mrs J, for one, makes me very proud. Her running ability makes me want to do better.
Dave and I are going to be running a half marathon next year. When we did a 10K a few years ago, he was very supportive, and didn’t complain once at how slow my pace was, or how many times I wanted to stop.
Another friend, Isha, just did a half marathon in the most God-awful heat. But she finished. Other people were being hauled off on stretchers, but she managed to run the whole thing! So awesome.
And then there’s Mama, who turned her critical eye to her own swimming education and is now outracing mermaids.
How can you be friends with these people and not want to improve?
Wish me luck!
Filed under: Friends, General Dialogue | 16 Comments »
Roasted Nincompoop
Posted on May 29, 2006 by Jorge
Rump Roasted
At the risk of appearing to be a geek* I will tell the story about Game Day, and the royal beating my wife gave my ego.
It all started fairly recently. Sometimes on a weekend Mrs. J will do her own thing, leaving me to my own devices.
So what I decided to do was have some friends over to play games on my Nintendo Gamecube.
Now, I can practically hear the eyes rolling in the audience, but let me state my case: It’s a great excuse to get together with friends in the winter (and rainy days), share some food, some beers and just relieve stress without anyone getting hurt**.
This previous gameday saw some new games, some new faces***, and good times in general
Towards the end of the day we started playing Soul Calibur. I’ll openly admit that after Shatton mopped the floor with us in Mortal Kombat: Deception, I was looking for some sweet payback.
So I continued to win, much to the chagrin of my fellow gamers.
Just before the final few guys left, Mrs. J, in an act of mercy, asked one of the boys for a controller, and promptly kicked my ass with her favourite character.
Mrs. Hai-Kuul? Winner.
Jorge? Humbled. Again.
Journey of the Nincompoop
I recently learned a neat fact about the theme song to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. It was a fact that I thought no one knew.
I told a few people about it, and they were just as surprised as I was.
One evening, I showed Mrs. J the beginning sequence to the movie…
Jorge: I want you to guess which band wrote this music.
Mrs. J: Okay.
Jorge: Seriously. You’ll never get it
Mrs. J: Umm…
Jorge: I’ll even give you a hint. This song was on their debut album.
Mrs. J: Hmm…
Jorge: If you guess this I will give you a thousand dollars.
Mrs. J: [A few seconds pass.] The Eagles?
Jorge: [Jaw drops.] I don’t believe it.
She guessed the damned thing right off the mark. Thank goodness I decided to do a double-or-nothing bet on the name of the song****. I don’t have that kind of money.
* – Or more appropriately, even more of a geek.
** – At least, not physically.
*** – Old friends. But their first time at Game Day.
**** – Journey of the Sorcerer
Filed under: Anecdotes, General Dialogue | 10 Comments »
Progress – This, That and the Others
Posted on May 25, 2006 by Jorge
This
So far, things are going according to plan regarding the translation of the Spaces version of Barking Space to the WordPress version.
The challenge is the sheer volume, mostly of the haiku entries. Not to mention that in November the server that hosted my images took a tumble, leaving most of the articles that had pictures without images.
So now it’s all about uploading those images again. But before I do that, I have to find them and format them.
That
The Figtography Blog seems to be a success. Quite a number of visitors have been to the site, and there are a number of comments.
If you haven’t gone already, I encourage you to go.
One warning I have to give you is that the photos are all posted by date. So it may appear that none have been added recently.
I apologize for making people do work to look at my images. That was never my intention when I started time-stamping everything.
The Others
Who watched the seaon finale of Lost last night?
I don’t think I have enough pee to properly express my excitement over what transpired in the two hours of the episode.
I know there was a lot of disappointment over season one’s ending. I don’t think that will be the case this time.
Any thoughts? Theories?
Filed under: General Dialogue, Photography | 13 Comments »
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