My friend johen said to me earlier that  Seattle cannot cope with 2 inches of snow.  I thought he was saying that with a bit of exaggeration, the way that people like myself say the same about Vancouver.

Except uh, I should have read that literally.  It took me over 1.5 hours to drive from my workplace to my apartment, a ride that normally takes all of 9 minutes.  I kept thinking that just up ahead there must have been an accident causing such a delay, but no.  No, it seems that if there is snow in the air it does not matter in Seattle.  Even if the roads are completely ice-free and give lots of traction even on an incline, traffic can still be 10x worse for absolutely no reason.

GAH!

Roads were clear and safe today.

I am currently stuck in a best western in Bellingham WA, as the I-5 is totally fracked up with snow.  It took me over four hours to get from my parents house in Abbotsford BC to here… a mere 40K but with massive border lineups and stop-n-go with snow meant that by the time it started getting dark we were not getting as far as we needed to.

I may even be stuck here another day.  :-(

Frigging awesome!

One thing that I’ve always been a bit defensive about is the perception that Canada is really cold.  The stereotype of course is that in summer Americans show up at the Canadian border in parkas with skiis.  Of course the truth is somewhat less than that, though still even people as close as Seattle often seem to think that Vancouver is going to be remarkably colder than their own climate.

So it kind of knocks me down a peg or two when I bring the wife up for US Thanksgiving, and it snows.

So I trudged to the store today to try to get a Wii.  I went two hours early in the rain, thinking that with the reseller prices coming down and it being a week after intial release, people would not be camping out.  Boy, was I wrong.  The employees informed me when I got there that they had given tickets for the Wiis they had in the store to the people sleeping there overnight.  GAH!

One of the other guys who showed up in line suggested going to a different store about 30 minutes away.  I figured what the heck, may as well try since I got up early and stuff.  So I went there too, except I didn’t know where the store even was so I meandered around for a while before I finally found it.  By the time I got there the Wiis were also totally sold out.  The dude in front of me at the local store was there too, except that he frigging got one! GAH!!  That means I was about 10 minutes late, at most.

One funny thing: when I asked the Best Buy employees about the Wii they informed me that yes they were sold out of the Wii but they still had a PS3.  This means that the 40+ people who were in front of me in the Wii line could not be bothered to get a PS3 even though PS3s resell for hundreds of dollars more.  I nearly got it just so I could try to trade for a Wii later, but I don’t have the time or inclination to deal with resale plus I’d have to bring it across the border… all adds up to a PITA I didn’t want.

I JUST WANT MY WII!

Maybe I should buy Nintendo stock instead.

Via my lovely wife comes a flipbook sample of the skymaul catalog.

Yesterday is considered to be the worst travel day of the year.  So of course I chose yesterday to travel to visit my folks for the long weekend on now.  I was fully expecting the usual trip of 2.5 hours to take 4 or 5.  Except for some reason, even though we left just after rush hour there was almost no traffic at all!

The freeway was pretty much clear except for Everett which always sucks so no shock there.  We even got stuck behind what looked like a serious car accident except it hardly slowed us down at all.  And the border was pretty much empty!

I know how lame this is.

Rob!

This BBC reporter seems positively giddy with the news that Palestinians are using crowds as human shields to protect houses that the Israeli military warns to evacuate before airstrikes.  If you think that story shows its bias too strongly, you can only imagine what he sounded like on the radio telling the same story… practically cheering them on.

Regardless, it seems to miss an incredibly basic point.  What precisely does this accomplish?  Think in terms of the completely forseeable conclusion.  You know, when the one where the Israeli military stops warning militants to clear out?  Oops, I spoiled the ending, you were supposed to guess that part.

Mondays are an annoying day for me.  First of all you’ve got you usual “Monday Effect” going on where you’re coming down from the weekend and also tired.  But also for me, Monday means that it’s allergy shot day.

What I call allergy shots is an evil concoction of things that I am allergic to (prescribed by Doctor Nietzsche),  delivered by doses in shot form incrementally increasing in concentration weekly.  The thinking as I understand it (before my lovely wife calls me an idiot in the comments) is that if my body gets used to the allergens I get in high doses, my exposure from relatively less “normal” causes will mean I won’t react as strongly.

And in case you thought I was being dramatic with the Nietzsche comment, I should also mention that after getting the dose I have to wait for 30 minutes at the hospital just so that they can EpiPen me if I start dying.  Whee!

So then I go to work, and so in addition to being sleepy and grumpy now my arms are frigging ITCHY from being injected with crap I’m allergic to.   And though even though I get up earlier than usual to make my appointment, I arrive at work late so I miss the daily status meeting.  My bosses know the reason why I’m late but I still feel like a frigging slacker.

And because I get to work late, I am behind so I have to work late.  By the time I get home I’m *hungry*.

Mondays suck.

Story 1:

It’s 11:00 Saturday night, and I’ve just finished watching an episode of South Park and feeling a bit tired.  I remember all of a sudden that it’s Wii launch night, and off I go to the Fred Meyers in Ballard.  I show up and the line is long, but not crazy long, I think I have an outside shot at getting one.  After about 10 minutes an employee comes out and walks to the end of the line saying that the store only had 90 Wiis and had already given out 90 tickets to get one — if you didn’t have a ticket you may as well go home.

Lots of people heeded his advice, and all of a sudden I was at the front of the “alternate” line.  It consisted of about 20 people who were hoping for either a counting error, or something else — basically just hoping beyond hope.  I was specifically hoping that one — just one — person in the line ahead of me would suffer credit card failure.  Maybe their crazy ex-wife chose today to mess up his credit, or maybe an identity thief  would choose today to buy $2K worth of internet porn.  Stranger things have happened… except that they didn’t happen.  All 90 people got their 90 consoles and even though I was the first alternate I left with nothing.

Story 2:

For the American Turkey Weekend holiday I’m taking the lovely wife up to beautiful British Columbia to visit my folks.  On a whim I figure I’d see if I could get a Wii while I’m there.  So I call the local Future Shop and ask when they are getting in their next shipment.  To my surprise, they said “uh, we just got them in right now”.  So I did what any reasonable person would do — I called my mom and asked her to go get one for me.  Sadly, by the time she got to the store an hour later, they were already sold out again.

to be continued…

:-(

This weekend my good friend geekpdx came to town, and he brought lots of cool toys for me to play with, such as…

A home theatre system!  Oh yes folks, that’s right :I’ve got a home theatre now!  Featuring a digital projector, screen, speakers, and wireless audio transmission I can use my GameCube, PS2, or my laptop with arse-kicking quality.

Getting it all together was an act of heroism, but thankfully geekpdx is as handy as he is suave, and “we” fashioned a tripod mount for the projector out of $8.00 worth of metal from the local hardware store and a $5.00 hacksaw.

I also made a big purchase this weekend.  I got a Sony…

(more…)

If shepard’s pie is made of beef, is cattle rancher’s pie made of sheep?

Evil educators refuse to recognize
the wisest of humans to ever exist.
My magnificent creation of 4
simultaneous 24 hour days within
a single rotation of Earth, debunks
the puny 1-day rotation of a fake
word god and stupid educators.
Nature has no choice but to bring
forth a hell upon evil cubelessness.
Know it to be of your own making.

So it seems that  Saddam’s lawyer has warned if the death sentence is carried out, there will be more violence in Iraq.  Isn’t that a pretty easy prediction to make though?

• “If there isn’t any Pibb Xtra in the fridge at work tomorrow, there is going to be more violence in Iraq.”
• “If your pizza isn’t delivered in 30 minutes, there is going to be more violence in Iraq.”
• “If the glove doesn’t fit, there is going to be more violence in Iraq.”
• “If you believe they put a man on the moon, man on the moon, there is going to be more violence in Iraq.”

I could go on.

I mean, c’mon people!

Luckily Haggard has clarified things. He’s admitted to having visited the male prostitute but claims he did not “visit” with him. He simply got a massage and bought some meth (which he did not use!) - seems believable enough to me. Who among us haven’t gotten a massage from a prostitute and bought some meth we simply threw away in the past? I know I routinely spend thousands of dollars on drugs I don’t use. Why must we all be so quick to condemn this man who has never rushed to condemn others in the past? — Calgary Grit

Via my lovely wife, a new column from Seattle Weekly called “Ask an uptight Seattleite”.  They don’t seem to have an index page for it on their website (forshame!) so these are the three I found on google.  Funny!

• http://www.seattleweekly.com/news/0642/seattleite.php
  
• http://www.seattleweekly.com/diversions/0643/seattleite.php
• http://www.seattleweekly.com/diversions/0644/uptight.php