It Tickled Me

I was sitting in church on Sunday and I noticed someone sitting a few rows up who looked awfully familiar, but as that person was living elsewhere, I knew it could not be him. But it kept bugging me every time I saw him. Later in the service I moved to the very back of the gym for audio reasons. When the service was over and everyone was walking about, I saw this person again and I found myself staring because he really looked like someone that he could not be. He noticed me staring and...
It turns out, one of the RAs I worked with in Germany happened to be in Calgary for the wedding of someone who attends my church. Now let me tell you how weird it was to see him there. First of all, the school year barely ended, so he has been back in North America for less than two weeks. Second of all, he is not from Calgary. Third, he is not from Canada. He is from the state of Washington. Fourth, my church has five services every week over three different sites, so even knowing someone from my church does not guarantee I would see him if he visited. And yet here he was. It was a moment of sureality.
We didn't have much time to chat and couldn't spend any more time together, but it was still good to see him. The weirdest part, I think, was when he introduced me to people that attend my church. He's not even from the same country and he introduces me to people I worship with every week. God enjoyed setting this one up, I'm sure.

I Can Be As Cranky As Scott When I Want To Be

Sometimes I get tired of 'blonde jokes', and 'ethnic jokes' and the such. Most of those types of jokes would be just as funny if it was about 'a person' instead of a specific ethnicity or group. That's not to say they are terribly funny to start with, usually worth a grin or a small laugh if it has not been heard before. Changing 'blonde' to 'person' is usually fine...that being said, if done ironically or self-referentially or with an obvious attempt a broad, lame humour (where the lameness of the joke is the joke), then I don't mind gender related jokes, but even then, it has to be done right...Michael Jackson has died, and I find that it hasn't affected me beyond rolling my eyes at how many people are so deeply pained by this person's death - a person whom they have never met...it is sad that he died so young, but truthfully, much of his life has been sad for a long time...just a further testament to the detriment fame can have on people...especially when they become famous so young...sometimes I wonder if he ever had a real friend in his life...and the obsession with celebrity is getting worse...if Perez Hilton can become famous enough to be at big awards shows because he blogs about celebrities then I say that celebrity watching is getting out of hand...it is such a nasty world of rumours and smack talk that I don't know how anyone can survive in that world...I have huge respect for those who can avoid controversy and remain faithful to their partner...the number of people on that list is depressingly small...Johnny Depp seems to be pretty good at not being dragged through the mud...Bono too, though many people have been finding him rather smug and self-important lately...(at least he's trying to help instead of spending his time getting drunk and boozing it up with young girls)...I do find it interesting that the obsession with celebrity is not a recent development...as long as there have been movies, there have been obsessed fans who needed to know everything about them...and there have been people who have been unable to handle the pressures put on them...that doesn't make it right, though...and I do think it is getting worse...I didn't have anything in specific that I wanted to share on my last post, it just felt like I did...I think I was just tired...Transformers 2 was pretty good, though they tried to have too many funny moments...that seems to be a common theme in action sequels...everyone likes the moments of levity in action movies and movies can get too intense without them, but too many and it ruins the mood...Jar Jar Binks sucked...I don't like Twitter either...I'm doing an online/correspondence writing course right now and I got my first assignment back on Wednesday...I couldn't make myself open it and read the comments until this afternoon...I was convinced that the teacher would hate it...this is what I go through every time I think of writing something...and this is what I go through everytime I show someone my writing...luckily, the teacher liked it, though she did have a few suggestions...so that was cool...I think 'everytime' should be one word, but it seems it is two...curse you, English language, you'll accept 'grrl', but not 'everytime'..."If you had all the gold ever mined in the history of man, you could build a little more than half of Devastator"...most random movie fact I have ever heard...I'm finally reading the Harry Potter books...haven't had a decent night's sleep since I started reading them...they're pretty good...I'm on the fifth one...Harry gets falsely accused of something in the fifth book and I found myself getting angry at the injustice of it all...kudos, Ms. Rowling, kudos...I know I'm a day or two late, but I updated Grasp the Nettle today...and I'm out!

Uncertainty. Snore.

You ever have a day where you feel like you have something to say, but you're not sure what, or how to say it? That's how I feel right now.
Well, that and tired.
Go. Read.

Matchless

I bought some socks yesterday. It says there were six pairs of socks in the package, or so it said. But when I opened them, I found that there were only five and a half pairs of socks. If I ever paired my socks together, I would be upset, I suppose. But I just grab socks from the drawer and put them on, not really caring if they are matching. Of course, since all of my socks are white, most people don't notice.
Also, every time I wrote the word 'socks', I first typed 'sox'. Weird, eh?

There's No Iron, Either

You know what I don't get? Why do food labels include items that are not actually in the food. For example: my milk list the amounts and percentages of different nutritional facts which it contains. There are 130 calories. There are five grams of fat, which is 8% of my recommended daily value. There is 140mg of sodium, which is 6% of my daily value, and also somewhat surprising to me. And then it tells me that there are 0 grams of fibre, which is 0% of my daily need. Why do they need to tell me that there is not something in the milk? I can understand, somewhat, if they are telling me there is no lead or arsenic in the milk, though that would make me suspicious of any milk that failed to say it was lead free, but that is a thought for another day. But if there is nothing of a mineral or whatever in the product, why do we need to know? Do people really assume that there is something in the food because it is not on the lable?
Although, I did hear about a woman who tried to sue a cereal company because she felt they had committed fraud by falsely advertising their product as being real fruit when it was not. The cereal was Captain's Crunchberries. The 'fruit' 'shaped' pieces on the box were labelled as being enhanced to show texture, or something that basically said that the picture was not accurate. Also, she had been buying them for four years. So I guess people need the blindingly obvious pointed out to them sometimes.
Well check out the next chapter.

P.S. The judge threw the case out of court, in case you were wondering.

It's all true.

Today, I ran out of clean clothing. I had to wear dress socks after work because that was all I had left. Perhaps I should do laundry more often...perhaps indeed.
Go here.

God does answer prayer

On Monday my manager was not at work. Over the weekend her ex-father-in-law had died. Though she is no longer married to her (obviously) ex-husband, she was still close to his family, so this was a bit of bad news. The funeral was on Monday, which explained her absence. She had, however, come in early in the morning to finish up a couple of things, and while she was there, or so I was told, she had been in a bit of a crabby mood (which is understandable). This is not the first time she has been somewhat grouchy, and when she is it can be difficult at the store. She is a very demanding lady (which is not usually a bad thing).
Monday was a weird day - it was unusually busy, especially given the weather conditions (cool and cloudy, and then rainy), and none of us there were completely into the day. It was like we were all in neutral, revving our engines but not getting anywhere. Some time after noon, I had a guy come in and order some five gallon pails of paint and two single gallons. We were busy, I was a bit distracted, I didn't write anything down, and he left after ordering it, planning on returning for it in a while. I did the two single gallon pails of paint and then I did the five gallon pails. As I was finishing them and putting them at the front to be picked up, it suddenly occurred to me that I had done both five gallon pails of paint completely wrong. I was supposed to put ten drops of black into them so that they would be just slightly off white. Instead, I put ten ounces of black in them. For the record, an ounce is made up of 48 drops (at least it does for our purposes). I then had to make another five gallon pail of paint with the correct amount and the five gallon pails were a write-off, which looks bad for me and hurts the store's bottom line. Later, I mis-tinted another single gallon pail. It was a great day (where's the sarcasm font? I need a sarcasm font!)
On Tuesday, I was worried about going to work. I wasn't sure if things would be okay or if I would get home for the day (and every day after as well). I was quite certain that Tuesday was going to be worse than Monday, and I really did not want to go to work. As I drove there I was getting more and more worried. Finally I prayed a serious prayer, asking God to grant me mercy. I was willing to accept the consequences of what I did, but I was praying that the consequences would not include being fired.
I get to work and, to my surprise, everyone is in a pretty good mood, even my manager. I decide to not mention the five gallon pails, at least not for a while. As the day goes, things are great. It was really slow (which is not great), but there was no frustrations or anger and tension or anything. Finally I am pulled into the office for a chat. I close the door and sit down, wondering what my punishment would be, wondering just how close I was to the end. She sits down, looks at me and very seriously offers to put me on full time, which includes benefits and vacation time, and even a possible raise. My brain rubbed its eyes and looked around nervously, wondering if my ears were playing a trick on it. For their part, my ears just shrugged and told my brain that they didn't make up the news, they merely reported it, which is not always true, but in this case they were right. She said that she was pleased with my effort and had contacted our district manager to tell him of her recommendation, and that he had agreed. I guess he was a little surprised because my manager is so demanding - for her to praise an employee so highly is somewhat unusual.
Wednesday was a normal day, nothing to report.
Today, our district manager came in and talked to me, basically repeating everything I had already been told. But him saying so makes it official, so that was cool. I decided to celebrate by not closing the lid on a gallon of paint and then putting it in the shaker. And when I say paint, I mean oil stain, so it was lots of fun to clean up (seriously, what is the most sarcastic font out there?). Apparently I cannot be told good news...
The full time/benefits/etc thing won't actually kick in until January or February as the budget for this year is frozen and nothing like this can be added to it. But when they do the budget for next year, I will be written in so it will be set in stone. Soft stone, as anything can be changed, but stone nonetheless. I don't know if I've ever been part of a budget like that before. It's pretty cool.
Anyhoo, that's been my week. I updated Thunderfunk again, in case you were wondering.

More than meets the eye!

Thoughts from Transformers (the recent movie):

It's a good thing the Transformers learned the driving laws right away. Bad driving would have been a dead give away...on second thought, I bet they never learned the rules and no one noticed.

Michael Bay is very hard on buildings in his movies. It's like he has something against architecture or something.

When the Autobots first show up and reveal themselves to Sam and Mikalea (Megan Fox's character), it's the girl who finally asks them why they came. That's because Sam is almost certainly just wondering if he can use these giant robots to blow stuff up or pick up girls. Ah, who am I kidding...if he can use these giant robots to blow stuff up and pick up girls.

I'm pretty sure that an entire scene was planned out so that they could have a rough-and-tumble army guy yell out "Left cheek! Left cheek! Left cheek!" Of course, he is referring to his buttock.

It was worth the effort.

Now that GM has filed for bankruptcy, what will that mean for the autobots? They were all Chevs, except for Optimus Prime. Does this mean that the next Transformers movie won't actually feature any autobots? The actors will just refer to the characters like they were actually there but the cars will never be shown? Or will bumblebee suddenly be a Toyota Prius?

Michael Bay isn't so great at subtlty. See Optimus' Prime speach an hour and a half into the movie. And yet, he is still much better the George Lucas. See Star Wars Episode Four. And Episode Five. And Episode Six.

The army is keeping a hostile alien robot underneath the Hoover Dam. They claimed there was no credible threat. I say, THEY HAD A HOSTILE ALIEN ROBOT!

Best quote to describe the movie: "Films directed by Michael Bay are usually like being shouted at by a halfwit for two and a half hours, and Transformers is no exception." (Wendy Ide, 2007)

"I'm gonna count to five."
"Well I'm gonna count to three." And then he points a gun at the other man's chest. Yeah, counting to three wins.

Semi-trucks pulling 180s at high speed on the highway is really cool.

Are transformers vulnerable while they transform? Can they stop halfway and defend themselves somehow? Once they start, do they have to change forms or can the change their minds and stop?

"Sam, put the cube in my chest, now!" That line, within the context of the movie, makes sense. It also makes me slightly uncomfortable for reasons I cannot say.

I still say it was a fun movie.

Robotnick

Many movies that feature robots with artificial intelligence often make the robots look very metalic and robot-ty. For example, C3PO is vaguely humanoid, but his mouth doesn't move and he is made of metal. R2D2 is a garbage can on wheels. The robots in I, Robot are humanoid and have nearly human faces, but they are obviously robots.
Other robots are presented as looking entirely human on the outside even though they are not. Data from Star Trek the Next Generation looks human (completely white, like he was an albino, but still human) and some robots in the movie Screamers (based on a Philip K. Dick short story, in case you were wondering) were basically indistinguishable from humans.
My question is, would it be easier to accept these creations as being intelligent and nearly human if they looked human or if they looked inhuman. C3PO has a personality and isn't looked upon as though he were a simple machine like a computer or car. He is treated as a person. But I am wondering if that would be hard for people to accept because he looks so inhuman. Would people reject him or find him disconcerting because his face didn't move and he was made of metal?
And conversely, would people find it too easy to accept a robot like Data as being a person and having personality because he looked so human. Would he get respect that he did not deserve if he was less sophisticated than C3PO just because he looked more human? What are people able and willing to accept?
Do I have too much time on my hands?