Bushland.net

Re: Carol Grosse (Baby Seals - God's Natural Photo op!)

From Carol Grosse:
Your facts and my facts differ greatly.
Veterinarians have stated that the seal hunt is not humane - many seals are skinned alive and dragged alive across the ice with the ice picks.
The seals are hunted to supply Europeans with fur - and that is a sad fact. The hunt is inhumane, very little (approx. $1000/annually) is the income to each hunter and the animals suffer greatly. (Yes, there is other suffering in the world but this should not be an excuse to condone this suffering.)
What a barbaric way to suppport an industry. Shame on Stephen Harper and shame on the rest of Canadians for turning a blind eye to this inhumane barbaric practice. Mr. Harper, you do not speak for me - my votes and other votes will speak for me.:

Carol,
I appreciate the fact that you took time out of your day to read my seemingly barbaric ramblings on my little corner of the web. I researched my facts again because of your comment just to make sure that I wasn’t falling prey to the huge propaganda push associated with this hunt and I came to the realization that you have no idea what you're talking about. I actually laughed when I read your comments because you obviously got your information from the latest celebrity protester, Pamela Anderson, or the environment zealots at PETA.

1. Veterinarians have agreed that hunt is human. The skulls of baby seals are egg shell thin at the time they are clubbed and death is just about instant for them when hit. They do not feel any pain, they do not suffer, they just die. It is a humane way for a baby seal to die but don’t get this confused with the hunt as a whole. Any hunt, seals, moose, ducks, chickens, turkeys, etc.. isn’t humane by definition as we are not treating the animals with kindness :)

2. Many seals are skinned alive you say? Death occurs with the cessation of electrical activity in the whole brain and not just the neo-cortex. With that said I find it hard to believe that baby seals are still legally alive with their skulls crushed or a bullet through their heads. If a chicken runs around with its head cut off does that mean it's still feeling pain? These "alive" seals you're talking about are nothing more than an involuntary muscle twitch which is a natural, albeit startling, process of death. Amusingly enough clubbing a seal with a hakapik is more humane than shooting a seal with a gun.

3. Hunted to supply Europeans with fur? This is a half truth because the seals are hunted for their meat and oils, the hunt isn't solely for the pelts.

4. $1000 annually? I would love to see how you calculated this number! To date many hunters have stated that their income from sealing represents between 25-35 per cent of their total annual income. With your math the annual income of a seal hunter just over $4000, we have a discrepancy somewhere! I know the cost of living in Newfoundland is low but come on.

6. The rest of Canada isn't turning a blind eye to this hunt as many have taken the time to read the facts and realize that this hunt is a part of our heritage and it is humane. I guess you're the exception to the rule.

7. From the sounds of your vote it will probably end up for someone in the Green Party, which is your choice. The Liberals, NDP, and Conservatives will all support the seal hunt so it's your only real choice. Don't worry, no one will miss your vote.

I'm now left to wonder if you even got your name or e-mail address right when you posted this comment!

Baby Seals - God's Natural Photo op!

Like clockwork misinformed celebrities are braving ice flows in the Atlantic Ocean for the sole purpose of creating a media frenzy in attempts to stop the annual seal hunt in Canada. So the stage is set for a showdown between a traditional hunt that has been ongoing since the 1700’s against the celebrities who realized one night while sleeping in their secluded mansion that they actually like cute white animals! This profound realization in turn drives the celebrities into a week long mission in which they will denounce a country, province, all levels of government and a traditional way of life only to end up back at their houses telling their friends how good it feels to contribute back to society and how smooth the salt water made their skin!

So on one side we have the rich and powerful telling up to 10,000 people who depend on the hunt to put food on the table, keep a roof above their heads and put clothes on their children’s back. Do these celebrities understand how out of touch they are with the people involved in the hunt? A lot of the communities involved don’t have Wal-Mart’s, grocery stores, provincial or federal government buildings, Tim Horton’s, or even a McDonald’s!! If these people can’t fish or hunt then they will have to give up their way of life and move somewhere, most likely outside of their province, to Alberta so they fan provide for their families.

At the end of the day though I guess its alright for celebrities to call these people savages because we all know that they would never make such a statement without meeting the people, right? Paul McCartney has the time and the money to fly in a helicopter to land on the ice flows, that are thin this year due to a warm winter, to lay down next to a seal pup to only end up disturbing it and have it growl at them in defense so I’m sure that he has asked some hunters to meet with him so he can hear both sides of the story. Nope, not likely! What gives these guys the right to judge a way of life they know nothing about except the propaganda that has been fed to them by the animal rights crowds? How do you think it looks when someone so high and mighty without a care in the world tells a man that he can’t provide for his family anymore mainly because baby seals are cute! The seal hunt in Canada is one of the most regulated and humane hunts in the world!!

On CNN the McCartney’s finally put a face to the other side of the argument and they were obviously rattled by it. Danny Williams performed amazingly well if you could look past the fog of propaganda that McCartney’s laid over the course of the debate. When confronted by Danny it was obvious that Heather had little to no respect for him by just about calling him a liar, cut him off at every chance she had and rolled her eyes when Danny made a solid point. The McCartney’s proved Danny’s point that they are misinformed because at one point Paul stated that he was in Newfoundland, when in actual fact he was in PEI filming from Charlottetown. But heavens no, there is no possible way that these people are misinformed! I respect the fact that they are trying to help a cause that they believe in but at least have all the facts before you do so. Honestly though? I don’t know what the McCartney’s want. The hunt is highly regulated and supported by the UN and the WWF with many independent veterinarians studying it and calling very humane. I guess what we should do is create a “Baby Seal Wish Foundation” so we can give a trip to Disneyland for every seal that will be killed in the hunt. That’s defiantly the missing piece of the puzzle.

I'm still kickin

Ok, it’s been a long time since I posted here and a lot has happened since October 24th. Well where to begin…I ended up going back to Newfoundland for Christmas this year and it turned out to be a really great time. I got to see a lot of people over my time home, although not nearly as many as I would have liked. It was great to be home but it was kind of sketchy because I never had my car, had to share with my parents, everyone was busy doing family stuff, and it was cold and snowy! The next time I come home, hopefully this summer, everything should be better then. I never realized how dragged out I was from work until I took some time off and came back in the new year to start back at it all. It’s funny, never thought I needed a vacation until I came back from it refreshed! Speaking of vacations I’m on the verge of booking one at this white water rafting place in West Virginia for august called ACE Adventure Center, which seems like a really nice spot.

Their has been a lot of other things going on my life over the past months but I'm to lazy to type everything out.

Well work has been going really good for me lately so I'm pretty content on that front. I get to more or less do my own thing here so I'm still learning a lot! My primary project right now is still working on a device simulator for load testing, which I find really challenging to work with. It's really cool because I'm familiar with just about every RIM BES protocol as they all have to be simulated for load testing. One fun thing about this job is that I don't usually do the same thing twice and I'm always seeing new protocols come across my desk, or new features, which have to be implemented. It's a lot of document reading figuring out how the Blackberry works and then simulating it from scratch. In other news I've had my first patent officially filed on Feb 1st! I will post the name/ID of it when I figure out if I'm allowed to or now. I have another 4 that are almost ready to be applied for and 4 others that are still in the drafting stage. All these ideas have led me to believe that I do in fact have good ideas that could be worth a lot of money to someone, if the technology moves in that direction! A little confidence booster and a little bit of patent bonus's make Daryl a happy camper.

I've finished a slew of books this new year, all of which were great reads!

1. The Truth - Al Franken. This was a great read and possibly better than the previous one I read, LIES: And the Lying Liars Who Tell Them - A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right. Al is a brilliant writer who can delivering enough truth about the Iraqi war and the Bush administration to sicken even the most right wing individual and then turn around and make the reader laugh as so we don't undergo the same levels of stress/anger while reading the book as he did when he wrote it. I highly recommend this book!

2. The Game - Neil Strauss. Another great read that was recommended to me by one of my friends Curtis Jennings over x-mas. This book introduces you to an underground culture of pick up artists that use/teach methods ranging from using Magic to CIA mind control techniques that were developed during the cold war. The stories told in this book are some of the funniest/craziest I ever read!

3. The Rebel Sell. Great read about culture jamming and how ineffective it is.

Currently reading two books on patent law now, semi-dry but very interesting read.

Ottawa & Interpol

Oh yeah, I spent the long weekend in Ottawa with Sheldon/Shannon in their……cozy 1 bedroom apartment. It was actually a good time, really nice to get out of Waterloo for the weekend and enjoy a bigger city. I was invited to Thanksgiving dinner on Saturday, as soon as I got in, by Heather Belbin and company, which I thought was really nice. Ate myself some nice turkey and tofurkey (yes tofurkey). I ended up spending a lot of time in the Market (as Sheldon lives within walking distance) and that’s about it.

The only thing out of the ordinary is that one of the ghetto residents in Sheldon's neighborhood decided it would be funny to put a big dent in the back of my 3 month old Altima! That really put a smile on my face! Actually, I’m lucky it wasn’t worse because the paint wasn’t scratched; it’s just a big dent that might be fixed easily. Could have been a lot worse, like a keyed car, broken window, god only knows what else!

Before this trip I had the pleasure of checking out Interpol at the Kool Haus and it was a great show. If you're not into Interpol I highly recommend you go to their website or buy a CD and give it a listen. Only downside was that who ever did the lights for the show was on a mission to blind the audience. For a lot of the concert the band was just a silhouette in the bright light moving around on something that resembled a stage. Every now and then I actually had to close my eyes or look away, so bright. Other then that they did put on a great show and I really enjoyed it.

Oh yeah, click these links. Funny....

Google Search 1

Google Search 2

That is all

My new PVR and me!

This post was inspired by re-arranging my computer setup last night in my apartment and making my desktop into a PVR. Well my desktop computer is a P4 3.3Ghz, 1 Gig of RAM, 256Meg ATI (forget the brand, but it’s near top of the line), 640 Gigs of HD space and a lot of other goodies. The reason for the move was because since I have a laptop I hardly use that computer for anything, my old PVR (P-800) used to get quite a work out though. So, now I switched the setup and I’m really happy with the results.

As soon as I booted up I noticed a huge difference in the quality of the picture on my TV. My old computer was running at 800x600 but my new one booted up right into 1024x768, which is pretty good for a TV. The quality of the picture was much better and the computer was much more responsive than my old one when it came to starting up bittorrets, burning DVD’s, watching TV and playing games!. NHL 2006 was the first game on the plate to be loaded up and played and it was great to watch on my TV, the quality was excellent! I could not get over the difference! My living room is also running almost silent now with the old computer shut down, god it was so loud.

Anyway, the lesson learned here is that I am a very big nerd as I’m posting in my blog about my PVR, even I know that’s pathetic. For anyone out there who is deciding to build one I highly recommend it and don’t cheap out on components so you can do whatever you want with it.

Let's do some math!

Unleaded Gas dropped today to 1.99 (US) a gallon from 2.57 on the exchange, due to lower demand. We are actually 2.6% below levels recorded last year. Now here comes the fun part!

.847 CA dollar = 1 US Dollar
3.79 Liters = 1 Gallon

So, what we have here now is that gas is selling, at wholesale, 52.50 cents a liter (American) or 61.83 cents a liter (Canadian). So what other costs go into shipping gas? We know that there are no duties placed on gas coming in and out of our country, thanks to NAFTA. Don’t get me started on NAFTA giving us the inability to control our gas prices. Let’s be conservative and say 3 cents a liter is for shipping, which is fair to me. So we have a total of 65 cents a liter now. Not to bad.

Let’s let the man come in and take it’s tax money. We have GST/PST and I’m not sure if we have another federal tax on gasoline, but let’s throw it at 20% tax (in Canada) so now we have 78 cents a liter. According to http://www.ontariogasprices.com/ the lowest price is 97.6 and the max is 129.9, so let’s see how much they are making a day.

On average? 20 automobiles per hour push through the gas station, a pretty conservative number. So we have a total of 320 automobiles over a 16 hour period. We need an average tank size now, so take into account transport trucks, vans, SUV’s, cars etc. so we can say at a minimum the average is 55 liters per tank. This is VERY conservative seeing that economy cars take approx. 40-45 liters. So we have a total of 17,600 liters a day served at a profit of 3520 dollars a day (at the lowest price) and 9134 dolalrs a day at the max.

Yes yes, operation costs do take a chunk of the profits but no more than 1000 a day so we have profits ranging from 2520 – 8134 a day! Do this up for a month and we have 75600 – 244020 of profits….let’s not calculate how much a year if prices stay like this now.

Long story short....Gas is a rip off!!!!

Oil sucks ass...

So the price of gas is going up again because of another hurricane hitting the Gulf of Mexico today. What really blows my mind is the fact that the oil companies are still able to make the rise in gasoline look like its OPEC’s fault and not theirs. We have an industry here that is being pumped full of crude oil, albeit maybe not light sweet crude but still oil, and there isn’t enough refining capacity to actually process the oil I don’t think many people are aware but there hasn’t been a new refinery opened in the States in 30 years! Demand for gasoline has been steadily increasing year to year but the capacity to refine the oil hasn’t changed much at all.

The government then decides to use some smoke and mirrors and blame OPEC for not producing enough oil when in fact OPEC right now is trying to find buyers for the oil, does this make sense? The government then steps in to play the hero by talking about laws to increase fuel efficiency of cars and oil companies profiteering, which is a load of shit. If the government has had 30 years to prepare for the current market demand but instead of doing so they just added more red tape to the process of opening a refinery plant so the oil companies can control the price of gasoline directly by limiting the amount they can produce. What a system eh?

Don’t even get me started on why gas stations are even allowed to raise their prices as soon as the price of oil rises on the mercantile exchange. The current gasoline in the pumps was not purchased at the inflated prices that should take a few days to trickle down to the pumps.

I just had to rant about this because it’s finally starting to piss me off ;)

The moral of the story is oil companies are evil and I wish I owned one :)

Pearl Jam - Hamilton, ON (2005/09/13)

So, I’ve now seen Pearl Jam for a second time in Hamilton, ON. After this concert the only regret that I have is that I didn’t buy more pre-sale tickets to the London, ON show and the upcoming Toronto show. Seriously, I should have went 4 times because they put on such an amazing show. My seats for this show were a bit better than the Kitchener show. I was on the same side of the stage, in the bowl, a 8 rows back from front but I had a perfect view of the stage.

Sadly enough I missed the first half of the opener because of bad directions off Google but as I was making it for my seats I got to hear the first half of Porch. By the time I found my seats Spin the Black Circle started so I decided to enjoy that song in the stairway as I didn’t want to disturb anyone while I try to get around them to my seat. From then on, the concert was just one big blur of energy….

Pearl Jam really knows how to win a crowd over, no questions about that. When I saw some other big acts like NIN and Radiohead they never said more than two words, but still had a great show. Small things like Eddie bringing out a mirror to reflect a spotlight during a solo shining it on the crowd to read peoples signs and get people moving really get things going. I mean, something as simple as that drove the crowd into a frenzy and got the nose bleed sections on their feet with the arms up.

One of the best parts for me was when Eddie told the story of one of his childhood friends and how he couldn’t be his best man as his wedding because of the concert in Hamilton because he had the crowd scream apologies and well wishes to the newlyweds. While Eddie was talking to the crowd the whole band dressed up in tuxes and sang Harvest Moon (with the help of the opener Sleater-Kinney) for the newlyweds. At the end of the show when the lights come on Eddie invited Sleater-Kinney out onto the stage again to finish the night with Rocking in the Free World. The crowd was in a complete frenzy for the whole song….I was no exception!

Anyway, great show and a great time! I just wish I get to see them again soon and hopefully I will when they tour with their new album!

Here is the set list…

Porch, Save You
Spin the Black Circle
Animal
Given to Fly
Sad
You
Corduroy
Half Full
Daughter
Lukin
Insignificance
Present Tense
MFC
Jeremy
Better Man
Rear View Mirror

Encore Break 1
Thumbing My Way
I Am Mine
Harvest Moon
Black
Alive

Encore 1
Last Exit
Don’t Go
In My Tree
Small Town
Indifference
Rocking in the Free world
Yellow Ledbetter

Pearl Jam - Kitchener, ON (2005/09/11)

I finally got to see Pearl Jam for the first time last night in Kitchener, ON. It was one of the most energetic concerts I have ever seen and one of the most responsive crowds I have ever seen, it was a sight. I was in the bowl, first row, so I had a great and completely unobstructed view of the stage (and the crowd). 10 minutes before Pearl Jam went on the stage the crowd was already on its feet, screaming, chanting and clapping for Eddie and the gang. It was an amazing sight to behold when they took the stage and 5800 people lost their shit, including myself.

No introductions were needed, no small talk, no hellos; they just ripped into 5 high energy songs one after another putting the crowd into a literal frenzy. The most amazing sight was during “Do The Evolution”, when Eddie sings “There’s my church, I sing in the choir:”, everyone put their hands up in the air in praise, no cues needed, no signs telling the crowd to do it, it was amazing. After Indifference even Eddie commented on the crowds energy by comparing it to the lyrics “How much difference does it make” by saying something along the lines of “It’s amazing to see people to do things in Unison, When you do that for something important it scares the shit out of people”, and again the crowd went mad.

From what I heard/read and from Pearl Jams reaction on stage, by calling Edmonton a bunch of pansies compared to us, we had one of the best concerts in a long time. I know what you’re thinking, everyone thinks their concert is the best but even Eddie said “Fuck those Motherfuckers in Edmonton” and not to mention calling the US crowds a bunch of pansies. I think it was a great concert because it was in a small venue, 5800, and it was in a pretty small town that never had Pearl Jam before. The only concert I think to top this one will be in St. John’s, NF (with respect to crowd energy) but even then it will be close.

My highlights were when they covered “Gimme Some Truth” and Alive in the first encore. It’s actually hard to pick a favorite moment because every song played was a crowd pleaser which everyone sang along to, well that happened for just about every song they played! The last time I was this pumped in a concert was when I saw Radiohead and I was front row/center for the whole thing and I’ve seen a lot of shows inbetween 

I look forwad to seeing them again on Tuesday in Hamilton. I wonder if the crowd will be nearly as good!

Anyway, here is the set list!

Long Road
Last Exit
Animal
Save You
Do The Evolution
Given To Fly
Love Boat Captain
Corduroy
Insignificance
Gimmie Some Truth
Faithfull
Jeremy
Even Flow
Leatherman
Habit
Blood

1st encore:
Soon Forget
Can't Keep
Man of the Hour
Small Town
Daughter/(WMA)
Black
Alive

2nd encore:
In My Tree
Indifference,
Better Man
Baba O'Riley
Yellow Ledbetter

Heat Stroke Induced Ramblings...

This has been such hot freaking summer in Waterloo…I’m going to freeze my ass off when I visit NF at the end of the month. So what’s new in the life of Daryl you ask? Well over the past month a lot of shit has happened so I’ll try to make a quick post here to catch up the adoring masses.

I just got back to work today from a small vacation. For those of you who read the last post one of my friends Jen Lomond flew up to Waterloo for a visit and she has been staying with me for the past 10 days now, but she goes home tonight. We had a great time though as we got to see Dave Matthews at Darien Lake which was a deadly concert! We also got to see Niagra Falls, National Art Gallery, The Canadian Museum of Civilization, The Toronto Zoo, and a whole bunch of other crap. Ottawa is such a great place to visit! It was a great time and I will put pictures up in my gallery as soon as I fix the damn thing.

Well right now at work I'm in between jobs inside RIM. My manager has left my group and has gone to greener pastures so right now I'm still trying to figure out where I should go next. I have a few options internal and I'm pushing for a group that I think does some really cool things so hopefully if all goes well I will end up there for a year or two. Looking back on the past year I find it pretty impressive the amount that I have learned and the amount of code I contributed to a few projects inside RIM. Good times! Speaking of contributing to RIM I actually started to write down all the crazy ideas I have floating around in my head and RIM is applying for 4 patents and I'm waiting to hear back on another 5 I submitted (and 3-4 of them should be accepted) and I have another 2-3 to write up and submit! God only knows if/when these ideas will be accepted by the patent office but it's cool to know that some of my ideas will probably go to market! Hopefully one of these days I can post a few patent numbers on my site!

I also decided to splurge the other day and buy a new car. Ok, I was actually shopping around for about a month and I ended up deciding on the Nissan Altima. So I am the proud new owner of a 2005 Altima 2.5 S! I just about got the car at cost so I'm only paying pennies a month and I owe it all to this site. I still have some spare lookups so if you're looking at buying a new car drop me a line and I'll e-mail you the dealer cost of the car to you!

Anyway..I think that's about all I have to post right now. I think I'm going to go back to floating between jobs and attempting to finish up my old one!

Oh, if you want to kill some time at work you can check this game out. Easy to do once you figure out how to do it but still addictive..

Who said what now?

Isn’t it just great when you look at a class or two that you wrote and you honestly can’t remember writing it? This just happened to me when I was trying to figure out how some stuff works in one of the libs we maintain. The funny part is that I looked at the code and I was impressed at how slick it was passing around function pointers and some void*’s too...anyway….I probably copied it all from somewhere anyway ;) What’s new in the house that Daryl built? Absolutely nothing! Work is work; I still really enjoy my job. Waterloo is Waterloo, boring as hell. I survived my first Tornado warning and my first heat wave in a long time.

Anyway….I guess a more incremental approach to posting will result in even more inane chatter like this so I will wait until I have something good to say for my next post ;)

It's to early in the morning to think of a title..

I always put off posting on this site for one reason or another and it’s easy to do because the idea of talking to myself doesn’t overly interest me. When all else fails I can just blame things on the heat induced haze that I have been living in for the past week, man it’s hot up here now!! I had to visit the price club over the weekend to pick up some fans for my apartment but all they do is blow hot air in my face. Yesterday I was driving down Columbia and check this out…one of the ponds was dried up! Ok, they actually drained it for construction but for a while I thought the whole pond evaporated in the heat wave.

So, what are the new developments on my end? Well one of my good friends, Jen Lomond, is flying up to visit me for 10 days in July! The plan so far is to check out Dave Matthews at Darian Lake. From there I think I’m going to take Jen to see Niagara Falls, it just has to be done, see the ROM , hit up a casino or two, go to buffalo for some buffalo wings and then do a road trip to Ottawa for a few days and beat around there. Everything considered I think we are going to be very busy for the time she is up here. I’m cashing in 3 vacation days so I will be off work from Wednesday to Tuesday, Monday is a civic holiday, so hopefully time won’t be an issue for us.

I got my tickets to Pearl Jam a long time ago thanks to the Ten Club pre-sale! The good news is that they are supposed to be reserved seats that are really close to the stage but the bad news is that I won’t find out where I’m to until I show up to pick up my tickets the day of the concert. I’m seeing them in Kitchener and Hamilton and I would have gotten another ticket and went alone to either the London or Toronto shows but I decided not to because none of the Pearl Jam shows have a GA. I would have liked to go to one concert, line up early in the day and rush the stage when the doors open. Maybe next time they come though I will get a chance.

Well...I’m bored with this post so I’m going to head on..

Nine Inch Nails, 05/05/09 Kool Haus, Toronto

So, I’m still in awe over the Nine Inch Nails concert I was at last night in Toronto. I showed up at around 8:15, doors opened at 8:00 and the lineup was wrapped around 3/4’s of the Kool Haus. The mix of people at the show was pretty interesting to say the least as just about every age group was represented in the crowd. Me and Dave positioned ourselves just a little bit left of center mic and away backed away from the mosh pit and we both had a great view of everything. I was blown away when NIN opened up with “Sin” and kept on playing 4-5 “older” songs in a row like “March of the Pigs” and “Terrible Lie” to lead into a push for the new halo. They played their big hits like “Closer”, “Hurt” and “Head Like a Hole” last night even though I was worried they may be put on the back burner because they were his more mainstream hits.

I also expected to see a frail, depressed and semi-withdrawn Trent on stage but in reality it was a Henry Rollins-esque bulked up Trent giving everything he has into each song he played. I have been to a few concerts and I have almost always wished I could have heard the bands classic set lists, like REM’s tour for “Automatic For the People” or Radiohead’s Ok Computer tour, this is not the case with NIN. The balance between new and old was perfect.

Long story short this was an amazing concert and I really hope other NIN fans get to see him on this tour. If he plays again within driving distance of Toronto I will be going to check him out.

I have a vague idea of the setlist right now and I will post it when I get it straight in my head.

Oh, this is the cool Lithograph I got at the concert last night. I think I'm going to frame it with a cheap frame from Ikea. Thanks Curtis “Martha Stewart ain’t got nothing on me” Jennkins for the advice ;)

Pearl Jam, NIN, and stuff

So Pearl Jam is doing a cross Canada tour and they playing in St. Johns, NF. I didn’t believe it even when I saw the official release on their website, pretty amazing. Seeing how I live in Waterloo, ON it doesn’t really do much for me eh? They are making a lot of stops though in the GTA and I’m going to check out a 2-3 shows in Kitchener, London, and Hamilton. That will be a very busy 3 days for me but worth it.

In other music news NIN released there new album today online for free to anyone who wants to listen to it. I forget when they actually release the album but it is pretty cool they are allowing people to listen to it for free. After just finishing listening to track 6 I am actually pretty impressed with the album so far. I can’t wait to see these guys in Toronto in May; it’s going to be an absolutely crazy concert. I just hope that though some magic I will get to see them again for a second time when they do another NA tour for this album.

Anyway, the past few days have treated me really well! Well in terms of music ;)

This is where I get back to work…l8r

Yup..

Ok, it’s been a long time since I updated my website but inspiration hit me when I noticed Sheldon decided to talk about his feelings on the internet again and the last time I checked Sheldon was “feeling kinda sluggish lately”. So much has happened since the last post and to those I don’t regularly keep in contact with it probably looks like my flight from Calgary went down. Anyway, long story short I did have a great time in Calgary after. It was very nice to get out of Waterloo for a while…I must say.

So, the biggest news that I can think is the fact that I am going to be seeing NIN in Toronto at Kool Haus! For those of you who don’t know anything about this venue it is pretty small compared to the crowd that NIN can draw in. The tickets ended up selling out in 2 minutes and I was lucky enough to get four to the first show. I am only using two and I am looking to sell two tickets and I will probably end up putting them on ebay or something. For anyone who knows me and the music I’m into then they know I am a pretty big NIN fan and I am really looking forward to this show. I also saw Ani DiFranco in concert the other night at the Hummingbird Center and it was a very good show. I was impressed in the end.

I’m also booking vacation time for the summer to travel back to NF for a while. I don’t have my ticket yet but I did decide on going home for the week of August 19th for about a week and I am really looking forward to it. I haven’t been home since I left to come to Waterloo in July so this will be a very nice break for me. I have also been talking to a few friends and I think I may have a visitor or two the summer in Waterloo, one of them being Jen Lomond. We shall see if she follows through or not but I proposed to her that she comes up here for a week or two and we both head down to NY to catch a Dave Matthews concert and also see NY! Nothing definite but it would be nice to see Jen again.

I know I missed a whole lot of stuff with this post but I’m to lazy to attempt to catch up, sorry. Haha I will try to not let this site go so long without an update again.

Anyway, I’m out…