I have accomplished a lot so far on my "stay awake for the weekend" experiment.  Friday I put in a full day of work.  After that I did some errands for the family and then went to a friend's party until 2am.  When I got home I did an hour of work to finish off a side project and then chilled out and caught up on a TV show.  Then I went back to work for another couple of hours on a new side project.  Then I caught up on another TV show and then did another hour on my new project. 

A 7am I needed to be in on a conference call for work which lasted a little over a half hour.  After that, the family was awake and I played with the boys while Elise went out to do some errands and then I had a shower. 

After my shower I felt completely refreshed and energized.  It was great.  I went out and did some work insulating the garage and then had some lunch.  After lunch I went to Home Depot to get some more garage supplies and a buddy of mine came over to help put up some board.

I've... (click here to read the rest)

I think sleep could be the biggest waste of time ever.  Think about how of our lives are wasted on sleep?  We usually accomplish very little while we sleep.  Don't get me wrong, I love sleeping.  It feels really, really good.  But I have a very hard time actually going to my room at night because I know I'm not going to get anything accomplished for the next few hours.

I usually go to bed around 2:30am.  Once every month or two I go to sleep before 1am and a handful of times I've gone to bed before midnight.  I'm usually mildly tired, which is to be expected but I'm usually more tired when I get more than 6 hours of sleep.

So, for fun, I've decided that I'm not going to sleep this weekend.  I am going to wake up tomorrow morning (Friday) at my usual time and go back to bed Sunday night (probably quite early).  I'm not trying to accomplish anything special or prove anything.  I just feel like doing it.  I plan on spending my nights working in the garage, catching up on some side projects and watching a few missed tv shows.

If I fail, I fail.  Who cares?  Oh..... (click here to read the rest)

TV shows for little kids are really crappy.  Even Sesame Street has gone downhill.  I've always hated tv for little kids.  I especially hate it when I realize I've been watching it for 20 minutes while my children have been off doing something else.  Today I'd like to write specifically about "toddler tv" theme songs.

I just finished eating lunch with my family and then Mason and I went upstairs to play trains and watch a kid's show.  Before I dive into it, I thought I would write the lyrics of a couple theme songs that get stuck in your head when you have two young children.  Listen to the creative genius that was vomited into these songs.

"Miffy, cute little bunny.  Miffy, sweet little bunny.  Miffy, smart little bunny.  Miffy.  And friends"

"Toopy, toopy.  Toopy Beenoo. Toopy, Beenooo. Toopy, toopy.  Toopy Beenoo.  Toopy Beenooooo."

Or. how about this one:

"Max and Ruby.  Ruby and Max.  Max and Ruby, Ruby and Max.  Max and Ruby.  Ruby and her little brother Max.  Max and Ruby.  Ruby and Max."

I have no idea what either of those two shows are about.  I mean, the show is called "Max and Ruby" but you wouldn't know it from the theme song. ... (click here to read the rest)

I was in Baltimore a few weeks ago for business and one morning I showed up to work and someone had left two interesting cans of pop on my desk.  It was a co-worker of mine who knew I liked to drink pop and she had found a couple of new variants of Coke and Pepsi (Diet Coke Plus and Diet Pepsi Max).  I thought she had some how discovered that one of my hobbies is collecting different kinds of pop cans (it's a cheap hobby if you happen to be looking for one).  I told her I would send a picture of my collection but quickly forgot about it.  She reminded me today so I figured I would snap a few pictures and give her a little write up. I've decided to add it to my blog.

I have the collection sitting on a ledge in my basement on either side of a window. I normally don't collect many diet cans unless I think they are really cool.  My favorite cans are the Coke II, Crystal Pepsi.  I'd love to get my hands on a "New Coke" can that they release back in the 80's. 

In the middle of the first... (click here to read the rest)

First off, I'm not American.  I can't vote in the US.  It's important to know that because I'm talking about US politics.  I used to be pretty conservative and I think that my current conservative government is a nice change from the Liberal party that we had but all in all day-to-day life hasn't really changed much.  We did get that sweet 1% reduction in our federal goods and services tax.

US politics is a complete train wreck though I think.  While the Canadian government affects Canada, the US government can affect the entire world (economically and otherwise).  That is the only reason why US politics is of any interest to me.  It's strange too because I don't really like politics.  I think most politicians are so afraid of doing/saying the wrong thing that they end up just going with whatever they can and don't really stand for anything.

Enter Mike Gravel.  This guy is the first politician that I've ever seen who isn't afraid to make waves.  On top of that, he shares a lot of the same views as I do.  If I were American, I would vote for this guy I think.  I like it when people aren't afraid to lay... (click here to read the rest)

Ever stopped at a red light and looked over at the person next to you and they are singing with the radio at the top of their lungs and they look over at you and get totally embarrassed?  Or they were picking there nose?  Or it was you singing or picking your nose!!  Red lights are awesome for that.

I was driving today and I saw my sister-in-law.  No.. she wasn't singing or picking her nose or making a fool of herself.  Anyway, my first instinct was to drive next to her and wave.  As I was about to do that I realized... what would I do after I waved.  We would be driving down a road side by side, unable to talk to each other.  Our only options would be to stare at each other like idiots and smile for a while or we could wave, smile at each other for a couple of seconds and look forward again and try not to always check to see if they are still next to you or looking at you.  Either way... it's awkward so I decided to just go my own way.

Well, now that we have that out of the way, I should... (click here to read the rest)

I got a new MacBook Pro this week for work.  It's a sweet machine!  I have installed VMWare Fusion on it and it's beefy enough to handle running OSX and Window XP at the same time.  I love the backlit keyboard!

Anyway... I've basically needed to configure two operating systems and it's been a big job.  For later reference I wanted to make a list of software that is ideal for me on a fresh OS.  I will be editing this list over time to include stuff I've forgotten or that I don't know about yet.  A lot of this stuff is geared towards web design and programming... cause... um... I'm a web programmer.  So... enjoy.

Windows OS

• Firefox - http://www.firefox.com
  The ultimate web browser.  I really love it mostly for it's extensions.  It makes my life as a web programmer so much better.
• Launchy -http://www.launcy.net
  Launchy is a little utitily that indexes the items in your start menu.  A quick key combination will open a box and you can type "word" and it will open MS Word for example.  Great time saver... and it's free.
• Office 2007
  Duh.. Microsoft office.  Duh!
• Adobe Creative Suite 3 (Photoshop/Fireworks etc)
• Foldershare - http://www.foldershare.com
  Allows you to keep folders in sync across computers.... (click here to read the rest)

I love the internet.  It flippin rules.  You have pretty much instant access to pretty much anything you can think of.  It can also totally mess over your life.  For example.  Look at this sweet picture of Hillary Clinton. A) What the crap would cause her to make a face like that?  2) How mortified is she that someone caught it on film and has spread it around the net.  Awesome!  Absolutely awesome. I am actually pretty scared of that picture.  Man that's weird.

The thing I get the biggest kick out of is watching a news reporter screw up on live tv. Thanks to the internet, we have amazing access to that kind of stuff.  A "reporter bloopers" search on youtube will result in hours of entertainment. Here are a couple of examples of what I'm talking about.

• Reporter vs. Blind man - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKO6G0pC0AM
• Reporter vs. Snow - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fm6HCXxVSE
• Reporter vs. Lizard - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccIc-On5MLI
  

Another thing I love is the fact that you can find some of the most random old school things that totally take you back to the day when you were 5.  Here are some more examples.

• Sesame Street Martians - http://youtube.com/watch?v=R9eIwafj7vk
• Sesame Street Daddy Dear -... (click here to read the rest)

Heroes is one of my favorite shows on TV these days.  They are in the habit of taking long breaks in between episodes just like every other show lately.  Still, it's one of my favorites. My old favorite shows like Lost and 24 have started getting a little old.  The first two seasons of Lost had me on the edge of my seat the whole time.  There was so much mystery.  The problem is that after 3 seasons we still have no idea whats going on.  They just keep feeding the mystery and never answering any questions.  I'm also having a hard time with 24 this season.  It's got some good action and an intriguing story line but there is so much stuff that is entirely far fetched.

Heroes on the other hand is awesome in that they keep adding mystery but the throw you a fricken bone every once in a while.  Every once in a while they answer a question and they introduce new questions.  

Okay... that was way too much of a rant.  The whole point of this post is to show off a Heroes parody.  I found this one a while back and laughed my butt off.  Enjoy.

So there's a lot of talk about global warming.  For some crazy reason I've become very interested in the subject.  It's almost like a religion.  On the one side you have some scientists saying we're causing our planet to heat up due to all the green house gases we emit each year.  This warming is causing the mass extinction of our planets species.  In short, we're killing our planet.

On the other hand, you have books like "State of Fear", US politicians and another group of scientist saying that its all a bunch of bunk.  It seems that once a week I read of some scientist or another who has new evidence of global warming or new evidence against it.

As a curious and level headed guy (or so I may think), I decided to research the subject for myself... and I have come to a conclusion.  The following is my adventure in global warming research.

My first step wasn't really research.  It was more a personal observation of the climate.  Who can argue with the fact that winters (at least here in Calgary) are a lot milder than they used to be?  Who can argue with the fact that the states has been... (click here to read the rest)