Boxing Day Sales?

One of the more enjoyable parts of christmas for me is hunting some boxing day deals to get the most out of gift cards. This year though, I wasn't very impressed with any of the deals I saw; at least on stuff I was interested in getting. I blamed it on the economy; or just a better general memory for prices really not all that different to the 'huge sale prices'.

Whether its the economy and the shitty Canadian dollar, or artificial jacking of prices to make the 'sales' look good; the fact is prices are higher now than they were in September. At least computer parts, as I happened to have a list of prices for the parts to build a computer for Steve's dad from back in September that he asked me to update for him to find any deals this week. Overall, even at sale prices, an 8-10% increase in price since mid-September on technology that normally drops weekly as new stuff comes out.

So in the end, I ended up with no new telephoto lens for my camera, or new speakers for my stereo, or BluRay drive for my computer; just booze enough to ensure I see spots for half the day on Thursday.

Oh, and Carolyn loves her x-mas present, and will until she kills them.

Its doomed.

Loudness DNE Fullness

Until I went browsing around to hear some of the tracks besides the first single from the newest Metallica album, I had never heard of the loudness war. I ended up finding a couple articles, including this one on the Wired blog, describing how the quality of sound was being sacrificed for the sake of a 'louder' sound. Boosting the levels of the tracks would make sense to me if people all over were suddenly turning all their stereos, personal players, computers or whatever to full volume and not finding it loud enough, but I really don't think that's the case.

Of course what the music industry has effectively done now is create a ton of garbage quality releases for which 'high quality' releases can later be marketed as they see fit.

At least in the case of Death Magnetic, it was also released as a Guitar Hero version, against which the album version was compared to see the remarkable effect of the loudness boosting. I've now downloaded, in the face of Metallica and their Napster kerfuffle, the GH3 version of the album and listened to it a couple times through. Does Metallica deserve my money for their efforts? Absolutely, its a great return to some of their earlier ways and energy, and miles better than St. Anger and its dropped D monotony. I don't however feel that their label and management are entitled to my money for an inferior quality release, and won't be buying the album until a re-mixed version is readily available, at a non marked up price.

If more people follow this philosophy, and record sales tank on this disc, it would seem to be obvious that the record labels would pretty much have to rethink their ways. Here's hoping.

-A petition directly for the re-mixing of 'Death Magnetic' is online here
-A presently smaller, broader ranging petition against the loudness war in general can be found here

Objects in Motion

4 degrees at night and a yellowish tinge to many of the leaves on the trees; fastest summer ever. One of the rainiest too.

Every year around this time, one of my friends from highschool throws herself a birthday house party, which becomes my annual highschool reunion to catch up with people I don't see in the intervening time. Back in highschool it was the typical gossip, backstabbing and drama. Through university less of the drama, and more bitching about profs, courses and tuition. Now, 7 years removed from graduation, and 2 or more from university or college, and most of the catching up involved hearing about people rotating through jobs in an attempt to advance careers. Meanwhile I remain static; an object at rest, waiting for enough of a force to get me in motion. One would think plummeting towards debt would instill some kind of energy to do so. Instead, I'm blogging, and waiting for paint to dry on another household 'make-work' project.

On the bright side, at least I haven't lost thousands or millions in the markets the past few days. At least I'm not one of those declaring bankruptcy trying to pay for my $300 000 home, and $50 000 SUV status symbols on a $30k salary. Not working at all has put me in the exact same position as those people at least, nowhere. But with infinitely less energy wasted. At least I have efficiency going for me.

Undiscovered Discovery Discretization

An article on the BBC this morning has me somewhat baffled. I'll not go into a discussion about whether the Arctic should be fair game for drilling, or the can of worms that this will re-open in terms of land claims north of 66.5° latitude.

According to the survey, the Arctic holds about 13% of the world's undiscovered oil, 30% of the undiscovered natural gas, and 20% of the undiscovered natural gas liquids.

If its undiscovered, then how does one determine a percentage, especially one as precise as "13%". Since there is apparently an actual volume of oil discovered by this survey, why not use this to calculate as a percentage of the known oil reserves. Ass backwards calculations like these will go a long way to pissing people off when getting the runaround about oil prices and economic 'forecasting'.

Blisters the Size of....Well, They're Big

Three days helping my buddy Steve and his wife move from a third story apartment with no elevator to what is essentially a three storey house. By the end of the first day I had the cliched muscles I didn't know I had aching. After three, I'm pretty sure I had worn them away to nothing anyways.

I followed that up with two days of building a poorly designed and supplied shed from Home Hardware (let this be a warning). Holding a bottle of ketchup at dinner was a challenge with fatigued arms shaking. At least its been good to be productive, and I have been paid well with food and beer.

But somehow between yesterday and today, my cellphone decided to take a shit, and now won't start up, despite being on a fully charged battery. Infact, the charger itself won't even work, and I'm left trying to find a replacement battery or a replacement phone for at least less than the amount of airtime I have left on the plan. I guess its back to being incommunicado for me.

Used Book Browsing

A few days back, Carolyn and I met up and walked uptown for a coffee. Having spotted a used bookstore on the way there that she'd heard about, but was unsure of the location of, we decided to stop in on the way back. In particular she was after a few Timothy Findley books, the titles of which I don't recall, and a copy of The Screwtape Letters.

The store was actually the main floor of a 1930s or 1940s era house, stuffed with 8 foot high shelves spaced too closely together to be able to stand far enough back to read the titles on the top shelf or two. Despite not finding The Screwtape Letters, she did find one of the Findley books she was after. I, on the other hand, after not finding any Douglas Coupland came out with Cat's Cradle, and a non-fiction book by Isaac Asimov, who I've only ever read a short story of for a project back in highschool english.

The stop planted a bug, and we decided to hit up another bunch of stores downtown today. The first stop was a disaster, with books spread into sections such that many had one or more overlaps with other sections making it difficult to really find anything. Some sections sorted by author name, others by title, and some apparently not at all, it was impossible to find anything specific, without randomly coming across it. The prices however were cheaper than the uptown stop (a trend that was true of every other stop as well).

A couple more stops, without finding good condition copies of the Findley books she was after, or any condition copy of The Screwtape letters, and myself not finding anything by a rather limited list of authors I was after (more or less George Orwell, Chuck Palahniuk or Douglas Coupland) we finally headed home to check out Amazon.ca.

A quick google found one more store in town we had missed, right by the universities. It turned out to be the smallest of any of the 5 stores we ended up at, and really the most bland. But despite its lack of musty bookstore character, it had the best, and cheapest selection.

She ended up with a couple Findley books, and settled for the Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe in lieu of not finding the other C.S. Lewis work she was after. I, being the geek that I am, finally found a Coupland book (Miss Wyoming), and also came out with two more non-fiction science books (Comet and A Brief History of Time).

The moral of this long-winded story? University students will sell off their good books to the store closest to them for beer/rent/tuition money, leaving the stuffy, musty stores to jack up their prices on books with mosquitoes squished in the inside cover.

Better Than Buck-A-Beer

For years I've had hundreds of dollars worth of homebrew equipment sitting in the basement collecting dust. At a time, my parents were all over homebrewed beer, wine, and brandy, using equipment mostly acquired for free from an old family friend.

By the time I was almost 19, the equipment hadn't been touched in 7 or 8 years, and I decided to try to resurrect it with an old malt kit at least as old. I knew enough at the time that I would need fresh brewers yeast to actually ferment the beer, but aside from that neglected the past due date.

I managed to stomach half a beer from that batch before pouring the rest of it down the drain. Another 5 years later, I decided to give it a go again, and this time I'm somewhat more pleased. I bottled the 23L batch today, and even right out of the fermenter it tastes alright. A couple weeks of bottle fermentation and it should be a great source of cheap thrills. The only problem being that I managed to screw some part of the process up, and the estimate for final alcohol content by volume is around 3.2%.

Still, at a third of the price of the cheapest piss-water from the beer store, I'll take it and try to get more out of it on the next run.

Oktoberfest Sucks

Have I mentioned lately how much I love the admin around the university? Really I do. I love how none of their multiple online systems seem to interact with one another. I love how the different departments of the admin themselves don't interact. I love them not putting my paycheque through on the scheduled pay date, with a MasterCard bill sitting and collecting interest. I love the vagueness of the responses when I ask for some clarification in trying to track down just what happened to my money. And I especially love being told that my pay request would be in on a specific date, that being today, and still not finding it there.

Other people get charged twice for their tuition because no-one cross checks things.

And still others are forced to write petitions to stay in school only to be informed, after being told that the petition was denied, that a completely different term from the one that the petition was written for was actually considered. Was there any kind of outline of the whole petition process to be found anywhere on line, or were people more forthcoming on the phone, this kind of thing could be avoided. But instead, the administration around the university just continues to build great report with those that ever have dealings with them.

And then there are the people swarming to the city for North America's biggest beer festival. Driving like idiots. Staggering around like idiots. Closing streets. Its an overrated sham, like every other year. I don't understand why people need an excuse to drink beer in the first place; but then they wait until the price on it is jacked up, and the stuff being served is old stock being cleared off in mass quantities. Don't get me started on sitting through the awful music, along with accordion accompanied covers of otherwise tolerable songs.

Am I bitter? Just a little bit. But at least not watered down like all those $6 cups of beer that in no way actually taste like a good German brew.

And on the Seventh Day I Rested

After a few weeks straight of working at it every day, there are a few more doors to be painted for my room, and I can wash my hands of this renovation project. But we're finally getting some proper summer weather, and in time for a long weekend for once, so its time to kick back and take a few days off, and instead of sinking money into tools and trim and pain, carefully invest in beer for the weekend.

I say carefully because I got a call this morning from Steve letting me know the details for meeting up with him and his wife at Algonquin in a couple weeks, and am not going to have a whole bunch of money to play with for that excursion. Not working for a calendar year is starting to hurt. So long as I don't go ahead and fuck myself over like last time around when I forgot, among other things, a sleeping bag, and spent a night shivering, an exorbitant amount of money on a blanket, and the rest of my trip feeling slightly jaded with the experience.

Not all of my money lately has gone to the renovation though. The latest White Stripes album is fantastically written, and complete with the typical catchy beats and riffs that they rock out so well. My favourites from it are Rag and Bone, which has a great fun energy, and Cause and Effect which can be interpreted any number of ways and to me is a great closing track for the album.

And of course, a legitimate candidate for album of the year so far, Matthew Good's latest, which I managed to score a signed copy of 5 minutes before selling out. Hospital Music, knowing the story leading up to the writing of the album, is one of the most open and honest collections of music you could ever expect to hear, with some excellent covers of Daniel Johnston's True Love Will Find You in the End (which was also covered by Beck on one of his recent albums) and Moon Over Marin by The Dead Kennedys. I honestly hadn't heard the Dead Kennedys version until after hearing Matt's version, so I'm likely biased in describing it as a much better put together rendition, but I'm saying it anyways. That's something that can't be said for most cover versions of songs ever done, with the Jimi Hendrix version of Bob Dylan's All Along the Watchtower and Pearl Jam's take on Last Kiss being other cases that come to mind.

I'm sure now I'll think of a number more though while I kick back with a few beers on the balcony for the weekend and attempt not to sweat it out as fast as I drink it. Dunno what this whole 'Civic Holiday' is about anyways, but I'll take it!

99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall

I finally got around to moving my ever growing beer bottle collection out of my room to make way for the also consistently expanding collection of textbooks. For the most part my work with those beer bottles is done, while with my textbooks it seems like an impossibly long time until they can be shoved off to the side somewhere.

The bottles aren't lined up around the top of the wall yet like I want. Nor do they set the mood around a small basement bar with a permanent keg fridge and tap like I also want. But the best things in life aren't free, so such grand schemes will have to wait. For now they'll have to stay crammed together with other beers of the same national origin, begging me to add new friends to their group.

The society thus far are strongly Belgian, with large minorities of Germans and Poles peacefully coexisting. That's not to say that some of them haven't combined to create their own little Auschwitz's in my stomach before. I need to add to the Dutch and Czech minorities, with some attention to the dry Asians out East. The problem is that the turnover on new selection at the liquor stores in town is less than spectacular, even when visiting multiple stores.

The easy, and infact ideal solution would seem to be to travel the world and get some of these things straight from the tap, but I don't see a windfall of money blowing in from the horizon. If it wasn't all regulated by the provincial government, it might be easy to go to a private liquor store with a request. Hell, if alcohol sales were privatized here, I'd consider opening my own store for import beers. The grocery stores are allowed to sell wine in their booths after the checkouts, why the hell shouldn't I be able to sell good beers?

In the mean time I'll have to sit down relax and wait on some new stock. Until then I'll take one down and pass it around...to myself...98 bottles of beer on the wall.