Gardenology 101: Lawncare

With the nice weather, and it still being early in the year, I thought that I might get ahead in the game and tend to the needs of the plant life that surrounds my house.  In particular, the grass.  Now my lawn isn't the greatest, many weeds and what seems to be creeping kind of mossy plant throughout.  I've raked some of it up and pulled as many of the dandelions as I felt like, but it's left my lawn a little bare in patches.

I figured that while the time of year is still right, I would buy some of that easy grow grass seed that they sell. I've tried it before and it came in a plastic dispensing container, so I figured I'd get a bag as a refill and save by buying in bulk.  I went to the store; it was $40.

My lawn is fine as it is.

In With The New, Out With The Nothing

As teased yesterday in my Twitter post, here's a picture.

Yep, it's that time of life again. Time for a new car! And it's actually new this time. My first new car is a 2013 Ford Focus Titanium hatchback. It's got some bells and some whistles. I can start the car with the key in my pocket with a push of a button.

I'm keeping the Jeep around for at least one more year... see how that goes. All I have to do is juggle the cars around in the driveway. Good thing the City recently allowed overnight parking onstreet.

It's blue.

Things I Don't Need To Buy: A New Roof

With all the rain that's been happening this week, I'm sure glad that I had my roof replaced back in October instead of waiting until spring, like I had originally intended. Especially since I've been seeing my neighbour giving his roof and windows suspicious glances today.

Thanks, past self! I owe you one.

What Happened To Community?

One of my favourite shows of the last couple years has been Community.  It was unique and never seemed to fall into the usual sitcom routines.  Sure it had some ridiculously wacky plots sometimes, but those always to pay off and served a purpose. But after seeing the first few episodes of the new season, I've noticed that it's style is gone and mostly so is the comedy.  How does the best show on TV become just another mediocre show so quickly?  Those wacky situations seem to be done every episode just for the sake of trying to be ridiculous.  It's been failing... hard.  If I wanted to see a barely funny show that used all the sitcom cliches available while sacrificing comedy for some misguided attempt at cramming in a bunch of emotional moments between characters, I'd watch NEARLY EVERY OTHER SHOW.

What Really Grinds My Gears

You know what really grinds my gears? Guys who use a straw brooms to deliver their shots in curling.  You don't need that archaic thing.  If you have to use a special broom that you can lay flat on the ice, at least use a synthetic one so you aren't leaving your crap all over the ice... Ice that's only moderately clean on the best of days.  Just because you've used it since 1978, doesn't mean you should keep using it.  No one thinks you look cool with it.  You look like a fool.

The opinions in the preceding post may have been magnified by a getting our ass handed to us tonight.  But I assure you that the principle of the matter would be the same on any given evening.

Thoughts on the Brier Final

I didn't watch the entire Brier final on Sunday, but I saw enough.  I'm glad to see Northern Ontario win for 2 reasons: It's nice to see someone other than the usual 3 win it and also it justifies the continuation of having a Northern Ontario team, from a competitive point of view anyway.

But the final wasn't exactly an exciting match to watch.  NO went up by 3 early on, and given how good and competitive the teams are, chances were slim to none that Manitoba would catch up.  It's a bit of a flaw in the game as it is right now... And early lead of more than one usually will mean a certain outcome, especially with the top teams consistently curling in the upper 80% to 90% range.  The free guard zone rule has given the "slim" chance for a comeback, which is better than the "none"-only option.

What's the solution for more comeback opportunities?  I have no idea.  More free guards?  Maybe.  But they should start thinking on rule tweaks, if they haven't already.  Or else, with the athletes getting better and better all the time, we may just end up with robo-curling.

Maybe they should start having big tournaments on crappy club ice.

My SimCity Non-Experience

Despite the fact that there was plenty of warning that EA's attempt at an always-online DRM scheme would create nothing but problems, I went ahead and bought the new SimCity anyway.  Because... well, it's SimCity.

I wasn't able to play it last night, due to overloaded servers.  I was able to pop on at lunch time to finally do the tutorial city.  But tonight, server congestion seems even worse.  I get a message that says it's too busy along with a countdown clock of 19 minutes saying that's when it will attempt to log in again.

The situation is just so mind mindbogglingly ridiculous that I don't even know what to say at this point.  I guess the message here is, according to EA, the only way to stop piracy is to stop everyone from playing games.

Canadian Tire and the Placement of Merchandise

I went to Canadian Tire tonight to buy a bag of ice salt for my driveway / sidewalk.  Looked all over the store for it... not in the middle of the aisles, not by the snow shovels, not by the windshield washer fluid... not even by the hockey equipment.  So, I walk through the checkout with nothing, walk out the door and what do I see?  All the salt.  "Well, that's a stupid place to put them", I thought.  But I grabbed a bag anyway and went to walk back inside towards the checkout.... but the "exit" doors don't open from outside.  I'm not going to walk all the way around to the entrance with a bag of salt to just work my way back to the checkout.  So, I'll go somewhere else for salt.

It'd be pretty easy to just walk off with a bag without paying, though.

New Year's Cruise

Last week I found myself in the Caribbean with my family on a boat.  For the fourth time, we've gone on a cruise over the holidays, however instead of it being over Christmas, we did it over New Year's.

Our adventure started in Ft. Lauderdale aboard Holland America Line's ms Eurodam.  Our first port of call was Half Moon Cay, the private beach island where despite a cloudy and windy morning, we did some swimming and took a hike through a trail.  A trail which we've walked on before (it's part of a Historical Nature Walk excursion, although we do it by ourselves).  This year, we found that signs had been posted at the start of the trail saying it was dangerous and prohibited.  We ignored that sign and went anyway even though we ended up not knowing where we were going.  We survived.

We then had a day at sea, which was on New Year's Eve.  It was quite the busy party on board and we rang in the new year in the Piano Bar in the midst of a mostly-drunken sing-a-long.

Our next port of call was Grand Cayman, where we did a snorkel and stingray petting excursion.  The idea of stingrays creeped me out beforehand, but they were quite docile and fun to pet.  However it was a very rough day on the sea, so the snorkeling was a bit difficult.

Day 5 found us on the island of Roatan, off of Honduras.  I didn't do an excursion that day.  Just hopped off the boat and walked around.  Not much to see or do around the port in Coxen Hole.  The exit to the port leads right onto a pretty poor street with eager vendors of cheap crap... Still better than Paris though.

Our last port was Costa Maya, Mexico.  We did an excursion to the Chacchoban Mayan Ruins, which were neat.  Not very big, but interesting.  One thing I didn't know was the the temples have all be rebuilt (with the original stone, mind you) by archaeologists.  At least there were there... I'm not sure of other sites.  Our boat was docked at a shopping complex (most ports are), where I bought one of those Mexican blankets and got harassed to buy a bracelet that said "Blue Jays" (since I was wearing my Jays hat).  Half of the port complex was actually a Senor Frogs, which meant there was no cheap beer to be had like in Cozumel.

Finished up with another day at sea, flew back from Ft. Lauderdale and now I'm back home... where I found my furnace wasn't working.  It was 6 degrees inside when I got back on Sunday.  Fortunately, it was an easy fix and as of today, it's up and running again.

One thing that was different this time was that I decided to not use the on board internet connection.  I'm glad I didn't, not so much because it was expensive (50 cents per minute) but because when I finally connected back on land, I had barely received an email or saw anything interesting that had happened on Facebook.

Here's some photos I put up on Flickr.  There's a few more in there than the ones I put up on Facebook.

Your Guide To Getting Through Season 1 of Star Trek: The Next Generation

Star Trek: The Next Generation was my favourite show as a kid/teenager.  I watched the show, read the novels, got posters, toys, models... everything short of dressing up like a Klingon and learning the language.  I watched the spin-off and saw the movies several times.  I still think the Season 3 finale is the best cliffhanger in television history.

And now the entire series is up on Netflix Canada.  Excuse me while I call in sick for the next week.

But to be honest, the series didn't really hit its stride until the third season, in my opinion.  So, if you want to give the show a go but want to skim over the first 2 seasons while still getting a good base for the series later on, I've chosen a dozen episodes from Season 1 that you should watch to get a good feel for the start of the series: Six are must-watch and six are should-watch.

I'll keep the descriptions spoiler-free, in case you have never seen anything to do with TNG.  But I'll say that I've chosen these episodes because they either have important character development or introduce something that is important later in the series.

Episode 1: Encounter At Farpoint. Must Watch.  The series premier.

Episode 6: Where No One Has Gone Before. Must Watch.  Introduces "The Traveller".

Episode 9: The Battle. Should Watch. Explores what Captain Picard did before the Enterprise.

Episode 10: Hide and Q. Must Watch. Any episode with Q is entertaining.

Episode 11: Haven. Should Watch. Introduces Lwaxana Troi.

Episode 12: The Big Goodbye. Should Watch. Entertaining Holodeck episode.

Episode 13: Datalore. Must Watch. Introduces Lore.

Episode 15: 11001001. Should Watch. Another good holodeck episode.

Episode 19: Coming of Age. Should Watch. A good episode that deals with Starfleet as a whole.

Episode 20: Heart of Glory. Should Watch.  Explores the nature of the relations with the Klingons.

Episode 23: Skin of Evil. Must Watch. Important main character development.

Episode 25: Conspiracy. Must Watch. Kind of out of character episode. Quite graphic for its day. As the title suggests, it deals with a conspiracy at Starfleet.

Happy Trekking.  I might look through Season 2 and do the same thing.  But once you get to Season 3, you're into the good stuff.