They've Got Cars Big As Bars

I go back to Fredericton tomorrow, and then I move apartments on the 29th.  There will therefore be a planned power outage from the hours of 8 AM until midnight in order to accommodate the server relocation.  Expect a Christmas vacation entry at that time.

Merry Mall Driven, Competitive Present Swapping, Overindulgent Consumerism, Winter Holiday!

I'm heading home on Sunday or Monday, but before then I need to give my apartment a thorough cleaning and do some shopping.  In other words: "Bah! Humbug!" to the lot of you.

More Trivia

Keeping up with my habit of posting links to these things, why not give the BBC's Global News Challenge a try.  Although it's normally a weekly thing, the current one covers events from the past year, and is available in two versions: the normal one and one dealing with more offbeat stories.

Just for comparison purposes, I got 8 / 12 on the first and 6 / 12 on the second.

White Light / White Heat

What an odd morning.  The power was out three times between 9 and 10, which is irritating in itself, but the first time it went out was rather, uh, unique.

To set the scene: it's sometime between 9 o'clock and 9:15, I'm lying in bed, dreaming about something or other.  The thing is, I'm not completely asleep; I'm at the stage where I know I'm dreaming and I'm concious of what's happening around me, but I'm still out of it.

Then, the power goes out.

Seeing as all the lights were already off in my room, I didn't know that at the time.  All I know is that there's a sudden stabbing pain in the back of my head, everything goes white, and all my thoughts are drowned out by a sudden loud noise in my head — call it a roar, a bang, whatever.  Needless to say, this completely wakes me up.

So, I'm lying in bed, dazed, trying to figure out what just happened, when suddenly I hear a shrill beeping coming from the other room.  It's my UPS, informing me that it just reset itself.  That's when I realise what's happened: the power's just gone out, and I got an electric shock when it did so.

Yet another reason for me to be glad I'm moving out of here.

2.6.0

For those who care about this type of stuff: version 2.6.0 of the Linux kernel has just been released.

I'm personally going to wait a little while before upgrading; I had issues with the early versions of 2.4, and I'd rather not repeat them with this one.  Besides, I only just upgraded to 2.4.23 two weeks ago.

The Ice Age Is Coming, The Sun's Zooming In

What the bloody hell?  Hold off on the sinning folks; the Rapture Index may be falling, but according to the US National Oceanic and Atmosperhic Administration we are currently "hurling towards the sun".

And you thought meteorologists didn't have a sense of humour.  On the plus side, it appears that only Turney, Missouri is scehduled to meet a firey demise.

Update: Dammit!  They noticed and took it down.  Give me a moment or two, as I managed to save a copy.  And here it is!

Music Is My Saviour

Right, I'm a little late with this entry, but I feel the need to post it anyways.  Basically, if you've been in a cave for the past couple of days, the Canadian Copyright Board ruled that downloading music tracks off of the Internet was not illegal, so long as those tracks were for personal use only.  Of course, uploading is still illegal and the various recording industries are expected to challenge it.

This comes in conjunction with their decision to impose a levy of up to $25 on portable MP3 players.  In other words: Better buy your iPod now (or Nomad, or rebranded Nomad… I mean Digital Jukebox) and start your downloading!

Here's a couple of links to news reports on the decision, courtesy of News.com and MacCentral.

I think I may have posted something along these lines before.

On a completely unrelated note, I see that the Rapture Index has sunk below 145. This moves us out of 'Fasten Your Seatbelts' and into the 'High Prophetic Activity' category for the first time in at least 6 years.  Don't bother repenting, the end is not so nigh!

My Head's Gonna Crack Like A Bank

Yay! It's yet another "Andrew's sick" entry.  Today's symptoms are: fatigue, dizziness, and a headache that seems to combine the feeling of my skull simultaneously collapsing in on itself and exploding.

…And I was planning on using this weekend to get lots of work done.

Random Stuff

I found this while I was sorting through some papers.  It was one of my "I really need to finish this roll of film" pictures.  So, uh, something or other at my sheer dorkiness!

It's not quite as bad as it looks, the thing in the middle is actually a UPS.

Odd Quotations

Today's odd quotation comes to us courtesy of the Associated Press, by way of an article in the Globe and Mail.  The article is about concerns being raised by British drug regulators in regards to the use of selective serotonin inhibitors (SSRIs), which are commonly used to treat depression, in people under the age of 18.

The reasoning behind this is that the side effects outweigh the possible good, and I'd believe that.  The more commonly used SSRIs have side effect lists that seem to go on forever, often contradicting itself.  (For example: paroxetine, more commonly known as paxil, can cause both drowsiness and insomnia.)  Anyways, what really caught my eye was this:

"In October, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued a similar but more general health advisory alerting physicians to a possible link between antidepressant drugs and suicidal feelings in the young."

Now I know that suicidal feelings aren't always caused by depression, but often they are used to help diagnose depression.  For that reason I just find the idea odd; that something used to treat depression can cause something that's one of the more severe symptoms of said condition.

Uh… Yeah… I have no idea where I'm going with this.

Snowed In

It's snowing right now.  Actually, it's snowing hard.  Combine that with winds and it looks like I'm going to end up spending another day in Moncton.  Actually, according to the weather reports I might be here until Tuesday.

I've got my thesis stuff with me, so at least I can do some work, but other than that everything seems to be conspiring against me.  I finished the only book in the house that I was interested in, and my Palm has decided that all it wants to do is ask me if I want to erase all data.  (If anyone has any ideas why it would be doing this, then I'd really like to know.  The manual for this model is available online, but, seeing as I can type faster than this computer can display text, I'm thinking a large pdf file might be asking too much of it.)

That's it, nothing more to say.  I'm off to find some homemade bread now, so at least there's one plus to being snowed in.

Commentless Entry Ho!

A trip to the mall yielded both a copy of High Fidelity and an urge to purge my head of syrupy seasonal music with one of the few Christmas themed songs I can stand.  So, in honour of that, I present my all-time top 5 Pogues songs.

Number 5:  The Broad Majestic Shannon, from "If I Should Fall From Grace with God"
Number 4:  Fairytale of New York, from "If I Should Fall From Grace with God"
Number 3:  Rainy Night in Soho, from the "Poguetry in Motion" EP
Number 2:  Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, from the "Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah" EP
Number 1:  The Sick Bed of Cuchulainn, from "Rum, Sodomy & the Lash"

Put Your Books Away; It's Pop Quiz Time.

How well do you know your punctuation and grammar?  Take the BBC's quiz and find out!

I only managed a 5 out of 10, but I argue that some of the questions shouldn't be there.

Public Service Announcement

When you're trying to type a message to someone, telling them you can't do your much needed grocery shopping tonight because you need to copy you thesis chapters out of a notebook and into Word, and end up typing "I need to copy food", then it's time that you consider the following:

• Perhaps you should get some sleep.
• Barring that, perhaps you should get some food.

Brought to you by the Association of Graduate Students Who Have Just Realised It's After 11PM and They Haven't Eaten Since Noon.