I have returned. Sadly, there is little to report.

In news from 'the place we shall not name', there is no news. God damn iron filters. I blew off three days and did not get to ascertain the state of my accursed filters. One day to seal everything back up, and prepare for rinse. One day to rinse, and not get it completely clean, and then another day wasted trying to backwash. God do I hate that place. God do I hate iron filters. I hate the whole damn thing!!!!!

In other news, there is no news. My life has become sadly boring. I really need to get out of that town in Manitoba. It has made me bitter and sad. Luckily I've had Melissa's cell phone messages to guide me from darkness into the sun. Thanks Missy, you're a doll.

Off to the APEGS meeting tomorrow. I doubt there will be highlights but I'll keep you informed.

Toodles!!

Blog Survey Of The Day:

Should I get an above ground pool?

Blog Question Of The Day:

Why would you EVER put carrot into a hamburger pattie!?!

Melissa and Christiane are the sweetest girls on the planet!!!

Thanks for the card!

Okay, I just remembered one of the things I wanted to blog about. Credit for remembering this goes to Melissa, as her food comments made me remember my boycott of Mr. Sub, which has lead to another boycott.

I will be boycotting the Teacher's Credit Union. Their radio commercials are idiotic. Don't take 0% financing from the dealership and instead come to the Teacher's Credit Union and get bend over for 10%+ rates on a car!?! Oh yeah, that makes sense. Argument #1 from them, you might pay full sticker price. Full stick, at 0% is probably cheaper than paying all that interest to the Credit Union. (You might save money on this if the car is really, really cheap) To the best of my knowledge, the only vehicles that are exempted from 0% financing are the really expensive ones, which if you can afford, probably are not being paid for by a Teacher's Credit Union loan..

They made a bunch of stupid reasons but they were all gay. Suffice it to say, its a crappy commercial. Please, all of you, join with me in boycotting the Teacher's Credit Union.

Sometimes I really hate that drive back to Watson on Monday morning.

I must have had about 30 good thoughts for a blog entry, as I drove back this morning. Then i've been through two hours of my usual phone hell, and now I can't remember a single one of them. That, right there, is damn messed up. And you can't even scribble the ideas down for yourself, because you're driving. Have you ever tried to write something while you drive? I nearly end up in the ditch every time I try.

I sunburned my head, driving around on Friday with the sunroof unobscured. I didn't notice until I had a shower and wondered why it hurt to get water on my head. I didn't get that shower until Saturday morning. I got up at 10:00 on Friday morning, and by 10:30 I was driving. Except for the four hours I spent in the field south of Virden, all I did on Friday was drive. For the record, it was boring. I got to my friend Greg's place, and promptly fell asleep on the couch. I don't think my fellow gamers were very amused. :-)

I now have a digital video camera. Its still in the box, two days later. I think I'm going to have to sit down and have a serious conversation with myself about buying stuff I never use. I bought a high definition satellite system, and I haven't been home for a majority of a week since I got it. I bought that high definition TV last summer, and promptly went on the road for two weeks after bringing it home. I need to either a) buy less stuff, or b) only buy portable stuff. Or, failing either of those, actually have a freakin' plan for all the crap I buy.

I may be a Shop-o-holic. I'll get evaluated and report the results to all of you.

This is G-5 signing off, from beyond the moon of Endor.

Its 3:41 AM on a Saturday night/Sunday morning. What the hell am I doing still awake?

I don't even know anymore. Things that felt right, feel wrong now. Successes have mutated themselves until they feel like failures. Good times have been painted over with a wide brush, tainted heavily with slate grey. The light that would shine in my eyes, has given way to the soul absorbing color of black.

Its quarter to four in the morning, and I can't make the voices in my head stay still enough to find sleep. They shriek and howl at me, demanding that I do things I feel incapable of doing. They moan about failures past, and failures that are sure to come. The wailing and screaming echoes around in my brain, drowning out any merriment I might find in a life that is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a bad one.

I can't stand the noise. The incessant barking and roaring floods my senses. It gives me a headache. It won't let me rest, even though my body does nothing else but beg from me that I stop. Exhaustion piles on fatigue and yet I keep going. One half of me wants nothing more than to stop completely, and hide in the dark from the demons that would pursue me. The other half rails at me to not be weak, to not give in to those desires. The cacophony of sound in my brain makes me want to pull it from within my skull and hurl it as far as my limbs can make it go.

I just want some peace and quiet. A few hours, or a day, when all the shouting stops, and my mind can truly be at rest. A moment of silence, that stretches on so that I don't remember it beginning, and can not see it ending. One block of time when all wants, desires, responsibilities and duties, melt into the background and I can just rest. And enjoy that I am resting.

One night of sleep.

Good night.

For being an active blogger, Blogger.com parent company, Google (some of you may have heard of this organization) has offered to let me be a beta tester of their new email service, Gmail. I just signed up. I can't offer a lot of details right now, as I've had the account about 5 minutes so far. I will be playing with it in the coming days/weeks.

For those of you that might want to email me at my new address, the account address is:

telk26@gmail.com

Toodles my friends!!

I have come face to face with the most insidious virus that you will ever find infesting your system. The virus is so pervasive, so intrusive, you forget that its a virus, a pestilence, a pox upon all of humanity. But the software of which I speak is the single greatest impediment to the advancement of human society, and the celebration of our arts.

I am speaking, of course, of RealPlayer, or as they call themselves now, RealOne player. Do not be fooled. This software is not helpful, useful, or in any way worth having. It is a virus. It is a foul infestation that overwhelms your system, and brings it to its knees. Nothing will make your computing experience any worse than an episode with RealOne.

At the least, at the absolute, rock bottom least, you could correct your mistakes as you progress from version to version. Still, STILL, these idiots at Real have not figured out how to have individual volume control for your movie selection. Every other media player in the computing world has independent volume control. i.e. you can set your system volume, but turn it up or down for your movie only. And this can't be hard to do. Nonetheless, their crappy software has been around for 10, count'em TEN, years, at least, and they still haven't fixed this. If RealOne comes up, for any reason, it immediately screws with your Windows system volume settings. I loathe this to a degree that I can't even express in coherent sentences, as my anger overwhelms my mental faculties.

Do not use RealOne. Do not even download it. For if you do, all the Norton's and McAfee's in the world will not be able to save you from the plague of RealOne. Throw out your computer and start over. Its your only hope.

Why does Adobe software suck so much bag!?!

Some reflections from a weekend away from home:

If you can go 30 miles with your right turn signal light on, and not notice it, I don't feel very comfortable with you going faster than me.

What kind of a numbnut do you have to be, to play frisbee in a mall parking lot?

What is it about Wal-Mart that makes people lose their minds?

When you put the 'Do Not Disturb' sign on your door in a hotel, shouldn't that tell EVERYONE not to bother you, including the front desk phoning about something?

Is it a new millenium thing in parenting to just let your hellspawn run amok in a public swimming pool?

Am I alone in thinking Jann Arden BUTCHERED the national anthem the other night?

The Inn Solutions Internet package, for hotel users, is NOT worth $7.95 a night.

I was gonna blog 'Go FISH' over the weekend, but they choked on it last night so now I'm mad at them. (Brian Burke - sign a real goaltender)

That is all. Damn Alzheimers. I can't remember everything anymore. Toodles for now!

Just for the record, Realplayer, and all Real.com product are HORRIBLE!!

Do not buy!

NO! NO!! NO!!!

Blog Good News Of The Day:

Production numbers are in from the membrane treatment plant located in 'the place we will not name'. The unit is producing 266 Igpm of bottled water quality water to the reservior. This is better than design.

We are cautiously optimistic.

I have a suggestion for all the car manufacturer and/or automotive accessory people who read my blog. (I'm sure there must be some since everyone LOVES me and my blog, no?)

You need to add the functionality of being able to turn on the seat warmers with the remote fob. Sure I can warm the whole vehicle up for 28 minutes so its at a comfortable temperature. However, I could let it warm up for 5 minutes, and be able to comfortably stand the climate, if only I could power up the seat warmers without being in the vehicle.

Something for the automotive geniuses to ponder.

Toodles!!

I talk on the phone a lot these days.

The above statement probably doesn't sound all that momentous. Lots of people talk on the phone a lot. Many people have whole jobs, that are nothing but talking on the phone. I even know one such person that has that job. It is however, momentous to me. I hate the phone. Perhaps hate is too strong a word but 'don't like' doesn't really say enough. Its a grey area in between, with my preference more to the loathing side. Suffice it to say, its not my favorite past time.

Today, for instance, I'm sure I've spent 4 hours on the phone already, out of the 5 hours I've spent at work. And I've probably talked to over a dozen people. I'll get one answer, take it to the person asking, and then get another question. Thus chasing me from person to person and phone to phone. I was even on two phones at once, at one point.

Coming from my perspective, this is incredible! I've never pursued the telephone, when any other method of communication would work. Not work better, but just work.

I just got interrupted from writing this blog entry for 45 minutes while I dealt with the phone. Again. I wanted to rant about this state of affairs but apparently the stupid phone, the bane of my existence, will not leave me alone, long enough, to finish it. So I quit here.

Have wonderful days everyone!!

How bloody vain do you have to be to buy Trojan Magnum condoms!?!

Is 30 years old, too old, to idolize Cody Banks?

Okay, this is an amusing piece of pop culture.

But first, a rant.

This could only happen, here in the armpit of the world. Pop culture media simply does not extend to us here in Saskatchewan. Anything that filters down to us, has long since been abandoned by the rest of mainstream media. If we get it, it already sucks.

My example? A pair of songs. One by Eamon, and a second, rebuttal from someone named Frankee. In one, a guy, Eamon, cusses out some woman that obviously wronged him. And he's a touch bitter. You'll not know the extend of it, listening to mainstream media of any type. But its got a good rhythm and the lyrics intrigue, so finding it by other means is not difficult, and is actually something I would recommend. The explicit version is definitely superior. Suffice it to say, he is not amused with his former paramour.

Now comes a rebuttal. Its only in tandem the situation becomes really amusing. I don't know if its the exact woman mentioned in the Eamon song, but someone named Frankee has taken issue with the comments made in the Eamon song. Same beat, different lyrics. Basically, throws all the assertions from the Eamon song, back in his face. Again, get the explicit version. Its worth the effort.

Ain't love grand?

You know, I don't really care who you are. You can be the wealthiest man in the world. You can be good looking beyond all measure. You can be so famous that even indigents in the rain forest know your name. You can be all those things but I still think this truth holds true.

How can you let a woman like Rebecca Romijn get away!?!?!

Blog Question Of The Day:

If you could contribute only one song to an 'Angry' compilation, what song would you pick?