Dance Moves

Waiting on the train from Montreal -- are transit schedules nothing but educated wish lists? -- Nathan passes the times with some dance moves.

Lunch

Walked into the building at lunchtime with these. I only had the cat food bag to remind me that I need to buy more, and having done so, was about to throw it away. Still made the helpdesk guys double-take.

Unwanted Hat

I think someone tried to throw it away on Monday because it was in front of our pile of trash in the morning. But because Monday was a recycling-only day, the garbage men wouldn't take it. The hat has been blowing back and forth on and off the street since then, as helpful people put it back on our lawn.

This Is The Tree Outside My Office Window

Victory

Every McDonald's ice cream is a victory that he's earned.

Smoke/ CO Detector

So the smoke detector in the unfinished side of the basement started chirping, and that got me looking at the rest of the smoke detectors. They say the lifespan of these things is five or six years, but who thinks of them that often? looking at the date of the "master" one above, it is clear that it is expired one way or another. So, off to Home Depot to buy three more (they are all chained together somehow) at $60 each. At least these ones "claim" to have a ten year life span, so I've put a big label on the front of them with the May 2026 replace-by date on them so we are less likely to forget.

On Hold

Playing with toys while trying to prevent the hold music from making me kill somebody.

Review: London Has Fallen

Well hey, it sure wasn't My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2. Not sure if there's much more positive to say about it. It isn't that it was bad, per se, but I'm too old for these gratuitous shoot-em-up type things. Still better than having to sit through MBFGW2.

Pardon Me, Sir

Waiting on the 93-Innovation at Bayshore. Watching the busses go by is one of his favourite parts of the outing.

Bowling

We went back to the disco-bowl place on Merivale. If we go first thing on Sunday it is pretty quiet so the kids can enjoy doing a game. Two games tends to be too much for them, and other groups are starting to show up at that point so it gets much louder. But Alex likes to sit on the floor and roll the ball into the gutter, he thinks that is hilarious.

The NDP Doesn't Get It

So it appears that the NDP has collectively sorted through the debris of last year's election and come to the conclusion that the reason why they lost is that they were not radical enough.

And this, folks, is the root of why the NDP isn't going to get anywhere federally any time soon.

We can forgive the fact that they confused "anger at the Bloq" with "national relevance". We can hand wave the fact that they brilliantly exploited the political and media vacuum left by the Liberal wreckage.

The problem is that the NDP doesn't seem to understand that in order to be nationally relevant, they need the mainstream vote.

Nonsense like the LEAP Manifesto doesn't help either. All it does is paint the entire party as a group of economy-wrecking, job-killing, tax-hiking know-nothings. And especially in the political environment where "long term planning" means Tuesday, it gives the impression that an NDP government would immediately seal the oil fields, quadruple the price of gas, and tax anything with petroleum in it.

None of the so-called blue-collar middle class is going to vote for killing their jobs, and that's who the heartland of Alberta is populated by.

When you put it all together, all this does is bleed good ideas. If the NDP comes up with an idea that is crazy, it just re-enforces the perception that they don't know what the public wants. If they come up with something that is politically palatable, then one of the other two parties -- probably the Liberals -- will adopt it, meaning that the idea can get implemented without the assorted other wackyness that a NDP government would undoubtedly want to proceed with. As a result, even if the country keeps moving left, the NDP will still get pushed left of mainstream as the Liberals adopt their good, actionable ideas.

If you want power, you have to be appealing to the people. Being more radical isn't going to help.

Maple Leaf Fail

So Maple Leaf has re-engineered the Natural Selections Family Size deli meat containers for the store. Here's how the resealable covers are supposed to work:

However, unless you are careful -- and probably 25% of the time even if you are -- this is how they actually open:

Note the gap riding the edge of the upper container, meaning that when you close it, it doesn't seal. In this particular case, I'd even been careful during the initial opening, but it failed like this on subsequent openings.

Now we go through this stuff fast enough that it doesn't particularly matter, but the thing is that the previous design worked just fine. I guess Maple Leaf needed to squeeze an extra fraction of a cent out of each sale by cheapening out on the packaging a bit.

Snow

OK, that's an impressive amount of snow for only a couple hours.

Earned Ice Cream

One of Alex's favourite rewards is to go to McDonald's for ice cream. He loves to go inside the restaurant, make his order at the desk -- he doesn't like the kiosk order stations -- and then try to steal the change from the order. We order an ice cream cone in-a-cup because it is cheaper than a plain sundae, even though there's more stuff -- the cone -- in the in-a-cup. A lot of the counter help doesn't know that, so I'll frequently just pay for the plain sundae because it's less than a dollar and it isn't worth getting upset about. Sometimes we are in McDonald's several times in a week, and you have to wonder what the staff thinks about Daddy bringing his boy for ice cream like every day, which it feels like sometimes -- once it was literally four days in a row. I told Jenn it would be hilarious if she took him once and made him have apple slices or something. But so far, the staff have kept their opinions to themselves, and Alex enjoys every visit.

Review: Batman Vs. Superman

DC really doesn't know how to do superhero movies, do they. I mean, they did a good job of addressing the elephant in the room of most superhero movies -- what about all the collateral damage caused by these superpower-infused romps of violence -- and turn that into a gritty, ugly churn of nastiness. Because really, could it turn into a garden of unicorns? Of course not. But it turns out that an ugly churn of nastiness doesn't, in fact, make a good movie.

And then there's the unsatisfying portrayal, motivations, and actions of Lex Luthor, the implausible monster which is produced for the final climax, and Superman's yo-yo-ing between yes-I'm-dead-no-I'm-not-oh-oops-I-guess-I-am. The whole end was just... stupid. Not to mention Batman's whole I'm-so-done-with-this-helo-bullshit.

I did like Wonder Woman, though. Even if she did have a shield made of unobtanium or fictionite or some other bullshitium.

The whole tone of the movie is so different from the DC TV multiverse, which ranges from The Flash's "the grownup world is just like highschool" (which is taken to extremes in Supergirl, where it is highschool in all but name) to Legends Of Tomorrow (which wants to be campy but forgot to bring a backpack) to full scale comic-book insanity in Gotham.

But put it all together and the only DC movies I'll really make an effort to see again are the latest Batman trilogy, because even though it has its problems it tells a cohesive story.

So: it (BvS) was pretty good for what it is, but man I don't think I'll want to see it again.

Tunnel Endpoint

I've gotten bored with the digging of this tunnel since there isn't anywhere to actually go, and there is a prohibitive amount of water in this particular spawn I can't just dig up to start a new overground location. So I played a bit with fancy tunnel shapes and lighting.