Checking my Yahoo! stock on E*Trade is, more often than not, become a depressing experience...

I know the stock will rise in value eventually... but seeing it now at a little over $23 US, I find myself smacking my head, wishing I'd sold some when it was worth $250 per share last year.

Proof that I'm not your typical testosterone laden male:

WWFE launched its XFL promotion a few weeks ago. I watched part of the first game, but then it hit me: no matter the rule changes, it was still just a football game - and I'm very bored by football.

This isn't to say that I didn't oggle the cheerleaders a bit - but even they aren't enough to keep me watching a bunch of guys throwing a ball around and trying not to be tackled by other big guys when they catch it.

Today's work on the Flash site for work proved to be very frustrating. Few of the things I tried to fix worked... and tomorrow I'm scheduled to demonstrate the site to my co-workers! Lovely.

Meanwhile, this current contract ends next Friday, March 2nd. The director is trying to get another grant that would give me 18 months more of work... but it won't be decided until the 26th of March - so I'll at least be in Limbo for the better part of a month. Lovely x 2.

Compu$erve has yet again allowed corporate greed to ruin a good service...

The message forums have been available on the Web for close to a year now. As you exit, a page for 'My Compuserve' comes up, since we are members.

The problem is: whenever you click a link on that page, you get redirected to one where you get told that only registered members have access to this.

If we can't access it, then what's the point of showing it to us?

With recent events in the US, this Canadian has to play a game of "armchair political analyst". Ignore at your own choice.

President G.W. Bush, in his first month in office: first, he's pushing for tax cuts. Then, he orders another air strike in Iraq.

I don't know about you, dear readers... but I first had a flashback to his father's "No new taxes!" stance, and the whole concept the first President Bush brought of using conflict at almost random times to give America more of a strongarm image.

Why does it feel like GW is just Xeroxing his dad's Presidency so far?

I tried to get more done on the Website I was commissioned to work on today. The chatroom still isn't working...

As I've edited all the codes properly, it's a given that the server folks still haven't worked out the kinks in Perl.

Yesterday was annoying for me: while trying to take some trash outside for garbage pickup, I took a major spill on the upper stairs in my building. Good thing it wasn't the landing to my apartment... I probably wouldn't be here to gripe about it!

It's still frustrating to me. I've now fallen twice in a month where I haven't in years, and while doing things I never had trouble with, either.

Monday February 12th marked a sad day for us writers. I just got to reading the email I downloaded today and learned the news:

I've been a subscriber to the Inklings newsletter for years now. It was an excellent resource for writers, highlighting markets, news, and offering a lot of advice.

The newsletter and its website are owned by the XLibris company. They can no longer afford to produce it, so it has ended. Very sad news.

I'm finishing up my lunch break at the office right now...

I've been fixing up errors on the Web site. Far as I know, this contract ends on March 2nd. Maybe it will be renewed, maybe not. Either way, I won't worry as I did the last time... stay optimistic, but realistic as well.

Happy Greeting Card Day to those who celebrate it! Okay... it's called Valentine's Day... but for folks like me - uninvolved - it's a sucky holiday, no matter what it's called.

This was a frustrating day for me... I'm commissioned to do some work on a website, we set today as a target date... only few of the things I'm in charge of are working. The Perl-based chat room isn't working, the search engine doesn't work as I expected either... that is something I'll fix "off the clock", because it was my oversight.

Tonight I had supper at the Community Kitchen restaurant here in NDG again. A plate of hearty Irish Stew, side salad, began the meal with a bowl of Beef and Barley soup, and finished with a dessert of blueberry-apple turnover. Total cost: two bucks.

Why I never tried this restaurant before I'll never know... but I've been there three times so far in the past few weeks. I'm even going to have meals delivered bt them soon.

XFL, Week 2: Sacked!

I talk about wrestling-related stuff in ABomanation, but I had to mention this here.

First, I'll admit this up front: football bores me. A bunch of muscle freaks tossing around a ball and trying to flatten the guy who catches it just doesn't appeal to me. When the XFL was first announced, I was underwhelmed by the idea. Vince McMahon has proved several times in the past that he can't make non-wrestling products work: The WBF, a bodybuilding promotion, fizzled in less than a year after starting. In the 1970s, he tried a sketch comedy with wrestlers based on Hee-Haw; it flopped too.

I don't hold out much faith in the XFL - and based on the ratings, viewers don't either.

Court: Napster can stay, but it may be liable. Sad. A victory for greedy businessmen and scaredycat record execs... but it's a victory won by the fact of not having a clue what Napster is good at: getting music to a wider audience without the high expense of CDs.

It's about time I wrote a substantially large Blog-post...

Friday started off pretty brutal, with rain and freezing rain. Brutal because it turned much of the snow to ice. While I do have ice picks on my canes, my feet aren't really all-terrain; they slip easily. So, I found myself walking very slowly just to cross a street... once. (I didn't leave the house for most of the day)

Friday night was the in-person deadline for issue 63 of Comicopia. My buddy-and-Central-Mailer Mike had already practically compiled all the newsletters already... we just had to get the last one from our friend/member Niall coming in from Ottawa specifically for that reason.

Ottawa is an unusual city in some ways: it's the Nation's Capital for us Canadians, but it's also less than 2 hours travel away. Niall frequently comes into Montreal by bus to meet people, taking a bus home around midnight. I guess it feels weird since Toronto is close to 8 hours of travel away...

We have a new member in Comicopia this issue; in itself, that's a great thing - but at the same time, the usual 'copia 'luck' struck: as one member joins us, one of the longer term members drops out from lack of activity. It always seems that when we get new members, an equal number of older ones drop out. Sigh

Interesting: looking at my server logs, I learned that one of the search terms used to find Jazz Life was my name.

I'm not so famous yet that my name would be cause to search for me (hopefully, some day!). I can only guess that two people I used to know well tried to locate me on the Web. Unfortunately, no one signed a Guestbook or discussion forum, so I have no way of knowing who it was... oh well.

blurbs in biffland I discovered Bif Naked through an appearance on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, with her singing her hit song Lucky. I've been hooked ever since.

Don't let the name mislead you. Bif may look unusual, have a strange name too - but she also has one of the smoothest voices today.

Mr. Bill I just found this site, and I had to link it here.

Anyone who, like me, watched Saturday Night Live in the 1970s will remember the cathartic shorts starring the Play Doh character, getting mauled every week.

Now, you can relive it online... or if you never saw him before, see what we loved!

I forgot to mention: what also made it funny was the fact that after my cut, everyone I know had the same reaction as they have anytime I get a haircut: they checked to see if I trimmed off my ponytail.

That's not gonna happen anytime in the near future... I've been growing it for over 8 years now; don't plan to change anytime soon!

I got my hair cut yesterday. Normally, that wouldn't be a big deal worth mentioning... what was interesting was the fact that my hair-dresser used shears to trim down my unruly bush of hair first. I think this was the first time she's ever done this.

I'm quite annoyed with Classmates.com at the moment: they removed my High School message board from Delphi's forums, and made them something you have to sign in on their own site instead.

The Delphi forums were very convenient for me... I already have an account there, and I just had to choose the school forums from the 'My Folders' option. Now, I'll need to take yet another step to do things.

The Forum brought some surprises to me in the recent past: I heard from a student who graduated the year before me. Said student and I had... well, a colorful past not full of warm fuzzy memories. I'll have to wonder how many people will come to Classmates now.

January saw the loss of a fragment of history:

THIS WEEK'S HONORARY UNSUBSCRIBE goes to Michel Navratil. One of the 706 survivors of the sinking of the Titanic, Navratil was the only male still alive (only four other survivors, all women, remain alive). He was not quite four years old when his father grabbed him in the middle of the night after the ship hit an iceberg on April 15, 1912. "My father entered our cabin where we were sleeping. He dressed me very warmly and took me in his arms. A stranger did the same for my brother. When I think of it now, I am very moved. They knew they were going to die. I don't recall being afraid, I remember the pleasure, really, of going plop into the lifeboat." His father indeed was one of the 1,480 who died that night. Navratil went on to become a professor of philosophy, saying that the disaster, and his ordeal in proving his identity so he could be reunited with his mother in France, influenced his thinking throughout his life. He died January 31 in France at age 92.

(Taken from the THIS IS TRUE newsletter)

The "Honorary Unsubscribe" section is really just a tribute to the lives of people overlooked for notice by most of the press.

The Titanic tragedy was nearly a century ago, but it was an event that will live on for a long time. Hopefully, so will a memory of Michel Navratil.

February 1st was the day for my bi-annual MRI scan, as part of a study. I'm in the machine for well over an hour each time.

Fortunately, I'm not claustrophobic, because the machine has you strapped into a narrow area. It's also incredibly loud... yet I sleep through most of my time in the machine anyways. :)

I come out though wondering why I bothered to wash my hair beforehand. I still come out with major bed-head.