Moving!

Quotation Of The Day ~ Cormac McCarthy: I got what I needed instead of what I wanted and that's just about the best kind of luck you can have.

I recently downloaded an app for my phone called Moves http://moves-app.com/

My doctor once told me that, in spite of my relatively unhealthy lifestyle (drinking, smoking, generally avoiding fresh fruit and veggies, living alone, etc.) (well, there's that damned pest of a cat, too) (<wink>) i'm in pretty good shape for my advanced age thanks to the fact that i walk a lot. I like walking!

Anyway, Moves uses the GPS to track my every step and i was interested in seeing how far i actually did walk in a day. Admittedly, at this time of year, and with the weather being the way it has been -- snow upon snow upon more snow and, let's be honest, it's also been fucking freezing -- i haven't been strolling the streets and avenues of my fair town as much as i might do on, say, a sunny day in May. (In fact, i hate walking atm, slithering and sliding all over the place, clambering over churned-up ice and that's been covered with layers of snow, it's too much like work....)

So, according to Moves, over the past two weeks, and excluding the time i spend at work wandering around aimlessly (i turn my 'phone off when i'm at the shop), i've walked an average of 2.5 kilometres a day. Not much, really, but then the weather has been in large part to blame. I come home with my face frozen, i don't want to go out and have it frozen again.  And, this winter, i have fallen more often than ever before -- sometimes tripping over objects hidden underneath the snow, but mostly in attempts to clamber over snow mountains that have been deposited in my path by the ploughs (or, for the benefit of my American readers, "plows"). Fortunately no harm done, except for a torn pair of trousers.... No broken bones or bloodshed.

Another thing about Moves, though, is that it tags my locations. (Damn that GPS, that eye in the sky!) And it's staggering, what a limited orbit i have had lately! For example, in the past two weeks, it tells me that i've been to Kelsey's seven times, to the bank twice, to Video + Books twice, to the beer store three times, the liquor store once, to Bentley's once, to Quiznos twice, to the grocery store four times, to Fanfare Books once and Joe's Variety three times and ... that's it. Those are the only places i've been to in two weeks, other than home and work.

What a sad old fart i have become.... I'll be less of one, though, as soon as the summer arrives. If it ever does.... (I'll be a happier old fart LOL.)

Caveat: Moves uses up a lot of battery. Even though, as i said, my phone is off all day at work, i still have to charge it every night.

Here's the playlist:

Stevie Ray Vaughan & Double Trouble - Greatest Hits
Simon Nicol - Consonant Please Carol
Marillion - Sounds That Can't Be Made
Spiers & Boden - Tunes
Bruce Springsteen - High Hopes
Jeff Lynne - Into The Light
John Fogerty - Blue Moon Swamp
Joe Satriani -- Unstoppable Momentum
Stone The Crows - Teenage Licks
Ofra Haza - Live At The Montreux Jazz Festival
The Beatles - Help!
The Moody Blues - To Our Children's Children's Children
The Beatles - Beatles For Sale
The Vaughan Brothers - Family Style
The Beatles - Rubber Soul
Camel - I Can See Your House From Here
Colin James - 25 Live
Camel - A Live Record
Jack Bruce - Songs For A Tailor
Stevie Ray Vaughan & Double Trouble - Live Alive

And the next selections from my CD collection:

Adventures In Modern Drinking

Quotation of the day ~ George Jones: Maybe some folks are alcoholics and others are just voluntary drunks. Maybe some folks drink due to body chemistry and others due to their lazy characters. Maybe some have drinking problems, while others have problems enough to drink.
 
As anyone who knows me will tell you, and as i've probably mentioned here ad nauseam, i am very fond of my beer. I'm also very fond of pubs, they're (quite possibly) my natural habitat, but i don't go to pubs to drink. No, really. If i just wanted to drink, i could do it at home and save a lot of money. I like the atmosphere and, as i spent a part of my childhood in England, living above a pub, they're in my blood somehow. (Same as, when i lived in Toronto, i lived upstairs from a pizza parlour. Starting at around 10 a.m., the aroma of pepperoni & cheese would waft up and imbue my studio, and, to this day, i have a Pavlovian reaction at the very thought of pizza.)

My favourite pub where i live now, is Kelsey's. Easy walking distance from both home and my work. There are one or two other places i drop into occasionally, but i've been going to Kelsey's on average maybe twice or thrice a week ever since it opened and it's my home away from home. Really. I feel that comfortable there.

I know you're curious as to why, and i'll tell you one reason. It's because i have friends who work there, i like everyone who works there, and some of the waitresses, i am far more fond of than i should be, at my age. (I'm honestly not a dirty old man but if i were 35 years younger....) Kelsey's -- as a good pub should be -- is a large part of my social life.

I like to think that i drink in a mature, responsible and "sober" (if that word applies) manner, though (except on Christmas Eve!). In public, anyway.  My usual routine is, have two pints (never fewer, rarely more), look at email, Facebook & Twitter on my phone, and then spend the rest of the hour or so reading my book (and occasionally flirting outrageously with the waitresses). And, let me tell you: every single server at Kelsey's is an attractive female, some of them i would even class as beautiful. Well, i DID say i don't go there to drink!

OK, that was rather a lengthy preamble, covering territory i've most likely covered before on these pages. On to the adventure.

On Friday, i dropped in, Jill had my pint before me in a record-setting ten seconds (she'd seen me coming) and i relaxed, did the Facebook / Twitter thing, and started to read my book (Ian Rankin's "Fleshmarket Close" if you're interested).

The only other people at the bar were a couple, a fairly loud woman and her very mousy male companion, but i paid them no heed and concentrated on my book. But then Jilly sent me a Facebook message saying "oh, dear." I thought (and hoped) at first that she was about to profess undying love, you know, like saying "oh, dear" after some world-obliterating sex, (i think it's okay for me to say that, she knows how fond of her i am) but then realised that she was dismayed about the stentorian female.

There was an argument over something (probably trivial). She started to yell at her "date," and he left, but heck, i wasn't paying too much attention, huge fan of Ian Rankin that i am, but apparently she was in a state of high dudgeon. A woman scorned and all that schtuff. Still and all, though, she was sitting relatively quietly. I'm not sure of the exact chronology, but i think that it was about this time that she ordered a couple of meals to take out. And slipped a salt cellar into her purse.... (And i told Jill so, via Facebook.)

But then she turned her attention on me, the only other person at the bar, alas.... "What are YOU looking at?" she called at me across the bar. I said (in my best Robert deNiro manner) "You talkin' to me?" I was looking at my book, in fact i even showed it to her. "It's called a book, see?" i said. "You can't be reading, you're not really reading, you're a liar." "Thank you very much," i replied, refusing to rise to the challenge. "Why are you pretending to read?" -- and she was literally yelling at this point.  "Well, you're right, i'm not reading now, you're interrupting me."

"You can't be reading," she repeated, with a certain lack of imagination, "not with the Muzak and the tv on. You look stupid!"

Again, i thanked her for her insight. She repeated her opinion on my appearance, more loudly this time,  and again, i thanked her for her view and admitted that she was 100% correct, i was only pretending to read. And, agreed that yes, i do look stupid -- but at my age i try to avoid mirrors and so i was grateful for that assessment. Maybe she was right!

Now, Kelsey's people stepped in. Michelle (manager) insisted that she leave. The customer screamed (literally) "FUCK OFF" (or words to that effect), "today would have been my son's 25th birthday, but he committed suicide!!!! AND NONE OF YOU LOT CARES!!!" Meanwhile, Jen was calling the police.

(Now, all right, if her son's suicide was a fact, it's a tragedy. No parent should have to bury their child. But none of us knew this woman, which, in light of her behaviour, made sympathy difficult. We've all -- every one of us -- lost someone we love. We don't all go doolally at the pub....)

After another brief bout of swearing and shouting, she left, damning us all to hell. Calm descended -- and her take-out dinners appeared from the kitchen, LOL. And then two police officers arrived, one to get the details of the incident, the other to return the salt cellar -- and the pepper shaker and the two plates she had also stuffed into her purse. I didn't notice her doing that -- i must have been too busy "pretending" to read Ian Rankin.

And then i left -- my daily quota of two pints having been taken and my excitement quota for the day (for the month, in fact!) having been more than reached. And Michelle & Jilly paid for one of my beers and gave me the two dinners that this harridan had ordered but left without -- and without paying for -- which i thought was very nice of them, quite unnecessary but much appreciated. That kind of gesture reinforces my loyalty to the place. (The food was good, too -- steak and wings -- Kelsey's food is excellent, although re-heating it four hours later doesn't show it off at its best.)

Now, in all fairness, i don't know for sure that this person was "under the influence." They told me that she hadn't been there all that long (although who knows what she'd been into before her arrival). She may have been a borderline sociopath, maybe mildly schozophrenic, who knows? But she was certainly out of control, and that was what was so disturbing.

All right, all right, as adventures go, this isn't quite up there with The Odyssey, but emotions were running high for me and my friends, and that doesn't happen -- to me, anyway -- all that often. So there.

When The Solution Exacerbates

I first worked with computers back in the 80's, back in the DOS days (no Internet then, folks!), and felt completely at home with them from the very beginning, but i left the business and wound up (for my sins) in the hospitality industry, and didn't buy my first home computer until Windows 95 -- by which point my computer training was 100% out of date.

When i bought my PC, no one at the shop bothered to mention to me the importance of installing anti-virus software, and so i didn't install any. What did i know? Computer virus? Whassat?

So i gleefully started surfing the Internet -- the usual guy stuff, music and porn -- and sho 'nuff, my shiny new computer was infected within a month.  I had to take it back to the shop to have the virus removed, and that's when they told me about anti-virus software, grrr.

Ever since, i have been cautious to the point of paranoia about computer security.

Today, my anti-virus program, Avast, told me i needed to update, so of course i clicked "yes"automatically. But then i realised that the update would also install Google Chrome as my default browser and i neither need or want Chrome (i already have three browsers and don't like Google anything these days) and so tried to hit the "back" button. It didn't work. So i hit "cancel" instead, and that's when the problems began.

My computer went into a seemingly endless series of re-boots.

I eventually solved the problem by booting into Safe Mode and uninstalling Avast and tried to move on to a different AV program: AVG.

It took a long time: i spent most of this morning downloading, scanning, re-booting, uninstalling, having downloads fail, scanning some more, re-downloading and it was worth it -- i now have AVG installed. I've used them before, i forget why i dumped them, possibly because (as i remembered when i ran my first scan a couple of hours ago) an AVG scan slows my system down to a crawl. (System is clean, btw.) But i also remember my friend Troy (who runs OnSite Technology and who knows more about computers than anyone i've ever met) telling me that Avast was the best; i must ask him about this the next time i see him.

I'll be seeing him pretty soon, too -- i need a new computer. This old machine, which works extremely well (most of the time) is still running Windows XP, which is under its death sentence (scheduled to be executed just three months from now) and, for obvious reasons, i'll no longer be able to use it.





Here's the playlist, cos i know you care (sigh):

Van der Graaf Generator - Godbluff
The Sutherland Brothers And Quiver - Lifeboat
Renaissance - Scheherazade And Other Stories
Cozy Powell - The Best Of Cozy Powell
Vangelis - Chariots Of Fire (soundtrack)
The Byrds - Free Flyte
James Taylor - JT
Emerson, Lake & Palmer - The Return Of The Manticore
The Soft Machine - 3rd
Jimi Hendrix - Blues
Genesis - Abacab
Wishbone Ash - New Jersey 1974 (bootleg)
Original Soundtrack - "The Cowboy Way"
Incubus - A Crow Left Of The Murder
Steeleye Span - Wintersmith
Quintessence - In Blissful Company
The Albion Band - Rise Up Like The Sun
Bruce Springsteen - High Hopes
Jimi Hendrix - Live At The Fillmore East
Fish - A Feast Of Consequences

Year-End Wrap-Up -- Literary Schtuff

Quotation of the day: Cormac McCarthy ~ Query: How does the never to be differ from what never was?

Right, well, the final episode in our year-end wrap-up: books. Here's the list of every book i read in 2013, in chronological order. As i wrote earlier, i keep track.

Dan Gookin – Android Phones For Dummies
Rod Stewart – Rod: The Autobiography
Stieg Larsson – The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo
Stieg Larsson – The Girl Who Played With Fire
Ian Rankin –  Watchman
Ian Rankin – The Flood
Stieg Larsson – The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest
Martin Amis – Lionel Asbo: State Of England
Ian McEwan – Sweet Tooth
Astrid Lindgren – Pippi Longstocking
Julian Barnes – Levels Of Life
Ian Rankin – Let It Bleed
Astrid Lindgren – Pippi Goes On Board
Ian Rankin – Black And Blue
Astrid Lindgren – Pippi In The South Seas
Ian Rankin – The Hanging Garden
Ian Rankin – Dead Souls
Laurie Lee – Cider With Rosie
Ben Elton – Meltdown
Ian Rankin – Set In Darkness
Daniel Quinn – Ishmael: An Adventure Of The Mind and Spirit
Craig Cabell – Ian Rankin And Inspector Rebus
Ian McEwan – The Child In Time
Daniel Quinn – My Ishmael: A Sequel
Daniel Quinn – Providence: The Story Of A Fifty-Year Vision Quest
Erik Larson – In The Garden Of Beasts
Andreea Radŭcan – The Other Side Of The Medal
Erik Larson – The Devil In The White City
Daniel Quinn – The Holy
David Lodge – Deaf Sentence
Erik Larson – Thunderstruck
Ian Rankin – The Falls
Ian Rankin – Resurrection Men
Ray Davies – Americana: The Kinks, The Riff, The Road: The Story           
Ian Rankin – The Saints Of The Shadow Bible
Martin Cruz Smith – Havana Bay
Martin Cruz Smith - Tatiana

A lot of these i read for the second or third time -- in particular Ian Rankin's Rebus novels, which, now that i've finally read them all, i'm going through again, in the order he wrote them (and it's fascinating to see how he develops as a writer). Apart from his new novella, "The Lie Factory," which i've listened to on CD (as read by actor Aidan Quinn) but which, in analogue form, is somewhere in my "to-read" pile.

My greatest discovery of the year in non-fiction was Erik Larson. His "In The Garden Of Beasts" gets the nod as best of the year (although "The Devil In The White City" came pretty close!). Larson's forte is linking historical events in hitherto unthought-of ways. "In The Garden Of Beasts" is the story of the American ambassador to Berlin in the 1930s. All around him, he sees signs that Germany is gearing up for war and evidence of Nazi brutality, and sends increasingly-frantic signals back to Washington, but is by and large ignored. Meanwhile, his daughter is having an affair with a high-ranking Nazi officer....

http://eriklarsonbooks.com/













Rod Stewart's autobiography could have been a contender. It started well, lots of laugh-out-loud moments as he wrote about his early days, but then, much like his musical relevance it disintegrated half way through as his drug consumption, his materialistic leanings and his philandering overtook him. Loved the first half, though.

In fiction, it has to be Stieg Larsson, and "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo." A friend recommended the film version way back in 2012 and i became a devoted -- nay, obsessed -- fan of both Larsson and his amazing creation Lisbeth Salander (which i've written about here many times).

www.stieglarsson.com

And that's it, folks, the end of the year-end wrap ups -- unless you're interested in my favourite pubs (Kelsey's wins again), my favourite pizza (Domino's for the nth year running), my favourite sub (Quiznos, of course!).

Here's the recent playlist (just a short one again):

The Electric Light Orchestra - Out Of The Blue
Bonnie Raitt - Silver Lining
Saga - Images At Twilight
Radiohead - Kid A
Peter Hammill - Sitting Targets

Radio, 2013 = K-SHE 95

Quotation Of The Day ~ Margaret Atwood: I particularly like Twitter, because it's short and can be very funny and informative. It's a litle bit like having your own radio program.

My year-end wrap-up wouldn't be the same if i didn't mention the three radio stations that i listened to the most in 2013.

I can't live without the radio in the mornings, and as i've written previously (ad nauseam, probbly), last December the station i had listened to loyally for a couple of years, nosedived and became just another crap station -- all of my favourite deejays either left or were let go and the music, which had once been brilliant, became just the same old schtuff one hears everywhere else but worse.

Mostly, i listened (online, of course!) to K-SHE from St Louis -- a friend who lives in St Clair Missouri (40 miles west of St Louis) told me about it in December and i was hooked the moment they played a Rory Gallagher song! And one of their deejays and i are now friends on Facebook -- we natter about music almost daily. And in fact i've developed a fascination with the city of St Louis, as i've written elsewhere, thanks to K-SHE.

The station i listened to the second most often in 2014 was K-Rock from Kingston, Ontario. Well, it's an excellent rock music station, but the reason i started listening to it is that my old chum Wendy Boomer is co-host of the morning show and she's great.

The other station i stream occasionally is Boom. They play 70's / 80's / 90's and a lot of schtuff i love but also a lot of more technodisco nonsense that i could quite happily live without. The selling point here is that another old pal, Vanessa Murphy, works there part-time. Usually the morning show on the weekends. She's terrific, but it would be unusual for me to listen to the station if she wasn't on-air.

Oh, there are other stations i listen to once in a while, New Zealand's Hauraki for instance, but these are the ones that do it for me more than any others.

Here's the latest from the CD collection:

and a (very) brief playlist (i've been busy, what can i tell ya?):

Jethro Tull - A Passion Play
Fairport Convention - Liege & Lief
John Tams - Unity
Joe Satriani - Unstoppable Momentum
Genesis - Selling England By The Pound

Year-End Wrap-Up 2 -- Film

Quotation Of The Day: Mark Twain ~ New Year's is a harmless annual institution, of no particular use to anybody save as a scapegoat for promiscuous drunks, and friendly calls and humbug resolutions.


Here, in case you're interested, is the list of every film i watched in 2013. (Yes, i keep track of schtuff like this, i'm a list-freak, what can i tell you...) They're not, i hasten to add, all current releases. Many of them are older than you are, and most of them i was watching for at least the second time. Ready?

The Girl Who Played With Fire (three times)
Analyze This
Mighty Aphrodite
The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest (three times)
Beowulf
The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (2011 version) (twice)
The Eagle Has Landed
Django Unchained (twice)
Source Code (twice)
The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (2009 version)
Dogma
Prometheus
Looper
The Bourne Legacy (twice)
Sherlock Holmes And The Scarlet Claw
Zero Dark Thirty (twice)
Skyfall (twice)
25th Hour
Sherlock Holmes: A Game Of Shadows
The Adjustment Bureau
Daisy Diamond
In The Cut
Magical Mystery Tour
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (twice)
Airplane!
Casino
The New Adventures Of Pippi Longstocking
From Dusk Till Dawn
Living In The Material World
Run, Lola, Run
Women On The Verge Of A Nervous Breakdown
A Good Day To Die Hard (twice)
Body Of Lies
Dressed To Kill

Standing In The Shadows Of Motown
Green Zone
Dead Man Down (twice)
Redacted
Casualties Of War
Passion
The Road
Die Hard 2: Die Harder
Indiana Jones And The Raiders Of The Lost Ark
Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade
Indiana Jones And The Temple Of Doom
Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull (bit of an Indiana Jones binge there)
Outlander
From Hell
Chinatown
A Clockwork Orange
The Bourne Supremacy
Live Free Or Die Hard
Salt
A Serious Man
I Am
Gorky Park
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home
Love Actually
The Sweeney
Wall-E
As Good As It Gets
Broken Arrow .

And what were my favourites of the newer releases (i hear you ask)? Loved The Bourne Legacy, loved Django Unchained, but i think that The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey gets the nod from me this year. And of the older ones? Wall-E -- i love this film to pieces.

But i also have to mumble a few syllables about "A Good Day To Die Hard," which has made almost everyone's top five worst films of 2013.

I liked it! I like the franchise and i bought the DVD and, on first viewing i didn't see much in it beyond the excitement of bloodshed and vehicular carnage -- which is what you want from a Bruce Willis film, after all. The second time, i started to begin to detect the appearance of a plot. (No, really....) I'm actually kinda sorta looking forward to seeing it again -- maybe the plot i detected will start to make sense. And maybe it won't. Who cares when there's that much broken glass flying around?

Otherwise, just my latest playlist:

The Beatles - Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
Amy Grant - A Christmas Album
John Kirkpatrick, Rosie Cross et al - Wassail!
The Albion Band - A Christmas Present From The Albion Band
The Albion Band - Another Christmas Present From The Albion Band
Joan Osborne - Righteous Love
Sky - Mozart
Pink Floyd - Meddle
Jeff Berlin - Crossroads
Iceberg - Sentiments

Happy Hogmanay, one and all!

It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like ... OUCH!

Quotation of the day ~ Bill Watterson: Oh look, yet another Christmas TV special! How touching to have the meaning of Christmas brought to us by cola, fast food, and beer... Who'd have ever guessed that product consumption, popular entertainment, and spirituality would mix so harmoniously?


Now before i go any further, i would like to state that i love Christmas. December 24th and December 25th are my two favourite days of the year. I hate hearing Christmas music in October, though, and in fact i hate most "popular" Christmas music -- hell, i wouldn't listen to Perry Como or Alvin & The Chipmunks at any other time of the year, why do malls / radio stations / piped-in muzak systems in pubs imagine that i'd be interested in listening to them now? (In fact, several years ago, a radio station to which i had been a devoted listener, started playing Alvin & The Chipmunks with distressing frequency in October and i damn near threw the radio out the window.) (And i set off on a quest for a new radio station to listen to, but that's a story told elsewhere on this blog.) (Search "radio" if you care.)

Anyway, where was i? Right, yes. Two weeks ago, i was at work, gearing up for what are generally our two busiest weeks of the year, all of those grumpy Christmas shoppers working up an appetite buying gifts no one wants with money they don't have. I was humping around a crate of chicken, maybe 18 / 20 kilos -- something i do all day long -- when owowowowOOOOOOW!!!! A pain soared through my back and all of a sudden i couldn't really stand up all that well. The boss drove me home, as obviously i couldn't really contribute much beyond the occasioanl pathetic moan to the rest of my shift.

That was Monday. Tuesday is my regular day off anyway, and, hard as this may be to believe, i did even less than usual that day. The boss told me to also take Wednesday off (with pay) which was nice, and return on thursday. On Wednesday i was feeling okay, so, cool, all on the road to recovery, yay. On Thursday morning, i awoke to a feeling like red-hot knives slicing through my back, i could barely stand up, and at 6 a.m. i went to the hospital (which i maybe should have done in the first place). The doctor diagnosed muscle spasms, gave me some Advil, told me to stay off work until Saturday and sent me home.

So, i went back to work, assigned "light duties," in other words tedious crap that no one else wants to do <sigh>.

Okay, okay, long story short. It was a terribly boring week for me although the restaurant was crazybusy, and i have been back at normal duty since Saturday and having no further problems.

But, the thing is, Christmas has been even more disorganised than usual for me this year. I wasn't straying too far from home, didn't go into the pub (or even have a drink) for well over a week, couldn't get to the post office (so if you receive your Christmas card late this year, that's the reason).

Hasten to add: i'm 100% fine now, no probs at all, and great effort has meant that i'm almost all set for Christmas. Just have to get the beer in, and i can do that tomorrow morning.

Here's the latest from the CD collection (including one recent acquisition, out of sequence):

And the playlist?



Jethro Tull - The Jethro Tull Christmas Album
The Albion Christmas Band - Winter Songs
Yes - Talk
Waterson : Carthy - Holy Heathens And The Old Green Man
The Albion Band - Rise Up Like The Sun
Siouxsie & The Banshees - A KIss In The Dreamhouse
Steeley Span - Bedlam Born
Van der Graaf Generator - Trisector
John Kirkpatrick - Every Mortal Place
The Trans-Siberian Orchestra - The Lost Christmas Eve
Vatious Artists - Morris On The Road
The Trans-Siberian Orchestra - The Christmas Attic
Keith Emerson - The Christmas Album
The Trans-Siberian Orchestra - Beethoven's Last Night
The Albion Christmas Band - Snow On Snow
Donnie Munro - Donnie Munro
Joan Osborne - Christmas Means Love
Various Artists - All Through The Year
The Beatles - Beatles For Sale
Runrig - Live At Celtic Connections 2000
Marillion - Merry Xmas To Our Flock
Ronny Heimdal - Timequake
James Taylor - Covers
Home - BBC Sessions
The Kinks - The Road
Jon Anderson - 3 Ships