wayner

A post on the BBC website describes one of their writers planning to give up on “Name Brands” cold turkey.

I’m no “We-can’t-get-people-to-support-us-so-we’ll-just-riot.” anti-globalization nut. I’ve never even read No Logo, but I do like the idea of not being a walking billboard.

Part of the problem is, I like the idea of buying quality stuff. I don’t often do it, but I would like, if I could, to buy the best stuff. And that stuff has logo’s on it. That might sound the opposite of what this guy is talking about, but that’s only because I kinda think he’s an idiot. Sure, not being a free advertisement is a good idea, but throwing away everything you own with a logo on it is just stupid.

In William Gibson’s Pattern Recognition, there’s a character who is “allergic” to corporate logo’s and advertising. The stuff can literally make her sick. In response to that she removes as much as possible from her daily life. Going so far as to have belt buckles sanded down to remove manufacturers name.

That stuck a chord with me. I like the idea of removing the stitching that says “Levis” on my jeans. Peeling the sticker that says “Designed for Windows XP” off a laptop. But everything has it’s limits. I don’t think Anita would enjoy me prying “Toshiba” off of the TV.

That wouldn’t exactly come off cleanly.

A friend of ours, Erin, is finishing up a month at a local hospital and she needs to choose between Ottawa, the Nation’s Capital & Land of Milk and Honey or Halifax, smelly city by the (cold, dreary) sea, for where to do her internship (or whatever they call it). She’s going to be a Onna.. Onni.. Onico… a cancer doctor.

So here is a completely unbiased Pro/Con list between Ottawa & Halifax to help her make up her mind. I’ll be updating this, so feel free to pitch in with your suggestions:

Skies will darken, the waters will turn red – Cake will be served!

Yesterday was Anita’s 29^th birthday, and I lived to tell the tale. Not having a car and the rain pouring down kinda made it hard to go out for breakfast. And forgetting my wallet didn’t help. (Not entirely my fault!)

But the rest of the day went (mostly) smoothly. A small group of us went to Red Lobster for supper and back to our place for cake. (Awesome Cake. I made it, thus, awesome.)

All in all, not nearly as bad as I was expecting.

This Saturday the lease is up on our car. It was four years and two apartments ago when we picked it up.

We had gone with a budget of 24,000Km a year at the time ’cause we just didn’t know how much we would be driving up here.

And now, four years later, I’m just starting to hit 31,000Km.

You might think that we don’t use it that much. And I guess we don’t, but I’m still going to miss having transportation. The various costs of the house are still trying to find equilibrium and we just don’t know if we can afford another right now.

We lived for two years without one so it can be done. It’s just going to suck having to get groceries in the middle of winter via bus again.

The Spherex speakers I was hoping to get from EB Games are sold.

They retail for $320 but were on sale for $250. I was hoping they would come down another $50 dollars to match the cost of the referb models on sale online for $199.

Damn.

I really liked the Spherex system ’cause of the Omnipolar design of the speakers. The sound radiates in a 360 pattern giving you the feel of a large soundstage and mostly eliminating the “sweet spot” (where you’d have to sit for everything to sound just right). The Spherex system could also handle 3 digital sources, 2 optical and one coax which was nice.

One Omnisat speaker can go for $250 alone. And this was 5 (lower quality of course, but I’m not sure if I could tell the difference) and a subwoofer. That’s a sweet deal. The next closest I can find that can do a digital signal is $350 at least. Heck, the Spherex system originally came out at $499.

Doh!

I generally like to be alone when I do any writing.  While signing my name on credit card receipts I’d like to be able to excuse myself and go into a separate room.

That means I’m generally up late.  But that’s ok, ’cause I like being up late with the music on.  Helps me pretend that I’m still young with a bright future in front of me.

For a while now, I’ve been using BlogDesk to write posts and publish them.  It is awesome.  WYSIWYG, spell check, and the ability to add textboxes to links.  (Tho not to images such as w.blogger)

But tonight before bed, I’m testing out the new Windows Live Writer (Beta).  And it has some nice features.  The chief one is that it has a full WYSIWYG.  That means that it downloads a copy of the blog theme and you can see exactly how things will look when posted.  It’s really nice.  And the web preview option will give a mockup of your page as if the current post was already inserted.  That’s cute, but not really that useful as far as I can see.

The program seems to have a lot more polish then BlogDesk, but it’s the little things.  I haven’t tried everything out yet, but the very fact that I can’t add “text” attributes to links for starters is a big downer.

I’ll have to play around a little more, but I think BlogDesk isn’t quite a pretty, but a lot more functional – at least for this beta version.

But I really should be going to bed!