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New user? Tuesday, October 30, 2001
Jumpin' jerseys!
Terry Jones, Edmonton Sun: Jumpin' jerseys!
Blork Blog
Quote of the week has to go to Ed Hawco of Blork Blog for this reaction to a sexually suggestive ad that has shaken up the ranks of Rogers Publishing and Marketing Magazine...
Personally, I think it's unbefuckinglievably funny. ;-)
I rolled a car when I was 19
I shared the story of my rollover on Robert Scoble's site. He survived a rollover yesterday and one of his readers wondered if any other webloggers had had similar experiences...
My story got Scripting News'd.
Dec 31, 2001: I decided to repost this here. It really should be on my site, in case Robert's site is removed some day.
My girlfriend (now wife) was in the car. We were moving from British Columbia to Alberta (a 2 day car ride). It was ONE day after I "took her from the safety of her parents' care". Way to impress the in-laws.
Note that all our most precious personal belongings are in this car. It's loaded. And the roof is loaded too, with a desk and drafting table on a roof rack and a tarp.
We left the motel on the morning of the 2nd day. We were driving in post-blizzard conditions (we knew the roads were bad when we left but we didn't realize how bad they'd get before we saw civilization again).
About 10km before the place we planned to stop for breakfast, the car hit black ice on the highway at about 70-80km/h (that's 45-50mph) and the car spun 180 degrees (ie: after the spin we were facing the opposite direction, but still upright), and then flew off the road into a ditch. The car landed on its roof, and then bounced off the ... oh, 6 feet of snow in the ditch, and came to rest on its tires again. Embedded in the snow.
It was so surreal. The ordeal was longer than 2 seconds because of the initial out-of-control situation and spin, but the roll only took a second or 2 I imagine.
It was the ride of a lifetime, I remember, as it was happening, thinking, "wow this is SO COOL!" I was terrified when the car was spinning but when the car was rolling, I was just enjoying it more or less. Weird.
The car stopped and I noticed I wasn't hurt at all.
I was so freaked out because the first thing that came to mind was the movies where the people run out of the car after the accident and just get far enough away in time before the car blows up! ;-)
I told Cheryl, roll down your window and climb out, FAST! (the doors wouldn't open because we were embedded in the snow)
I did, and fought my way through the snow to the shoulder of the highway. Then I looked back and saw Cheryl still sitting in the car.
SHIT!
I ran back, and she was just sitting there, in shock. I managed to get her window open and she got out, or I pulled her out. I don't remember that part too well, everything was so frantic.
We went to the highway together. The car didn't blow up. :-)
A car that was maybe 500m behind us when it happened (they saw the whole thing) had stopped on the other side of the highway (note that our car was in the ditch on the opposite side of the highway... we were damn lucky there was no oncoming traffic, like the rig that passed me right after I got to the shoulder).
They asked if we were alright, we said yeah. They offered us a ride, me in their car, and Cheryl in another car that stopped, to Valemont, the town 10km away we were trying to reach.
I was so scared. We left all our belongings in that car. Cheryl was now in some stranger's pickup truck.
Well this story is getting long so let me wrap it up. The insurance company said it was not our fault because the roads were so bad. We saw half a dozen cars and trucks/vans in the ditch in the 5 km of road before our accident. I don't know how many there were in that final 10km, I was in shock, was just watching the pickup truck behind us to make sure Cheryl was in sight.
The car had $9000 damage but they wouldn't write it off! We had it fixed good as new, covered by insurance, and noone was seriously hurt. Cheryl's back was sore and so was mine, but pretty minor stuff really.
We were wearing our seat belts too. I know they saved us. That, and the roof rack that must have given the roof a lot more structural integrity. The top of my head always touched the roof of that car when i drove it. The roof only collapsed an inch. if it had totally collapsed like it should have given that the car landed on its roof at high speed, my head would have been smushed. I still have the twisted beams of that roof rack in storage... I figure I owe them my life and loyalty.
I'm glad to hear you're alright Robert. We're lucky people.
Jim
Too bizarre to be made up
Remember I mentioned a week or two ago that all NHL games are now broadcast by Microsoft and WindowsMedia.com?
Well. I'm listening to the Canucks/Columbus game because the Oilers game is over. (We won, sorry Aaron!)
Everything is normal, I'm listening to the game. Then, all of a sudden...
Silence.
Then, after a couple seconds... a dial tone. (Seriously) After maybe 10-15 seconds, I hear a phone number being dialed. I look up at my external modem's lights to see if I'm still connected. Yup. Then I hear the phone ringing. Someone answers it. "The number you are trying to dial cannot be reached. Please hang up and try again. 14231". CLICK
After a few seconds, I hear that sound you hear when you leave the phone off the hook. That really annoying sound you always here and then put the phone back on the hook. Then... 10 seconds later... Silence
I'm still being streamed this "hockey game"... but it's silent.
This is what happens when Microsoft broadcasts a hockey game.
(Banging my head against the wall)
Will somebody PLEASE put this company out of business??? PLEASE!
Monday, October 29, 2001
EchoStar to buy DirecTV
CNET.com: EchoStar to buy DirecTV for $25 billion
I guess that means that eventually EchoStar customers will be able to get NHL Centre Ice, which previously was only available to DirectTV customers in the USA, and Bell ExpressVu customers in Canada.
Expos on the bubble?
Selig says contraction still viable option
Bummer! I'm not a baseball fan but I wouldn't want to see the Expos gone... I don't know the whole story though. Do the fans support them, or are they just having problems competiting because of the exchange rate and taxes?
RE: Canadian shot dead in Kuwait
Finally, 19 days after I found a tiny blurb about this on the BBC News site, I find an actual story in the Canadian media about this.
It's here!
Max's copies of the WebObjects book arrived, and he brought one into work today!
I'm so excited! :-) Hopefully mine will be waiting for me when I get home today.
Update:
Well I finally sneaked a look at the book. It's nice! It's not 1000 pages like they say on Amazon. Not even close. It's 444 pages + 15 pages on index + TOC + blah. I haven't had a detailed look yet, but from flipping through it, I'd say it has definite promise. :-)
Sweet deal on RAM and Word/Entourage SE
Power Your Power Mac - 512MB/MS Word/Entourage
As seen on Apple's Hot Deals site, get 512 MB RAM and the Word 2001 / Entourage 2001 SE bundle for $179.
You can upgrade to Office v.X for only $149 if you have the Word/Entourage SE bundle, so this deal gets even better if you upgrade.
And you might need all that RAM to run Office. ;-)
A proposal that won't help
Michael Sippey: A MetaFilter Proposal... essentially, make people pay for the privilege to post with virtual credits earned through high ratings of previous posts.
Even that wouldn't be enough to make me want to read MetaFilter. And I fear it wouldn't work. Not enough people are going to take the time to yay/nay a post.
And another thing. Censorship. If your opinion isn't popular enough you're not going to get the credit. MetaFilter is cliquey and pop-trendy and inner-circle enough without turning it into a big circle jerk.
Sunday, October 28, 2001
bye bye microsoft sf
Apparently the Microsoft Store in the Metreon is closing. Bill Lazar says it's because of the X-Box.
Superheroes
Justin! You da man for finding this link:
This site (nlc-bnc.ca) is the National Library of Canada. I think it's extremely cool that the NLC would recognize the history of comics in Canada.
The shockwave intro features art by the legendary Ken Staecy, who among other accomplishments, did his trademark colours for the covers of the first two issues of Todd McFarlane's Spawn.
Ken lives (unless he moved recently) in Victoria, where I lived during my teenage love-affair with comic books. Todd McFarlane also lived just outside of Victoria at the time. I had the good fortune to meet each of them at comic book conventions. I begged the owner of Curious Comics to let me work a convention once, at the age of 13 or 14, and had a whole pile of comics and posters signed by Todd.
It was pretty cool to grow up constantly in the shadow of legends, first with the great Oilers teams in Edmonton, then the great comic book artists in Victoria. Now in SF, I live amongst the legends of the tech industry. Now that I'm old enough to appreciate such things, it makes it even sweeter.
