a few days ago, the 23rd in fact, i was heading off to lunch with some coworkers when we stopped by a little booth in a mall run by two very nice girls. they were promoting earth day for an organisation called earth day Canada. they had trivia cards, and stuff for prizes. i answered right, (yay!) acquired a button and proceeded to ask one of the girls: "i'd like to get involved in this city in promoting green energy... who do i talk to about that? any suggestions?"

the girl stuttered at first, perhaps surprised at the fact that anyone would want more than a free button and then responded: 'you know, i have no idea. i just hand out the buttons ;-) but i'll give you this. (she hands me a card) you can call her and i'm sure she'll be able to help you".

the funny thing about business cards is that they have a tendency to bury themselves in your wallet and only see the light of day when you're "getting all the junk out of there", but this time was different. it reappeared as i was fishing for some cash to buy a box of doughnuts for the office, and so i called the lady today. i explained the deal -- that i wanted to get more wind turbines up there and wanted to talk to the right people about it. she took my name and email address and i received an interesting article in my mailbox not hours later complete with a name and number the guy on the earth day Canada board who handles this kinda thing... another day another number. here's hoping this turns out well. maybe he'll be able to help me get some of my ideas into the real world.

courtesy of smyli, i have a new treat for all those who might be interested in another big documentary. super size me is a new movie coming out this may that chronicles the health hazards of mcdonald's food. and to prove his point, get this: he ONLY ate mcdonald's food for 30 days straight. "how bad could it be?" you might ask -- well he wondered the same thing and so, he made a movie about it. check out the trailer if you're interested.

some of you may have heard, but there was recently a death in my home. not of a human being of course, but of something rather important to me. my handspring visor.

it had served me well for years on end, but just the other day, i tried to turn it on, and it refused to budge. replacing the batteries only worsend my pain however, as when my favourite toy bleeped back to life, i discovered that it had miraculously forgotten everything i had taught in in the past 4years. a tradgedy if there ever was one. i had thought that hope was lost, but just now, as i rebooted to windows to play some command & conquer, i found that i still had an old copy of the palm db on my hard drive. a couple clicks and a hotsync and my favourite toy has it's life back! o joy! o rapture! ...note to self. backup more often.

all mac haters, or even those who've used the stupid things and can't quite put their finger on why they don't like interfacing with the rediculous toys, this movie is for you.

and just read this. it's a rather old story about a company in washington state that produces carry-on bags for things like laptops etc. the tag on this one however is special... check out the french (it's translated for the unilinguals among us).

you remember those beer commercials where this guy was pretending to be monday and all these people are throwing shit at him and he's being all nice and polite? i like that commercial.

anyway. i managed to wake up at the ungodly hour of 8:10 this morning just so i could get into and out of work at a reasonable hour. why you ask? 'cause i'm having dinner with the pretty girl tomorrow night and i have absolutely nothing left to wear. all the hours i've spent on the sustainable living lady's stuff (or putting it off) has led to a backlog of dishes and laundry -- and i'm not showing up tomorrow in sweatpants (ew). so yeah: "t.g.i.m." good day to clean all this stuff up and catch up on everything.

one minor gripe though. when chrystal and i broke up a terrible balance was upset in our lives. together, she had all the cooking equipment and i did all the cooking. now, i tend to starve more and she eats popcorn for dinner. does that seem right to you?

a great day in fact. after my last posting, i admit, i've not been in the best condition. "a mess" while not entirely accurate, is about as close as i can come up with at the moment. but i got a great email from my parents, and some additional support from my friends, so while i'm not "all better" i'm sure things will be fine.

so why is this a great day? why else? i met a pretty girl. great hair, nice smile, and fun to talk to, we walked all over this city today, going from cheesecake to the market, to a record store, to my apartment, to a steakhouse. i learned more about how the city's divided into different sections and re-discovered the "toronto hemp company" where i finally found some rope for my curtains. the company was wonderful and made for great conversation... for eight hours. somehow, things don't seem so terrible anymore.

ps
noreen's mentioned that she'd like to get actual, named credit for being one of those cool friends with all the support through the previous post. so yes: noreen kicks ass. thanks dude.

one final note. it's now 2:32am eastern and my boys have pulled through to take us to game seven back home. after three periods of overtime... morrison bagged the game winner. just a nice end to a good day.

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chrystal got her official posting confirmation to raleigh, north carolina today. she's quite excited, and i'm quite proud -- maybe "proud" isn't quite the right word, but i'm not really feeling very "thesaurical" today. nonetheless, a huge congratulations goes to her, she's known who she was and what she wanted for so long now, it's about time she got it.

this is however, not a happy posting. if you're in a good mood at the moment, go out and enjoy the weather, no need to bring yourself down. come back later if you're really interested. you see, today is a big day for me. lots of stuff happened, chrystal got her long hoped-for posting, i picked up the babylon 5 season 5 dvd and this... this very post is the 100th post in my blog.

so why is this a depressing post? in order to understand you have to know my reasoning for starting this thing. back in december i started out with a big plan. i'd come to the great real city of toronto, and i was going to do great things. i hadn't come to socialise, to make friends, get a job and buy an suv. no -- i'd come to "the centre of the Canadian universe" to find out who i was, and how to do what i felt i was supposed to do. i was going to meet with city officials, propose my big plans and get some shit done.... then i'd be able to go home and relax, knowing i'd done what "i was supposed to do". the whole thing would be chronicled here, in hopes of finding support from friends and family and keeping me on task.

but here i am, 100postings later. and all i have to show for it is some semi-concrete documentation and some time spent with the sustainable living network setting up a lan.

i wish this was easier. i wish i had the mind to understand how this sort of thing gets done, but every time i show my ideas to people it's met with decimating apathy or half-hearted, directionless encouragement. i was good at school -- school was easy. i had a task, it was written down. normally i would finish and be helping my friends long before everyone else was through the gate, but this... no instruction, no direction, just ideas, passion and a whole, damning heap of apathy. most people here don't recycle. they'd rather drive 6blocks to work than walk or take the subway. they complain about gas prices, but scoff at wind power, and every thursday there are 22 plastic bags full of garbage on the sidewalk on my way home from work. how do i fight that? i'm stranded here with a head full of ideas and no idea where to put them. and the worst part, the really terrible part -- is that i'm not even fighting here. an enemy, a task, a job -- they're all easy. but moving people, changing minds, when those minds have no interest in anything other than the hockey game... that'll cut the heart right out of anyone.

i don't know what to do. i left home to find myself, my calling. and here i am doing the same thing i was doing back home. working 9-5 paying off visa so i afford rent and food. and this blog contains more about the cancelling of tv shows than it does about anything of any real importance. i can feel myself slipping... but i'm not sure whether it's more into bitterness or dispair.

you won't understand why this is SO VERY COOL unless you're remotely familiar with X|HTML & CSS. but trust me. this is frickin' amazing.

for those who were interested, here are the pictures noreen has been pestering me to publish.


the pictures of actual people are, of course behind a login. so if you want to see those, you can use the same username/password you use on this page. merry: email me with what you want for a user/pass and i'll hook you up.

so it turns out that when i upgraded my blog i missed a very important bit of the upgrade: the database. this oversight caused none of the comments to work, so if you left a comment anytime between now and then, sorry, i missed it.

the sad (or funny, i guess) part about all this is that the person who found the bug was my grandmother -- thinking that it was her own inexperience with the web that was causing her comments not to show up when it was in fact my own lack of attention to detail and testing that was the problem. so yeah, next time, if you see something like this, please tell me. i don't want to be responsible for confusing my grandmother anymore ;-)