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Sweet, hopefully the next invention will be making people not drive like idiots when there is snow in the air.

http://news.therecord.com/article/329878

Which one will it call mom?

He’s having their baby.

Tomorrow, it will be 5 years since I bought the house.  Since the mortgage was up for renewal, Kristin and I switched to a Manulife One account.  As of tomorrow, Kristin will be the proud co-owner of a mortgage, so everyone tell her how it brings out her eyes.

Lately my luck has not been so good.  So far, two bad things have happened, so I’m expecting the third to come along very shortly.

The first bad thing was that the furnace decided to not keep Kristin warm.  Kristin gets quite cranky when that happens, and as she herself has stated, the warmer the house, the less clothes she is inclined to wear.  Hence cold house means that she is bundled up like Nanook of the North.  One new $417 circuit board and 2 hours of labour later, it was fixed.  Needless to say that was a bill I was not expecting.

The second bad thing to happen was that the radio in my mazda decided to remain backlit when the car was turned off.  The radio would also intermittently play after the car was turned off.  Since this was strange behaviour, I booked a service appointment for Friday.  Since this was something the dealership had not seen before, they were quite perplexed.  I ended up waiting around a good part of Friday, until they realized it was a larger problem.  They gave me a free rental car for the weekend since they had kept me waiting.  The issue ended up being a short in the wiring harness which connects the hatch to the car.   As a result of the short in the wiring harness, some other components needed to be replaced, but thankfully the repair was under warranty.

As for the third thing, so far nothing has happened.  However, there are a couple of things on the radar which may strike at a moments notice.

Item #1: The hot water heater didn’t have hot water tonight.  Kristin is a big fan of hot baths, and she gets cranky when she can’t have one.  I will likely have to setup a service call to get it checked out, or invest in hearing protection so I won’t have to listen to the whining.

Item #2 (This is a sure bet if the hot water heater doesn’t pan out).  Kristin has managed to convince me to go the states shopping with her for a weekend.  This may end up being a decent experience, or as I fear it may be a fate worse than death (she has already mentioned clothing shopping).  The horror, the horror…..

Chude - A person of indeterminate gender, could be a chick, or a dude.  Unfortunately after a quick check on urban dictionary, it appears it is not a Kristin original.

This weekend was a bit busy.  We had Kristin’s niece Becky down for the weekend, for a few reasons.  The first reason to give her a belated birthday present, which was a introduction to flying lesson at the waterloo airport.  The second reason was for a fitting for dresses for the wedding, since she is moving to B.C. shortly, and for a wedding party get together we planned for this weekend.  It was a good time to get everyone together, to do the introductions, and exchange contact information.  Afterwards, Graeme, Brenda, Matt, Kristin and I went tubing at chicopee tube park.  We had a good time, and it was cold enough for us to get some good speed up going down the hill.  Most of my Saturday before the party was spent doing some last minute cleaning, and getting some food and booze for the party.

Sunday was spent with me taking it easy most of the day on the couch with a good book.  I’ve read about 350 pages of the book Uther, which is part of an excellent series by Jack Whyte regarding the rise and fall of King Authur and Camelot.

Also, I did go and get some groceries for the week, played a bit of World of Warcraft and started the laundry and spent some time watching BattleStar Galactic Season 1 while riding the bike in the basement.

This coming week looks to be a bit busy at work, with yet another urgent task coming up late last week, that will demand my attention early monday morning.  However, I plan on starting out on Monday by going to the gym to help burn off all the cookies I ate this weekend.

From all the news reports I have been reading in the past couple of days, it appears that High Def Format war is finally over.  I personally was cheering for HD-DVD mainly because I hate Sony and all their attempts at proprietary formats (MemoryStick etc).  Unfortunately, Sony and the Blu-Ray format won out in the end and it appears most of the studios are switching production to Blu-Ray.  Unfortunately, those who bought a HD-DVD player are now left with a “beta” machine which has all the net worth of a boat anchor (sorry Pete).

Unfortunately, it is still a buyer beware situation out there.  One of the flaws with Blu-Ray is that it was rushed out the door when HD-DVD released, and not all players support the full format.  Some details can be read here about how it is screwed up.  Yet another reason why I think HD-DVD should have been adopted instead of Blu-Ray since HD-DVD worked when it was released, Blu-Ray did not.

However, the High Def DVD battle is now entering a new phase, it is now a battle for market share.  Very few households have upgraded to the new technology.  With Blu-Ray players going for $400+, is it worth the cost of the player for a limited selection of more expensive Blu-Ray titles?  At the moment, my personal opinion is that it is no it is not worth the hassle.  By the time prices drop to a more reasonable level, other ways of delivering digital media to the household may have taken root such as video on demand.

It’s been a while since I last posted anything to my blog, so here are a bunch of updates.

• The murder on the Bruce has a suspect who has been arrested.  More details can be found here.
• I have resumed playing World of Warcraft, otherwise known as World of Warcrack, much to Kristin’s chagrin.
• I’ve been doing some work on a unfinished pine desk kit for the past month, and now it is finally in a position to be stained then assembled.  It has been a lot of sanding thus far, and applying a coat of pre-stain.  The first pieces have been stained, and it is starting to look very good.
• I’m coming off a 5 day weekend in which I did very little.  I read a couple novels (The Lance Thrower by Jack Whyte, and The Hunters by W.E.B Griffin), worked a bit on the never ending desk project, and played some WOW and XBOX.  I even went a couple days without having a shower, much to Kristin’s dismay.  Sunday she attacked with pillows to get me away from the XBOX, and up and doing something.
• We are progressing on the wedding plans.  We have the hall, caterer, photographer, and dj booked.  We still need to get a cake, which I am looking forward to the cake tasting’s.  Also we need to figure out transportation, we were hoping for a Double Decker bus, but we will likely end up with a limo.  We are also starting to look at honeymoon locations.  Options are a cruise for a week, then traveling around for a while, or heading to a resort.

You may have seen in the news lately, that a doctor was killed up near Lion’s Head.  According to the article here, he was found along an isolated road in Bruce County.  What they failed to mention that it is near my parents place, about 2 - 3 miles away from their house.  I believe it is the first murder to happen in that area, which is classified as a “quiet, isolated rural area”.  It seems rather shocking to hear about that so close to home.

Here is a direct Kristin quote regarding a recipe she is making tonight.  “It will be interesting to see what it tastes like when we actually follow the directions.”  I will post the update once we have actually eaten it.

Just as an update, it actually did taste better when the directions were followed. It isn’t likely a behaviour Kristin will keep, but it is interesting to see these things happen every once in a while.