Happy Seal

More playing with pictures. Here's a happy seal from Witty's Lagoon.

The Long Recovery Week 14

Clearly, things are looking up -- last night I went through the drive-in at Wendy's.
Now before you get yer garters in an uproar about global cow warming and all that, consider this: I drove up to the order window, wound open my own window, and passed out money, then took back my change then took in my drink and meal.
I did it all with my left arm.
Slowly, very slowly, my shoulder is getting better.
It's still very weak, and mobility is still limited, but it is coming back. I keep finding myself able to do things that a week or two ago I couldn't.
And I must be feeling optimistic about my eventual return to the kayaking -- yesterday I ordered a waterproof VHF radio.

Takei on Hardaway

Once again, Jono has sent me a YouTube that I am compelled to post on the blog! Damn him!
Here, George Takei responds to Tim Hardaway's recent homophobic rant.

Spider-man... in 5 Seconds

Future Shock (past tense)

Introducing... The Book!

The Long Recovery Week 12

This was a week of firsts.
Monday, I had my first bath. I decided that it was time to try to get in and out of the tub. Getting in was okay, but getting out still remains a little haphazard. However, I didn't fall, and it was very relaxing. Heck, I may even have another one tonight. (Long-time followers of my misadventure will recall that due to the tinyness of my bathroom and the awkwardness of my injury, I was forced to pee in the sink for a short while after my release from the hospital. I would like to state for the record that for some time I have been able to pee in the usual manner and into the usual bathrrom fixture, although I still occasionally pee into the sink because I am a lazy and gross bastard.)
Tuesday, I tied my shoelaces for the first time in three months. After getting home from my accident, the first phone call I made was to my niece who works in a discount shoe store to ask her if they had any sneakers with velcro instead of laces. And lo, they did, and they were delivered unto me, and I've been wearing them ever since. But after a recent long walk, I discovered that discount shoes aren't designed to be walked in over a lengthy distance, and since my plan is to walk home when I return to work, it was time for more comfy (and more expensive) shoes. And so it was that on Tuesday morn, I took my old expensive sneaks out of the closet, placed them on my feet and tied the laces with no discomfort in my battered left shoulder. Huzzah, huzzah.
And today another first: my first day back at work. What a, er, um, thrill it was to be back. Makes one hanker for the days when I could just sit home, rest, watch tv and get paid. And that was just last week!
Actually, it felt good to be back, if for no other reason than it represents another small step along The Long Road Back. The shoulder seemed to survive the day fairly well. And when I did my exercises in the evening, it seemed a lot less tighter than usual. Perhaps being back at work did it some good.
I stuck up a copy of my x-ray in my cubicle. Most people were shocked at the amount of metal in my arm.
"Is that permanent?" they gasped.
"Yes," I replied, "until someone figures that the going rate for titanium is worth digging up my cold and rotting corpse for."
I walked home, as per my plan, and although I was jealous of every bike rider that passed me and every kayaker in the harbour (there was only one, and he had to be crazy to be out on a stormy day like today), at the end of the day I feel a little more confident that one day soon I'll be back on my bike and in my kayak.

Imagine - George W. Bush

Eagle

I'm playing around with some pictures I took on various kayaking paddles over the last couple of years.
Here's an eagle off of Willows Beach.

How To Get on The No-Fly List

1. On an airplane, quietly and calmly open up your laptop case.
2. Remove your laptop.
3. Turn it on.
4. Make sure the passanger sitting next to you can see the screen.
5. Log on to the Internet and click this link.

Battlestar Galacticons

Here's a great article on Neocons who use sci-fi and fantasy analogies, and how many of them are upset at the third season of Battlestar Galactica which depicts many of the Galactica crew as insurgents against a Cylon occupying force even going so far as to use suicide bombers against the first graduating class of human security forces police recruited by the Cylons:

National Review’s Jonah Goldberg, who writes regularly about Galactica’s politics on NRO’s group blog, The Corner, also picked up on parallels between the show and the war on terror. Goldberg took particular glee in attacking Galactica’s anti-war movement, which he said consisted of “radical peaceniks” and “peace-terrorists” who “are clearly a collection of whack jobs, fifth columnists and idiots.” Goldberg also praised several characters for trying to rig a presidential election. “I liked that the good guys wanted to steal the election and, it turns out, they were right to want to,” wrote Goldberg. Stolen elections, evil robots, crazed hippies … what more could a socially inept right-winger want from a show?
But alas, this love affair between Galactica and the right was not to last: in its third season, the show has morphed into a stinging allegorical critique of America’s three-year occupation of Iraq. The trouble started at the end of the second season, when humanity briefly escaped the Cylons and settled down on the tiny planet of New Caprica. The Cylons soon returned and quickly conquered the defenseless humans. But instead of slaughtering everyone, the Cylons decided to take a more enlightened path by “benevolently occupying” the planet and imposing their preferred way of life by gunpoint. The humans were predictably not enthused about their allegedly altruistic rulers, and they immediately launched an insurgency against them using improvised explosive devices and suicide bombers. Needless to say, this did not go over very well in the Galacticon camp.
“The whole suicide bombing thing … made comparisons to Iraq incredibly ham-fisted,” wrote a frustrated Goldberg, who had hoped the struggle against the Cylons would look more like Le Resistance than the Iraqi insurgency. “The French resistance vibe … is part of what makes the Iraq comparison so offensive. It’s a one-step remove from comparing the Iraqi insurgency to the (romanticized) French resistance.”

The article goes on to mention further sci-fi allusions, including a writer who thought that:

“[i]t’s time to institute Disintegration Chambers in our major American cities,” he said, referring to a Star Trek episode that featured two tribes who preferred to fight wars by disintegrating their own people rather than sending them into live combat. Even though the episode was actually an allegory about the perverse methods governments use to shield their people from the brutal costs of war, he took quite a fancy to the idea of forced disintegration, especially for his ideological foes.
“Here’s the deal,” he wrote. “We decide what constitutes torture, and identify it as the following: insufficient air conditioning, excess air conditioning, sleep deprivation, being chained to the floor, and other forms of psychological stress … Those who disagree with these techniques must sign a record that registers their complaints. When a terrorist finally spills the details on a forthcoming attack on, say, Chicago, the people who signed the register and live in Chicago are required to report to the disintegration chamber.”

The Long Recovery Week 10

It's funny how I can suddenly discover that I can do something without even thinking about it, or that I can still find that there are very simple tasks that I cannot do.
For instance, last week after physio, I ran for the bus. Not that the running itself was a surprising thing -- I'm not much of a jogger, but up until my accident I was riding my bike five days a week, so I was in shape enough to run if need be -- but the fact that I was running and my shoulder seemed pretty okay with it was an unexpected surprise. It wasn't until I got on the bus that I realized that I had run a couple of hundred metres with little discomfort.
Mind you, later that day I couldn't get my socks off. As I stood in front of the laundry hamper, I decided that the socks I was currently wearing were due a wash. So, still standing, I bent my left knee, lifted my left foot, reached down with my right hand and pulled my sock off. After lowering my left foot, I lifted my right foot and without thinking reached down with my left hand and did not have the strength to take off my right sock.

The good news is that I am feeling more and more human and I'm venturing out more. Here's me last week at Gyro Park. Dig the "physio beard."

Climate Change Unstoppable

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change of the United Nations issued a their latest report today, conclding that global warming is "unequivocal" and that human activity is the main driver, "very likely" causing most of the rise in temperatures since 1950. [See here, here, and here.]
The report, using their strongest language yet on the issue, said now that the world has begun to warm, hotter temperatures and rises in sea level "would continue for centuries," no matter how much humans control their pollution. "The observed widespread warming of the atmosphere and ocean, together with ice-mass loss, support the conclusion that it is extremely unlikely that global climate change of the past 50 years can be explained without external forcing, and very likely that is not due to known natural causes alone," said the report.
The report finds that sea levels will rise between 7 and 23 inches by 2100, and it also concluded that seas would continue to rise, and crowded coasts retreat, for at least 1,000 years to come (by comparison, seas rose about 6 to 9 inches in the 20th century).
The report also finds a new wrinkle in the climate change story: a drop in the pH of seawater as oceans absorb billions of tons of carbon dioxide, which forms carbonic acid when partly dissolved. Marine biologists have said that could imperil some kinds of corals and plankton.

The President of the United States said, “This generation has altered the composition of the atmosphere on a global scale through . . . a steady increase in carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels.”
Oh, sorry. That wasn't the current President speaking.
It was President Lyndon Johnson.
In 1965.

Living in his own private reality bubble, the current President, "President" Bush, is rejecting mandatory carbon caps, but likes the idea of giant space mirrors.

An Offer I Couldn't Refuse ... But I Refused Anyway

I just got spammed. It says:

"Dear Home Owner,

Are you tired of paying high interest rates? Act now on your loan pre-approval.

You can receive $265.00 for
$678 per month.

Please respond Instantly.
http://ilook.tw/knln



Kent Jones
Loan Center


Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example."

Wow. Now there's a freaking deal. Too bad my fingers don't move at the speed of light so that I could respond INSTANTLY.

The Long Recovery Week 8

After the swelling in my arm started going down, physio began in earnest. My first exercise was what's called the pendulum. It's exactly what it sounds like. I lean with my right arm on a table or counter-top and let my left arm out of the sling and let it hang like a pendulum. I swing it forward and back, side to side, then it circles, first clockwise, then counter-clockwise. I swing it for about three or four minutes, twice a day. The idea is that it gently pulls on the muscles that are now super-tight and holding my arm in my shoulder socket. All those muscles have been traumatized and many surgically reattached. They were, and are, extremely tight to say the least.
Funny things were happening with my arm. Suddenly my left arm began drying out and flaking. My right arm was fine, but my left arm suddenly developed a taste for vast amounts of moisturizer.
And I could feel strange sensations in my arm as all the new hardware rubbed against flesh and bone. Sometimes, it even feels like it gets caught against a tendon or ligament [shudder]. It's a strange, strange feeling.
Slowly, time passed. Days became weeks. Weeks became months. Months became years. My writing became a pattern of clichés.
But seriously, time did go by slowly as I was mostly housebound. If it wasn't for the fact that I had just ordered the first two seasons of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea on DVD, I might have gone mad.
I couldn't even write or surf the Internet much as it was too uncomfortable to sit at my computer for very long.
Christmas rolled around and I began to venture out more. Thankfully I had done most of my shopping before the accident, and Amazon did the rest.
At physio, I got to do more exercises. I got to lie on my back and, gripping it with both hands, I had to raise a cane over my head. At first, I could barely raise in 90 degrees, or just above my head. Now I can get it about 150-160 degrees over. Still got a ways to go.
Next came The Violin. Still lying down and with my forearms straight out in front of me at a 90 degree angle, I gripped the cane and moved it from my right to left, trying to move my left forearm away from my body while keeping my elbow in place at my side. This works to stretch my shoulder were the Bankart repair took place and the flap of muscle was sown over my shoulder socket to keep my arm in place. This I can only do to about 35 degrees. More work needs to be done here, too.
You're not reading this over dinner, are you?
As long as you're grossed out, here's how my scar was doing after about seven weeks.

Other exercises were added to regime like Walking Up the Wall. Simply put, I stand in front of a wall, put my left hand on it and use my fingers to "walk" my arm up it until my shoulder screams out "Enough already!"
However, the physio is going slower than expected. All these exercises that I've been doing are passive exercises, meaning that the injured area is not doing any work during the exercises it's all being done by the other arm, gravity, or in the case of my physiotherapist, someone else entirely. The normal recovery protocol for a Bankart repair would allow for active weight-bearing exercise at this point; however my arm is still too sore and stiff for this, so we are continuing with just the passive exercise. This will make for a long recovery period.
At least now I'm out of my sling.

Harper and Kyoto

According to this CBC report, a leaked 2002 letter from current Prime Minister Stephen Harper (then leader of the now-dead Canadian Alliance party) to party supporters called the Kyoto Accord a "socialist scheme" designed to suck money out of rich countries.
Other choice Harper quotes from the letter include:

"We're gearing up now for the biggest struggle our party has faced since you entrusted me with the leadership ... I'm talking about the 'battle of Kyoto' — our campaign to block the job-killing, economy-destroying Kyoto accord.
"Kyoto is essentially a socialist scheme to suck money out of wealth-producing nations.
"We will do everything we can to stop him there, but [Prime Minister Chrétien] might get it passed with the help of the socialists in the NDP and the separatists in the BQ [Bloc Québécois]."

Harper also says that the accord is based on "tentative and contradictory scientific evidence" and it focuses on carbon dioxide, which is "essential to life."

There is the old notion that most politicians are generally 20 years - a whole generation - behind the general public in discovering the important issues of the day. Who'd've thought that Stephen Harper was a Neanderthal? (Okay, hands down - that was a rhetorical question, dammit!)
With leadership like this, it's a wonder we're not already dead.

Wild Westcoast Winter Weather

Here's a recap of this winter's wacky westcoast weather (as tabulated by the Victoria Times-Colonist):

NOV. 6
A subtropical jet stream known as the Pineapple Express brings warm, moist air from the south Pacific Ocean to the West Coast, setting rainfall records. Its impact is worsened by the remnants of Typhoon Cimaron, the strongest storm to hit the Philippines in eight years. The storm floods hundreds of homes, closes roads and overloads the region's storm sewer system.
- The amount of rainfall received at Victoria airport: 38.8 mm
- The previous record for Nov. 6 set in 1975: 20.1 mm
- The amount of rain recorded at the Sooke Reservoir over 24 hours: 181.4 mm
- The high temperature for the day at Victoria airport: 17.1 C
- The previous record high for the day set in 1958: 15 C

NOV. 10
A vicious windstorm lashes every coastal area from the Alaska Panhandle to Vancouver, Victoria and the Gulf Islands. The brunt of the storm hits the capital region about 3 a.m., uprooting trees, knocking out power, and forcing the cancellation of flights and ferries.
- The reported speed of winds in the Strait of Georgia: 70 km/h to 80 km/h
- The record speed of winds at the airport: 50 km/h gusting to 70 km/h

NOV. 15
One of the worst rain and windstorms in recent memory slams into Vancouver Island, cutting power to thousands, closing highways, swelling rivers, and virtually sealing off the Island from the mainland. Port Alberni bears the brunt of the storm, with Highway 4 closed in both directions, cutting the town off from Tofino and Nanaimo. In Vancouver, the heavy rainfall triggers dozens of landslides that muddies the city's reservoirs and triggers the widest water warning in Canadian history.
- The amount of rain that fell in Port Alberni over 24 hours: 130 mm
- The speed of maximum gusts at Port Alberni: 105 km/h
- The amount of rainfall recorded at the Victoria airport: 40.1 mm
- The previous record for rainfall at the Victoria airport set in 1998: 35.2 mm
- The depth of mud covering Highway 19 north of Sayward junction: 50 metres
- The number of Island homes without power at storm's height: 50,000
- The number of homes without power across the province: 210,000

NOV. 19
For the fourth time in less than two weeks, a Pacific storm drenches coastal B.C. Victoria escapes the brunt of the blow, as the storm goes island hopping instead. B.C. Ferries shuts down service for several hours between Tsawwassen and Swartz Bay until the winds begin to subside around noon.
- The speed of gusting winds at Saturna Island: 111 km/h
- The speed of gusting winds at Gonzales: 80 km/h
- The speed of winds at Victoria International Airport: 31 to 52 km/h

NOV. 25-29
A series of snowstorms sweep across southwest B.C. with record snowfalls and icy temperatures. In what is becoming a tired refrain, the storm that hits the Island downs more trees, knocks out power to thousands, and generally leaves Islanders reeling. B.C. Hydro says the storm caused more damage than the famed Blizzard of '96. Snow and ice contribute to as many as four deaths on Vancouver Island, and cause extensive damage.
- The amount of snow that fell at Victoria International Airport on Nov. 27: 15.6 cm
- The old record for snowfall on Nov. 27 set in 1985: 10.2 cm
- The amount of snow that fell at Victoria airport on Nov. 29: 7.3 cm
- The previous record snowfall set in 2005: 5.2 cm
- The number of homes on Vancouver Island left without power at one point: 44,000
- Number of B.C. Hydro crews working in the Greater Victoria: 30
- Number of B.C. Hydro crews usually working in the Greater Victoria: 12

DEC. 11
Bang! High winds hammer B.C. again, blowing down trees, killing power, and halting ferry sailings. On the lower Island, a tugboat crew pulls two people from the Inner Harbour after their small boat flips, and the wind severely damages the 120-foot tent and particle-board sets of the Bethlehem Walk in Central Saanich.
- Number of B.C. Hydro customers without power on the Island
and Lower Mainland: 190,000
- The speed of gusting winds at Victoria airport: 70 km/h
- The speed of gusting winds on Discovery Island off Oak Bay: 102 km/h
- The number of homes in Greater Victoria without power: 4,000
- The number of homes in Cowichan Valley without power: 14,000

DEC. 13
Bang! Bang! For the second time in three days, hurricane-force winds buffet the Island. More trees fall, more homes cut off from power grid. Gusting winds upend an unoccupied Cessna 150 at the Victoria airport and blow it 30 metres.
- The number of B.C. Hydro customers without power on the Island: 70,000
- The top speed of gusting winds at the Victoria airport: 94 km/h
- The spans of electrical line down between Bamfield and Port Alberni alone: 172
- Estimated minimum number of B.C. Hydro crews needed to repair Bamfield line: 25

DEC. 15
Bang! Bang! Bang! The third storm in five days, and one of the most powerful in history roars across the province. The winds shatter records, and destroy trees from Stanley Park in Vancouver to the West Coast Trail on Vancouver Island. Race Rocks records hurricane-force winds, and weather experts compare the storm's power to Typhoon Freda in 1962. Sooke and West Shore are particularly hard hit as fallen trees and power lines blocked roads, crushed cars and damaged houses.
- The speed of maximum gusts at Race Rocks off the southwest tip of Vancouver Island: 158 km/h
- The top speed of wind gusts at Victoria airport: 78 km/h
- The record for wind gusts at the airport set in 1967 and 1972: 109 km/h
- The number of people without power in Greater Victoria: 25,000
- The number of people without power on the rest of the Island: 10,000
- The total number of people across the province without power: 250,000

DEC. 20-21
Victoria and southern Vancouver Island dodge the impact of another windstorm; it strikes hardest in the north, knocking out power in Courtenay, Campbell River, and Port Hardy.
- Speed of gusting winds in Port Hardy: 83 km/h
- Speed of gusting winds in Campbell River: 75 km/h
- Number of B.C. Hydro customers without power: 20,000
- Number of days Bamfield had been without power before this storm hit: 9

JAN. 1-2
The Pineapple Express whips across the Island again, flooding roads and homes with record amounts of rainfall. Tofino is hardest hit, but the Sooke River also crests, putting nearby campsites underwater.
- The amount of rain at Ucluelet on Jan. 1: 181.3 mm
- The previous record at Ucluelet for Jan. 1, 2003: 75.8 mm
- The amount of rain at Victoria airport on Jan. 2: 46.5 mm
- The previous record at Victoria airport set in 1953: 45.2 mm
- The amount of rain recorded at Tofino over 30 hours: 270 mm

JAN. 7
Heavy rain again causes flooding problems in Greater Victoria. Thousands of people wake up to flooded basements and yards, and municipalities field hundeds of calls for pumps and sandbags. At the Home Depot on Shelbourne Street, people line up before the store opens to get the last few wet-dry vacuums the store has left.
- The total rain at Victoria airport: 34.6 mm
- The previous record set in 1953: 33.3 mm
- The total amount of rain that has fallen in capital region so far in January: 149 mm
- The rainfall average for all of January for the capital region: 115.2 mm
- The record monthly rainfall for January set in 1953: 358.9 mm

JAN. 10
In what is now a familiar pattern, snow follows rain into beleaguered Victoria, coating streets and slowing the morning commute to a standstill. The icy conditions lead to countless fender benders and jack-knifed semi trucks, including one that blocked traffic at the bottom of the Malahat near Goldstream Park where motorists trying to get into or out of Greater Victoria were left waiting for hours.
- Amount of snow recorded at Victoria airport: 12.2 cm
- Record for snow at Victoria airport set in 1980: 14.6 cm
- Number of car accidents in Parksville area alone in one afternoon: 22

But hey, no signs of climate change here! Just ask our Prime Minister!

Post #300

TOP REASONS TO LIVE IN BRITISH COLUMBIA
1. Vancouver: 1.5 million people and two bridges. You do the math.
2. Your $400,000 Vancouver home is just 5 hours from downtown.
3. You can throw a rock and hit three Starbucks locations.
4. There's always some sort of deforestation protest going on.
5. Weed

TOP REASONS TO LIVE IN ALBERTA
1. Big rock between you and B.C.
2. Ottawa?
3. Tax is 6% instead of approximately 200% as it is for the rest of thecountry.
4. You can exploit almost any natural resource you can think of.
5. You live in the only province that could actually afford to be its owncountry.
6. The Americans below you are all in anti-government militia groups.

TOP REASONS TO LIVE IN SASKATCHEWAN
1. You never run out of wheat.
2. Your province is really easy to draw.
3. You can watch the dog run away from home for 3 days.
4. People will assume you live on a farm.

TOP REASONS TO LIVE IN MANITOBA
1. You wake up one morning to find that you suddenly have a beachfrontproperty.
2. Hundreds of huge, horribly frigid lakes.
3. Nothing compares to a wicked Winnipeg winter.
4. You can be an Easterner or a Westerner depending on your mood.
5. You can pass the time watching trucks and barns float by.

TOP REASONS TO LIVE IN ONTARIO
1. You live in the centre of the universe.
2. Your $400,000 Toronto home is actually a dump.
3. You and you alone decide who will win the federal election.
4. The only province with hard-core American-style crime.

TOP REASONS TO LIVE IN QUEBEC
1. Racism is socially acceptable
2. You can take bets with your friends on which English neighbour will moveout next.
3. Other provinces basically bribe you to stay in Canada.
4. You can blame all your problems on the "*#!% Anglo!"

TOP REASONS TO LIVE IN NEW BRUNSWICK
1. One way or another, the government gets 98% of your income.
2. You're poor, but not as poor as the Newfies.
3. No one ever blames anything on New Brunswick
4. Everybody has a grandfather who runs a lighthouse.

TOP REASONS TO LIVE IN NOVA SCOTIA
1. Everyone can play the fiddle. The ones who can't, think they can.
2. You can pretend to have Scottish heritage as an excuse to get drunk andwear a kilt.
3. You are the only reason Anne Murray makes money.

TOP REASONS TO LIVE IN PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND
1. Even though more people live on Vancouver Island, you still got the big,new bridge.
2. You can walk across the province in half an hour.
3. You can drive across the province in two minutes.
4. Everyone has been an extra on "Road to Avonlea."
5. This is where all those tiny, red potatoes come from.
6. You can confuse ships by turning your porch lights on and off at night.

TOP REASONS TO LIVE IN NEWFOUNDLAND
1. If Quebec separates, you will float off to sea.
2. If you do something stupid, you have a built-in excuse.
3. The workday is about two hours long.
4. It is socially acceptable to wear your hip waders to your wedding

I've Got A Bad Feeling About This.....

William Shatner - Rocketman

Mere words are not enough...