Having Caller ID on a phone brings about an interesting etiquette question. No, not the "should I or shouldn't I answer" question - that's obvious - you shouldn't. I'm referring to the conundrum of the initial greeting. When you answer the phone, full aware of who it is, are you supposed to let on you know who it is? Should the identity of the caller affect your tone or even what you say? Are you supposed to answer with a personalized greeting to the caller? For some reason, I find this spooky when people let on that they know it's me from the get-go.

I still answer with a generic "Hello" or "Sean here" greeting, no matter who it is. If you *do* get me on the line, take it as a compliment that I saw your name and still picked it up.

The phone companies are playing a tricky game with Caller ID. They now offer a service called Privacy Services, or Caller ID Block. This feature allows you to mask your identity when you call. You can also buy a service from the phone companies (above and beyond the price of the caller ID feature) that allows you to unmask these hidden caller's true identities. Didn't Sylvester McMonkey McBean do this, too?

I found a perfect new .wav file to use for an error notification.

Some heavy hitters are now in town for the G8. From our lofty perch in the Treehouse, we just saw Air Force One land at the Calgary International and shortly after 12 army helecopters flew out towards Kananaskis.

One of the dumbest ideas in marketing has to be the Collectible Food Package gimmick. I'm guessing it started with Wheaties boxes back in the forties. A few others have tried to make collectible items inside packaging, but very few have been able to pull off making the package itself the item to hang onto.

I was in a convenience store this morning when I saw bags of Doritos in collectable Star Wars bags. "Collect all 6" it proclaimed. Doritos are relatively non-biodegradable, but wouldn't one expect food to eventually go bad? Do you really want to clutter up your living space with bags of food you have no intention of eating?

It must be summer - hardly anybody's blogging.

If I end up dying in my sleep tonight and no one can figure out why, it was the rice.

Chatrooms are a gathering of the loneliest of the lonely, socially-awkward types. Many people are there because they want to hide behind the anonymity of an Internet connection and converse without social restraint and courtesy. That's why most people have come to hear of strange relationships that go on in chatrooms where two people use words to sexually excite each other. Cybersex.

One of my regularly-read blogs put me onto a cybersex tarbaby that a darkly sarcastic and witty writer put up - a false persona of a 14-year-old girl (complete with picture stolen from somewhere). This poor ficticious girl (with the chatroom name AmberForever) has all sorts of Jerry Springer-like nuttiness going on in her life. She sits, electronically, in wait for some unsuspecting pedophile or nutcase to come along and strike up a conversation with her, hoping to use her to get their jollies. What happens is they're pulled down into a hilarious (but foul-mouthed) dialogue that shows how totally wacked-out some these guys are.

The writer pulls no punches and uses all kinds of language and subject matter that may offend or amuse. So, if you dare, be a fly on the wall as AmberForever has a few chat sessions. You better not be at work or have a mouth full of coffee while you are reading some of the funnier ones.

So, What's New?

Nothing. Absolutely nothing. I was watching the news tonight and nothing is new. Medicines are discovered, epidemic diseases spread. Fanatical partisans continue to feud and war with each other and end up killing many innocent bystanders. Government continues to thwart those who oppose it. Business encourages consumerism through the media which is fed by business.

Although nouns change in this long stream of journalism, it seems the same as it was 10, 50, 100 years ago. I find keeping up with the news a very onerous task. It weighs heavy on the hearts of those who care about humanity. I am glad that some of my friends take matters (that seem so much bigger than my existence) into their hands and act for or against them. When I stop doing the things that provide for myself and my kids, I just want to revel in victories and tragedies in my more immediate circle of acquaintances.

My sympathies go out to the farmers in New Brunswick who's crops were killed by a late and heavy frost, but I fail to see how this affects me, or even KNOWING about it does me any benefit. I'd much rather hear about how the older couple (one of whom has ALS) across the road are getting on now that their son has moved out. Or about how Banana felt when one of the boys in her class (who's parents just divorced) started to cry because they were making Father's Day cards during Art. To me, these are events that hold more meaning and can be impacted more by my effort of caring.

I didn't go. As I stood in the shower at 6 am, I decided that I deserved my attention that day more than Sprint Canada did. Instead of schmoozing I read, cleaned out the garden shed, listened to some music, then went to a driving range and hit eight dollars worth of golf balls into the wild blue yonder.

I'll not be a corporate whore for a coffee mug and a poorly cooked steak.

Hurrah hurrah.

Tomorrow I've been invited to a corporate schmoozefest - a catered and beveraged all-day golfing event at a yet-to-be-disclosed golf course and I'm really struggling with whether or not I should go. The invite was on short notice - our Sprint Canada sales rep called me last Wednesday and asked if I was still interested in going. Not one to pass up freebees ir responded in the affirmative. As the day goes closer, I'm thinking ahead to what the day holds.

Cons
• an early morning, starting with a bus from a far-from-home-meeting-place to the golf course at 7:15 am.
  
• a day of heavy drinking, starting (most likely) on the bus trip to the course and lasting into the evening
  
• a day of golf, which I neither particularly enjoy or am good at
  
• I'll be in the company of people I don't know, all of which will be eventually drunk and likely obnoxious
  
• some sort of sales pitch and rah-rah speech for Sprint Canada - after all they *are* paying the bill
  
• lots of hokey Sprint Canada trinkets and gee gaws
  
• arrive back home, tired and late, to a grumpy and feeling-left-out family
  
• potential football head the next day from drinking
  
• a whole day of things to do backed up in the pipes at work
  
  Pros
  
• a day spent outside, walking in the sun (so says Darr Maqbool) occasionally interrupted by golf
  
• the knowledge that I've gone on vendor-sponsored junkets before and had a great time

So, what would you do?

This evening I feel like giving out advice and making bullet-point lists.

813,000 Canadians no longer have a connection to the Internet in their homes, or so says a report in the National Post.

Could you live without an Internet connection?

I've decided what I want for Fathers Day - I want Banana and McMonkey to do a blog entry each. I feel guilty for not having written for so long.

All home renovators secretly want to use a reciprocating saw on a wall. I'm lucky enough to know someone who owns one of these little babies and is going to help me finish the a job I started on an exterior wall. Garden doors are going in and a picture window is coming out.

Reciprocating saws are a thing of awesome power, slicing through metal, plaster, wood and carelessly-placed flesh with equal grace. I used one to take out a built-in bookcase last year and can't remember when I had more fun doing home demolition. Hmmmm ... actually, yes, I DO remember having more fun. It was using a 15 pound sledgehammer on the basement floor of a previous house to relocate some bathroom plumbing prior to renovations.

What is it that's so appealing about these actions? Power? Irreversible change? Noise?

I'm not sure.

Breakfast.
Travel.
Work.
Travel.
Dinner.
Clean up.
Sleep.
Repeat.

Be agnostic no more. He's got a blog.

Happy Happy Birthday. A weekend without electronics, spent in the company of friends.

This weekend was a weekend of ghosts: phantom contrails tracing southward in the sky as I jetted up to Edmonton on a sunny Friday afternoon; demons of guilt banished as I caught up with pals I'd lost touch with; spooky feelings of unfamiliarity as I drove through once-familiar neighborhoods and haunts; dates, times, names and faces of shared acquaintances levitating just out of reach as locations of importance slipped by as I did a (bike) road ride on a route I hadn't travelled in 12 years; tales of actual poltergeists at places where I had worked; scary lifeguard stories traded back and forth - it was all a little unnerving.

During the last two days, I toured the city that I used to live in. I've changed so, so much since my days as a high school student, a University student, and then finally a Edmonton Parks and Rec employee. I've only been gone for six years, but it seems like a full existence ago since I knew the streets, the businesses, where things were, what people were like .... I am now fully a visitor in Edmonton and I'm not sure how I feel about that.

Is the Sean that once lived here now a ghost?

Veer.com has just been released into the wild. Looks like they picked up my color scheme, seamlessly tying into nuther.com.

Now, let's go do some business.

Work caused me to miss a swim team barbeque on Saturday and it's still bumming me out.

Bubba de bum bum bum,
bum de bum de bum,
BUBBA DE BUM Bum bum,
bum de bum.

Because we never get to hear enough good marches - that's why.

Cornets, indeed.

Oooo! Wait! Not yet! Almost! Just about! Just a nip here and a tuck there and then we can nearly ...

... uh, can you come back tomorrow?

Things are getting better. We've got a phone system.

What a crappy, crappy, crappy day I'm having.

Here I sit on the tarmac in an immobile plane in Toronto. We've been here for two hours while a mechanic does something to the innards that makes the sound of a '69 Dodge Colt trying to start on a minus 40c February morning. I had maybe 3 hours of sleep last night due to the fact that I took a 12:30 am flight from Calgary to Toronto. When I reached Toronto, I was refused entry into the United States, as the Customs boys have very specific rules about non-Americans working in the States - you now need a letter of explaination from your company and the US company when you travel down to do work. I managed to get the address for the closest FedEx building but my cabbie couldn't find the said address and wasted about 20 minutes driving around an industrial park. At 8 am Toronto time, I was trying to find a crate for my parcel that I was to deliver and install, so at least it could get to where it was going so *someone* could install it. I finally got it into a box begged some some packing material from another company, then got it on its way. Then, Banana phoned me at 9:45 am crying and I couldn't console her.

I consider my business trip a failure, I feel that I've put the business in jeopardy and I'm cramped into a tiny airline seat and my knees hurt.

Did somebody say, "Road Trip?"

Here I am at an Internet terminal at the Calgary International Airport. I have found myself on the way to Conneticut for a work-related whirlwind tour. I have to go down there to talk nicely to some equipment, so one of the companies I support can have a website. The suspicion that I might be making this trip started on Monday and quickly congealed between 4 and 5 pm this afternoon. 5:30 saw me scurrying around the house, grabbing my passport and a clean set of boxers. I took the camera and may post some pictures of the wild ride when I get back. As tiring as this is going to be (flying ALL NIGHT to Toronto, then early commuter to Hartford, then rent a car and drive for an hour), I am looking forward to the adventure.

Whoops! I just had a spontaneous Monty Python moment.

Update time.

• I'm preparing to replace my dining room picture window with a set of garden doors. Never before have I made a five-foot wide hole in the wall of a structure that I wanted to continue living in. When I'm finished, it will be a beautiful set of double doors, opening out onto a four-and-a-half foot drop. Guess I should get to work on some deck plans, too.
  
• spring must be here, as the triathletes are beginning to show up in our master's swim team practices. I haven't been going to practice faithfully for the past few weeks, but when I am there, I can count on seeing at least four or five of 'em. The object of many a middle-age-woman's lust is one of these 160 pound wonders, whom I've dubbed Skinny Guy. One of the Broads has taken a shine to him. Sure, he looks hot in his Speedo, but I can still kick his ass (for fifty metres, anyway).
  
• work is a funny place these days. We're building something and I'm not sure if I'm at liberty to say just what yet. Imagine a huge structure, totally surrounded by scaffolding, all covered in tarps, several stories high. People come and go from different levels at all hours of the day and night, carrying wood planks, steaming bowls of pasta, explosives, buckets of paint and manure, canoes and inflatable Zodiacs, cages with howling monkeys, Chinese throwing stars and 1960's lava lamps. Horrible and alluring cacophonies and syncopations are emitting from all over the structure in geysers of din and dissonance.
  
  My job has been to bring wires, batteries, balaclavas for everyone and 4 dozen freshly-baked lemon pound cakes. On Wednesdays I get to write speeches for the archbishop and mash kiwi fruit with my bare feet in one of the clawfooted bathtubs. It's the highlight of my week, I assure you. I enter on the fourth level scaffolding, northwest corner and leave through the ground level exit with exactly four and a half cups of stripped carriage bolts.
  
  Sometime soon, someone is going to tug on a cable, and all the sheathing and supports will fall away in one glorious and tumultuous collapse, leaving our company standing in the wide open business scape for all to see. I'll let you know when it's unveiled.
  
• I went through a bit of a blue funk, but I'm back to a muted yellow now.
  
• my dad's looking forward to his annual Father and Son and Son Father's Day golf game. I guess I should get out to the driving range and hit a bucket of balls before then.
  
• I think I've got a family reunion near Edmonton in the next month.
  
• Jenn was shown the results of some testing that was done during her recent interview and they are relatively certain that she is assertive and task oriented. Why didn't they just ask me?
  
• I am selling some old junk through the Bargain Finder, and no matter what I price it at, someone wants it for ten bucks less. Cheapskates!
  
• in answer to an ongoing mouse problem my mother-in-law is having, Jenn suggests at the dinner table that she get a cat. Resounding cheers sound from both my daughters. McMonkey tries her best to convince everyone at the table that bright-eyed Calico kittens would make excellent mousers.
  
• our van has finally rusted right through. You can see the ground through the door jamb when the driver's door is open. At only 276,000 kilometers. Crappy Fords.
  
• Our yard is home to two robin's nests, both of which contain four chicks. One nest is in the pine tree in front of the house and the other nest is on top of the floodlight in the carport. It pleases me to know that the birds chose our yard as a place to make their home.

That's all for now. I'll keep you informed as new stuff comes up.

I think I'll get a beer before I get started.

I'll be right back.

The amnesty from imagined sins of your innocent youth can never be too late in coming.

I spent the evening with an acquaintence who had changed from a wild, reckless party girl to a mature but edgy mom of three. A conversation regarding her son and his behaviors freed me from shackles I was unaware of.

Thank you.

This weekend was a long weekend here in Calgary and I made an encouraging observation - all the stores were closed.

We (as a society) have leaned towards valuing success in business over personal, non-working time. In years past I've noticed more and more flyers advertising long weekend "sales". Big department stores, specialty boutiques, car dealerships, electronics stores, even some little mom-and-pop shops - they all seemed to be open and ready for business. If there was a sale on, that meant that everyone had to be working. "If everyone's working, who's meant to be at the sale," I often pondered. No one seemed to come to the same conclusion I did. In fact, right up to last year, it seemed to get worse with each passing holiday.

This spring, I noticed that for some reason, the trend seemed to be reversing. Today (Monday), I had the luxury of not having to work. In my travels, I noticed that the majority of places of business that I passed where ... closed. Phew. Finally, everyone gets a rest. Could it be that the events of September 11th have reminded everyone of what really is most important in life?

I have a feeling that society is getting around to valuing mental health and time with friends and loved ones.

I keep thinking of cool things I can make technology do around the house - wireless networking, server file storage, virtual private networking to my office, network access throughout both floors .... I can't seem to find a reason to do any of this, though.

Technology is outstripping my needs.