I have decided to add a new category to my blog in hopes of revitalizing my need to write and rant to the world. Thus it is called well - Rants…

Ahhh where to begin? Lets start off with a little conversation I had with a friend over a pint of beer last night.  My girlfriend was agitated that someone had actually asked her to take off her shoes in their home. She said she felt so uncomfortable that she left. ” It was just an apartment, and it is not as if my shoes were dirty! how rude…who does she think she is ? Take off my shoe? We were there for like a second! And now she is mad at me for reacting this way!”

At this point I was staring at my friend with barely restrained awe - perplexed by how someone could really make an argument of something so inane and even more befuddled that they thought they had a point! I dropped my gaze to my beer and waited for the ranting to pass and then quirked one eyebrow I sarcastically replied, ” Why were you in a home with your shoes on in the first place? Do you leave yours on in your home?”

Of course this lead to more indignation and her agitation rose as she saw me taking sides. That was when I burst out laughing at the ridicoulosus severity that a shoe conversatoin was being allotted.

Bottom line - take off your G..Damn shoes….and don’t be such an ass when you are asked to.

Whenever something new comes along there are always passionate remarks and reactions and even more dramatic commentaries about it. Take the iphone - or as some articles are reporting - don’t. There seems to be two very opposite views about Canada’s position on this long awaited techno phone diva.  EEtimes.com  reports that there is not a strong response to the iphone in Canada due to package and pricing issues. Of course some of this is based on an interview with Allan Yogasingam, an Ottawa-based technology analyst for TechOnline who while stating the reasoning for such apathy is also  lining up out side the Rogers store with his friend at  3am for the iphone. So maybe he is referring to the non-geek, general consumer. Of course to me it would never have been the general consumer that would be interested in all the shinnies that the iphone has to offer, but that is just me.

Canada.com   Paints a different picture - one of enthusiastic consumers waiting in line for the iphones. These Canadians are more than happy to be joining a league of more than 20 countries with this new iconic device. At one of the Ottawa locations artical states ‘ “The spirits are really high. There is lots of excitement but everyone is well behaved and enjoying themselves,” said Henrietta Gibson, a spokeswoman for the Rogers chain in Ottawa. “The crowd is cheering as people come out of the store with their phones.” ‘

Personally I have been waiting a long time for this lovely new Apple, and will suffer the prices but not the lines. I never got the itouch (why settle while I waited?) and now I am anxious to have my little new shinny regardless of what the average consumer is doing….. Are you hungry for this new apple as well or do you agree that it is too much hype for too much money?

Whew, it is has been quite a journey, but we made it. The rooms are finished, the dust is gone, the website is up, and all that we are missing are the guests. We took a beautiful, but forgotten century home, and gave it new life. All it took was a roof, new wood furnace, new chimney liners, two new bathrooms( including bringing the piping through the old walls to the top floor, renovating the two existing bathrooms,4 new doors, a new front deck, new expanded driveway, new back fence, ridiculous amounts of furniture/appliances/linens and a few of the essentials for a small home reno - 100 paintbrushes ( evidently you should clean them) 1004 screws of various sizes, 25 gallons of paint, 10 gallons of stain, 5 gallons of varnish,16 Tshirts ( never got the hand of painting) 10 blinds ( I like to walk around …um…sans dress),6 gallons of wood patch, 12 half pints of various stain ( alot of wood in the house), 20 sets of curtains,105 large pizza’s from Fred’s,5 new pairs of pants due to all the pizza, 245 pieces of molding and baseboards, 510 nails of various lengths, 65 pieces of different grit sandpaper,3 cans of turpentine, 43 pieces of drywall, 65 dollars worth of recycled beer and wine bottles ( you can do the math) 20 new locks ( including a rather cool fingerprint one for our office), 50 lft of vinyl flooring, 4 tubs of glue ( yes tubs), 18 tubs of putty ( yes again tubs), 25 exacto knives ( not sure why), 4 ceiling fans,72 rolls of paper towel 4 chandeliers, 10 wall sconces, 10 wood transition pieces, 3 electric fireplaces, 3 things of ‘goo be gone’ 12 sets of trays and rollers, 35 tubes of silicone ( I like the smell), 4 bottles of asprine ( smell did not like me),50 bags of black soil ( for the garden of course), 15 bags of bark, flowers and plants that I dont dare count, 15 rolls of wall paper, 24 4×4, 75 2×4, uncountable metal thingys like “l”brackets and stuff, 84 packages of wood paneling, 1 nail gun, 4003 nails for nail gun ( 2003 of which are misfires), 3 packages of bandages, uncountable new saw blades and drill bits, and about 1/2 hour of marriage counseling ( decided to get drunk instead).

Okay so the numbers might be off, but it was a lot of work - I am sorry I have not been around and from the JaK attack we hope we have not lost all of our listeners…. We will be back in no time at all!

So come and see the reason myself and Jonathan have fallen off the face of the planet - http://phoenixhollow.com

Please sing to the Brady Bunch theme

This is a story,About a lady named Kelly,

Who was sailing to lands far and strange.

Part of the Canadian Navy,She wasn’t happy

Time for a change.

This is a story About a boy name Jonny,

Who was sailing on a ship of his own

He was a Linux geek Stuck in windows

And he was all alone

Till one day when the lady met this fellow

And they new they could never go back

That this couple must somehow leave the navy

That’s the way we became the JaK attack

The JaK attack – The JaK attack

That’s the way – we became the JaK attack

Please visit the JaK attack Pod cast for more thrilling songs and riddles!

Okay okay, I know it has been a long time since my last post! I mean we are even into a new year now! but let me just get over the next bit so that I can get on with the post - a post that has made it important for me to dust off the keyboard and log in to share it will you…. \Since my last post we bought a home in Windsor Nova Scotia that is over 143 years old - needless to say the repairs and renos have been relentless! |I have also been working full time for a kitchen design firm. So in between trying to get out a pod cast with JaK attack and redoing the roof, electricial and flooring I have neglected my sight….

Soooo on with the reason with why I have come from the darkness of blog neglect back to the realm of the internet readers…… I was researching for a top ten list for JaK attack and found an article of what men are to tell their girlfriends in order for them to lose weight….and it was serious…at AskMen.com you can find this little article and if you want a death wish you can try one of the six pieces of advise that  Chris Lumsdon gives for desperate men trying to tell their women that they are fat! OMG… I cant believe that this is published and more importantly that some blind men out their might actually be trying their luck and using these lines! I tried to email Chris to ask him if he hit his head when he came up with this wpihamy- however teh link to his email was not working at the time…..

Men - there is no way , easy or otherwise, to tell your girlfriend she is fatter than you would like. Trust me , if there was an easy way to tell the one you love all that you did not like about their appearance than all of us women would be standing beside our own version of Brad Pitt or Antonio Bandaros rather than our own special brand of Elmer Fud…. None of us are perfect… If you are not happy with your partner just tell them- you are going to get the heat no matter what…fooling yourself that their is a way that can trick one another is simply stupid…Quite frankly - if you are so very concerned with your lovers appearance that you need to lie about a way to get them to change then you have other deeper issues.

Chris- you guys have got to get a female on the team. What good is guys giving advice to guys…..I was in the Navy for 14 years and I could always not get over the bad advice men gave to each other on ‘how to handle the gentler sex’…..Honestly…

Doubt me? go ahead and use the ridiculous line of having a new female trainer at the gym….. see how the rest of your evening goes!

Its Friday night, I am in my PJ’s, have no cable, and live along the coast of brisk Blanford Nova Scotia ( meaning the nearest Blockbuster is a 40 min drive on a windy old highway that is actually under the command of the local porcupine patrol). Not a lot of choices since I have done the face book pirate thing to death and will soon have to re-mortgage my future home in Windsor if I stay on ebay any longer…..So I do what we have all done at one point or another - I put on my longest jacket over my at-home-alone-fat-pants, slid my finger toe socked feet into the nearest rubber boots on the porch, and walked to the corner store.

Read the rest of this entry »

Thats right! I am not sure how long it will last - a day an hour who knows- but one of our devoted podcast listeners (Bob we love you) put in an entry about me! We are about to move to Windsor Nova Scotia - birthplace to Hockey, home to Sam Slick, arena for Pumpkin regattas and now ( as it says in Wikipedia) home to KPG…..I took a screen shot as I know this wont last, but gee if feels so nice to be famous…le sigh….

If you visit this link and I am not there, stay a while and read about our new quaint little town! It is a place of old homes, cotton candy, and smiling neighbors…..

Okay, for those of you who have actually stayed on with me from the beginning you know of my issues with Linux and my laptop. To recap – I had a crappy Acer with an equally crappy 4318 wifi card – this was a problem since every distro I tried would fail miserably with the wifi connection. I was trying to dual boot, then I simply relied on live discs, but to no avail. I was about to give up, when suddenly there were all these Linux users telling me that if I was a Windows user and having such a hard time of it, why didn’t I just give it up and go back to Linux. Of course this just pissed me off – If you are supporting open source software that is supposed to be free and for the benefit of all who are not into proprietary software why deter those that are trying to embrace it. In the end I gave up as well. Read the rest of this entry »

One day Man decided that toast too difficult, who wants to watch over cooking bread? So Man logically made something to make the toast pop up by itself when it was ready for us to devour. That is what we do – when something requires what we deem as too much effort we create something to make that effort go away. Remote car starters, diet pills, face lifts in a can…anything to make life easier with the least amount of effort possible. Now of course it does not hurt if it is also extremely cool! And with these thoughts I give you the LED faucet by Gugliemli.

 This is a contemporary brushed satin stainless steel faucet that cleverly changes the colour of the water according to the temperature! The Faucet has an integrated LED light which reveals the water temperature through vivid shades of brilliant blue, warm vibrant violet, or fiery red hot. Whether this is an innovative design for children or for the fun at heart with an eye for technology – this is simply awesome. I love things that sparkle and if that is also useful – what more could one ask for ? Just another way to make our lives simpler, but in a really cool method!

Wow, it has been a long time since I wrote here! Soooo sorry! Lets us catch up shall we? Lets see….I graduated Mount Royal College and am finally a real life interior designer – at the same time we sold the house and the day after my graduation we to Costa Rica for 10 days! After a week and a half of total debauchery ( we also toured the canopies of the rain forest, horse backed, surfed, visited Nicaragua, and learned that the best rum in the world is actually in a can …) we came back to Calgary. We packed up the dogs and left Alberta in our new truck and headed back home to Nova Scotia.

We stopped in each province, leaving the penguin mark in one way or another, and finally made it to Halifax. We are now residing in a fantastic home in Blanford ( courtesy of Jon’s sister Catherine) and have just purchased a house in Windsor that is actually older than Canada. It is here that we will hopefully start our B&B in about a year…..This place is amazing! It needs a lot of work but it is so awesome!

The JaK attack has followed us to the brisk shores of the North Atlantic, and we posted our first one last week. We move into our new home in Windsor on Halloween, and life is moving on…..

Wow! That is a lot isn’t it! So hopefully now that THAT is all out of my system, I can get back to my blog,,,,, and the penguins!