Category: Uncategorized

Well, like an idiot, I worked until about 8pm tonight. As many of you know, I’m a temporary full-time employee, meaning I don’t get paid OT nor do I get bonuses. I can’t work every night until 9pm but that would be dumb. So why did I stay late tonight? While I did need to finish something, I mainly stayed because I was lazy. My ride was staying late and I also didn’t have anything to make for dinner at home. So by default, doing a little bit of OT solved both my problems. I got fed and I also got a ride home. Had I gone at the normal time, I would had to take transit home and then required to find out what I needed to eat for dinner.

I won’t be doing this too often though. Working for free is not a good idea!

Late night talk show host Conan O’Brien recently returned from a trip to Armenia. Conan took along some crew and his personal assistant Sona, who is Armenian. They were there for four days and taped some material. I believe Conan understands one of the things he does better (by a country mile) than any of the other late night hosts is his ability to make a remote segment funny and entertaining. As such, he stands apart from his peers as he’s traveled to Cuba and now Armenia to film for his show.

The material from his latest trip will air in mid-November. The above clip is just a taste of what’s to come!

I woke up this morning feeling exhausted despite going to bed at roughly the same time as usual. As I laid in my bed wondering what had happened, I briefly toyed with the idea of doing a “work from home day”. I’d sleep until 10am then start work remotely. As tired as I was though, that seemed like too much of a hassle, so I decided I still had to go to work.

Why was I so spent? Had I expended too much energy in following the federal election? Did watching Stephen Harper disappear from the national political stage tucker me out? Who knows. Perhaps it was a symbolic hangover of a not-very good decade of conservative rule.

I borrowed that phrase but it’s true. After almost a decade of steering this country off-course, Stephen Harper and his band of misfits has finally been cast off by my fellow Canadians. Following disappointments in 2006 and 2011, I was worried that Canadians had forgotten what made this country so great. Today was a sign that you can only push them so far before they reject the perverted vision Harper had for this nation. I lost $100 tonight but I would say it was the best way to rid myself of $100 in recent memory.

Over the course of the next few days, I will lap up the tears of those puzzling Harper supporters, who somehow drank the Conservative Kool-Aid with such mind-numbing vigour. If Schadenfreude could sustain a person, I might not have to eat for weeks.

As you can see above I did not want to tempt fate. I’ve never wanted to lose $100 as much as I do now. By this time tomorrow, I hope that money (and more) won’t be returned to me.

As many of you recall, I sometimes partake in online betting. So far, I’ve only bet on ice hockey games featuring the local professional team, the Vancouver Canucks. I exclusively bet again the Canucks. In this manner, if they lose, the sting of defeat is more than soothed by winning money. If they win, then a small amount of money is an acceptable price to pay to see them advance. If you’ve followed the Canucks in recent years, you’ll then recognize I’ve won a lot of money off their performances then.

On the weekend, the same kind of thinking got me to look up if there was online betting for politics, in particular the Canadian federal election. Indeed, there is and online betting site Bodog has several propositions relating to the election. My intention was to prepare for the event that Stephen Harper would be re-elected. If such a horrible outcome would become reality, at least I could make some cash off that. On the weekend, the odds were as follows: Harper -125, Trudeau +125, Mulcair +800. To read these odds, first take a look at the sign. A positive sign means that, if you bet $100, you’ll win your money back plus that amount. So for example, if you bet $100 on Mulcair and he becomes PM, you win $800. Positive numbers are considered riskier bets. A negative sign means, that’s how much money you’d have to put down to just win $100. So a -125 means you’d have to bet $125 just to win $100. Negative numbers are an oddsmaker’s way of saying they think this the more likely outcome.

I was going to put down $200 on Harper as Bodog were indicating he’d be the most likely to win the election. Bodog of course doesn’t do their own polling, they rely on the news, external polls, and the experience of their oddsmakers to come up with the odds. Then the weekend ended and the latest set of polls started to come out. The Liberals started to pull away from the Cons and the NDP. These are now the odds as of Friday morning:

The odds have swung heavily towards Trudeau at -250. You’d have to wager a hefty $250 on Trudeau just to win a measly $100. Harper now goes into the positive as the oddsmakers see his chances dwindle. Mulcair is now even more out of the race. A $100 bet on him would yield an amazing $1500 if he managed a miracle.

I’m no longer certain if I want to bet on Harper anymore. Now I get that polls can and often are inaccurate. Geez, if I were to use the same thinking for the last provincial election in B.C., I’d be hesitant to bet on Crusty Clark because of polling, yet she pulled it off. Part of me thinks I should put $100 on Harper anyways, just so I don’t tempt fate. In any case, the odds might have changed in the hours since I wrote this. Check them yourself right here.

Ok, so while I was on the Bodog site, I also found they do bets involving entertainment. They also have a whole set of propositions on Star Wars: Episode VII. The most interesting bet to me is: “May the Force be with you” to be said.

The odds for this at the time of writing are -150, meaning I’d have to wager $150 to win $100. This is a sure thing is it not? Even the odds say so! That line has been said in every single Star Wars film, all six of them. Unfortunately, there has been some variation in the line in some of the movies. In some cases, it’s “May the Force be with us”. Does that count technically? I’d have to check with Bodog.

Still, I feel like J.J. Abrams would not miss an opportunity to not use that line in his first and possibly last involvement in a Star Wars movie. He’s a geek like me and if he were to use the line, it would be the purest form of it, not a variation. It is why I’m thinking of putting down a cool $1000 on this bet. Yes, you read that right, I am that stupid. A $1000 wager would net me a handsome sum of $667. Not bad eh? You can see more of those Star Wars bets right here. Anyone fancy a wager on a best picture Oscar win?

I am currently without Internet access right now. The timing, as is with many things in my life, was just perfect. As I was about to prepare materials for my original post, my Internet stopped working.

I am typing this out on my phone, which is not an ideal way to write a blog post. I can only hope that when tomorrow comes, nothing else will stop me from writing what I originally wanted to write on Monday evening.

So the web site I referenced in my last post is back up but I’m going to save that post for tomorrow as there is something else I want to get to. Last evening, as I wrote yesterday, I returned home from my parents’ place after a fabulous Thanksgiving dinner. For the remainder of the evening, I played video games, ate more food (I’m getting fat), and remotely logged into my work computer to work on a task I needed done. As is often the case, I went retired to my bed chamber well past 2am. As my alarm was set for 8:30am, I knew I was in for a rough morning. There was nothing I could do though, so I just went to sleep.

In the morning I awoke, not because of my alarm but naturally. This is a common occurrence as I get older, I wake more often during sleep. Since my alarm had not gone off, I closed my eyes again to catch whatever sleep remained. After an indeterminate period of time, I awoke again and I noticed my alarm still had not gone off. Curious, I grabbed my phone to check the time. It was exactly 10am on the dot. I instantly realized what had happened. On Sunday evening, I had turned my alarm off because of the long weekend. I’ve frequently forgotten to do this, only to be unnecessarily woken up on a holiday Monday from an alarm that should have been off. Alas, this time the opposite had happened, which most would agree is the worse of the two scenarios.

I had perhaps a picosecond of panic before I realized I wasn’t really that late for work and I wasn’t scheduled to be in any meetings this morning anyways. I did, however, send off an e-mail to two engineers that definitely needed to know I was going to be late. With that done, I proceeded to get ready at a steady yet not rushed pace. I didn’t skip any of my grooming or hygiene tasks. I also made sure I just didn’t wear anything willy-nilly from my closet.

Despite waking up an hour and a half later than when my alarm goes off, I was only late by an hour. As I strolled into work just before 11am, I saw a surprising amount of cars pulling into the campus parking lots. Were these people late like I was or were they coming in at their normal times? Anyways, despite being “late”, no one gave me any grief about it. I have to say it was literally refreshing to be at work today. I got nearly eight hours of sleep last night and that’s rare for a work night. Because of that, I was very perky all day and didn’t require any caffeine of any sort. There was no afternoon lull or sag. What an interesting perspective on getting proper rest.

Rest assured that my alarm is now back on for tomorrow, when I undoubtedly will not be as full of vigour.

I had a post all planned out tonight but I needed to get some source images from a web site. That web site is now down for maintenance, so there goes all my stuff for the post. I’m kinda out of back-up material so I’m at a loss right now.

Uh, I’m not sure what to say. How was your Thanksgiving? My was great. My Mom made a lot of food this year. I had a very satisfying meal and I got leftovers too which is always a bonus. Alright, just come back tomorrow folks.

One week from today, Canadians will go to the polls for the latest federal election and choose their members of parliament and thereby, indirectly choosing our next prime minister. In an earlier post, I wrote that I expect the Conservatives to win this election, thus extending Stephen Harper’s reign of terror on this once great nation.

As you might infer, from this post and earlier ones, I am no fan of Stephen Harper and his band of traitorous misfits. In my earlier post, national polling had the NDP ahead of the Conservatives but I wrote that I didn’t trust polls and when it comes down to the wire, Stephen Harper would be victorious. I believed that in August and I still believe it now. Too many Canadians have fallen for Harper’s campaign of fear. Conservative voters believe if they don’t vote for Harper, the economy will crumble and terrorists will run freely in the streets of every Canadian city and town. The right love to scare people into voting for them and older folk are especially susceptible to this. Too many of our citizens have become too dumb to think for themselves and examine the issues and face reality for themselves. These are the people who will keep Stephen Harper in power and allow him to continue to steer this country towards even greater ruin.

On Monday, the only question to be answered is, will Stephen Harper have a minority or majority government? At this point, political experts would say the likelihood of a Harper minority government is the most likely scenario of the two but I would remind people not to underestimate the breadth and depth of the stupidity of millions of Canadians voters. Thus, I can say with confidence that one week from today, Canada will continue to be ruled by a Harper led majority government.