The Hilton Chronicle

After spending an hour shoveling today, I went to the back of the house and it was as if I hadn't shoveled at all. It has been snowing continuously for the past few days making driving a real treat and the aforementioned shoveling a losing battle. However, on a positive note, it is not as cold today. The temperature has risen to a balmy -23 degrees.
The nominations for the Oscars are out and after taking a cursory perusal I see that Lord Of The Rings: Return of the King is nominated for 11 awards. Now, I am not one to usually follow this ego tripping award falderall, as you know, but with LOTR in the running I, for one, hope that Peter Jackson is given some recognition for at least the monumental achievement of bringing the Tolkien masterpiece to the screen. I will predict at least a best director nod for the Aussie hobbit. As for the other nominations, the only other movie we have seen is Pirates of the Caribbean which is nothing more than a bit of Disney special effects fluff so I don't see much competition there. As for the others....who cares?
What is wrong with these so called "all news" channels that they won't give you the news? I sat down for lunch at work yesterday and started flipping through the channels to get an idea of what was going on in the world. I had to surf for 20 minutes before I got even the top news headlines. CTV and CBC seem to think that sports and business news are more important than the actual news and CNN and Headline News are so busy self promoting themselves that you have to commit a whole evening to get any meat. I thought the idea of these news channels was that you could just tune in for five minutes and be brought up to date on the worlds happenings. The only one that seems to do any thing close to that is the good old BBC and we can't get that at work. And I can't stand all the cutesy chit chat the anchors seem to think they have to do to make the newscast more entertaining. Enough of these bubble headed "personalities". Just give me a guy in a tie that will deliver the goods. Remember George Finstad on the CBC?... Now that was no nonsense newscasting.

Posted 2:45 PM by Jeff

Tuesday, January 27, 2004

Tell Me Agin Why I Live In This Country?

No sooner had we dug ourselves out from three or four days of continuous snowfall than we were plunged into the deepfreeze which, as I type this, sits at -35 degrees. Over the weekend I was out at least twice a day shovelling snow. I guess the only redeeming thing about that is that the constant movement prevents you from freezing up in the icy temperatures.
I have been virtually locked out of any of the computers here for the past few days as one child or another has been busy writing essays, studying and doing school assignments. Even Dianne was busy for the last two weeks writing an essay for a bible study course she is taking and has been glued to the upstairs machine for the duration. So I have had a good excuse to why there have been few to no posts.
Dianne will be leaving the freezing climes of Edmonton next week as she wings her way to the sunny beaches of Cuba where she will spend a week taking a few continuing education courses and generally soaking up the rays with the rest of the staff in her office. I have not been invited and will remain here to hold down the fort. And probably shovel a bunch more snow.

Posted 11:14 AM by Jeff

Wednesday, January 21, 2004

TV Wasteland

It's time for the annual dumbing down of the airwaves as the monotonous excuse for reality programing, American Idol, hits the airwaves again. And I guess the Canadian version is once again on the lookout for talent and will actually be recognizing us fine citizens in the The Great White North as auditions will be held in Edmonton this year. Nikki is mulling that over. With all this trash TV on the commercial channels it is so assuring to have the DVD player and all those box sets standing by.

Posted 10:06 PM by Jeff

Saturday, January 17, 2004

"We likes it, Precious!!"

Yesterday Dianne & I had the day off so we took the opportunity to finally go see a matinee performance of Return of the King. The beauty of waiting so long to see it, apart from the joy of anticipation I get, is the fact that the theatre was virtually empty. We had our pick of seats and were able to enjoy the movie in almost perfect solitude. I say almost because even though there was hardly any one else there, the experience was marred to some degree when a couple brought their five or six year old kid in to see the film. Every two minutes he was asking "Who is that? What's he doing?" in a voice loud enough to compete with the soundtrack. Nonetheless, the movie, to quote a rather silly cliche, blew our socks off. Once we had collected our footwear, we left the theatre emotionally exhausted and wanting to come back to see it again. I can only imagine how great it will be next Christmas when the extended version comes out. At least then I can sit end enjoy all three parts, by myself, with no annoying play by play commentary coming from the back row.
And now that I have seen all three Lord of the Rings movies on the big, big screen, I would be happy if I never set foot in a theatre again. I find it totally annoying that after paying $9 to $14 to get in, then being robbed blind for some oily, over salted popcorn and some sugary flavoured water, we have to sit through all those trailers and then...actual commercials! Then, as if that is not irritating enough, they have to lay on the guilt trip by dragging out some guy who claims to be a set painter or a stuntman who whines away for five minutes about how people who download illegal movies takes food off his table. First off, he's probably an actor anyway and second, whether he's an actor or not, he's getting paid union scale to make those pictures and will continue to get paid whether the picture flops or not. The only ones hurt are the fat cat studio executives who don't get as large a slice of the pie. Those bootleg movies aren't all that great anyhow, or so I've heard. They are usually such poor quality, have Japanese subtitles on them and you have to listen to the guy holding the video camera yakking away to his girlfriend. In Japanese..

Posted 6:59 PM by Jeff

Tuesday, January 13, 2004

The Ice Capades

I'm not sure what it was like in your neck of the woods, but we had some pretty bizarre weather here over the weekend. Seems it rained most of Saturday and then froze causing great havoc on the roads and elsewhere. But some did take advantage of this flukey weather. Here's a shot of the kids actually skating on the sidewalk.

Temps have now risen and the roads are quite a slushy mess, not to mention the cars. Guess I won't be getting a car wash soon.

Posted 9:39 PM by Jeff

Saturday, January 10, 2004

Ice Berg, Right Ahead!

This Monday is the maiden voyage of the new 800 million dollar Queen Mary 2 from Southhampton England. Southhampton, as you remember, was the departing port for the ill fated Titanic a few years back. I hope they have some binoculars on board this time. The new liner is as big as a 21 story building and has all kinds of swimming pools, restaurants and theatres. It holds 2100 people and the 14 day maiden voyage from Southhampton to Ft Lauderdale Florida will cost you up to $48,000. Forty eight grand and you only get to Ft Lauderdale?! I think I'll save the money and just hang out at West Edmonton Mall for a couple of weeks.

Posted 2:32 AM by Jeff

Wednesday, January 07, 2004

Happy Birthday!

The last of our children has become an adult. Nikki celebrated her 18th birthday on Jan 5th.

Happy Birthday Nikki!

Posted 7:36 PM by Jeff

Mac Stuff

It must be the January blues or something, but the posts are not exactly pouring out of my brain. Perhaps working a midnight shift doesn't help either. Nonetheless, there is some news for all you Mac fans. Mac has introduced a new mini iPod in an array of vomitous colors. The machine is about the size of a credit card and has a 10gig (I think) hard drive instead of solid state memory and get this, is only 50 bucks less than a standard iPod. What gives? I guess it gives them a starting point in which to drastically reduce the price once the demand is up for this thing, making Mac look so good in the eyes of geekdom. All this for something that only costs them about $40 to produce. But these new gadgets with mega huge hardrives the size of a match box are becoming quite popular. I would be interested if I could get my hands on something with 4 or 5 gigs of memory for around $100. I would use it to store digital images while on holiday or something. Now that would be cool!

Posted 6:27 PM by Jeff

Saturday, January 03, 2004

Happy New Year!

It seems that with all the hustle & bustle of the holidays and working and not being able to get on the computer I have let 2003 slip away from us and lo and behold 2004 is upon us! So this will be the first, and most auspicious post of the new year. Too bad I cannot think of anything greatly profound to fit the occasion. Nonetheless, I would like to wish all a happy and prosperous 2004. Now down to business.
Dianne discovered, recently, that her electronic organizer was damaged and was not useable so a replacement was needed. After going through the flyers after Christmas, we discovered several stores that had a Palm Zire handheld computer on sale for a good price and so she picked one up. I was so impressed with it that I found a way to justify going out and purchasing one of my own. So for the last few days I have being tinkering with it, discovering all what it can do and am really impressed with it. It is the bottom of the line unit, only has 2 Mb of memory and a B&W screen, but for our meagre purposes will serve just fine. I have discovered, much to my delight, that there are a number of software applications available on the net that can be downloaded and run on this thing, so I have been downloading e-books, and metric conversion software and a couple of games. The plus factor is that the unit is so small it will fit nicely in my vest pocket or on my hip in a pouch that I can carry it with me at all times making it even more useable.
Still haven't ventured out to see Return of the King yet. I'm waiting till the seething crowds have dwindled a bit. In a couple of weeks Dianne and I will take in a matinee on our days off together. Meanwhile I can savour the anticipation, however, I am being besieged at home by every one who has seen the movie, urging me to go see it so that they can talk about it around the table. We are probably going to sit down sometime this weekend and watch the first two episodes to whet our appetites.
I have to say that I am somewhat disturbed by this whole Michael Jackson thing. It seems he is living in a little world of his own where things aren't the same as the ouside world. He sees nothing wrong with having little kids sleep in his bed with him. Duh! Wake up and smell the litigation, Jocko. I'd hate to think what life is going to be like for him if he is convicted and he has to do jail time. It's not quite Neverland!
We are in the throws of winter's nastiness at the moment as temperatures have dropped to -25 & -30. We got a dump of snow the other day which, combined with the cold, does not motivate one to make any excursions outside the comfy confines of one's couch. I think those hibernating mammals have the right idea. I only wish I could find a way to get my employer to pay me to sleep for three months.

Here's a little Christmas morning happiness.

Posted 5:10 PM by Jeff

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