A Blast from the Past
There's something about shopping malls that seems to suck the life right out of me.Yesterday was no exception. After buying my brother a belated birthday lunch at Boston Pizza, we headed on over to Garden City Shopping Center so he could hit the EB Games outlet.The bloody mall was packed (mostly parents dragging their costumed children from store to store looking for candy) and as such, it was a bit difficult to navigate through the mall......especially considering that most (if not all) children lack spatial awareness and are, in general, ignorant of the laws of physics. On a number of occasions, we had to stop suddenly to avoid kids who had also

Announcing: My Retirement
After nearly sixteen long, eventful (and verbose) years, I have decided to retire my nickname.No longer will I be known as Conceited Jerk.It's been a good run, but CJ's best days are behind him now. Add to the fact that there are more people (mostly teenage brats) using the name, I figured it was time to move on.Sooooo... from here on in, I'm writing under my own (real) name.Regards,Shaun M. Wheeler.

Pass the Pepto, or Bringing Up the Past
So, my iMac 400dv died last weekend, taking with it twenty gigabytes worth of music. All that time spent ripping my CD collection over the years was for nought, and the backups I'd made are nowhere to be found.*sigh*Ah well, back to square one. This time however, when I re-rip my collection, I'm going to encode my tunes into an open format such as OGG Vorbis.--Until I set my Linux box back up and start ripping my music again, I'll have to listen to (gasp) actual CDs!Of course, I haven't owned an honest-to-God CD player in years, so I dug my trusty ol' CDTV out from the depths of the lab and s

Levantine vs. Lunchpail: Round 1
I've been on a Middle Eastern/Levantine/Mediterranean kick lately.I don't know if it was because of the Ouzo I've been drinking lately or side-effect of all those bloody Donairs I've eaten over the last week, but I've spontaneously developed a taste for Arabic music.I have the odd Arabic piece in my music collection, but it's not enough. Today, I craved more. So, off to the music store I went. I did what I always do when I'm interested in a hitherto unknown variety of music - looked for a "Various Artists" sampler.I found what I wanted in The Rough Guide to Arabic CafeIt's a

... causing undue stress on the topography of the Province of Manitoba
I've been noticing that I seem to be slowing down lately.I come home from my usual walkabouts sweaty and out of breath, when ordinarily I wouldn't even break a sweat. A walk to my corner store can wear me out on a bad day. I seem to be feeling the heat more than normal as well...I noticed yesterday, as I was getting ready for my friend's dad's funeral, that neither my suit jacket nor dress pants fit. "Must have shrunk 'em in the wash..." I thought. Took me a second to remember - I always had these dry-cleaned...The long-and-short of it is: I'm getting fat.Three years ago, when I was promoted from Warehouse Manager to Inside Sales, I weigh