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Winter - Drumheller Valley
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Images
- Hits: 2719
Sunday Off and I've promised to take A***** to Drumheller, in lieu of the usual night out at .... etc. A better bet I thought.
And the weather, Calgary, +10, thinking that I might get a shovel or two in the river and perhaps do a bit of prospecting...
No. Just past Beiseker the landscape turns to snow, Calgary isn't Alberta, after all. I'm still surprised. Like with how the rest of the world's economy is surviving...
Nonetheless, a few pictures from our trip. Photos, I could have spent a month, year taking, these are off the cuff, Samsung phone pics.
Phone Box, Dorothy. Fisher Price...
Grain Elevator near Dorothy
...moonrise between cell-towers...
Abandoned railway bridge near East Coulee. Bridge fenced off, hazardous, many broken ties, note the state of the walkway...
Enhanced Panorama over the Suspension Bridge at Rosedale...
Horseshoe Canyon. A***** is the red ghoul, the stitching software didn't like him so much...
A fine sunset approaching Beiseker. The best time of the day to be on the prairies (or in the badlands). Except for morning, when the rivers are thawed and there's the prospect of ...
He visited the museum (Royal Tyrell), I read a book. And we ate lunch at a generic pub (the "Last Chance Saloon & Hotel" in Wayne was closed, I checked their hours, not the days, my bad, shame, it's without a doubt - for ambiance alone, the best bar for 100 miles), so we found the pub, he took the waitresses recommendation and had the steak, I had a burger...the burger was delicious, topped with jalapenos and crispy with black pepper, poutine smothered in gravy on the side, can't go wrong with a burger in a small town, his steak, well, a boot on a plate with a side of frozen superstore veggies...he survives it. I give him a bite of my burger to give him the taste and remembrance of his pretension...
Still, not a bad trip, not a good one, when the snow/ice is gone we'll try again for the Wayne Hotel, the other sights he's seen, and maybe a few hours sinking the shovel into a few of the nearby rivers...
The Source - $39.99 For Cassette Adapter
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Rants
- Hits: 3248
I'm tired of putting myself through the commercial radio stations. Can't do it, forever scanning the airwaves looking for something decent to listen to, trying to imagine my life on the road, prospecting, 8, 12, 16 hours a day driving, listening to this shit, lucky if you catch even just one good song an hour...
"...You can call my on my cell phone..". Fucking hell. Buddy, if I called you on your cell phone ass hole it'd be to find out where you were so I could track you down and shoot you. You've done for music what Donald Trump has done for politics.
Anyways, I've decided this will end, I have a perfectly great car stereo left over from the Jetta, but no time to install it (or no son, he's in Victoria...). And so I pop by Westbrook Mall to find some options. Into the Source...formerly Radio Shack, they have what I'm looking for. NextTech, the offbrand of offbrands, kinda like V-Tech and other anonymous tech names that no educated consumer would touch with a ten-foot pole. It's $39.99. Seems a bit pricey, maybe I should shop around a bit, I never go shopping for new shit, I'm a pretty bad consumer...
Not worth my time, I buy it, with tax it comes to 41.99. The salesman looks at me with dead eyes, tries to upsell me a ten years supply of value priced off-brand AA batteries. I must look like a real pervert. I politely decline. He asks if I'd like to, for an extra $8.00, purchase their extended warranty, these particular cassette adapters have a known issue with the plug breaking off, for an extra $8.00 they'll replace the plug, twice, over 3 years, no questions asked...
This is the lamest thing ever. And I've experience with the Source's Extended Warranty program...it's fucking shit. I decline. He offers to take my email, put me on their spam mailing list. Is everyone that shops here such a sucker, I wonder? No thanks.
$41.99 later and I have a vaguely uneasy feeling and my cassette adapter, now to find an MP3 player. Nothing great, just something that takes batteries (I don't wanna be charging it) and holds a lot of music. The Source has nothing, and so I shop around...bad quality MP3 players, designed to look like Ipods, $30, $40 bucks a pop, more even, for a lousy 2 or 4 GB memory, this is the gift the saddest kid on the block got at Christmas, I can hear him screaming just looking at it..."I asked for an IPHONE!!!", name's like "Hip Street" and "Cool Tunes" tell you just how uncool they are...
I head to London Drugs, and their MP3 players, like everywhere else, hold nothing, don't take batteries, $50, $100, WTF? Why not just buy a Tablet? Laptop? I mean, for the price...bloody hell...
But they do have a cassette adapter. $7.99. Unbelievable.
Now, a dollar or two, three, five, ten even, I'd swallow the loss, shoulda shopped around. But this boils my blood...
...Back to the Source, $5.00 Gas, this is their strategy, hopefully it's just not worth the suckers time to return it, it's not worth mine but they're not getting my money, fuckers, return cassette adapter, the manager assists me, asking innocuously why I'm returning it...
"Because I found it for $8.00 at London Drugs." I reply. I'm visibly not impressed. He's got no reply, then, after collecting a load of irrelevant data tells me:
"Well, you know, the quality isn't all the same, if you decide you need a better one...". It's the best he can do, I get it, he's gotta try. But really, I could buy 3 of them, use up my extended warranty, for half the price they're selling them for.
My new slogan for "The Source" - "The Source of Dollarama Shit at Holt Renfrew Prices..." Really guys, get a fucking life. And get it together. When you finally close your doors forever don't blame the internet, blame yourselves for your fucked up exploitative pricing.
The Unicorn Chaser
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: WTF
- Hits: 2052
This is absolute undiluted brilliance. Courtesy of Vice, who do some amazing documentaries and character studies.
Note that Polyamory is a major theme, and while I know that before JC we were all essentially polyamourous, and reason allows it, there's that romantic bit inside me that it just doesn't sit with. Never mind, each to their own, and the world's a richer place as a result...
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Really, while it's set in London and worthy of it's own mini-documentary, in Nelson you wouldn't give it a second glance...
(Thanks to Lesli for sharing...)
No Man's Sky
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Link of the day
- Hits: 2143
An intriguing article at The Atlantic describes a rather new and unique video game. An artificial self-created universe, with 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 planets to explore, bigger than any one of us, any population of us - and I'm including the world here, could hope to explore in our lifetime. The chances of running into another player - in your lifetime (in the game), are less than that of winning the 6/49. A curious premise, curious, too, as to how this algorithm evolves...
Link: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/02/artificial-universe-no-mans-sky/463308/
Updated: Game Site
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