Beware of Flower.

Of course if you don't live in or near Toronto this will be somewhat out of your way :D

The Vampires of London are being murdered and only the Angel of Death can save them!

Come on out and enjoy an evening out with Karen Dales, author of 'Angel of Death: Book One of the Chosen' and 'Changeling: Prelude to the Chosen' as we celebrate the Launch of these novels in one volume!

Sunday, July 5th, 2009.

Fox and Fiddle
1525 Yonge Street
(North of St. Claire)
Toronto, Ontario.

5pm to Midnight

Please come on out and bring all your friends for a fun night out.

Costume dress appropriate to the genre is always welcome!

In addition Karen Dales and Dark Dragon Publications is proud to announce that Marshall Dane, acclaimed "Best Live Electric Band" at the Toronto Independent Music Awards" will be playing at the Book Launch.
Check out Marshall Dane at
http://www.marshalldane.com

There will be -
* Author Reading
* Premier screening of Angel of Death Book Trailer
* Multimedia Presentation of Angel of Death Commercials
* Door Prizes and Surprises
* Yummy Fox and Fiddle snacks
* Bloody Cake Cutting Ceremony

Facebook group: http://tinyurl.com/cn27xa

Everyone Welcome! Please invite all your friends!

All Media Welcome!

www.thechosenchronicles.com

When I woke this morning I could remember my dream, which means it was significant. It also feels significant and wasn't one of the recurring themes that appear in my dreams.

It began with a couple angels and a couple demons trying to convert a little kid who was some sort of son of god or something like that. Fighting over him almost. For some reason I felt the need to intervene, to tell the kid not to blindly listen to either pair and follow his heart. I also mislead, without actually lying, the demons and angels into thinking I was something more than human. After all, what human would be stupid enough to get in the middle of an argument between such powerful entities? Anyway I managed to get them away from the kid (for the moment at least.)

In the next scene I was, for reasons unrevealed, with the Angels discussing the best way to teach the kid how not to get trapped in Hell (or the underworld I guess) should he go there for a visit. The idea we were going with involved the kid watching movies with a suitable theme. Showing a preschooler horror movies, even bad ones, really doesn't strike my waking mind as such a good idea, but to my dreaming mind it made sense.

This was interrupted by us somehow learning, being told I think, that the demons were trying to do something to the kid. I told the angels that it was their duty to stop the demons because I didn't want to let them know that I couldn't *poof* myself to the kid's location. Just my luck some entity decided to *poof* me there, I was not thrilled about this.

The next bit is blurry, but it involved a menu and going through a yard filled with thorny plants that I couldn't avoid. The ground was muddy and I could fly a little bit, but not enough to avoid the bushes. I had to go through them. Fortunately they weren't too close together, just close enough that there was no easy path.

The third part involved the kid and me needing to teach him how to pray. It's done from the Heart, not the Head. I was disappointed in the dream that his mother had not taught him this.

I'm sure the timing of the dream has something to due with my niece being baptized tomorrow. I just need to figure out what I'm supposed to do.

For reasons I don't feel like going into we've decided to switch phone companies from Bell to... we're not sure. Any suggestions?

Dear Valued Customer,

We are writing to you today as many activities are underway to shape/reshape Internet use as you all know it. Over the last year some of you have been made aware and/or have seen activities on throttling in the news or in your daily lives. Another proceeding relating to the Internet in Canada required Telecom providers (Bell/Telus/etc.) to provide ISPs with wholesale service speeds that match those that they offer to their own retail customers. Specifically, Bell has been directed by the CRTC to provide matching speeds which would allow us all to have more flexibility in our day to day online requirements. Instead of adhering to these directives, Bell decided to take this issue to the federal Cabinet and at the same time file a tariff application with the CRTC proposing to introduce Usage Based Billing (UBB) on its wholesale customer accounts.

What does this mean for you, the consumer?

Bell provides TekSavvy with last mile, wholesale DSL access services, which TekSavvy uses to provide you with your Internet access. If Bell were to be allowed to introduce UBB on this service, a cap of 60GB would be imposed on all of its users, with very heavy penalties per Gigabyte afterwards (multiple times more than our current per Gigabyte rate of $0.25/GB on overages). This would inherently all but remove Unlimited internet services in Ontario/Quebec and potentially cause large increases in internet costs from month to month.

If you'd like to make your comments/concerns known about what Bell is attempting to do, please do so here:

http://support.crtc.gc.ca/crtcsubmissionmu/forms/Telecom.aspx?lang=e

Select the word "Tariff" from the drop down list.

Add the following in Subject Line "File Number # 8740-B2-200904989 - Bell Canada - TN 7181" and make your thoughts known!

The deadline for filing your comments is today at midnight, so hurry!

Regards,

Rocky


Rocky Gaudrault
Chief Executive Officer
TekSavvy Solutions Inc.
330 Richmond Street, Suite 205
Chatham, ON, N7M 1P7
Customer Service: 877-779-1575
URL: www.teksavvy.com

I haven't been here for a while due to computer problems. I don't feel like reading back through everything that I've missed, so if there's something important you think I should see from the past couple of weeks let me know.

My computer died yesterday - right now I've got my old one hooked up temporarily and am reminded of why I got a new one in the first place! This one is less than 1/3 the speed of the other one and has problems that go beyond merely being slow. I suspect that several of them would be fixed, or at least made less significant, by reformatting the hard disk and reinstalling windows.

I should look at getting my other one fixed or replaced, but I don't drive which means getting it to a repair person would be a pain.

A webcomic that works like a Choose Your Own Adventure, growing new branches on a weekly schedule - or something like that.

I'm thinking it might be too awkward to do unless you did something along the lines of releasing a 'book' every month or something like that. Having it continue with one, or even a few, strips a day would be tricky.

Any thoughts? Would there be any interest if I were to design something like this?

After reading this (including the comments) I wrote this:

Some people feel that marriage is about a woman giving herself (or her father giving her) to a man for his needs and pleasure. It is possible for a relationship like this to be healthy, although I doubt very much it can happen when one person is so arrogant as to think that it is their right to be “the boss” rather than seeing it as a gift that the submissive gives of her (or his) free will.

I don’t view prostitution as wrong, the trouble is that very few sex workers are in it because they decided it was a good way to make money but rather feel, rightly or wrongly, that they have no choice.

Comparing marriage to prostitution is, at best, an oversimplification. A “Good wife” is expected to do a lot more than merely have sex with her husband. She is expected to see to the running of the household and raising of the children. When a woman enters into this type of marriage she is contracting out more than her sexual services.

Like prostitution a lot of women enter into this type of marriage not because it is something they want but because they perceive, rightly or wrongly, that they don’t have a choice.

I don’t think the article is really about sex, but rather about a woman’s place being beneath her husband’s.

I'm not entirely certain why I felt the need to post it here on my livejournal as well an in the comments over at Pandagon. Perhaps I wanted to see what the people I communicate with here think about it. Or maybe I just felt it should reach a wider audience or that I'd be more likely to get a useful response here. Probably all of the above to some degree or another.

I don't like it. In a lot of ways it's good, and I want to like it but it won't let me adjust certain tabbed browsing related things. You see I've gotten in the habit with Firefox of middleclicking links in order to load it in a background tab. This enables me to finish the page I'm reading and then go to the next interesting thing. The drawback to this is summed up nicely here, and while I have managed to wind up with over 40 tabs at once it only rarely happens.

Chrome doesn't have a way to let me set it up so the tabs work the way I like them to. Which is a pity, because a lot of the features it has look to be pretty nice.

Okay, I'm not going to worry about keeping count and have decided that I'm going to post Happy Things every day I remember to. Unless I think of something better for a daily "I'm still here" type post :D

On Friday the Spawn and I went to visit Dan, Mark having gone on Thursday. He gave me Guitar Hero World Tour for Christmas. Spawn is doing the singing tutorial. This is a Happy Thing! Especially if it improves her singing :p May write up more complete story later, may not. Definitely will if three people ask.

I live within walking distance of The Danforth, where there are lots of nice restaurants and some nice stores. Notably Grassroots and Ten Thousand Villages. I'm sure that my liking those stores says something about me, and I hope it's something good. I prefer small stores to big stores or malls, and there being some nice ones within walking distance makes me happy.

The cup of Dark Hot Chocolate that I made myself is also making me happy. As will the coffee i bought when I brew up a pot tomorrow.

It looks like I missed a day, and I have two of these titled as "Day 2" Oh well, I think it's still serving the purpose I want it to which is getting me to look at good things in my life.


Tonight I am going to post about something that makes me happy: The Toronto Pagan Pub Moot. It's one of the few things that gets me out of the apartment and socializing. The regulars are all pretty cool and if not for the moot I probably wouldn't have hooked up with Mark. (It's possible, but unlikely.)

I'm very introverted and tend to avoid social settings. Unless I make an effort I will tend to spend all my spare time sitting at the computer or playing video games. This is very unhealthy and feeds into my depression. So, anything that will motivate me to get out and do something with people is good.

We had some friends over to plya Rock Band 2, It was fun playing on No Fail mode and trying songs at levels I wouldn't have had much chance of passing normally. That's today's Happy!

I"m a pretty decent cook, nothing spectacular but when I want to I can whip up a nice meal with minimal effort. This makes me happy.

*For eight days you have to post something that made you happy that day. Tag eight people to do the same.*

My computer makes me happy. It's much, much faster than my old one as I am reminded whenever I feel the need to reboot and it's done rebooting in less time than it took the old one to shut down!

I don't care to tag anyone, it's not my style. However you may feel free to tag yourself on my behalf.

*For eight days you have to post something that made you happy that day. Tag eight people to do the same.*


I get along well with the portion of my family I see the most and reasonably well with the portion I see at the occasional family gathering. I'm really looking forward to the expected new member of my family, one baby girl who could be here any day now and the other baby girl is scheduled to arrive on January 20th.

I don't care to tag anyone, it's not my style. However you may feel free to tag yourself on my behalf.

Reading through my friends list there was an entry or two about idiot christians who care more about acting persecuted and enforcing their idea of what the holiday season should be like than about any of the good stuff Jesus taught: Like Love and Charity. Here is an example: http://labrys6.livejournal.com/248289.html?nc=3

Fortunately there was also an entry by a woman who clearly has a deep and abiding faith in her version of Christianity that kept me from going to a bad place because of this. In this entry: http://sandratayler.livejournal.com/443469.html?nc=4 she asks for recommendations of children's books to help her teach her children about different holidays.

Sometimes we need to be reminded that the vocal idiot christians do not represent the entirety of Christianity.

Anyone reading this who lives in Canada that doesn't know about the current kerfuffle in the house of commons should be ashamed! I'm not entirely sure what to think of the situation, but I agree with what Tom Barber said on his blog: http://tombarber.guetterman.com/blog/index.php?itemid=915

Today I got an email about ( Toronto Kitties Needing Homes )

It got me thinking. I have no doubt that we all are either effected, or no someone who is, by the current recession. What we don't think about is how this will inevitably effect the critters who rely on human generosity. I doubt that there are many people who would donate to a cat shelter knowing it will mean that they won't be able to eat. Certainly there would be almost none who would do so at the expense of being able to provide food for their children.

I don't know what my point is here, or even that I really have one. I just wanted to share this for two reasons: In the hopes that someone who reads this will be able to take in one or more of the cats and because I needed to share my thoughts for my own psychological well being.

Closing thought: Bob Barker gave good advice when he told us to have our pets spayed or neutered.

I think it may have been intended for tomorrow, but today's user friendly is really good. Go take a look: http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20081110