Wayne D's Blog

Enough time has now passed and I have sufficiently recovered that I can, with some degree of detachment, write about Grey Cup 2007.

The Thursday to Sunday weekend started out somewhat inauspiciously when a large accident shut down 400 at Highway 7 on Thursday afternoon. I had figured that 2 hours was enough time to get me from Langstaff and Weston Rd. down to the Argonotes Central for the weekend, the Novatel on the Esplanade. Boy was I wrong, every southbound route was choked with traffic. Nothing was moving. At 5:31 p.m. I sent a text message to the Argonotes bandleader informing him that I was stuck in traffic and wouldn't make the 7:00 meeting time in the hotel lobby. I had travelled less than 2 km. in 30 minutes. Finally I headed north to Major MacKenzie, across to Dufferin and then down top the 407, 404, Don Valley and across the Gardiner to arrive at the hotel right at 7. I still had to check in, assemble my sax and get to the first venue for our 8:15 show. Luckily other members of the band had been delayed by the abysmal weather. Off we went following the PATH underground tunnel system to the Sheraton Centre. Then we went over along King Street to Tim Horton's for a snack before heading back to play some selections outside Roy Thompson Hall where the CFL Player awards were taking place. AT one point Damon Allan even conducted the band for a short time. After that we headed down to the Convention Centre for one of many appearances at the various parties that were taking place there. The it was back to the hotel where I was safely tucked into my bed by 12:30.

Friday morning began with a trek up to Bloor and Yonge for an appearance at the Fan 590, Toronto's sports radio station. I think that our wake up call was at 7. I could hear alarms and phones ringing faintly around us as other Argonotes tried to drag themselves out of bed too. Fan 590 has a tiny studio so Steve picked 15 people out of the fifty or so who were there to go up and play, the rest parked themselves at the Starbucks across the street to wait. Those who went up arranged themselves in the hallway just outside the studio door and waited. The producer went down the hall to warn the station broadcasting from an adjacent studio what was about to occur. At the appointed time the door swung open, a microphone was pointed at us and off we went. There was a short break, we played another tune and by 9:30 we were done. One of our band members snuck out of her office to join us as we went across Bloor to Yonge to play at the corner. She didn't even bring a coat and by the time we were done she was happy but frozen and she charged back to our office. We went down back into the subway to head downtown. We stopped at the Eaton's Centre to play for the crowds before heading back to the Convention Centre. We played outside, we played inside, we played in rooms, we played in the wide convention centre hallways. We had nine scheduled events and probably played as many impromptu ones including an unscheduled concert at the Vanier Cup. My lips were chapped and sore by the end of the day when we my roommate let me invite a few of the hardcore partiers back to our room for a warm up party. It was an early night by 12:45 a.m. the partiers had returned to there own rooms and I dropped into bed.

I was awoken from a sounds sleep by Steve the bandleader Saturday morning. He asked where I was, which seemed to be a strange question since he had called me and obviously knew where I was. I asked him what time it was and he informed me that it was 9:05. 9:05! The hotel had missed our wake up call. We were supposed to be on in 10 minutes at the Sheraton Centre! I grabbed the clothes that were lying on the floor, got dressed, grabbed my sax and rocketed out of the room. Luckily there was a taxi outside the hotel and a few minutes later I was at the Sheraton Centre only slightly dishevelled. My roommate had demurred from trying the make the appearance. It turns out that Steve had called because there were no snare drummers and he was percussion deficient. My roommate the snare drum player was who he really wanted. As usual the gig started late and I had to put up with the unmerciful ribbing of the other Argonotes. Then it was back to the hotel to shower, shave and change clothes. Lunch with the Saskatchewan Roughriders Pep Band was followed by an impromptu parade down Front Street Street, was followed by more appearances in and around the Convention Centre. The fans were excited, the events were well run and organised. After our final gig of the day some of us headed up to Yonge and Bloor to a Argonauts fan club party. Shortly after midnight we headed back to the hotel to join the Argonotes party that was already in progress. After receiving a couple of complaints from people who were obviously not CFL fans we moved the party to another room. At the tail end of the move a hotel staff member arrived to warn us that if there was another complaint they would throw us out of the room. Luckily the neighbours at the new location were sounder sleepers. The party finally broke up at 3:30 a.m. Thanks Tim for being our host.

I was jarred awake at 11:00 a.m. by my roommate to check out of the room. Checkout time wasn't until 1:00 p.m. I informed him but I was awake and I couldn't get back to sleep. I felt inexplicably fuzzy as I headed down to breakfast. First rule of grey Cup weekend, don't worry about the money. Who cares that breakfast buffet was $15, I made up for that with the two bargain street meat meals I had. It was off to the ACC to play as the Raptor's game let out, then over to the Roger's Centre to play for the commissioner's guests as they arrived for the game and them inside for the Grey Cup itself. I have never heard it so loud in the Roger's Centre. It isn't the same when your team isn't in the game but it was a great game none the less. Out we went for final Gate 2 concert for the year. We exchanged goodbyes and hugs and then drifted off. The Argonotes 2007 season was done.

There were many highlights of the weekend but the biggest one for me was when the band played C is for Cookie for Christina the Cheerleader. She is a veteran of the squad and this will probably be her last year. Her nickname is Cookie and at one point in the weekend she and the other Argos cheerleaders were in a large room at the Spirit of Edmonton. We started to play the song, she recognised it and I think there was a small tear in her eye she was so touched. She gave Steve a big hug.

Today my personal cell phone refuses to power on.

Rogers turned off my Internet today without warning because they said there was excessive RF leakage from my house. Nothing here has changed in my wiring for 5 years so why when they found it today did they have to turn it off immediately? Couldn't they have waited a day or two? My wife has an internet based project she has to work on today and tomorrow. Boy was I pissed when I called rogers to complain. The tech is supposed to be here at 8 tomorrow morning to fix it, we'll see what happens then. My rogers blackberry interferes with every receiver in the house yet my cable TV is supposed to be a hazard to aircraft navigation.

Then I'm using the blackberry to read my rogers email and in the middle of that I get a message that the email service is unavailable and to try again later.

I had discovered the solution to ldap preventing a FC7 system from booting months ago and I thought I had written it down but when I upgraded on of those junk heap Dell Optiplex 320's that I was fighting with a few months ago from Debian to Fedora Core it reared it's ugly head again. The boot process stops at Starting System Message Bus and sits there for a very long time. It eventually times out but not before your hair has turned grey.

To fix it you have two options:
Remove any mention of ldap /etc/from nsswitch.conf
or
change
bind_policy hard
to
bind_policy soft
in ldap.conf

I was listening to Quirks and Quarks today and Gary Taubes was on the show talking about his book, Good Calories, Bad Calories: Challenging the Conventional Wisdom on Diet, Weight Control, and Disease. You can listen to the segment by clicking here. His hypothesis is that our obsession with fat as the cause of obesity has blinded us to the real culprit, carbohydrates. I encourage you to listen to the segment and draw your own conclusions. The book sounded interesting so I went to Amazon.ca to look it up and found it at a price of $20.13. With shipping and tax it came to $27.59. To check whether the purchasing power of the Canadian dollar had been reflected at Amazon I went to Amazon.com where the same book was priced at $18.45. With shipping included I could buy it for $27.43 U.S. I wasn't really surprised. The only reason I didn't buy it from Amazon.com was that the currency conversion fee on my credit card would have made it a wash in the end anyways.

I noticed the same price discrepancy this week when looking for a Novatel Wireless Merlin XU870 3G HSDPA 3.6/7.2 Mbps ExpressCard. Expansys.com has it for $379.95 on their U.S. website, $399.95 on their Canadian website. Both sites show 21 in stock, I bet they only have one warehouse and whether I buy in the U.S. or Canada their cost is the same.

You might have heard about the big tempest in the teapot over the release of an HD DVD code earlier this year. Geoff Smith made a song about it and Cali Lewis of Geekbrief.tvpodcast.

I always seem to get my great ideas for blog post when I'm in the car. I figure I won't forget them but when it comes time to sit down and write they have vanished from my head.

I have recently been looking around for a new printer to help break my families addiction to Lexmark ink-jet printer cartridges. More expensive than the finest perfume I keep finding exhausted printer cartridges strewn all over the house. I was looking for an inexpensive monochrome laser printer and have pretty much settled on the Brother HL2040 which Tigerdirect sells for about $120 but last time I was in the store they didn't have any in stock. I was in Grand and Toy last night and found a Lexmark E120N network printer marked down to $117 and I almost bought it until I realized that the toner cartridge it shipped with was only good for 500 pages and refill cartridges are $85 and are only good for 2000 pages. The Brother cartridges are $62 and are good for 2500 pages. I have never been able to get our Linux computer to connect to the Windows XP home box where the Lexmark ink-jet was installed so I was looking at network printers but wasn't prepared for the big step up in price. Tigerdirect had the network version of the 2040 on sale for $122 yesterday but I didn't have the time to make it to the store and I figured that they wouldn't have any in stock anyways. I had went in there previously to look at the Brother 2040 and they didn't have any printers on the floor at all. Imagine my surprise when I went on their website today and saw it still at $122 which is $60 lower than the normal selling price. I decided that it was worth the drive. Image my surprise when I get to the store and see a stack of printers. Imagine my disappointment when I see the price is $185. I pulled out my trusty Crackberry to make sure that I had seen the price from the website correctly, enter the Tigerdirect.ca URL and wait, the screen goes white and nothing happens. Sigh, the previous night the same thing had happened when I had tried to look up printer information on the Lexmark at the mall. The Crackberry said I had signal but the page wasn't loading. The previous night I had pulled the battery and reset the Crackberry which had seemed to help but I was suspicious of the signal meter. I went outside to see if I could get a better signal but it was still unresponsive. While waiting oldest son was fidgeting as only a 15 year old can. He was with me because I had taken him to have his hair cut before he looked too much like cousin It from the Munsters. I resorted to the low tech method of calling my wife and getting her to look it up on the website for me. She verified that I had not been imagining things so I went back inside and asked the sales guy. He took the price sign with him and told me that I was right and that the correct price was $122 and we are now the proud owner of a networked laser printer that works great from both Windows and Linux. I expect it will have paid for itself in 6 months.

I have four full garbage cans in the garage that I dragged out to the curb on Friday morning expecting to be picked up. Evidently I had my weeks wrong because when I came home from work they were still there. We are now on a biweekly garbage pickup schedule with recyclable and organics picked up weekly. I would have been much happier with two cans every week. Separating out the organics seems to have attracted fruit flies. I bought a package of new high tech flypaper today to try and keep them under control. It's a sticky plastic square with pictures of fruit on it. I was hoping to find one of those old retro coils that hang from the ceiling but was unsuccessful.

By the way, the Crackberry seems to be working fine now.