Palmer's World

Years ago, when I first began working on the 4th floor, I always wondered what was in the door attached to the bathroom stall.

Then a few years later, I ended up having discussions with Benoit about what it could be. The girls involved with the conversation were intrigued that there was a random locked door inside the men's bathroom, let alone, inside a stall.

Benoit thought it was a secret passageway for covert government operations, whereas I thought it was a mere janitor's closet. Benoit even took a picture of the door with his cellphone to show the ladies what we were talking about.

The mystery was solved today when I came back after lunch to open the bathroom door and to discover the door was open!

I freaked out. There it was…the answer to our five-year mystery. Inside was a passagway with a lone lightbulb inside. My mind exploded with a myriad number of thoughts:

"Where does it lead?"
"Where is the janitor's closet?"
"I need a camera for proof!"
"I need to go tell everyone!"

I ran from the bathroom to ask people for a camera. Finally, Pierre had one so him and I and Shawn went inside to take a look and a guy came out of the passageway. We chatted nonchalantly and told him we were interested in seeing what was inside. He said "Go ahead" and it turns out that it's an access passageway to the plumbing to the toilets and sinks. Unbelievable! Well, totally believable, but exciting at the same time.

We then took a few pictures and snuck Maren inside to check it out which was probably overwhelming since it was her first time seeing the guy's washroom at the same time - "Urinals? What are those?"

Pictures to follow!

So, Eric has been raving about this last.fm website for quite some time now and I have taken a little notice but never dug my fingers into it. After hearing about it again, I decided to take a look.

Last.fm essentially is a music service which tracks what you listen to, then compiles charts and whatnot, but also recommends similar music tastes that you may have.

Much like Pandora, if you type in an artist you like, it will let you stream music from similar artists so that you may discover new music.

How does it track what you listen to? Well, in my case, it installs an application where it links to iTunes and keeps track of whatever you listened to and then uploads it to the last.fm system. Within this database, you can also see other stats like how many times this song has been played throughout the dbase and whatnot. Heck, if you just wanted to stream a song, chances are they have it in their database.

On the right hand side of the blog, you'll see that I am currently displaying what I have recently listened to. I can choose to publish different lists such as weekly top 10, or overall top 10, but I thought you would be interested in seeing what I am currently listening to. However, this list would only update when I have been listening to iTunes on my computer. Please note that over at work, you can't see this…must be blocked. Sorry fellow colleagues.

I was talking with Claude today about his upcoming wedding and asked him about a bachelor party. He was undecided about his bachelor party and said he didn't really feel like partaking in the classic events (such as getting sloshed drunk and becoming a fool).

I was telling him that we live in a new era of bachelor parties. Gone are the days where you tie up your buddy onto a chair, pelt him with eggs (and whatever other god-awful things that would stick to him) and throw him in the back of the pickup truck for a night on the town. Or the days where you MUST make a trip to the gentlemen's club for a night of debauchery.

Personally, upon hearing these stories of old, I think of how awful that must be for the bachelor and that a new order should emerge in the times of friendship, hence, I present 'The New Bachelor Party Order'.

What does this order consist of? Well, the most important rule is to do whatever the bachelor wants to do. This is his last time of freedom boys, he should be allowed to just sit and watch movies all weekend with the boys, or play poker on a Saturday night and just enjoy the moment. Or, if he really wants to get ripped and go out to the gentlemen's club in Montreal and discover he's in Los Angeles by morning, heck, that's fine too. Don't get me wrong, Palmer is a fan of the ladies.

I've been to many bachelor parties in my day and I appreciate that nowadays, it's leaning more towards whatever the bachelor wishes to do. As a friend, I don't feel that I should pressure my buddy into doing something he doesn't care to do. Do I want the bachelor to hold a grudge against me and then have him take it out on me in the future? Heck no!

I remember Eric's bachelor party and how we went into his apartment, taped him up and dragged him out in front of his wife to be. That scared him a little, but in the end we told him we were just trying to scare him and that the weekend was his to enjoy! We drank beer, watched some movies, went bowling, went out for dinner, played some Tagzone - all in all, a good weekend out with the boys.

Enter the new Bachelor Party Order gentlemen. Do what the bachelor wants to do, even if you think it's lame and you want to get pelted with tar and eggs when your time comes. Your time will come. YOUR TIME WILL COME.

Aww man, there's something wonky with Blogger today and I cannot attach a great picture of a moustache here!

So Katie's cottage party is coming up in August and entry fee for this year consists of growing a moustache.

Not one to grow much facial hair, I decided to start growing one last week, along with a goatee so Vero doesn't have to be embarassed walking next to a moustachioed man.

So far, so good. It's probably been this long before on a lazy week...I'll be starting to enter new terrain soon enough...where Ryan's hair has never gone before!

What will it look like? Will I realize that I could have grown a pretty sweet moustache all these years ago, and that I am on my way to being a true Ladies man?

Who knows? Unfortunately, it dawned on me that I'm the usher at Shannon and Maureen's wedding in a few weeks so the experiment will have to end there, and start up as soon as the midnight bell rings that Saturday night.

Well, I received word that after six months of waiting, the appeal on my competition has been dropped. Yeeha!

Granted, I won't believe it until I sign a piece of paper saying I accept a permanent position at my level. NEVER TRUST THEM.

Here's an interesting article about how rats not exposed to a super hygenic lifestyle have better immune systems.

Click here for the article.

I totally believe in studies like this - I think that everything is out of control when it's 'hygiene this, hygiene that'. I remember Mom telling me about how there was a cup near the sink to get a drink of water. Everyone used it. Everyone didn't get their own cup, that was silly! Nowadays, it's a sin to drink out of another man's cup (unless he can't finish his beer).

"Attention, there is an electrical storm entering the area. Please get out of the water."

That was the start of our first night of Petrie Island Volleyball. We could see this wall of black clouds coming closer but we decided to set up the net and play for awhile.

Once the lightning was getting close enough, we decided to pack it in and run for the cars. Less than 10 seconds of us all driving away, the torrential downpours hit us. Unbelievable. I've probably never seen anything like it.

Continuing up the road, we saw a lightning bolt hit the gas station up ahead of us. CRACK! The lights flickered as they tried desparately to take one final breath and then stopped.

By the time we got up the hill, I couldn't see clearly out of the car windshield and I was thankful I was close to home.

Mike, Vero and I got drenched just running from the car to the safety of the house. Incredible force.

I proceeded to see probably 20 other lightning bolts in the sky, one of them smacking the lamppost in the parking lot behind my house.

The beautiful thing about this storm was the fact that I got to see our walkway in full force and I am proud to say that no water was collecting near the house! There was an area near far corner which collected a pool, but we figured that would eventually happen, and Mike noticed that after five minutes of the rain stopping, it had trickled into the lawn. BEAUTIFUL!

I also found out that the only reason my eavestrough was leaking was that there is a leak somewhere in it, not the fact that when it rains hard, it splashes over the eavestrough. EXCELLENT!

Electrical storms are a wild time. We could even see the hair on the girls heads starting to go up while packing up the volleyball net.

Volleyball itself was decent although it only lasted 15 minutes. We had a good turnout and next time we'll know how to set up the net a lot faster.

Went to Joelle's to catch the first two periods of the hockey game and then called it a night.

Unfortunately, as soon as I went to bed, the power went out so I had to remain awake for 20 minutes to set my alarm. THEN during the course of the night I noticed that my alarm clock had lost power again and was flashing. I reset it 3 times and I finally took it downstairs and proceeded to smack it (always the greatest troubleshooting technique there was ever was) and it seemed to work fine after that. This was around 1 AM so I was feeling pretty tired this morning.

I like how everytime I go to the used CD store nowadays (or garage sales) there's a slew of albums from grunge/alt era that I wanted to own, so I'm just discovering them now.

Let's take 1997's debut album of Days of the New. What can I say about them?

Acoustic folk/grunge/country?/rock album. You can't go wrong! His voice is something else also which just pulls you into the music.

But my only gripe with this album is that there are quite a few songs that sound the same! In fact at one point, the track had changed and I thought I was just entering a different verse of the song.

Perhaps the repetitive sounding guitar lessens his their subsequent releases and I would hope so.

Alright sci-fi geeks, listen up.

Joss Whedon (of Buffy fame) made this kickass sci-fi TV show called Firefly back in 2003.

I finished watching the 15 episode series (before it was cancelled) and my thoughts on it are this:

Awesome.

The show revolves around smugglers out in space, but since it's only 500 years in the future, the customs of Earth are still there such as guns and dialect, but then you couple it with the new customs of the world (such as America and China being the supreme super power which rules the galaxy, hence the reason why everyone seems to know how to speak Chinese and English).

There's a crew of 9 people and the main storyline revolves around two stowaways, River and Simon, River being a special girl who was in Alliance (the big superpower, think THE GALACTIC EMPIRE) custody and Simon broke her out of there because they were doing some crazy mind experiments on her.

So, like any good TV show, not every episode revolves around the MAIN storyline...you have your humour filled episodes in which the crew of the Firefly class ship Serenity has to deliver cattle to other planets, or when they show up to one town and the slave workers workship one of the crew who had an encounter with them in the past...

All in all, I highly recommend this series. Vero even gave the thumbs up after watching one episode and she doesn't even like sci-fi. She thought the story was good and even if the setting was in space, it really had nothing to do with space.

Alas, the series was cancelled, but there was such a major fan following that a movie studio allowed them to come back and make a major motion picture out of it to tie up some loose plot points (and to give what the fans wanted).

Hence, the movie Serenity came out.

I watched this on Saturday and I was blown away. It follows the crew of Serenity being chased by the Alliance who are trying to take River back because of some secrets she knows.

All in all, I would have definitely loved this movie even if I hadn't seen the series. It was a great movie, great acting, great effects, great STORY!!! I will probably pick this movie up myself seeing at how good it was. It was strange to see the settings a little difference (such as the entire ship of Serenity all dark and mysterious) as opposed to the TV show where it was bright. Also, some characters have moved onto other planets but you still get to see them during the movie.

All in all, two thumbs up for both the series and the movie.

Saturday's operation of laying down my patio stones went off without a hitch. With the help of Rob and Mike, I can now look at my walkway and realize that there's no way that there will ever be any rain trickling towards the house.

Saturday started off with a start out of bed and into the car to go check out garage sales for a crowbar. I have determined that no one ever parts with their crowbar, but they do part with halogen lights for $5. Sweet deal.

After picking up a crowbar at Canadian Tire, I started hauling out the stones and shortly afterwards, Rob and Mike showed up. After an hour of messing around, we realized that it would be a lot easier if we had the proper tools for the job, so off to Home Depot we went. Let me point out that this entire day went smooth due to Rob doing some bricklaying back in the day in Paisley. His knowledge helped us out immensely.

The day was done by 3:30 and I can't say we worked too hard. However, I have realized that drinking beer while working in a 35 degree day isn't the smartest thing to do. I was feeling pretty sluggish around 2:45 so I thought some H20 may do the trick. After we were refreshed, the job was finished pretty soon after that.

I dig the jobs that would probably only take 2-3 hours if we busted our ass, but take all day because we don't feel like busting our ass.

1. Sean Connery
2. Pierce Brosnan
3. George Lazenby
4. Timothy Dalton
5. Roger Moore

Thanks to Kevin for bringing this up.

Discuss.

How the heck can I review this movie without spoiling some of it? Being an X-Men fan of old (someday I'll get back into comics...like when I retire!), this franchise is near and dear to my heart.

Unfortunately, to go along with my spoiler free policy on Palmer's World, I suppose I can't get into too much detail here, so I'll throw a pro/con list out here.

Pros

• Beast was AWESOME!!! So cool. Way cooler than Nightcrawler. Well, I suppose this is true if you actually like the Beast better than Nightcrawler.
• Decent ending (? if it is?) to the whole mutant vs. human storyline. The 3 movies revolve around it - I can see the next movie just focussing more on one villain (ala James Bond).
  
• Storm - Hey! She got to speak in this movie!
• Excellent clip after the credits which follows the comics (from what I can remember of them) and opens up the new storyline I think.
• Good action?
  

Cons

• Well, if you're fan of the comic books, then this movie may irk you a little because it goes against comic lore in a few ways. But if you don't read the books, then you will probably find it enjoyable (as many friends have).
• Angel - Come on. Did he even speak in the movie? Way too little screen time. Should have been cut out of the movie.
• More characters like Angel - A slew of characters introduced for little or no reason.
  
• Juggernaut - Ugh. I don't know...I don't know. In some ways it was cool to see him, in others, he was kinda silly.
• Deaths - Am I spoiling the movie if I say someone dies? So be it. Someone dies. Kind of unnecessary.

Yeah, so...all in all, definitely not as good as the other two X-Men...but not the worst movie ever. Benoit thought it was so horrible that he put it in league with The Incredible Hulk. Good lord, that movie was awful...but X-Men 3 was nowhere near as bad. I equate X-Men with the equivalent of a bad comic book in the series - you still love the X-Men and what they do, but the comic just wasn't the greatest (but you still like it anyhow). It's like with anything you like - take a TV show for example. There's good ones and bad ones.

Oh! Let's take James Bond and the whole Roger Moore era for example. Boom. Point proven. A low point in the James Bond history. Not as low as Timothy Dalton though. I liked him better as an actor compared to Roger Moore, but I didn't care for the rogue agent story they were going for in...License to Kill? Or was it The Living Daylights?

If you don't read the comics, you'll like the movie. If you read the comics, you will be disappointed, but hopefully not TOO disappointed. I would say that if the movie had another 30 minutes added to it, it would have been great. I found they cut down a lot of stuff that would have been better if they added 5 minutes to each major sequence (like a fight vs. Pyro and Iceman...give it 5 more minutes and it would have been mint.)

I invite whoever wants to chat it up with me about specific points in the movie to do so (I know Benoit has been waiting 2 weeks to talk about how it was the worst movie ever. I'm not sure how I want to oppose his points. It wasn't the Hulk, but it sure wasn't Spider-Man)

If anyone out there is a fan of superpiking volleyball, then head on out to Orleans on Monday nights at 6:30 - Petrie Island.

In lieu of my class being over for the summer, and I have a little extra time on my hands, I figured we should start up some fun volleyball for the rest (beginning?) of the summer.

We'll start this coming Monday night at 6:30 and decide whether or not this is a good time for all of us or not.

iplaying: Stepchild - Solomon Burke (Don't Give Up On Me)

This morning I had to go to the West Block at Parliament Hill to watch some MPs in action.

I must admit that I feel proud when I step onto Parliament Hill for business and not while being sloshing drunk (ala Canada Day. That's the only day that I'm like that on the Hill. It's not like it's a monthly event people). I walk up and think "Hey, I'm not here to sight-see, I'm here for business!"

Granted, this visit wasn't the most exciting as I was only there to observe a Standing Committee meeting, but there was this one time years ago when I was in a meeting in the East Block and then I had to follow some official type back to their office and instead of walking across the grounds, we walked UNDER the ground in a tunnel which connects the Main Block with the East block. COOL! I felt like I was in my own little secret passageway. It was wide enough for a golf cart.

Anyhow, I'm sure some of the more politically minded friends that I have (read: Paul Duffy) would have enjoyed it a lot more, but I can't knock walking up to the Hill on a beautiful morning and checking out the going-ons inside the walls.

So this Saturday I'm embarking on the 'let's level my patio stones so they water doesn't drain TOWARDS the house.

Seeing that this is a giant job, it will consist of the following elements:
- 4 guys
- beer
- bbqed meat

I was wondering if anyone out there could help me with some details? Here's how I envision the process:
1. Lift stones.
2. Redtribute sand.
3. Lay patio stones down.
4. Make sure they are on such an angle that a tennis ball can start rolling away from the house (learned this from the house inspector).

Other than that, I'm thinking that's it? Eric was mentioning maybe renting a compactor but I don't really know if that's necessary?

Offer the Palmer some advice!

***Update - after reading Katie's comments, I'm not sure if I made it clear that what we're moving are those giant patio stones that go up a walkway...like there are five or six of them...I'm not talking about the brick sized ones. I'm not sure if that makes a difference or not.***

So today Krista noticed some white gunk in my hair. It was the stuff I put in my hair, but usually it's fine.

Turns out that last week while golfing, I left my bag in the hot, hot car and the stuff melted into some random paste like substance. It's not bad, but sometimes there are chunks that just don't get rubbed into the hair and they stick out like bad dandruff. Doh!

This brought back a memory of me back in Grade Nine science class. Back in Grade Nine, let's just say I wasn't the most popular dudes in school (that subsequently happened in Grade Eleven when I was the Ladies Man. To those people who read this blog and are from KDHS, stop laughing now. Carol, I'm looking at you!), so in an effort to be cool I decided to try and style my hair a little to get rid of the cowlicks.

Well...that ended badly when some kid was talking to me and then said "Ryan, what the heck is in your hair?" and then they proceeded to laugh at the fact that there was this giant solidified glob of stuff in the front of my hair. Then everyone else decided to laugh also. Ah, the beauty of high school. I think at that point I said screw it to styling my hair and started growing it out.

We all know my faithful readers love Star Wars that they love it when I talk about it and they tell all their friends also. Crack a beer, here's another review.

For the past six weeks, I've been reading The New Jedi Order series which is a 25 book opus in the Star Wars universe. It involves some new bad guys coming and kicking ass from another universe and everyone is having a hard time with them.

The books are an average of 300 pages long so I find them short reads now (compared to years ago where this would have taken me a month!) so I think I may end up finishing the series in the Fall. I'm currently six books in. Maybe the 8th. I've lost count.

I gave up on the Star Wars series when this came out because:

• 25 books is a lot
• I figured I should start reading other books out there. When I was a teenager, it was rare that I read anything else.

Anyhow, I am enjoying this series as they nod towards other events in the timeline of the movies and books. All characters of old come out and there is reference to events that have happened in the past - for example I just read a part where Han Solo and his kid are in the Mos Eisley cantina and they make a joke about how it never goes smoothly in that joint.

A lot of faithful Star Wars readers didn't care for the NJO for the sole reason that it changed the way the universe is played out and it really takes away the emphasis on the old characters. Let's be honest though...if you have a set of books and they are spread out over 25 years past the time of the last movie, your main characters ARE old so you need to focus on the new blood. I don't mind that really. Luke Skywalker is much better as a wise old master than he was when he was a young buck not knowing what the heck he is doing.

One thumb up so far on the series and I am sure the other one will rise as soon the Jedi start kicking some ass.

iplaying: The Golden Path - Chemical Brothers - Singles 93-03

So last night Mike showed me some engine guards for his motorbike and how he removed the rust off of them. It was looking pretty slick.

How did he remove the rust?

With some tinfoil and some Coca-Cola.

I was amazed.

Eric watched an episode of Mythbusters in which they demonstrated that this is in fact, true.

I remember I stopped drinking dark pops (well...I don't drink that much anymore anyhow, compared to years ago, it's all water and juice and beer now) because I read what Coca-Cola was used for - such as cleaning up murder scenes. I figured if it can clean up rust, what the heck is it doing inside my poor fragile body?

Anyhow, this is a post to say kudos to the Mythbusters. I enjoy their show and they give us practical advice.

Back in 1989, Prince released the greatest song in the world - Batdance! Tim Burton asked Prince to write a slew of songs for the new (well I suppose it was the first at the time) Batman flick that we all love (although I must say I like Batman Begins better).

I remember watching this video of all these Bat'men' dancing around and wondering why the heck they had things popping out of their chest.

Oh, Ryan, how young you were back in 1989. Little did I know that they definitely were not Batmen.

Thanks to someone on the Wolfshack for putting the memory of Batdance into my head. Now I want to go listen to the song because I just remember it being chaotic.

Read the post here for background info.

To all the naysayers out there, please note that I received a letter from HMV last night which had a great letter outlining all my points I brought up, as well as a $25 gift card for my troubles.

I'm so impressed that I will reply to their letter and tell them thank you, because people never get a thanks for their work.

I must admit their reason (read: excuse) is kind of lame though...they said 'human error' didn't find my CD that day. Sounds like they actually had my copy somewhere but that didn't really make sense. Not a big deal. What kind of a reason was I really looking for anyhow? I just wanted a response. I received it.

Booya.

Lesson learned: Give it a try. It never hurts.

Two days ago someone dropped by my office and told me to call the LAN team so they can install my new 19" flatscreen monitor.

Oh baby. Christmas has come early.

I had forgotten they were giving me an extra one. I have held onto my dinosaur 20" CRT monitor for the past 5 years since everyone was going for the ultra sleek (but ultra smaller at 17") flatscreens. I would rather have size than aesthetics any day so I held out.

It paid off and I inherited a 19" flatscreen. Booya.

The colour is more vibrant and I think the brightness was wacked on my old one so I've been visiting my favourite websites with a new experience.

Sure, I'm a geek. But heck, I really don't care when I have something so cool in my possession.

And, to all those who want to complain about how I get the perks - two words. Get Bent. I work hard.