More comic strip parodies

A parody of my favourite comic strip, xkcd

A slight modification of today's PhD Comic

May flowers should be here soon

Since April showers are already here, I expect that the May flowers should arrive soon.

I woke up and I looked out my window this morning, and it was suddenly green/brown/gray out. I had to do a double take b/c the lovely snow cover we had, all 1" of it, had disappeared overnight. I checked the weather and it was 7 degrees out!

Then, this evening, I got rained on pretty hard walking home after my volleyball game. I hate rain. IT'S JANUARY, WE'RE NOT SUPPOSED TO HAVE RAIN. STUPID TORONTO, GET WITH THE PROGRAM. YOU ARE IN CANADA, YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO HAVE SNOW IN JANUARY, NOT RAIN.

At least humour us with freezing rain...

Unrealistic movie locations

I was watching a movie the other day and it was totally unrealistic. There's no way that there'd ever be that many girls in front of Sandford Fleming (the engineering building on U of T campus).

The movie was shot on campus and the buildings were very easily recognizable. That ruined the whole movie for me. It went from some plausible fictitious story to one rooted in reality that was completely unrealistic. I know the areas that they shot very well and the events that they portrayed were completely implausible for those areas.

I used to find it quite the novelty to recognize scenes in movies, but now I just find that it takes away from some of the magical qualities of the movie.

Movies that were ruined for me because they were shot on U of T campus: The Skulls, Mean Girls, American Pie Beta House, The Hulk 2 (to be ruined). The ending for Resident Evil 2 was ruined for me because I know for a fact that Toronto City Hall wasn't blown up, in fact, I was in my room in residence at the time watching them film and the place didn't blow up.

"The trains are delayed"

There's a way to con the TTC somewhere to be found in the following story...

So, the other day, I found myself at Eaton Centre picking up some stuff. On the way home, I went to go take the subway. I figured it would be busy b/c it was rush hour (about 5:30). The platform was PACKED! It was probably 6 or 7 people deep, chest-to-chest, all along the entire length of the platform (the length of the subway train). I've never seen a subway that busy before. The TTC workers were saying that the trains were delayed and they didn't know when it was going to be fixed.

I wait maybe 2 or 3 min. I'm not sure how long these people have been waiting (insert joke involving memory-less exponentially distributed waiting times). People are leaving. Just as I decided that I was going to leave, a train comes. It's PACKED! Everyone inside is chest-to-chest as well. No one is able to get into the train b/c it's already so full. This is going North bound along Yonge at rush hour...

I know it's a lost cause at this point and decide to leave. I take a transfer, not bothering to ask for a refund. I figure that I'd try and take the streetcar. Usually you can't use a transfer at the same stop b/c then you could just take a transfer on your way out, run your errand, etc., and then go back into the subway or take the streetcar, or you could have 1 person go in and take a bunch of transfers from the automated machine and then go to the bus or streetcar stop and let others use these transfers and ride for free. But, the bus and streetcar drivers are pretty diligent at catching invalid transfers.

I wait for the streetcar and surprisingly, not many people are following my lead, probably b/c most are trying to head really far North. I go onto the streetcar and flash the transfer. I can see the driver looking at it and the thinking processes going on in her head and wondering how the hell my public transit path got me to the streetcar from the subway a couple feet away. I told her "the trains are delayed". She accepted this and let me on.

I had to then transfer to another streetcar at Spadina to head North and again the streetcar driver gave me a puzzled look while looking at my transfer. I again told the driver that "the trains are delayed" and I was let on.

There's little communication between the different transportation systems in the TTC, so I'm sure that this line can be used regardless of whether it's true or not.

So there you have it, a magical phrase that can be used to con the TTC.

Verbalizing emoticons

Pet peeve: people that use IM acronyms in verbal (i.e. face-to-face or phone) conversation, eg. lol, rofl, brb, etc.

Response: verbalizing emoticons 'colon end parenthesis'

I less than three colon capital 'D', open parenthesis open curly brace end parenthesis, semi-colon end parenthesis, colon open parenthesis, and armmove

And for those of you used to right-to-left languages, open parenthesis colon

open parenthesis 'a' end parenthesis


Warning to xkcd: don't rip me off this time!

Most exciting thing this year!

OMG, the most exciting thing thing year just happened!!!

I went downstairs to do my laundry and we have brand new FRONT LOADING washing machines!!!

Front loading washing machines are more energy efficient and I feel that they do a better job of washing clothes (especially when you shove a lot into the machines) and they are more delicate with clothes (as opposed to having that middle thing spin and twist clothes).

I haven't tried the new dryers yet, but I don't think they're more exciting than the front loading washing machines.

e-mail or email?

I've been using the spelling "e-mail" since I started using the word. I thought that was the proper spelling and that using "email" was just being lazy. So, it irked me anytime my google searches included the term "e-mail" and google suggested a corrected spelling of "email". I found it strange, but thought maybe it was just b/c of the statistical nature of the spell checker that google uses and the plethora of abuses to the English language on the web.

Today, I decided to settle this once and for all and looked it up. Apparently "e-mail" is anachronistic and "email" is widely accepted now. They compare it to words like "web-site", "non-zero", "on-line", "soft-ware", etc., which have since lost the hyphens. Typically new words start with hyphens and then lose them after they become common place. Reportedly over 16,000 words have lost the hyphen in the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary.

The final tipping point in my decision to drop the hyphen and adopt the new and cooler "email" was a comparison between companies that used the form "e-mail" vs "email". A very strong pattern emerges. The companies commonly viewed as behind the times on the web, such as CNN, BBC, The New York Times, Microsoft, HP, IBM, Dell, and CNET, all use "e-mail", while the "hot" companies that are more in tune with the younger generation, such as Google, Apple, Yahoo!, and eBay, use "email". I don't think you have to look any farther than this. What do you want to be associated with, a stuffy old company or a hip cooler one?

Also, it's "internet" now, not "Internet".

Ok, here's an update

I'm backlogged in posts, so I've been delaying posting, but someone wrote on my blog wall asking for an update, so here it is. I'll now post some random comments.

• I'm back in Toronto


• New Year's was "interesting"


• I played a lot of Wii in Winnipeg


• There was another semi-annual engineering dinner


• I built my annual quinzee


• I went snowboarding in a valley in the prairies again


• Tiki's about 6 months and 5 pounds now and she likes her new cat tree as well as climbing to the top of my shelf and knocking books down


• There was snow here when I got back, but it all melted b/c it was +16 in January, so much for snow on the slopes...


• I managed to avoid the -46 in Winnipeg


• Instead of exchanging phone numbers when you meet new people, the new thing to do is ask if they're on Facebook


• There are too many birthdays in January and I wish that people would spread out their parties. April must be a fun month. I guess spring is not just mating season for bunnies.


• I managed to sneak my rollerblades into a club after the bouncer said I couldn't b/c they were a weapon


• Circa is a weird nightclub


• 90's teen movies throw me off because they don't text message, use the internet, or use pepper spray


• Plenty of fish


• I got my OLPC laptop!


• Volleyball intramurals and GSU league have started, so I'm back to my regular (at least) 4 days of volleyball a week, which will be bumped up to 7 in March


• I'm really pissed off at the door-to-door paper salesman that keeps giving out my cell number. This has been happening for over a year...


• I don't recommend rollerblading in the snow


• I'm tired of being the 3rd, 5th, 7th, and 9th wheel


• I love that "A" Daily Show and the Colbert Report are back on the air, despite the lack of writers. I'm also loving the Mercer Report now.


• Barack Obama


• David Suzuki's talk on campus was awesome. I hope to have that much energy when I'm 71.


• I sometimes despair that the world will never see another man like Superman


• Do you ever finish showering, shut off the water, and still feel soapy, then you look around and one of your arms still has soap bubbles all over it? No? Well, I guess it's just me then.


• I watched all of Rome and was upset after finishing the second season to find out that there wasn't any more episodes. I then turned to Shakespeare to continue the Roman story.


• I still haven't unpacked and I'm going to a conference in Banff in mid-February, so it's getting to the point, where I can just close the suitcase and leave instead of unpacking and then repacking