The newest additions to the recipe database are:
• Fajita Seasoning Mix • Beer • Chicken Alfredo •
Life is its purpose.
Sunday 27th April, 2008
That's it :)
Holy McFuck!
Saturday 8th March, 2008
I updated on consecutive days. If you weren't aware of it already, the universe just imploded.
Also, tomorrow I should have a post that has 'fuck' in the title.
Holy fucking snow batman!
Friday 7th March, 2008
Well, I won't complain when it gets cold anymore - cold is better than snow.
We're fast heading towards the record - jeebus has scheduled a good 50CM of snow for tonight/tomorrow - putting us close to beating the record of 450CM of snow in one season, as of tonight we're at about 365CM.
My babies are rocking, Kaitlyn is a sweetheart to her little brother - she is an uber-goof (like her mum). Good times. Her little brother is now about 14 and a half pounds, not bad, he's about a twelfth of my weight at age 3 months :D
Despite the snow, we're almost done with winter, I am itching to get outside more and enjoy spring.
Only
Sunday 17th February, 2008
10 feet of snow so far this season. Apparently we're fast heading towards a record. I hope we don't beat it.
We're all doing great, Kieran is awesome. It's winter, I am shit in winter - this is the best I can do, update-wise.
Later...
http://photos.okroy.ca
Tuesday 18th December, 2007
The boy has arrived! Kieran, 8lbs 10oz - born on November the 29th, 2007 at 7:02pm (ish).
It's been an insane two weeks - very busy :)
He is incredibly cute (of course) and a great little guy. Sleep hasn't been fantastic for the Gini (like a trooper I have been forced to stay in bed during the early morning wakings) but she's doing amazingly well.
I'd add more, but I'm not going to right now :P - Take a look at the pics, just follow the link in the title.
We're in this together.
Saturday 24th November, 2007
I guess I've been in a weird brain-zone lately. It happens every year around about this time. 10cm snow on Wednesday, -13C when I got up this morning... I suppose I'm not a winter person.
Now don't get me wrong, I like winter stuff, but I seem to enter a brain fuzz zone at this time of year. It's OK though - it'll lift come April :D
The boy, thus far, seems as stubborn as Moosey and I. He is a week late at this point. I predict a Thursday / Friday birth, I hope I am wrong though. The Gini (quite understandably) doesn't want to be induced, I don't blame her - it seems like a huge pain, her labour was in the 27 hour region last time.
Not sure what else to say, there is lots - but it is late right now, looking forward to seeing my son :)
Oh, and by all means no last thought: Happy Birthday Spencer, you will always be almost as old as me :D
Apparently I'm an addict...
Saturday 13th October, 2007
NameThatDrug.com - Test your drug knowledge
I don't think so, but I guess the website thinks I am..
:P
Well, there you go.
Saturday 13th October, 2007
So, in stunning contrast to my last post the weather outside is a brisk 5 degrees C and there was frost on everything this morning. Damn.
The Moo is doing much better. However, after another visit to the doctor yesterday it transpires that pretty much we don't have a clue what she was sick with. She didn't actually need the antibiotics as the throat swab they took came back negative.
I guess it doesn't really matter after the fact as she is doing very well right now, happy and healthy :)
I just beat Guitar Hero II on medium mode, now I have to work on the more advanced techniques. Free Bird was a bitch, even on medium.
Hot holy fuck - It's October!
Friday 5th October, 2007
I thought I'd write a post on the last nice day of this year. It was 25C out today which is insane for October. From now on it's going to be shitty. Only five more months until spring-like weather, yay!
The moo is sick, for the first time in a long time. Turns out she has a throat infection of some kind (still waiting for the results) and she is on antibiotics. Unfortunately she reacted to them and has a rash all over her, made for a grim evening this evening. We've stopped these anti-biotics so hopefully she'll be doing better tomorrow, she's had a rough week (as have we all).
I stopped playing wow again (hence the update) likely for the final time. I keep trying but I'll never have the time to do anything worthwhile in the game - it's a game that rewards time spent playing it this means that I am pretty much fuxxored.
Second child is cooking nicely, we're fully expecting an early delivery. I'll keep you posted on that.
Also, Asus sucks, hardcore.
Burnded...
Friday 25th May, 2007
It would seem that a shaved head combined with the hotness in weather might lead to my scalp being burninated. My brain is red hot right now, it's not too shabby but putting a shit ton of moisturising cream on it is a little odd. I helped my brother in law build a deck today, it was a productive time - free pizza and beer helped, but then again it always does.
I've been on vacation this week, I guess now that Friday is over then technically my vacation is over. We didn't do a whole great deal of anything, but we had fun. We took the Moosey swimming, and to the local waterpark. We went to see the Chinese exhibit at the Museum of Civilization. We visited family, we're going to take Kaitlyn to Cosmic Adventure tomorrow, I'm pretty sure she will have fun going nuts there.
What else? Aww, nothing :)
Huh, huh, huh .. you said buttfuck...
Sunday 20th May, 2007
I self censored one of my recent press releases due to a comment made by El Willheim. Apparently saying "but, fuck" on a blog style homepage could be misconstrued as "teh ghei".
I didn't do too much this week, other than watch the Ottawa Sens get to the GODDAMNED STANLEY CUP FINALS! (W00t, by the way :) ) Oh, and also accidentally suplexing my baby, she's doing better than me for the experience.
I'm on vacation this week, life ain't too bad...
"I'm standing at the edge of the world, there's chaos in the city as the capital burns..."
Wheee! Updates are fun!
Sunday 20th May, 2007
I have much to say, much to report... It's odd because I haven't actually used this page for the purpose it was originally intended, you know, updates and the such :) Today I will announce to those not in the know that I have shaved my hair. It's pretty short now.
'Til later!
Happy Mothers day, me...
Friday 11th May, 2007
Today I got the following email from Pampers.ca, I feel so emasculated:
Dear Alastair,
From the moment you first held your newborn baby in your arms, you knew that things would never be the same again. Suddenly, you've become a teacher, a nurse, a coach, a playmate and a friend. But, above all, you are a mother.
Because your little one may not yet realize how hard you work every day, we at Pampers would like to thank you for everything you do. Happy Mother's Day!
Proper update
Wednesday 9th May, 2007
Kind of :) I am making proper leeway into being communicative with the rest of the world. I don't tend to use IM quite as much because I don't spend as much time in front of my PC - so I'll be falling back to email for a lot of contact, and of course I'll try to call people more often too.
Happy 2007!
Sunday 7th January, 2007
Yep...
Whee!
Saturday 9th December, 2006
Moo, moo moo moo moo! Moo, moo. Moo; moo moo moo moo? Moo.
I don't care if you like the music or not...
Friday 24th November, 2006
This video is excellent - Bombs so watch it, and enjoy :)
Moosey continues to amaze me on a daily basis. 9 months doesn't sound like a whole lot of time, but it's an eternity for a baby. She is climbing the stairs, cruising and generally setting herself up to be a whole lot of trouble in the near future.
Being at home with her is one of the best experiences of my life. Going back to work will be weird, hrmmm.
Anyway, it's late and I updated twice in a month. You're welcome.
Yep, not looking after Moosey or playing WoW
Thursday 9th November, 2006
Blogs. Well, everyone and their dog has a blog (rhymes, I know - I'm a fucking genius). However, I think that this is the main reason that I have not updated this site quite as much as I did once upon a time. Well that and World of Warcraft - the stealer of souls, or at least of all free time.
So where to begin? I guess I'm interested whether anyone I know ever even looks at this site anymore. If I was smart and if I had time then I would probably do something awesome like track the sites stats - but I am not smart and I do not have any free time (except from right now it would appear).
I'd write more, and maybe make some vague promise to update again in the future, but I could simply be talking to a wall. If it interests anyone, then I am enjoying listening to the album 'Old World Underground, Where Are You Now' by Metric. It's most, umm, w00t.
Full time moosey
Saturday 19th August, 2006
For those that don't know about it, I am now on full time parental leave. This means that I am home for the next six months (the perfect time for you Britainoids to visit me).
I was going to write more, but I am too tired, sorry.
It's July and I'm camping alot :)
Thursday 13th July, 2006
Yep, camping is a lot of fun. We took the moosey out on an experimental camping trip this week and it turned out that she just rocked the camping experience. She's only 4 and a half months old but she kicked campings arse. As such we decided to go camping again this weekend (after a couple of days at home avoiding the rain).
We went grocery shopping today with the camping trip in mind. We must have spent at least $40 on meat and meat by-products, I love camping!
Design change
Saturday 24th June, 2006
Yeah yeah, not posted in a while - blah blah blah :)
I had some time off and as such decided on a redesign of the site (a little). Recipe page is next.
Too much has happened in the last 4 months for me to worry about writing about it right now (it's far too early in the morning). In fact, I'm off to bed...
Moosey has entered the building
Wednesday 1st March, 2006
Yup, she's here and she's the cutest person in the world :)
Check out the update over at moosey.okroy.ca
Oh look at that, its 2006
Thursday 23rd February, 2006
Yup. I've added a little recently played tracks thing on the page. I've set up a few radio stations using last.fm and they're pretty sweet.
Still waiting for Moosey who at this point is 11 days overdue. That, and not playing WoW has pretty much consumed most of my time recently.
I decided, in the past, not to update my web page when I'd been drinking
Wednesday 7th December, 2005
So I won't :D
Recipe Search
Saturday 17th September, 2005
Yep, it's back, and it's better than ever. There is a recipe search on the recipe section of the site. It uses a boolean search thingie which is quite neat and powerful.
Anyway, if the lack of a search function frustrated you then be frustrated no more.
OMFG! An update!
Friday 19th August, 2005
Yeah.
I've upgraded to Fedora Core 4 and taken care of a few issues I had with my last Linux installation.
As such I have to go through much less work to update this page.
My life has become very busy :) And I will post an update about that stuff soon. This is more to test that this thing still works ;)
Knurd - Would be good
Sunday 8th May, 2005
Good day :) Happy May!
I don't have a great deal to say, not because life is dull or anything. Just because.
We did a mothers day thing today, I appreciate my mother in law. It's a cliche that the mother in law is usually some kind of devil spawn, but it couldn't be further from the truth in my case. The womans mum has embraced me into the family and I appreciate that a great deal.
So here's to mothers and mothers day :)
I am still here :)
Monday 25th April, 2005
The woman just bought me a copy of Becks latest and greatest. It's the special edition, comes with a hardback book (which doubles as the cd / dvd case) and it is neat :)
Not a great deal happening, work is, well work. I was lucky enough to get a free trial of World of Warcraft from Martin. It is a fun game, but I don't think nearly as addictive as a certain Mr Zutroy has made it out to be.
Blarr, it's been raining for what seems like an eternity (in fact it's been a couple of days) but it might dry up enough to go for a rollerblade tomorrow. I hope so.
And that is it!
A week of sunshine
Friday 8th April, 2005
Means a week of rollerblading. It feels pretty cool to be able to go out and do stuff like that on a more regular basis again.
I don't really have much more to say right now, maybe later ;)
Skiing and snowboarding
Thursday 24th March, 2005
Are two things that I thought that I probably would never end up doing. But living in Canada makes a difference with respect to the ease of access to suitable facilities. Me and the woman just got back from 4 days of doing the above at Calabogie Peaks. We did some snowboarding. Snowboarding is hard, well probably more so if you've never slid down a mountain on anything before (no prior skiing / snowboarding experience here). To be honest, I think we did better than I thought we were going to. Gini was better at snowboarding than me. I fell over, a lot.
Skiing was exponentially easier to do, and much more fun because of it. We spent 2 days skiing and 1 on teh boards. The resort is mighty fine, I would recommend it to anyone, all of the people there are uber friendly (and stuff).
Anyway, I am still on vacation and loving it. Just got home and spent an hour an a half clearing off both levels of the deck and heading oot for sooper at the in-laws tonight.
So, laters :)
March = Cold
Friday 11th March, 2005
I came to realise what my issue is with March, why I find it so frustrating weather wise. Basically I'm wired to the fact that when the days start getting longer (ie it's light when I get up and light when I leave work) the days start getting warmer. This is delayed by about 6 weeks here, in mid-april it will start getting warmer (and by that I mean consitently above 0). I can't complain too much, I'm going snowboarding next week ;)
Also lanbbq and vacation time coming up, can't wait.
Moosian values on a post modern apocalyptic platform.
Friday 25th February, 2005
Uh huh, it's nearly the end of February. Lanbbq is on its way, the month is nearly up it's all looking OK :)
So, any of my British pals, you're also invited to the mighty lanbbq that's going down at chez my house on the 19th March (let me know eh?).
Not a great deal has happened since my last update to be honest, my t-shirt didnt arrive yet. I should check to see if I got charged for it on my credit card.
I'm still loving that Beck single, there needs to be more mainstream artists willing to use C64 music in their remixes :D Although I suspect that right now this music is being enhanced by my blood alcohol level (this seems to be very much the case when it comes to retro game music and yours truly).
Overnights are coming soon at work, I hope that this time I'm somewhat productive when I R doing them. Maybe a coding update of some type will be in the works, although again I doubt it. I've been much more of a slacker lately :)
I wish there was more to report, but unfortunatley life is pretty mundane. In this respect I can only blame myself :) No point in bitching about an ordinary life / job / world if I don't really do much to change it. This is very much a February in Canada thing though I feel. It's hard to plan anything when the weather is so changeable. Me and the woman went for a rollerblade last Sunday, hmm well actually the Sunday before. I couldnt really do that tomorrow, too freaking cold (it was -19C this morning)., it makes it difficult to plan ahead, might go for a skate instead.
The thing is, I am a lot more active than I used to be. Even as a child or young adult (read Mightily Pimpled Teentard) I never used to be as active as I am now (believe it or not I used to sit in front of a TV hooked up to either a atari 800xl, C64, Spectrum, Amiga, nes, snes, megadrive or playstation (all thoughout my yoof to early adult)). So being stuck indoors all winter is incredibly frustrating. The winter in Canada is literally 5-6 months long (this is the length of time that I can't really do any outdoor activity that I personally enjoy). Now to be fair, I do go climbing (read bouldering) twice a week (at least I try to keep to that schedule) but it sure isn't the same as getting out and about in the spring / summer time.
Ack, I think those February blehs are actually starting to affect me. Hmm, good job there are only 3 days of February left.
Holy shit, this is far too much of a ramble for my liking. Meh, that is it for now :D
Beck made me buy it :)
Saturday 12th February, 2005
It would help if you were a little more retro geeky like me you know. Man, you JUST DON'T UNDERSTAND!
Anyhoo, I'm eagerly awaiting this in the post: This thingie.
I wonder what the Gini will say ;)
They're getting better
Tuesday 8th February, 2005
You know, in case you were wondering or something.
I made a couple of little style tweaks to the website here and there, apparently the bold font in these postings was annoying Kris. What can I say? I think it looks a bit better, the colours are a little better balanced, I tweaked the margins a bit and I fixed some code on the recipe page to do with the comments (more than one comment was generating invalid xhtml, bad me!), now the only thing that will generate any kind of xhtm parse errors is the Archive page (I think) and that is pretty much down to external links having wierd characters in them.
It's been a bit of a bleh week, the weather has been hovering around 0 degrees C, to be honest I wish it was a little colder. The warm weather melted all of the ice sculptures down down and its become better to walk on the canal than skate. On the plus side, the massive snow pile in front of my house has now become a little more manageble and the fuel economy on my car has shot up (by about 200km per tank).
As the spe_dog just put it to me, what we have a here is a rather nasty case of the Februarys :) I actually intentionally decided to get the old wisdoms out in Feb just because it is the shittiest month, what's the point of ruining a perfectly good other month on a couple of weeks of discomfort?
Anyway, that's it for now.
It did start to suck a lot more
Thursday 3rd February, 2005
Well, I have a rotten headcold which doesn't help (sore throat, congestion and all that). I did remember everything, so no amnesia for me.
Man was there ever a whole bunch of spelling mistakes in that last post, hmph. Well I suppose it was a miracle I could type at all. Anyway, my right jaw now looks like it has a baseball attached to it, the tooth that required the most work was sitting in the back right side of my mouth.
The Gini bought me a dinosaur (for the aquarium) and a remote controlled mini-submarine (for the aquarium - it could be similar to yours Will) as way of making me feel better, thanks Gini :)
Probably won't be heading to work until Monday as it's difficult for me to get my head through doorways right now so that could make me housebound ;)
I am now 100% less wise than I was previously
Wednesday 2nd February, 2005
I just had my wizdom teeth removed (in fact about an hour an a half ago). I am still hopped up on narcotics and apparently there is a good chance that I won't remember a whole bunch of this because of the amnesia effects of the drugs.
So basically I had to do an update just for the weirdness factor. Also I just popped a big old dose of codene so that bad boy should be knicking in sometime soon.
So for my own reference, as of this point I remeber waking up as the dentist was putting in the stiches. I remember the recovery room and discussing all sorts of stuff with the chick there, I remember driving home with no issues (Highway on to moodie then down strandherd) and I brought the garbage can in ;)
I don't think I will forget all of that mundane stuff, but to be honest if I do, it would'nt be all that great of a loss.
They showed me a couple of my teeth from after the removal (I had all 4 yanked out, 2 had to be cut out) and they had large chunks of flesh haning off them, yummy!
So anyway, suffice to say, I'm not dead, so that's alright, and I may upadate later if I feel like it (apparently it will all start to suck a lot more after the pain medicine wears out :( )
I don't need to complain about the cold, Ottawans will do it for me
Thursday 20th January, 2005
Check this oot.
From the article, actually fuck it, all of the article, it's pretty small:
OTTAWA (Reuters) - A cold spell gripping Ottawa is so intense that houses have started to produce loud cracking noises, prompting worried citizens to report burglaries and gunfire, local police said Wednesday.
Spokeswoman Monique Ackland said police had received around 20 calls Monday night and Tuesday morning, when temperatures in the Canadian capital dipped to an unseasonably low minus 40 Celsius (minus 40 Fahrenheit).
"Those were calls about breaking and entering, people making excessive noise and calls about gunshots," she said. Police responded to each alarm and rapidly realized crime was not responsible.
"Those calls were all (prompted by) the cold," she said, adding that one possible reason for the loud noises were exploding nails.
Something changed!
Saturday 15th January, 2005
It's all looking a bit different, innit?
I moved alyster.com to a new server. My own. Not to say that my ex-hosts Ace of Space were no good, those guys were fucking fantastic, but I had to move on.
There are a few features not available until later (namely the recipe search) but what the hell everything looks better.
Also I procured a new soundcard (Soundblaster Audigy 2 ZS) it is mighty fine, my games have sped up and stuff sounds, well, crispier.
The curse of Gananananaoque
Monday 3rd January, 2005
Ahh, Gananananaoque is back to haunt me. I decided that for our new years trip to teh cootage of Will we would take the Poopalier. It died, gushing coolant over the dirt road we were travelling on at the time. Thankfully Will let us use his CAA membership and the cost of the tow to Gananananaoque was a total of $0. Unfortunatly the radiator died (big old hole in it) and it needs to be replaced and flushed. ($500).
So we will be heading out to Gananananoque today to pick up the ailing beast.
The Hippo did us a great service on New Years day by driving an hour to come and pick us up (towing the car back to Oottawa would have cost too much) so thanks again Spe! J00 4r3 t3h r0ck!
Oh yeah, Happy New Year!
Here's a taste
Sunday 12th December, 2004
Actually, in reference to my last posting (and this also refers to another previous posting), one of the things I apparently did last night was write 'Turn the fucking music down' in the snow on the back of my neighbours car. It's a good job that I wasn't too drunk to realise that was a fucking dumb idea and removed my snow grafitti before it could be discovered by my friends next door.
Another stoopid update :)
Sunday 12th December, 2004
The womans work party was fun. It was at the museum of civilization (in france), a most excellent venue for any posh looking party. I got very drunk for free, I got very sleepy near the end of the night and napped on the bus on the way home. Apparently I also got up to other antics on the way home but as I have no recollection of said antics they didn't happen.
I had to work today which was a pain in the arse, it was OK though because originally I had to get up at 5:30am to head to work (I would have been in no good state at that time) but my shift got pushed forward a little. If I had to work at 6:30 it would have been a fucking disaster as the 'lectricity broke and there was no juice to my alarm clock. Also there was a good 10cm of snow piled up on my car this morning, I was in no fit state to drive but neither was the woman (she stayed in bed unitl 1:30pm, 1 freakin 30!)
I spent my x-mas bonus on a pair of ice skates today, hopefully I will get to use them sometime soon. It's a pair of hockey skates. To my British pals this might sound all impressive like I'm being all sporty and shit for the first time in my existence but the sad fact is that I could get either hockey skates or figure skates and I'm no a buftie. The shitty thing about buying hockey skates it that they take a long time to break in, I have no idea whether my purchase is going to be any good until at least a good 2 weeks of solid use, goddamnit!
That's it...
Work is a son of a whore
Wednesday 8th December, 2004
I just got off overnights, it was thouroughly unpleasant. Anyway, as much as I want to say more, this is a public wossname. So I will continue with listening to my wikkid jungle tunes and get on with this update.
It be the Gini's work party this week, it has a free bar (I love free bars!). It seems that Canada is the country of free bars, I had heard of the concept but never experienced it until I came to these blessed fabled shores (Thanks Will, Megan, Janice and Chris for your free booze wossnames, yeah yeah you all had the pleasure of being married but I had the pleasure of being drunk at your expense ;) )
Now here is a cry out to some of my English freinds, get married, have a free bar and if you're lucky then maybe I might turn up and sponge some free inebriation from you. DO IT!
I need to pee.
Wow, the tune I'm listening to just said (and I quote) 'My rhymes are harder than last nights erection' I wish I was such a master songwriting type.
I'm oot of stuff to say, mainly because the rant I want to go in to about how work is so shitty just is'nt appropriate ;)
Bye all!
Happy Decemeber!
Wednesday 1st December, 2004
Yup, 's the month of el Crimbo again. Me and the woman have already provided our gifts to ourselves. We gots a 6 month membership to all of the public recreation centres around here, should see the winter through I feel.
It's late and I'm listening to some wicked jungle tracks, I'm heading full on into my weekend (I have messed up shifts this week) and I already am happy in the knowledge that in the next two days I am going to achieve absolutely nothing. I am so very tired right now, mainly because our new neighbours have some obsession with being quiet as mice all night then pumping out rock / video game / whatever else music after 11pm. I believe the main reason they do this is because they are fucking stupid.
As always hopefully I will get some coding done in the next few days, I have been neglecting that side of things and it is upsetting me. Happily though I have both my server and my desktop systems configured to my liking and both are running Linux. Hopefully ATI will be coming out with some 3d drivers for my card within the next couple of weeks to top off the joy.
Also, one last thing. I'd like to give a shout out to one of my under appreciated buddies here in Canadar, the only advice I can give is to keep doing what you're doing (in the way that you interact with fellow humans) because, believe it or not, you're doing a better job of it than most of the people around you, and the good stuff will come through in the end. Hope is a bitch, but unfortunately most of the time it's all we have to work with.
The Spe_Dogg celebration approaches
Friday 19th November, 2004
Climbing, Chinese boofet and out on the town for some boozing, what could be better in a day? Tomorrow is the offical celebration of Hippos birthday (or at least his alter ego), so here's to Spe. You're as old as me now, whore!
I'm living on a landmine...
Thursday 28th October, 2004
Oh for the love... It's been such a long time since I did anything approaching a real kind of update.
First of all, I moved house two weeks ago, a pretty stressful experience you might imagine, but no! I had the most wickedest of crews, The Mighty Pratts and the Spe_Dogg massive were looking out for my stuff. It was great moving with people who cared about making sure all my (I guess, really, unimportant) stuff was taken care of. Seriously, it could have been 1,000,000 times worse, it was the easiest move in the history of all moves and that was down to the people that helped me (THANK, the fuck, YOU ALL!).
It's great being in town, I lost a little of my High Speed bandwidth (down from 4mbps to 2.5 - but hey, my upload stays the same). It's nice being so close to work, I just got off my 6 week rotation overnight shift (sorry, truly sorry Greg that I couldn't continue with the insanity and go make some Karaoke love down town) it was nice only having to drive for 6 or 7 minutes to get home after such a ballache instead of driving for 20 minutes.
Me and the Gini just passed our five year anniversary of weddingness. This is very, totally fucking amazingly awesome :) I would like to give a shout out to the woman (who, along with me, was accused of being 20 yrs old tonight (thank you unknown stranger)) who has made this silly fucking existence much, much more happy and enjoyable.
She only loves me for my dimples :)
Another thing I have found to be highly enjoyable lately is the fact that my brother (El Mykio) has also obtained himself some high speed internet action, and in true, raegin Okroy fashion, is looting the intarweb for all that it is worth.
I'm out of stuff to say, some day maybe I'll call you, I'll see whenever I'm free.
So, so, KO...
Another Month, Another Update
Friday 22nd October, 2004
First of all, here's the funniest signature I saw in all of today: "--Bush/Cheney '04 - Because You Don't Change Horsemen Mid-Apocalypse--"
I plan on writing a big old update, honestly, it's true. I have been doing a million and one chores today and am at about the end of my be-arsedness. So instead of writing that update I think I'll have myself a beer and maybe just kick back for a little bit.
Stuff to buy
Thursday 30th September, 2004
So very much stuff to buy. What colour should my basement be? The woman seems to thing that a green type colour would be just swell, and I think I agree with her. I can't get a pool table in there though (maybe that's something for the next basement.
I'm so very tired right now, I had to get up at 5:30am the last couple of days as I'm covering Kathleens shifts, I'm also working 6 days in a row this week (mon-sat) then I'll have Sunday off then back to work on Monday. My schedule got all fucked up this week (shouts going out to Cameron for that one).
I will be having a hoose warming followed by a lanbbq a little afterwards (maybe a week or two after) all of this will be happening sometime in November.
Also, the womans team won their baseball playoffs, they rock :)
El Hoosio
Friday 24th September, 2004
Here she be: HooSe Pictures
I will be moving in within the space of a month and a half or so. Lots of shit to do first. All things willing I will still be visiting the UK in the spring / summer of next year. It's pretty hard to figure out what will be happening in six months from now. A month ago I didn't think I would have a 25 (or 19 year the way we're doing it) debt, but I really hope I will be able to visit Yurp. I'm long overdue a visitation.
Oh, and on another note please check out some Elliott Smith. If you're a fan of the melodic rock 'n roll then you would be a fool to pass this gentleman by. It's a shame he won't be making music ever again, and it's a personal opinion that his cover of 'Because' by The Beatles is better than the original.
Rumours are in the pipeline that the Spe_Dog will be purchasing a breadmaker for yours truly. What can I say, the guy rocks ;). If any of you fuckers want some fresh bread related products, drop me a line and maybe we could set up an appointment.
HooooooosE!
Wednesday 22nd September, 2004
So, it looks like me and the woman will be the proud new parents of a mortgage.
I love the way that the word mortgage starts with the french word for dead. Hmm, I wonder where the word is derived from.
And a quick dictionary.com search later comes up with this:
[Middle English morgage, from Old French : mort, dead (from Vulgar Latin *mortus, from Latin mortuus, past participle of mor, to die. See mer- in Indo-European Roots) + gage, pledge (of Germanic origin).]
Hmm, fascinating.
Anyway, the hoose is in Barrhaven and seems to be quite cool. I will gallerify it when I move in, which is soon (closing is Oct 15th).
Also, because of the above I gots me a new stove. It has many features and is dressed in stainless steel clothing.
Oh the joy.
Yarr, it be that time of the year again me hearties!
Sunday 19th September, 2004
Talk Like a Pirate
Shiver me timbers! If it's not Talk like a Pirate day again, avast!
Well me hearties, I've been very, very busy lately and neglected this fine web site somewhat. To be honset I'm doing a lot of work on okroy.ca as it will be my main site eventually.
And there are other things in the works that some ppl know about, and some ppl don't.
More information on Tuesday.
Something is happening
Thursday 16th September, 2004
I'm trying to buy a house, I am very close to doing so in fact. More details to follow.
It rained yesterday
Friday 10th September, 2004
A little:
Camping
Thursday 2nd September, 2004
Oh Fuck, it's September already. I guess I should have updated by now, but August was a pretty hectic month.
I'll be camping this weekend but I promise some kind of an August Log after that.
As if we needed scientific proof!
Thursday 12th August, 2004
It's official, I'm one sexy bastard.
First read this
Then observe:
Men with "front vowels" in their names -- sounds formed at the front of the mouth like the "a" in Matt or Alyster -- were considered sexier than men with "back vowel" sounds like the "au" in Paul, she concluded.
See! Like the 'a' in alyster!
Oh Boy
Tuesday 10th August, 2004
Wow, looks like I haven't updated this site for a while. Sorry. I guess I have been too involved in Okroy.ca and, you know, general summer type stuff.
When I logged in to make this update I noticed that my hosting company had bumped up my package considerably. I now have 100MB space (way more than enough) and 100 email addresses (way to fucking many), 10 separate mysql databases (I only use 1) and I believe a whack more monthly bandwidth than I had (like I need it). Although their name may be cheesy, I couldn't recommend Ace of Space enough.
Overnight update
Monday 26th July, 2004
Yawn! I did a bunch of work on the okroy.ca site. It's going to be my online database of troubleshooting stuff, tech articles and other fun things. The backend, as far as authentication is concerned, is already more advanced than alyster.com. There still isn't a great deal there yet, but it's all baby steps for the time being.
Sunday nights / Monday mornings are unsurprisingly quiet on the overnight shift. Things will pick up tomorrow for sure, just hope that I can get through the next couple of overnights without too much hassle. I won't have to do another one until labour day week or so. I hope.
Brain no function well without sleep
Sunday 25th July, 2004
Man, I'm ill. Gots me a sore throat and a blocked nose, mild illness seems to be part and parcel of the overnight shift with me. I suspect it has a large part to do with the lack of sleep, especially on this first overnight shift where I think I got a total of maybe 4 hours of sleep before getting up at 9:30am for a shift that starts at 9pm.
Meh! It's all good though, I'm going camping next weekend and Miss Nature is set to serve up some mighty fine weather. Looking forward to a couple of days on the beach, basking in 30C sunshine. I burned the tops of my feet today when I was sat on the porch, it was only 21C out so I think that 30 and sunny could mean painination without some adequate preparation first.
Bah! That's it for now I'm afraid.
Chat goodness
Friday 23rd July, 2004
Oh for a job that actually pays me what I'm worth. I wonder how many people out of the billions on this tiny globe have that thought on a daily basis. I guess my only option is to stop bitching and start looking.
Anyway, here's a wee excerpt from a chat I had recently on this big old intarweb of ours:
aLyStEr... says:
man all I did was freaking chores today
aLyStEr... says:
when I was a kid I thought that when I grew up I wouldn't have to do freaking chores anymore
aLyStEr... says:
life, she is a mother-chore
See, I even bitch about my days off.
Prodigy album update
Wednesday 7th July, 2004
I listened to that album again, it's still looperific, which can be expected for this type of music. I do like to give stuff more than one chance and I have to say that the album is a lot better than I originally gave it credit for. I've actually listened to it on a decent stereo, with the volume turned up (as I expect nature intended for a dance album) and it's pretty nicely layered, has some good transitions and just generally rocks nicely.
Thats it.
An album review
Monday 5th July, 2004
For those of you who haven't hear the new album by The Prodigy, Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned, let me sum it up for you in one sentence.
Image a tone deaf eight year old, locked in a room with Fast Tracker for a couple of hours and this album is what you'll get; It's looperific.
In other news, I went climbing yesterday, for the first time in 4 weeks, and I managed not to hurt myself. Starting with an incline wasn't such a good idea for my shoulder though as I can't support any weight on it at certain angles.
I'll try again on Thursday.
Thank Fuck
Tuesday 29th June, 2004
That bastard Harper isn't Prime Minister. Looks like we might be in for some interesting government for the next little while.
FPS games are a big lie
Saturday 26th June, 2004
When on this silly overnight shift the mind can be subject to random pondering,
Here's a thought that ran through my head after I heard a particularly distubing creaky type tapping sound at about 3am. The thought was "FPS games are a total crock of shite". If I was suddenly launched into a Half-Life or Quake type scenario at my work place I would be utterly defenseless.
I took a quick stock of my immediate surroundings and instead of a multitude of Armour Bonuses, Health Packs, Ammo Packs and of course the obligitary BFG there was a Plush Seal toy, a Small Tent and some Christmas Trees. I mean, how the hell am I meant to defend mankind from creature beyond the foulest pit with a fluffy seal?
I think I ought to put a complaint in with management regarding this. Bring on the rail guns!
Tweakination
Saturday 26th June, 2004
So I made a few minor changes to the recipe section, added a function here, built a script there. The net effect of my 30 minutes toil is that in the search views and the all recipes view of the recipe section the rating is now listed also. I may expand this at some point to include how many comments each recipe has.
See, I knew you would all be excited.
Nearly fucking done
Friday 25th June, 2004
Man, these overnights are dull and shitty.
Looking forward to the weekend, fo' tha shizzy.
(aL...)
So I will be sending off my application to become an official Mooseshagger today. Apparently I will have to dress up as Bob McKenzie and sing O Canada while eating perogies and poutine and drink a 24 to become fully integrated into society here.
Sounds like fun.
Vacation is over :(
Wednesday 23rd June, 2004
So first of all a little update on my poor aching shoulder. It still hurts, not as bad, but its still there. I think it's going to take me a little while to get back into the climbing, which really sucks :( I really have an appreciation for the grief that Spe_dogg and his poor dislocated finger went through now. Lack of exercise is frustrating.
Being back at work is a little strange, probably because I'm going straight into the overnights. I had 1240 emails waiting for me, So many, in fact, that they broke my email client.
I don't have too much to say as I'm too tired right now. The only thing I would say is Hi LuiS! I will reply to your email, honest ;)
Ninja skating skills
Wednesday 9th June, 2004
Are something that I don't have. I went out for a rollerblade with the Gini yesterday, it was a journey that was to end in doom for me (and entertainment for the Gini).
I was coming down a hill, right, lost my blance somewhat, right, so instead of hitting the road I figured it would be better to hit the grass, so I leaped over the gravel on the shoulder and ploughed into a field, shoulder first.
My shoulder hurts, it looks like it is about twice the size of my other shoulder (which kind of makes me look super buff from one side at least). The good news is that I have movement in most directions (I can't hold my arm up and across my chest, boo frickin hoo).
As I have mentioned, my Dad is here to visit. He helped me complete my awesome speaker setup. I am now the proud new parent of a pair of Athena S.5 speakers (normal bookshelf speakers that I am using as my surround sound speakers). Here is a picture:
We watched a movie last night, you know to test them out an all, the sound was fantastic. The movie sucked. (I would recommend AGAINST watching the movie 'Cube').
Almost vacation time
Wednesday 2nd June, 2004
Yep, it's almost that time of year again. This vacation I will spend economising, as my Crapalier has cost me $1200 in the last month. She's a beauty.
There probably won't be any time to do the myriad of things that I want to do with the web-site, but as they say "Life, she is a motherfucker". (Or something close to that anyway).
Later...
You've heard about their long distance plan
Thursday 27th May, 2004
(WARNING! This contains some very Canadian and work specific stuff!)
So I got one of those nice unsolicited calls tonight, this time it was regarding saving money on my long distance plan, it went a little like this, oh and BTW here is the key (m) = me (h) = her :
h: Can I speak to A Okroy please small note here, my phone book reference says 'A Okroy' and not my true, great name
m: Hello, 'A' speaking
h: I'm calling from Primus and I'd like to tell you about our great long distance plan
m: All hopefull about ending the conversation soon and shit Well actually, I already technically work for Primus and I can get a long distance plan through work
h: Ignoring what I just said Do you currently have a long distance plan?
m: Well actually as I just said, we recently just got bought out by Primus and I can get the plan you're talking about cheaper through work
h: But you don't currently have any plan set up with Primus
m: We just got bought out within the last month, have you heard of a company called Magma Communications?
h: Not really, it sounds kind of familiar I think. Can I tell you about our rates?
m: As I just said, we just got bought out, we're doing the employee discount thing right now so I'm not really interested
h: Ok thanks for your time etc etc
m: Not a problem at all, oh an if you get the time please check out magma.ca
h: Good evening
This should be a fun ride I think...
Recipe Ratings
Friday 21st May, 2004
So I fixed a small bug in the recipe ratings page that caused the posting date to be appended to the rating date.
This might mean that the posted date of the recipe no longer chronologically matches when it was actually posted for a couple of recipes.
Oh yes, and I made a couple of changes to the Mono style sheet, it looks a little more like the one on my other site.
Eve
Saturday 15th May, 2004
Oh, and I got bored of Eve. As pretty as it looks, it lacks depth. Well I couldn't find any at any rate. This, in realistic terms, means nothing.
A few things here and there
Saturday 15th May, 2004
It would seem that this year would be the year that a bunch of my favouritest bands ever decide to visit Canada eh...
Muse, well those that visit okroy.ca would know that I have missed out on Muse already. I just found out that they are touring with The Cure in July/August. Well the only problem is that the closest they'll get to me this time is Detroit, a highly dodgy city that beats the whole of Canada in its murders per year quota. Plus its a nine hour drive.
Next in line is Gomez. My dad is visiting me in three weeks, this is also the time that Gomez are visitating Ottawa. It wouldnt be prudent or even slightly fair to book tickets for this gig on the day after my dear old poperoo lands in Canada so no go there either. Or is it! It would appear that this fine group is playing in Taranna in August. I'll be there, buying me some tickets permitting.
The other band, and possibly the one that I would most anticipate watching (actually that's a lie, I've seen these guys before, I've never seen Muse live) are the Wildhearts. They are supporting the most shitty 'The Darkness' in Morrreeealll. The problem here being that I will be on my overnight shifteroo, no getting oot of that biatch.
So all in all, live musically, this year is almost going to be as much of a scam as other years. Damn I hope I get to see Gomez. That would be t3h p00pX0r5.
By popular request
Monday 3rd May, 2004
I got rid of the Achieved this month section. I wasn't really achieving anything at all.
There are a couple of new recipes in the old recipe section, courtesy of Camion and Zutroy. I will be adding a little more functionality to the recipe section that allows a recipe to be edited by the original submitter. That will be along later :)
Eve is fun
Wednesday 28th April, 2004
Me and the hipposaurus have recently set of on an expedition into Outer Space (to find another place). Here are some snapshots I took while traveling the trade routes:
Eve online is more fun than I thought it would be :)
Overnights coming up
Thursday 22nd April, 2004
Ahh, overnights are about to happen themselves upon me again. This means that I will get around to actually updating my site again :)
Joy all round for everyone!
Oh yes, and I finally got around to getting myself fixed up with some haircut action. My hair was starting to take on a personality of its own, it's a relief that I no longer have to wax philosophical with my own scalp.
Burgatron!
Monday 12th April, 2004
Burgatron 2 - The child of Burgatron made an appearance at my abode this evening, I am honoured :)
For more details regarding the entity that is known as Burgatron please visit hipposaurus.com
Snow update
Thursday 8th April, 2004
I have been told that I'm not allowed to complain about snow, even if its in April.
Josh is in Newfoundland right now (to be honest it's about time that place changed its name to Recentlyfoundland or Wefounditquiteawhileagobutcouldntcomeupwithagoodnewnameland) and the snow there is a little more extreme:
It's April, and still snowing
Tuesday 6th April, 2004
I suppose I got to learn to love 6 months of Winter a year if I want to stay in Canada.
It's just so freaking cold. I suppose it's my fault for buying some shiny new Rollerblades this week. (Actually thanks go out to the Gini for that one).
Happy Spring Everybody :D
Saturday 20th March, 2004
(Ahem, in the northern hemisphere).
So my part of Canada is celebrating by providing 10CM snow today followed by 5mm rain. (I guess that makes approx 8 or so CM of slush then)
Sundays are dull
Sunday 14th March, 2004
I'm updating this page purely because I'm at work and I'm horribly bored. I don't even really have anything to say, but then again I rarely do.
I'm in the process of working on the gallery again. IE is a sonofabitch non-compliant POS browser, it's unusual to have stuff work properly in Mozilla but not properly in IE. But whatever, it's something I'll have to work on.
Authentication
Monday 8th March, 2004
So. Authentication has been implimented in a couple of sections. It might seem like a pain in the arse, but due to the fact I had several forms that would allow posting to the database it is pretty much nescesary.
It only takes a couple of seconds to register, honest! Anyway, due to the fact that I added this, the comments section for recipies has been added to the bottom of each recipe.
She be coming along
Sunday 7th March, 2004
So authentication has now been implemented on the site. You can't really tell by looking, but trust me it's there.
Next step is to add that comments thingie to the recipes web page, thats definatly a matter of be-arsedness.
I prepared that curry on Thursday, to be honest it didnt look all that great (a brown sludge in fact), but man did it ever taste fucking great. I would heartily recommend it to any beginner curry maker, simple yet most tasty.
My overnights project
Thursday 4th March, 2004
So my overnights project this time is to add a comments section to the recipes database.
You'll have to login to post a comment on any of the reipes you have tried. Should be good methinks ;)
I think I'll try this bad boy on Thursday
Monday 1st March, 2004
If you didn't notice, a kind chef added a whole bunch of most excellent curry recipes to my recipe web page. I'll be trying this on Thursday.
Hey, I might even take a picture for your viewing pleasure :)
Conversions
Saturday 21st February, 2004
I have added some conversions to the recipe section. I will add more as I find them. (Weights and measurements, things of that nature).
When I finally travel back to Engerland I will be coming with the gift of measuring thingies.
Back by popular demand
Thursday 19th February, 2004
I have re-coded the "all recipes" page to fit in with the new deisgn.
Take a look, its in the recipes section.
This was pissing me off
Tuesday 17th February, 2004
I figured it out. How to centre images when just using xhtml and all of these div fellahs. This is for Kris more than anyone else :)
img {
border: 0px;
display: block;
margin: 0 auto;
}
Yeah
Saturday 14th February, 2004
Who want's to visit Canada? Free room and board for mah peeps. No vacation for Al and the Gini this year that involves leaving Canada. All applications for visitation will be seriously considered. Get em in soon.
On a completely different note, I think that I will be applying to be a certified moose-shagger soon. That's it.
And on another completely different note (that Kris will hate me for), listen to French lounge music, the new Stereolab album is most .... .... .... French ;)
Contacts
Friday 6th February, 2004
After my latest Windows re-install, and resulting uber stable system, it would appear that Outlook does not want to recognise the fact that it used to take care of addresses and phone numbers for me. Being the unprepared fool I am it would also appear that all non-digital copies I had of said phone numbers and addresses have disappeared.
This means that, if I had your telephone number, house address and email address then I most likely don't have them anymore. Drop me a line would you :)
My PCs brain feels better now
Friday 6th February, 2004
More RAM! The lever of doom that caused the grief in the first place now seems to be fully functional.
My computer is a cruel mistress...
Thursday 5th February, 2004
But I love her so. Well, actually I don't. But it's not really her fault. I suppose. She has some rusty old bits, her memory is failing. No, only one bank of her memory is failing and that is replaceable. I just wish it hadn't of failed in such a spectacular fashion, during a session of Neverwinter Nights. Oh well, I will grab an upgrade today and see how that goes.
Now with selectable styles
Sunday 1st February, 2004
Thanks to a little tutorial here the site now has selectable styles. Not very good ones, but I'll work on that :)
Fixed
Sunday 1st February, 2004
With a little help from Kris and a lot of buggering around fixing the layout (well actually re-creating it from scratch) I have fixed (I hope) the formatting problems with the site.
Could you please drop me a line if you have any problems? Please :)
Summin.
Sunday 1st February, 2004
It looks like that I'm just about done integrating the recipe bit into the main bit. Suffice to say it works. Actually this is a lie, it only seems to work with Internet Explorer, the most lenient of all the browsers. In other browsers it looks like the grand arse. Buggah. I suppose it gives me something to do at a later point (a point that is hopefully not as stupidly late/early as 3:30 in the morning.)
Give her a try please, and report back to me if anything fucks up (which it inevitably will).
Yawn, g'night.
Odds and ends
Friday 30th January, 2004
So I updated the rest of the code as well. I will eventually make a much better archive also
I have also re-installed gallery. There are a few new backgrounds for your perusing pleasure and I definatly plan to get some of those photos up that I've been promising for a wee while.
In case you were wondering
Friday 30th January, 2004
I have completely re-coded alyster.com (well the index page anyway
It now no longer uses tables, not one table. Oh the joy, this should also get rid of the double scroll bar effect that intermittantly happened with some browsers.
See, I knew you would be happy.
Should be OK now
Sunday 25th January, 2004
Kris pointed out a little something that caused the screen to get uberwide, this should be fixed now...
I hope :)
And another thing...
Sunday 25th January, 2004
If anyone was fretting (and I know that SOMEONE must have been fretting), the transition of my website from one server to the other went just peachy. Thanks for asking ;)
More foolishness...
Sunday 25th January, 2004
Ahh, such things that are happening. First of all I would like to congratulate my dearest brother in law, Ooh Ahh, on his new job, I greatly look forward to taking advantage of his 'out east' status. I've heard that the beer drinking is most good out there. In other news, my father will be visiting this great land of ours sometime in June.
A wee one
Sunday 18th January, 2004
Because of the site moving to a different server the email whoojit is a little different.
If you actually use your alyster.com email you'll have to put the full email address and the password when you click on the webmail link.
Oh, I had to re-create the accounts, this means that I might have your password wrong, if you can't log in please drop me a line :)
Downtime
Saturday 17th January, 2004
Moving to a different hosting package (with some nifty nice new stuff) so there may be a little downtime with email and the such.
My love for you is like...
Sunday 11th January, 2004
One of many interesting conversation snippits obtained from here.
IronChef Foicite: well, there's a lot of reasons
IronChef Foicite: i mean, roses only last like a couple weeks
IronChef Foicite: and that's if you leave them in water
IronChef Foicite: and they really only exist to be pretty
IronChef Foicite: so that's like saying
IronChef Foicite: "my love for you is transitory and based solely on your appearance"
IronChef Foicite: but a potato!
IronChef Foicite: potatos last for fucking ever, man
IronChef Foicite: in fact, not only will they not rot, they actually grow shit even if you just leave them in the sack
IronChef Foicite: that part alone makes it a good symbol
IronChef Foicite: but there's more!
IronChef Foicite: there are so many ways to enjoy a potato! you can even make a battery with it!
IronChef Foicite: and that's like saying "i have many ways in which I show my love for you"
IronChef Foicite: and potatos may be ugly, but they're still awesome
IronChef Foicite: so that's like saying "it doesn't matter at all what you look like, I'll still love you"
For the love of another update.
Sunday 4th January, 2004
Winter sucks. Actually, around here the winter, to date, has been almost tropical with the temperatures above zero most of the time. This is to change, rapidly. I was thinking of changing my yearly thermometer update with a link to the Weather Network instead. But you know, that just wouldn't be the same.
I need a toque!
Happy New Year
Thursday 1st January, 2004
Ya hosers!
Soppy
Sunday 28th December, 2003
I hope everyone had a great (X)-mas and will have an equally cool (or possibly much better) New Year.
To all my friends and family: Remember I love you all to bits and life would be much more boring without you ;)
Yeah
Sunday 21st December, 2003
That's it. That's my new section. Things I have achieved this month. I'll eventually have an archive so I can see what I achieved historically.
To be honest more coding gubbins has gone into the above section than your first glance might make you assume. It's got sweet assed error checking and a time/date relativity function(TM).
Felice Nardidard
Sunday 21st December, 2003
Or something. Ahh, another update that is fuelled only by my total boredom during my overnight shift. (And you're reading because you were fuelled by total boredom in whatever you were doing before you came here to read this). Ahhhhhh Zen. Oh fuck, I forgot Zen is soooo nineties. And so is saying things are sooooo (insert something here).
Well I hope you're enjoying your visit here today. To be honest the best piece of advice I can give you is to leave this hallowed page of mine and head over to Chez Hipposaurus and check out his tasty little new section. It promises a level of delicous anarchy that I couldn't even hope to emulate.
I will be adding a small 'plug in' to my site soon. It's not quite as enjoyable as Hippos addition but it'll at least keep me on my toes, or point out to me how worthless my existence is ;)
Right that's it for now...
Speed Test
Monday 1st December, 2003
Just in case anyone was curious:
If I was a South Park character
Sunday 30th November, 2003
Then I guess I'd look like this :)
Slow day
Sunday 30th November, 2003
I updated the recipe database to have a print preview function. That was fun and took all of 10 minutes to do. Meh, Sundays are so slow.
How aboot that accent, eh?
Saturday 22nd November, 2003
Man oh man. My accent is totally fucked up now. As part of my employment I get the joy of listening to a few of my calls every month, I did this yesterday. It was like a rollercoaster ride accross the atlantic. One second it sounded Yorkshire (ish) the next second (typically when I'm spouting a more Canadian phrase) it sounded like a bastardised mixture of Brian Glover and Byan Adams. Maybe I need speech therapy or something.
FFXI
Tuesday 11th November, 2003
I want it. I'm hoping some kind of game fairy will leave it under my pillow so I can awaken to a morning of joy. I don't think that's going to happen though :(
Sunday evening update
Sunday 9th November, 2003
A catalogue of non-sleepingness. Being pushed, unwilling, into an overnight shift is somewhat akin to beating ones head with a nail filled bat. My sleep patterns are totally screwed.
Yesterday I was woken up after 4 hours of fitful sleep by some yippidy yip merchant testing out his Uber-Bass (TM) sound system, probably on his Pinto. It felt like it was being tested in my bedroom. Unfortunatly for me because the human ear has a hard time determining the direction that low frequency sound is coming from, I couldnt locate the G and put a sledgehammer through his sub-woofer.
I nearly fell asleep at the wheel on the drive home (Spencer gleefully told me this afternoon that thats why the majority of morning accidents occur). Today I was awoken by a large explosion, this was after 5 hours of similarly fitful sleep. Boo hoo.
I wonder what tomorrow will bring.
And another update
Thursday 30th October, 2003
It looks like I actually have high speed. It's nice and speedy. The only problem is that I've forgotten what the internet was for again. Hmm, something beginning with P?
What fun
Thursday 30th October, 2003
'They' say that Monday will be the day, zero hour if you will. It seems like a long time to wait. Umm, not quite as long as two years though, so that's not too shabby. Just stumbled by this Penny Arcade cartoon and it seemed quite fitting.
In other fun news: Me and the woman are off to Taranna tomorrow to see the most excellent Eddie Izzard in a cozy little downtown theatre. So I guess that's it for now :D
Joy
Tuesday 28th October, 2003
*Sniff* I think I now know the feeling a parent has when they see the face of thier new born child, it probably feels the same way as when I see this:
I just checked with Magma and have been told that the 3Mb service is available. I wonder how long it will take to get activated...
Something about high speed
Monday 27th October, 2003
SO I went to a meeting today that included someone from Bell. She happily told us that high speed internet would be available to order from them in the next couple of days or so. It was meant to be available by now but they are working on a 'technical hitch'. So it looks like that within a couple of weeks I should be up and running with DSL. Yay.
Frigination
Sunday 26th October, 2003
I really don't know how many people read my occasional updates, I hope it's quite a few of you. In all honesty I feel that latetly I haven't had time to do shit all, especially in terms of communicating with people outside of my immediate circle (ie. the North Gower crew). I'm putting a lot of hope that the promise of the aforementioned potentiality of super deluxe high speed internet will improve things communication wise, hopefully making up for my complete lack of any action in the voice communication section of things. Gonna stop here for now, high speed update on Monday :D
Yawn
Saturday 18th October, 2003
Working on a Saturday should be banned, by law or something. On a Sunday as well. I should be drinking. Heavily
My insurance company decided to drop me this week, on mine and Ginis anniversary of all days. This is because of my minor driving conviction in August. They gave me two weeks to find other insurance then they're cutting me off, talk about fair-weather friends. I went to another broker to get quotes and they looked over my driving history. They basically told me that what my current insurer has done was pretty brutal and most other companies wouldn't drop me in the shit like that.
I actually got my full (homie) G licence on Friday, my driving test type person told me at the end of the test, as a side note, that she felt very comfortable and relaxed with my driving. Shame the Ford Focus station wagon driver didn't think that back in August too. Bah, I'm rambling.
In other news: The wonderfully tempting carrot of High Speed Internet (capitalised on purpose) has yet again been dangled in front of my wanting eyes. Apparently Bell (our monopolistic telephone provider) has set a date of 27th October to officially announce the availability of DSL in our wee village. We'll see... Anyway, I'll be going to the meeting where they make this announcement, I might get to heckle someone.
Minor update
Monday 6th October, 2003
Just wanted to mention that I have made a couple of small changes to the recipe database. Go on, have a look. Put a recipe or two in :)
Why Linux will never be as popular as Windows to the common PC user
Thursday 2nd October, 2003
This is why:
Because I just spent three hours configuring a Winmodem to work in Linux. Three fucking hours. I consulted a quite a few help resources which assumed an level of Linux knowledge I wasn't even close to approaching. What is incredibly unfortunate about the whole incident (as I proudly write this update using Galleon, a browser for Gnome, I particulary like this browser as it echoes my Pirate Al past) is that I finally got the fucker working using my own solution.
So for all you snarky bastards writing 'so called' Linux how to's about 'so called' WinModems I have these words of wisdom: "Go fuck your momma!"
Journalism 101
Wednesday 1st October, 2003
Ahh CNN. One of Americas most visited news websites. Their journalists are on the cutting edge of news, their stories are thought provoking and intelligent. For example this gem appeared on their site today:
I'm sure some obese Americans will be looking at making a class action suit against the country of Mexico for all of their culinary sins.
Sigh...
I wish I had more to say in this update
Monday 29th September, 2003
Hello. Not a lot going on right now to be honest. I figured I'd write an update because I hadn't done one for a while. But now, well. MEH.
In recognition of 'National Talk Like a Pirate day'...
Friday 19th September, 2003
So today is the day. A day of cherry red joy, Captain Al and the Good Ship 'The Larkian' can come out to play again, for today is National Talk Like a Pirate Day.
Aye! If I find me stapler in your berth, you scurvy knave, ye'll be hangin' from the yard arm this noon!
Recipes - Take a look to your left :)
Monday 15th September, 2003
And now for that exciting thing I was talking about the other day.
Click here to visit the all new aLyStEr.com recipe database. It's a home for tried and tested recipes. This is actually a point that I need to address because I gave the recipe input form a rating system, and I don't think that I've rated any of the recipes I've entered below 7. This is mainly because the recipes that are there right now have been cookified by yours truly. I might trash the rating system altogether or maybe make it so it has a user rating instead.
This section of aLyStEr.com should really be considered a beta version. I have a few hundred things else I want to do with it. Pretty much all of it is database driven and because of that there's a few other things I need to implement. Whatever.
I would like it if a few of you would add your own recipes, if you want to do that drop me a line and I'll set you up with a username and password.
Yes, I really am bracing myself for the rush ;)
And this is how I spell Tyre
Sunday 14th September, 2003
TYRE!
This is embarrasing.
Sunday 14th September, 2003
Yes I know...
I spelled brakes wrong... :D
Yeah I know
Thursday 11th September, 2003
I spelled Gauge wrong...
A wee update
Thursday 11th September, 2003
Just a small note to tell all of you fine folkies that I'm working on something new. Something big. Something so amazing it could quite literally blow your socks off.
Nothing really too interesting happened lately apart from what happened yesterday, ahhhh yesterday.
So I went to pick up my vehicle, you know the one that had to be repaired because it had a big hole in the fender and a large part of the bumper missing. There it was, all shiny and new looking. I was even impressed at the fact that it had been cleaned inside and out (something that must have been a fair challenge, it hadn't been done for at least 6 months). So I drive this new looking shiny mean machine out of the dealership, get as far as maybe 2 possibly 3 kilometres away and I notice smoke coming out of the back of my shiny new looking vehicle. I also noticed the temperature guage speeding merrily towards 'red death alert' setting. I pull over the car, turn it off and decide that the only thing I can do is drive it back to the dealership (you know with the heaters on full blast and all the windows down, or something). The fucking thing wouldn't start :(
So I had to take a small stroll to the bus station where el Ginio had the shiny new vehicle parked, getting many bemused stares from motorists on the way (I guess people don't walk long distances in Canada very often, definatly not during morning rush hour anyway).
So after getting the car towed back to the dealership it turned out that the water pump exploded or something. Another $400 on top of the $500 bill I had when I left earlier that day. A new car would have worked out cheaper.
I severely dislike that Cavalier now, here's a small service history (since I bought it two years ago):
3 wheel bearings (about 350 each)
the clutch and starter motor (1100)
the water pump (400)
and other stuff I would have had to do anyway:
all 4 tyres (400 or so) with 2 more due to be replaced at the end of October
All 4 breaks (I've forgotton what that cost)
So essentially we could have bought a new cavlier for the amount we've spent on the damned thing already. I suppose thats part of the reason why my new car is much newer than my old car was when I bought my old car. Or something.
Wine Production
Monday 1st September, 2003
So I've started production of a cheeky little Pinot Noir. This kit was slightly more expensive than the last one and it features roasted oak chips. It already smells a little better and that's after 1 week of fermentation.
This bad boy will be ready for consumption in mid-November. Something to make the winter a little more acceptable :)
What did I get for my birthday?
Thursday 28th August, 2003
A $190 fine and 3 points.
Yeah, that's right...
Shiny
Tuesday 26th August, 2003
Hmmm Alerolicious:
Niagoorah!
Wednesday 20th August, 2003
Right. So the first of a whole bunch of holiday photos. I've been to Niagara three times now. I thought it was about time I took a picture of it so I could remember it. Now I don't have to go back again ;)
This picture is pretty big, click on the image to see its true glory:
Not holiday pictures ;)
Tuesday 19th August, 2003
So, a small garden type update. I present you with a before and after shot.
Before:
After:
I have to say, they're much tastier after. What you see above is Fiery Hot Salsa. Trust me, this beast lives up to its name ;)
Gallery
Tuesday 19th August, 2003
It just occured to me (after Miss Rock sent me a couple of holiday pictures in email) that I should post a gallery of pictures from that fateful time.
Maybe tonight, maybe tomorrow night. :D
Oh for something interesting to post
Tuesday 12th August, 2003
For all those I have not contacted recently, I have a reason: Let's pretend the internet broke and I was unable to send any email. To be honest I'm going to use the age old excuse, I've been busy, really busy. Pickling season has arrived again at Le Maison D'Okroy and before that I was on vacation, you'd think that would allow me more access to computers in general but this was not so, I had a Kris glued to my PC :D
I had a lot of fun while not working (although I spent a week of my vacation with the wierdest illness in the world. The recovery from said illness was not helped by my consumption of alcohol, but what the hell I was on holiday ;) As you've seen from previous postings I had a little visitation around our wonderful province of Ontario. I now know for sure that Younge St smells like cheese and that Kieths Blond is my new favourite bier.
Fret ye not, I will be replying to some emails this week. Actually thinking of having another BBQ before summer runs out, so please, Stay Tuned...
Ontario - Yours to discover
Tuesday 29th July, 2003
So the vacation is going well, it's good to be off work, even better to be off work with the Wommin, Kris and Helen ;)
We went a travellin' in Ontario yesterday. Actually we had planned to go to Montreal but we cancelled at the last minute due to "promises of civil disobedience" from some nice people protesting the WTO meeting there.
We only went as far as Kingston but made some stops at Brockville (very nice) and Gananananaoquequeque (the very pit of hell). Gananananaoquequeque was summed up quite nicely by the following find:
I had a scone that could have been used as a lethal weapon and for fucks sake "Pear Green Tea (with artificial flavouring)", I asked for tea and got something that tasted like, well god knows what - no-one in their right minds uses pear as a flavouring for anything.
Anyway if you ever visit Kingston, Ontario I will pass on a recommendation made by Will, visit the Tir nan Og pub, it's quite excellent and makes the memories of Gananananaoquequeque tea rooms fade away.
That garden update I promised
Thursday 10th July, 2003
Once upon a time I remember apologizing to dial up modem users about the amount of pictures that I had in my posts. To be honest I'm pretty much the last person in the civilized world that uses dial up anymore (and according to the latest rumour even that could change within a month or so). Anyway here's the garden update I promised a few days back, I know you're all enthralled.
Tune in later for more excitement!
"Insert humourous caption here"
Thursday 10th July, 2003
These trousers used to fit me, snugly. Until I went on the NEWEST of all diet crazes, this is NOT a FAD! Lose weight and feel healthy on the fantastic EAT LESS plan!
To be honest the woman forced me to pose for this picture, I seem to be more concerned about what's down my trousers though. Could be a ferret ;)
'Nuther update
Sunday 6th July, 2003
The woman enjoys wine too:
Wine Update!
Sunday 6th July, 2003
Here is some booze I made recently.
Watch this space
Sunday 6th July, 2003
It's pretty exciting I know. Within the next 24 hours I plan on posting a picture of the work in progress of my wee vegetable patch. I must go climbing first though...
Caribbean
Saturday 5th July, 2003
That's it...
"Emeny"
Friday 4th July, 2003
Emeny.... It's the only way that the word Emeny should be said wenst droonken...
"Most of your ideas were stoled off me!"
Friday 4th July, 2003
I'm an unoriginal HO! I love it ;)
Apparently I should, oh god I can't even remember what I should. I was trying to explain to the Spencenyaa that 'Special' blend Whiskey is special only in the way that the special olympics are Special.
I'm going to hell, apparently it's warm, like the Carribean ;)
Joy of Joys :D
Thursday 3rd July, 2003
Ahh, I have just booked some tickets to go and see the incredibly funny Eddie Izzard in Toronto on the 31st of October. This should be a lot of fun :D
In other news: The mighty Hipposaurus now has a Questions and Answers forum. I highly suggest you go here click on the 'Ask the Hipposaurus' link and ask him a question.
The message...
Saturday 28th June, 2003
In my slightly inebriated state while posting the last message I think the wossname of the final paragraph is lost...
I think after the line "but North Americans have really fucked up the English language" I meant to write: Maybe she wanted to give some speech training...
"Al you sure can humidify those chicks"
Friday 27th June, 2003
That's right, I'm a chick magnet.
According to the Spencenyaa chicks just want me and I don't even know it. This revelation was revelated to me shortly after buying some yippidy yip climbing troosers at MEC, the lady at the cash (till) was apparenty trying to get into my shorts.
It's pretty sad that I'm so married that I didn't even realise this was the case, but then again the Spencenyaa could have been lying.
On the other hand there was that chick that said I had a very fuckable accent, not too sure what she meant by that, but North Americans have really fucked up the English language. I am a chick humidifier, it's a new term and it's copyrighted.
Link of the day...
Thursday 19th June, 2003
The link of the day is provided by Kris
PowerGen Italy
Kris also provided the following information:
"Energy giant Powergen says it has no connection to the unfortunately named Italian website www.powergenitalia.com.
Rumours have been sweeping the internet that the website for Powergen Italia is part of the empire of the British firm.
But Powergen Italia is actually an Italian battery firm, which was unaware running its name together in its URL would prove amusing to English speakers."
Trivial Pursuit
Sunday 15th June, 2003
I have found that it isn't a great idea to answer any question in this great game. I mean other peoples questions, even if I was innocently getting myself another drink and wasn't paying attention to the play order. Richard Nixon was a bastard and his ghost came to haunt me last night, this much I can reveal.
Still I don't think I deserved to be called a jackass (although many of you may agree with the insult :P ). I suppose what I'm really trying to say is "Don't play Trivial Pursuit when you are drunk". There was this other game, some kind of card game where you didn't play with any cards lower than a 10. To be honest I didn't really understand what was going on, that's why we started playing Trivial Pursuit. I think I was euchred from the start.
And here's something I wanted to post a long time ago
Thursday 12th June, 2003
I wonder what they do here:
Asshat of a network
Tuesday 3rd June, 2003
This is wrong:
You'd think a multi-billion dollar computer company would provide network access faster than a 33.6 modem, wouldn't you?
Minor updates...
Monday 2nd June, 2003
I updated the 404 error message so its colour scheme matches the rest of the site. That's pretty exciting isn't it?
I've also added a couple of links to the site in the external links section.
Oh yeah and in other news, the garden is planted, w00t. Twenty items have been planted, only one can survive.
HardDrive f1xx0r3d!
Wednesday 21st May, 2003
Well, Maxtor actually came through for me this time and delivered a tasty 60GB new HDD in replacement for my 40GB drive
Now that I had to replace the power supply in my PC I've started to wonder if maybe the problem was that all the time. Hard drives do tend to start having problems after the PC has shut down unexpectedly a few hundred times :P
Goddamn, muthafucking harddrive...
Tuesday 13th May, 2003
It's broken, AGAIN!
Maxtor are going to send me a new drive, hopefully this one won't break within two months :(
Message board back online
Friday 9th May, 2003
After a long period of time I am daring to put the message board back online.
Post a message or two, go on, you know you want to ;) The message board can be found here.
The Guestbook
Thursday 8th May, 2003
Is no longer online. It was more of a test of my skillz.
I am currently implementing a new bulletin board (it's not quite ready yet).Soon people will be able to not post in there instead of not posting on the message board ;)
Guestbook now implemented :)
Sunday 4th May, 2003
Post all suggestions, abuse and general stuff in the alyster.com Guestbook
Messing around with styles
Friday 2nd May, 2003
Just thought I'd try out a different colour scheme for a change.
Does anyone like it?
More Backgrounds
Thursday 1st May, 2003
Well I didn't get around to posting any real photographs yet. For now I have added a couple more delicious backgrounds to the Gallery section.
Enjoy!
This one's for Kris...
Monday 28th April, 2003
The rake in all of it's glory, modelled quite excellently by me ;)
Pretty Pictures
Monday 28th April, 2003
I have added a new section to the web site, it makes it more exciting for me anyway. I'll post up a whole bunch of the digital camera pictures we've taken over the last few years when I get home, for now you can see some beautiful desktop backgrounds.
The gallery can be viewed here.
Rake Update
Saturday 26th April, 2003
I have been refunded for my rake.
I bought a new one, this one is red.
Joy!
Rake
Saturday 26th April, 2003
My rake snapped in half. This is probably the most exciting thing that has happened in the last week.
This is MY SQL goddamnit!
Wednesday 16th April, 2003
Thanks to some exhausting work on my behalf and some invaluable advice from HRH JB'Ness the 3rd I have managed to get this page formatted so I can easily update it using PHP and mySQL.
Joy of Joys!
Its got a fucking H in it!
Wednesday 16th April, 2003
This would be an update
Thursday 17th April, 2003
I got told off for making alyster.com the homepage for the Committee so it's back to the old format. Possibly I will make alyster.com an update page for my plants. For those who care.
Actually I might take some pictures of the herbs I am currently growing, won't that be exciting?
• Fajita Seasoning Mix • Beer • Chicken Alfredo •
Sunday 27th April, 2008
That's it :)
Saturday 8th March, 2008
I updated on consecutive days. If you weren't aware of it already, the universe just imploded.
Also, tomorrow I should have a post that has 'fuck' in the title.
Friday 7th March, 2008
Well, I won't complain when it gets cold anymore - cold is better than snow.
We're fast heading towards the record - jeebus has scheduled a good 50CM of snow for tonight/tomorrow - putting us close to beating the record of 450CM of snow in one season, as of tonight we're at about 365CM.
My babies are rocking, Kaitlyn is a sweetheart to her little brother - she is an uber-goof (like her mum). Good times. Her little brother is now about 14 and a half pounds, not bad, he's about a twelfth of my weight at age 3 months :D
Despite the snow, we're almost done with winter, I am itching to get outside more and enjoy spring.
Sunday 17th February, 2008
10 feet of snow so far this season. Apparently we're fast heading towards a record. I hope we don't beat it.
We're all doing great, Kieran is awesome. It's winter, I am shit in winter - this is the best I can do, update-wise.
Later...
Tuesday 18th December, 2007
The boy has arrived! Kieran, 8lbs 10oz - born on November the 29th, 2007 at 7:02pm (ish).
It's been an insane two weeks - very busy :)
He is incredibly cute (of course) and a great little guy. Sleep hasn't been fantastic for the Gini (like a trooper I have been forced to stay in bed during the early morning wakings) but she's doing amazingly well.
I'd add more, but I'm not going to right now :P - Take a look at the pics, just follow the link in the title.
Saturday 24th November, 2007
I guess I've been in a weird brain-zone lately. It happens every year around about this time. 10cm snow on Wednesday, -13C when I got up this morning... I suppose I'm not a winter person.
Now don't get me wrong, I like winter stuff, but I seem to enter a brain fuzz zone at this time of year. It's OK though - it'll lift come April :D
The boy, thus far, seems as stubborn as Moosey and I. He is a week late at this point. I predict a Thursday / Friday birth, I hope I am wrong though. The Gini (quite understandably) doesn't want to be induced, I don't blame her - it seems like a huge pain, her labour was in the 27 hour region last time.
Not sure what else to say, there is lots - but it is late right now, looking forward to seeing my son :)
Oh, and by all means no last thought: Happy Birthday Spencer, you will always be almost as old as me :D
Saturday 13th October, 2007
NameThatDrug.com - Test your drug knowledge
I don't think so, but I guess the website thinks I am..
:P
Saturday 13th October, 2007
So, in stunning contrast to my last post the weather outside is a brisk 5 degrees C and there was frost on everything this morning. Damn.
The Moo is doing much better. However, after another visit to the doctor yesterday it transpires that pretty much we don't have a clue what she was sick with. She didn't actually need the antibiotics as the throat swab they took came back negative.
I guess it doesn't really matter after the fact as she is doing very well right now, happy and healthy :)
I just beat Guitar Hero II on medium mode, now I have to work on the more advanced techniques. Free Bird was a bitch, even on medium.
Friday 5th October, 2007
I thought I'd write a post on the last nice day of this year. It was 25C out today which is insane for October. From now on it's going to be shitty. Only five more months until spring-like weather, yay!
The moo is sick, for the first time in a long time. Turns out she has a throat infection of some kind (still waiting for the results) and she is on antibiotics. Unfortunately she reacted to them and has a rash all over her, made for a grim evening this evening. We've stopped these anti-biotics so hopefully she'll be doing better tomorrow, she's had a rough week (as have we all).
I stopped playing wow again (hence the update) likely for the final time. I keep trying but I'll never have the time to do anything worthwhile in the game - it's a game that rewards time spent playing it this means that I am pretty much fuxxored.
Second child is cooking nicely, we're fully expecting an early delivery. I'll keep you posted on that.
Also, Asus sucks, hardcore.
Friday 25th May, 2007
It would seem that a shaved head combined with the hotness in weather might lead to my scalp being burninated. My brain is red hot right now, it's not too shabby but putting a shit ton of moisturising cream on it is a little odd. I helped my brother in law build a deck today, it was a productive time - free pizza and beer helped, but then again it always does.
I've been on vacation this week, I guess now that Friday is over then technically my vacation is over. We didn't do a whole great deal of anything, but we had fun. We took the Moosey swimming, and to the local waterpark. We went to see the Chinese exhibit at the Museum of Civilization. We visited family, we're going to take Kaitlyn to Cosmic Adventure tomorrow, I'm pretty sure she will have fun going nuts there.
What else? Aww, nothing :)
Sunday 20th May, 2007
I self censored one of my recent press releases due to a comment made by El Willheim. Apparently saying "but, fuck" on a blog style homepage could be misconstrued as "teh ghei".
I didn't do too much this week, other than watch the Ottawa Sens get to the GODDAMNED STANLEY CUP FINALS! (W00t, by the way :) ) Oh, and also accidentally suplexing my baby, she's doing better than me for the experience.
I'm on vacation this week, life ain't too bad...
"I'm standing at the edge of the world, there's chaos in the city as the capital burns..."
Sunday 20th May, 2007
I have much to say, much to report... It's odd because I haven't actually used this page for the purpose it was originally intended, you know, updates and the such :) Today I will announce to those not in the know that I have shaved my hair. It's pretty short now.
'Til later!
Friday 11th May, 2007
Today I got the following email from Pampers.ca, I feel so emasculated:
Dear Alastair,
From the moment you first held your newborn baby in your arms, you knew that things would never be the same again. Suddenly, you've become a teacher, a nurse, a coach, a playmate and a friend. But, above all, you are a mother.
Because your little one may not yet realize how hard you work every day, we at Pampers would like to thank you for everything you do. Happy Mother's Day!
Wednesday 9th May, 2007
Kind of :) I am making proper leeway into being communicative with the rest of the world. I don't tend to use IM quite as much because I don't spend as much time in front of my PC - so I'll be falling back to email for a lot of contact, and of course I'll try to call people more often too.
Sunday 7th January, 2007
Yep...
Saturday 9th December, 2006
Moo, moo moo moo moo! Moo, moo. Moo; moo moo moo moo? Moo.
Friday 24th November, 2006
This video is excellent - Bombs so watch it, and enjoy :)
Moosey continues to amaze me on a daily basis. 9 months doesn't sound like a whole lot of time, but it's an eternity for a baby. She is climbing the stairs, cruising and generally setting herself up to be a whole lot of trouble in the near future.
Being at home with her is one of the best experiences of my life. Going back to work will be weird, hrmmm.
Anyway, it's late and I updated twice in a month. You're welcome.
Thursday 9th November, 2006
Blogs. Well, everyone and their dog has a blog (rhymes, I know - I'm a fucking genius). However, I think that this is the main reason that I have not updated this site quite as much as I did once upon a time. Well that and World of Warcraft - the stealer of souls, or at least of all free time.
So where to begin? I guess I'm interested whether anyone I know ever even looks at this site anymore. If I was smart and if I had time then I would probably do something awesome like track the sites stats - but I am not smart and I do not have any free time (except from right now it would appear).
I'd write more, and maybe make some vague promise to update again in the future, but I could simply be talking to a wall. If it interests anyone, then I am enjoying listening to the album 'Old World Underground, Where Are You Now' by Metric. It's most, umm, w00t.
Saturday 19th August, 2006
For those that don't know about it, I am now on full time parental leave. This means that I am home for the next six months (the perfect time for you Britainoids to visit me).
I was going to write more, but I am too tired, sorry.
Thursday 13th July, 2006
Yep, camping is a lot of fun. We took the moosey out on an experimental camping trip this week and it turned out that she just rocked the camping experience. She's only 4 and a half months old but she kicked campings arse. As such we decided to go camping again this weekend (after a couple of days at home avoiding the rain).
We went grocery shopping today with the camping trip in mind. We must have spent at least $40 on meat and meat by-products, I love camping!
Saturday 24th June, 2006
Yeah yeah, not posted in a while - blah blah blah :)
I had some time off and as such decided on a redesign of the site (a little). Recipe page is next.
Too much has happened in the last 4 months for me to worry about writing about it right now (it's far too early in the morning). In fact, I'm off to bed...
Wednesday 1st March, 2006
Yup, she's here and she's the cutest person in the world :)
Check out the update over at moosey.okroy.ca
Thursday 23rd February, 2006
Yup. I've added a little recently played tracks thing on the page. I've set up a few radio stations using last.fm and they're pretty sweet.
Still waiting for Moosey who at this point is 11 days overdue. That, and not playing WoW has pretty much consumed most of my time recently.
Wednesday 7th December, 2005
So I won't :D
Saturday 17th September, 2005
Yep, it's back, and it's better than ever. There is a recipe search on the recipe section of the site. It uses a boolean search thingie which is quite neat and powerful.
Anyway, if the lack of a search function frustrated you then be frustrated no more.
Friday 19th August, 2005
Yeah.
I've upgraded to Fedora Core 4 and taken care of a few issues I had with my last Linux installation.
As such I have to go through much less work to update this page.
My life has become very busy :) And I will post an update about that stuff soon. This is more to test that this thing still works ;)
Sunday 8th May, 2005
Good day :) Happy May!
I don't have a great deal to say, not because life is dull or anything. Just because.
We did a mothers day thing today, I appreciate my mother in law. It's a cliche that the mother in law is usually some kind of devil spawn, but it couldn't be further from the truth in my case. The womans mum has embraced me into the family and I appreciate that a great deal.
So here's to mothers and mothers day :)
Monday 25th April, 2005
The woman just bought me a copy of Becks latest and greatest. It's the special edition, comes with a hardback book (which doubles as the cd / dvd case) and it is neat :)
Not a great deal happening, work is, well work. I was lucky enough to get a free trial of World of Warcraft from Martin. It is a fun game, but I don't think nearly as addictive as a certain Mr Zutroy has made it out to be.
Blarr, it's been raining for what seems like an eternity (in fact it's been a couple of days) but it might dry up enough to go for a rollerblade tomorrow. I hope so.
And that is it!
Friday 8th April, 2005
Means a week of rollerblading. It feels pretty cool to be able to go out and do stuff like that on a more regular basis again.
I don't really have much more to say right now, maybe later ;)
Thursday 24th March, 2005
Are two things that I thought that I probably would never end up doing. But living in Canada makes a difference with respect to the ease of access to suitable facilities. Me and the woman just got back from 4 days of doing the above at Calabogie Peaks. We did some snowboarding. Snowboarding is hard, well probably more so if you've never slid down a mountain on anything before (no prior skiing / snowboarding experience here). To be honest, I think we did better than I thought we were going to. Gini was better at snowboarding than me. I fell over, a lot.
Skiing was exponentially easier to do, and much more fun because of it. We spent 2 days skiing and 1 on teh boards. The resort is mighty fine, I would recommend it to anyone, all of the people there are uber friendly (and stuff).
Anyway, I am still on vacation and loving it. Just got home and spent an hour an a half clearing off both levels of the deck and heading oot for sooper at the in-laws tonight.
So, laters :)
Friday 11th March, 2005
I came to realise what my issue is with March, why I find it so frustrating weather wise. Basically I'm wired to the fact that when the days start getting longer (ie it's light when I get up and light when I leave work) the days start getting warmer. This is delayed by about 6 weeks here, in mid-april it will start getting warmer (and by that I mean consitently above 0). I can't complain too much, I'm going snowboarding next week ;)
Also lanbbq and vacation time coming up, can't wait.
Friday 25th February, 2005
Uh huh, it's nearly the end of February. Lanbbq is on its way, the month is nearly up it's all looking OK :)
So, any of my British pals, you're also invited to the mighty lanbbq that's going down at chez my house on the 19th March (let me know eh?).
Not a great deal has happened since my last update to be honest, my t-shirt didnt arrive yet. I should check to see if I got charged for it on my credit card.
I'm still loving that Beck single, there needs to be more mainstream artists willing to use C64 music in their remixes :D Although I suspect that right now this music is being enhanced by my blood alcohol level (this seems to be very much the case when it comes to retro game music and yours truly).
Overnights are coming soon at work, I hope that this time I'm somewhat productive when I R doing them. Maybe a coding update of some type will be in the works, although again I doubt it. I've been much more of a slacker lately :)
I wish there was more to report, but unfortunatley life is pretty mundane. In this respect I can only blame myself :) No point in bitching about an ordinary life / job / world if I don't really do much to change it. This is very much a February in Canada thing though I feel. It's hard to plan anything when the weather is so changeable. Me and the woman went for a rollerblade last Sunday, hmm well actually the Sunday before. I couldnt really do that tomorrow, too freaking cold (it was -19C this morning)., it makes it difficult to plan ahead, might go for a skate instead.
The thing is, I am a lot more active than I used to be. Even as a child or young adult (read Mightily Pimpled Teentard) I never used to be as active as I am now (believe it or not I used to sit in front of a TV hooked up to either a atari 800xl, C64, Spectrum, Amiga, nes, snes, megadrive or playstation (all thoughout my yoof to early adult)). So being stuck indoors all winter is incredibly frustrating. The winter in Canada is literally 5-6 months long (this is the length of time that I can't really do any outdoor activity that I personally enjoy). Now to be fair, I do go climbing (read bouldering) twice a week (at least I try to keep to that schedule) but it sure isn't the same as getting out and about in the spring / summer time.
Ack, I think those February blehs are actually starting to affect me. Hmm, good job there are only 3 days of February left.
Holy shit, this is far too much of a ramble for my liking. Meh, that is it for now :D
Saturday 12th February, 2005
It would help if you were a little more retro geeky like me you know. Man, you JUST DON'T UNDERSTAND!
Anyhoo, I'm eagerly awaiting this in the post: This thingie.
I wonder what the Gini will say ;)
Tuesday 8th February, 2005
You know, in case you were wondering or something.
I made a couple of little style tweaks to the website here and there, apparently the bold font in these postings was annoying Kris. What can I say? I think it looks a bit better, the colours are a little better balanced, I tweaked the margins a bit and I fixed some code on the recipe page to do with the comments (more than one comment was generating invalid xhtml, bad me!), now the only thing that will generate any kind of xhtm parse errors is the Archive page (I think) and that is pretty much down to external links having wierd characters in them.
It's been a bit of a bleh week, the weather has been hovering around 0 degrees C, to be honest I wish it was a little colder. The warm weather melted all of the ice sculptures down down and its become better to walk on the canal than skate. On the plus side, the massive snow pile in front of my house has now become a little more manageble and the fuel economy on my car has shot up (by about 200km per tank).
As the spe_dog just put it to me, what we have a here is a rather nasty case of the Februarys :) I actually intentionally decided to get the old wisdoms out in Feb just because it is the shittiest month, what's the point of ruining a perfectly good other month on a couple of weeks of discomfort?
Anyway, that's it for now.
Thursday 3rd February, 2005
Well, I have a rotten headcold which doesn't help (sore throat, congestion and all that). I did remember everything, so no amnesia for me.
Man was there ever a whole bunch of spelling mistakes in that last post, hmph. Well I suppose it was a miracle I could type at all. Anyway, my right jaw now looks like it has a baseball attached to it, the tooth that required the most work was sitting in the back right side of my mouth.
The Gini bought me a dinosaur (for the aquarium) and a remote controlled mini-submarine (for the aquarium - it could be similar to yours Will) as way of making me feel better, thanks Gini :)
Probably won't be heading to work until Monday as it's difficult for me to get my head through doorways right now so that could make me housebound ;)
Wednesday 2nd February, 2005
I just had my wizdom teeth removed (in fact about an hour an a half ago). I am still hopped up on narcotics and apparently there is a good chance that I won't remember a whole bunch of this because of the amnesia effects of the drugs.
So basically I had to do an update just for the weirdness factor. Also I just popped a big old dose of codene so that bad boy should be knicking in sometime soon.
So for my own reference, as of this point I remeber waking up as the dentist was putting in the stiches. I remember the recovery room and discussing all sorts of stuff with the chick there, I remember driving home with no issues (Highway on to moodie then down strandherd) and I brought the garbage can in ;)
I don't think I will forget all of that mundane stuff, but to be honest if I do, it would'nt be all that great of a loss.
They showed me a couple of my teeth from after the removal (I had all 4 yanked out, 2 had to be cut out) and they had large chunks of flesh haning off them, yummy!
So anyway, suffice to say, I'm not dead, so that's alright, and I may upadate later if I feel like it (apparently it will all start to suck a lot more after the pain medicine wears out :( )
Thursday 20th January, 2005
Check this oot.
From the article, actually fuck it, all of the article, it's pretty small:
OTTAWA (Reuters) - A cold spell gripping Ottawa is so intense that houses have started to produce loud cracking noises, prompting worried citizens to report burglaries and gunfire, local police said Wednesday.
Spokeswoman Monique Ackland said police had received around 20 calls Monday night and Tuesday morning, when temperatures in the Canadian capital dipped to an unseasonably low minus 40 Celsius (minus 40 Fahrenheit).
"Those were calls about breaking and entering, people making excessive noise and calls about gunshots," she said. Police responded to each alarm and rapidly realized crime was not responsible.
"Those calls were all (prompted by) the cold," she said, adding that one possible reason for the loud noises were exploding nails.
Saturday 15th January, 2005
It's all looking a bit different, innit?
I moved alyster.com to a new server. My own. Not to say that my ex-hosts Ace of Space were no good, those guys were fucking fantastic, but I had to move on.
There are a few features not available until later (namely the recipe search) but what the hell everything looks better.
Also I procured a new soundcard (Soundblaster Audigy 2 ZS) it is mighty fine, my games have sped up and stuff sounds, well, crispier.
Monday 3rd January, 2005
Ahh, Gananananaoque is back to haunt me. I decided that for our new years trip to teh cootage of Will we would take the Poopalier. It died, gushing coolant over the dirt road we were travelling on at the time. Thankfully Will let us use his CAA membership and the cost of the tow to Gananananaoque was a total of $0. Unfortunatly the radiator died (big old hole in it) and it needs to be replaced and flushed. ($500).
So we will be heading out to Gananananoque today to pick up the ailing beast.
The Hippo did us a great service on New Years day by driving an hour to come and pick us up (towing the car back to Oottawa would have cost too much) so thanks again Spe! J00 4r3 t3h r0ck!
Oh yeah, Happy New Year!
Sunday 12th December, 2004
Actually, in reference to my last posting (and this also refers to another previous posting), one of the things I apparently did last night was write 'Turn the fucking music down' in the snow on the back of my neighbours car. It's a good job that I wasn't too drunk to realise that was a fucking dumb idea and removed my snow grafitti before it could be discovered by my friends next door.
Sunday 12th December, 2004
The womans work party was fun. It was at the museum of civilization (in france), a most excellent venue for any posh looking party. I got very drunk for free, I got very sleepy near the end of the night and napped on the bus on the way home. Apparently I also got up to other antics on the way home but as I have no recollection of said antics they didn't happen.
I had to work today which was a pain in the arse, it was OK though because originally I had to get up at 5:30am to head to work (I would have been in no good state at that time) but my shift got pushed forward a little. If I had to work at 6:30 it would have been a fucking disaster as the 'lectricity broke and there was no juice to my alarm clock. Also there was a good 10cm of snow piled up on my car this morning, I was in no fit state to drive but neither was the woman (she stayed in bed unitl 1:30pm, 1 freakin 30!)
I spent my x-mas bonus on a pair of ice skates today, hopefully I will get to use them sometime soon. It's a pair of hockey skates. To my British pals this might sound all impressive like I'm being all sporty and shit for the first time in my existence but the sad fact is that I could get either hockey skates or figure skates and I'm no a buftie. The shitty thing about buying hockey skates it that they take a long time to break in, I have no idea whether my purchase is going to be any good until at least a good 2 weeks of solid use, goddamnit!
That's it...
Wednesday 8th December, 2004
I just got off overnights, it was thouroughly unpleasant. Anyway, as much as I want to say more, this is a public wossname. So I will continue with listening to my wikkid jungle tunes and get on with this update.
It be the Gini's work party this week, it has a free bar (I love free bars!). It seems that Canada is the country of free bars, I had heard of the concept but never experienced it until I came to these blessed fabled shores (Thanks Will, Megan, Janice and Chris for your free booze wossnames, yeah yeah you all had the pleasure of being married but I had the pleasure of being drunk at your expense ;) )
Now here is a cry out to some of my English freinds, get married, have a free bar and if you're lucky then maybe I might turn up and sponge some free inebriation from you. DO IT!
I need to pee.
Wow, the tune I'm listening to just said (and I quote) 'My rhymes are harder than last nights erection' I wish I was such a master songwriting type.
I'm oot of stuff to say, mainly because the rant I want to go in to about how work is so shitty just is'nt appropriate ;)
Bye all!
Wednesday 1st December, 2004
Yup, 's the month of el Crimbo again. Me and the woman have already provided our gifts to ourselves. We gots a 6 month membership to all of the public recreation centres around here, should see the winter through I feel.
It's late and I'm listening to some wicked jungle tracks, I'm heading full on into my weekend (I have messed up shifts this week) and I already am happy in the knowledge that in the next two days I am going to achieve absolutely nothing. I am so very tired right now, mainly because our new neighbours have some obsession with being quiet as mice all night then pumping out rock / video game / whatever else music after 11pm. I believe the main reason they do this is because they are fucking stupid.
As always hopefully I will get some coding done in the next few days, I have been neglecting that side of things and it is upsetting me. Happily though I have both my server and my desktop systems configured to my liking and both are running Linux. Hopefully ATI will be coming out with some 3d drivers for my card within the next couple of weeks to top off the joy.
Also, one last thing. I'd like to give a shout out to one of my under appreciated buddies here in Canadar, the only advice I can give is to keep doing what you're doing (in the way that you interact with fellow humans) because, believe it or not, you're doing a better job of it than most of the people around you, and the good stuff will come through in the end. Hope is a bitch, but unfortunately most of the time it's all we have to work with.
Friday 19th November, 2004
Climbing, Chinese boofet and out on the town for some boozing, what could be better in a day? Tomorrow is the offical celebration of Hippos birthday (or at least his alter ego), so here's to Spe. You're as old as me now, whore!
Thursday 28th October, 2004
Oh for the love... It's been such a long time since I did anything approaching a real kind of update.
First of all, I moved house two weeks ago, a pretty stressful experience you might imagine, but no! I had the most wickedest of crews, The Mighty Pratts and the Spe_Dogg massive were looking out for my stuff. It was great moving with people who cared about making sure all my (I guess, really, unimportant) stuff was taken care of. Seriously, it could have been 1,000,000 times worse, it was the easiest move in the history of all moves and that was down to the people that helped me (THANK, the fuck, YOU ALL!).
It's great being in town, I lost a little of my High Speed bandwidth (down from 4mbps to 2.5 - but hey, my upload stays the same). It's nice being so close to work, I just got off my 6 week rotation overnight shift (sorry, truly sorry Greg that I couldn't continue with the insanity and go make some Karaoke love down town) it was nice only having to drive for 6 or 7 minutes to get home after such a ballache instead of driving for 20 minutes.
Me and the Gini just passed our five year anniversary of weddingness. This is very, totally fucking amazingly awesome :) I would like to give a shout out to the woman (who, along with me, was accused of being 20 yrs old tonight (thank you unknown stranger)) who has made this silly fucking existence much, much more happy and enjoyable.
She only loves me for my dimples :)
Another thing I have found to be highly enjoyable lately is the fact that my brother (El Mykio) has also obtained himself some high speed internet action, and in true, raegin Okroy fashion, is looting the intarweb for all that it is worth.
I'm out of stuff to say, some day maybe I'll call you, I'll see whenever I'm free.
So, so, KO...
Friday 22nd October, 2004
First of all, here's the funniest signature I saw in all of today: "--Bush/Cheney '04 - Because You Don't Change Horsemen Mid-Apocalypse--"
I plan on writing a big old update, honestly, it's true. I have been doing a million and one chores today and am at about the end of my be-arsedness. So instead of writing that update I think I'll have myself a beer and maybe just kick back for a little bit.
Thursday 30th September, 2004
So very much stuff to buy. What colour should my basement be? The woman seems to thing that a green type colour would be just swell, and I think I agree with her. I can't get a pool table in there though (maybe that's something for the next basement.
I'm so very tired right now, I had to get up at 5:30am the last couple of days as I'm covering Kathleens shifts, I'm also working 6 days in a row this week (mon-sat) then I'll have Sunday off then back to work on Monday. My schedule got all fucked up this week (shouts going out to Cameron for that one).
I will be having a hoose warming followed by a lanbbq a little afterwards (maybe a week or two after) all of this will be happening sometime in November.
Also, the womans team won their baseball playoffs, they rock :)
Friday 24th September, 2004
Here she be: HooSe Pictures
I will be moving in within the space of a month and a half or so. Lots of shit to do first. All things willing I will still be visiting the UK in the spring / summer of next year. It's pretty hard to figure out what will be happening in six months from now. A month ago I didn't think I would have a 25 (or 19 year the way we're doing it) debt, but I really hope I will be able to visit Yurp. I'm long overdue a visitation.
Oh, and on another note please check out some Elliott Smith. If you're a fan of the melodic rock 'n roll then you would be a fool to pass this gentleman by. It's a shame he won't be making music ever again, and it's a personal opinion that his cover of 'Because' by The Beatles is better than the original.
Rumours are in the pipeline that the Spe_Dog will be purchasing a breadmaker for yours truly. What can I say, the guy rocks ;). If any of you fuckers want some fresh bread related products, drop me a line and maybe we could set up an appointment.
Wednesday 22nd September, 2004
So, it looks like me and the woman will be the proud new parents of a mortgage.
I love the way that the word mortgage starts with the french word for dead. Hmm, I wonder where the word is derived from.
And a quick dictionary.com search later comes up with this:
[Middle English morgage, from Old French : mort, dead (from Vulgar Latin *mortus, from Latin mortuus, past participle of mor, to die. See mer- in Indo-European Roots) + gage, pledge (of Germanic origin).]
Hmm, fascinating.
Anyway, the hoose is in Barrhaven and seems to be quite cool. I will gallerify it when I move in, which is soon (closing is Oct 15th).
Also, because of the above I gots me a new stove. It has many features and is dressed in stainless steel clothing.
Oh the joy.
Sunday 19th September, 2004
Talk Like a Pirate
Shiver me timbers! If it's not Talk like a Pirate day again, avast!
Well me hearties, I've been very, very busy lately and neglected this fine web site somewhat. To be honset I'm doing a lot of work on okroy.ca as it will be my main site eventually.
And there are other things in the works that some ppl know about, and some ppl don't.
More information on Tuesday.
Thursday 16th September, 2004
I'm trying to buy a house, I am very close to doing so in fact. More details to follow.
Friday 10th September, 2004
A little:
Thursday 2nd September, 2004
Oh Fuck, it's September already. I guess I should have updated by now, but August was a pretty hectic month.
I'll be camping this weekend but I promise some kind of an August Log after that.
Thursday 12th August, 2004
It's official, I'm one sexy bastard.
First read this
Then observe:
Men with "front vowels" in their names -- sounds formed at the front of the mouth like the "a" in Matt or Alyster -- were considered sexier than men with "back vowel" sounds like the "au" in Paul, she concluded.
See! Like the 'a' in alyster!
Tuesday 10th August, 2004
Wow, looks like I haven't updated this site for a while. Sorry. I guess I have been too involved in Okroy.ca and, you know, general summer type stuff.
When I logged in to make this update I noticed that my hosting company had bumped up my package considerably. I now have 100MB space (way more than enough) and 100 email addresses (way to fucking many), 10 separate mysql databases (I only use 1) and I believe a whack more monthly bandwidth than I had (like I need it). Although their name may be cheesy, I couldn't recommend Ace of Space enough.
Monday 26th July, 2004
Yawn! I did a bunch of work on the okroy.ca site. It's going to be my online database of troubleshooting stuff, tech articles and other fun things. The backend, as far as authentication is concerned, is already more advanced than alyster.com. There still isn't a great deal there yet, but it's all baby steps for the time being.
Sunday nights / Monday mornings are unsurprisingly quiet on the overnight shift. Things will pick up tomorrow for sure, just hope that I can get through the next couple of overnights without too much hassle. I won't have to do another one until labour day week or so. I hope.
Sunday 25th July, 2004
Man, I'm ill. Gots me a sore throat and a blocked nose, mild illness seems to be part and parcel of the overnight shift with me. I suspect it has a large part to do with the lack of sleep, especially on this first overnight shift where I think I got a total of maybe 4 hours of sleep before getting up at 9:30am for a shift that starts at 9pm.
Meh! It's all good though, I'm going camping next weekend and Miss Nature is set to serve up some mighty fine weather. Looking forward to a couple of days on the beach, basking in 30C sunshine. I burned the tops of my feet today when I was sat on the porch, it was only 21C out so I think that 30 and sunny could mean painination without some adequate preparation first.
Bah! That's it for now I'm afraid.
Friday 23rd July, 2004
Oh for a job that actually pays me what I'm worth. I wonder how many people out of the billions on this tiny globe have that thought on a daily basis. I guess my only option is to stop bitching and start looking.
Anyway, here's a wee excerpt from a chat I had recently on this big old intarweb of ours:
aLyStEr... says:
man all I did was freaking chores today
aLyStEr... says:
when I was a kid I thought that when I grew up I wouldn't have to do freaking chores anymore
aLyStEr... says:
life, she is a mother-chore
See, I even bitch about my days off.
Wednesday 7th July, 2004
I listened to that album again, it's still looperific, which can be expected for this type of music. I do like to give stuff more than one chance and I have to say that the album is a lot better than I originally gave it credit for. I've actually listened to it on a decent stereo, with the volume turned up (as I expect nature intended for a dance album) and it's pretty nicely layered, has some good transitions and just generally rocks nicely.
Thats it.
Monday 5th July, 2004
For those of you who haven't hear the new album by The Prodigy, Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned, let me sum it up for you in one sentence.
Image a tone deaf eight year old, locked in a room with Fast Tracker for a couple of hours and this album is what you'll get; It's looperific.
In other news, I went climbing yesterday, for the first time in 4 weeks, and I managed not to hurt myself. Starting with an incline wasn't such a good idea for my shoulder though as I can't support any weight on it at certain angles.
I'll try again on Thursday.
Tuesday 29th June, 2004
That bastard Harper isn't Prime Minister. Looks like we might be in for some interesting government for the next little while.
Saturday 26th June, 2004
When on this silly overnight shift the mind can be subject to random pondering,
Here's a thought that ran through my head after I heard a particularly distubing creaky type tapping sound at about 3am. The thought was "FPS games are a total crock of shite". If I was suddenly launched into a Half-Life or Quake type scenario at my work place I would be utterly defenseless.
I took a quick stock of my immediate surroundings and instead of a multitude of Armour Bonuses, Health Packs, Ammo Packs and of course the obligitary BFG there was a Plush Seal toy, a Small Tent and some Christmas Trees. I mean, how the hell am I meant to defend mankind from creature beyond the foulest pit with a fluffy seal?
I think I ought to put a complaint in with management regarding this. Bring on the rail guns!
Saturday 26th June, 2004
So I made a few minor changes to the recipe section, added a function here, built a script there. The net effect of my 30 minutes toil is that in the search views and the all recipes view of the recipe section the rating is now listed also. I may expand this at some point to include how many comments each recipe has.
See, I knew you would all be excited.
Friday 25th June, 2004
Man, these overnights are dull and shitty.
Looking forward to the weekend, fo' tha shizzy.
(aL...)
So I will be sending off my application to become an official Mooseshagger today. Apparently I will have to dress up as Bob McKenzie and sing O Canada while eating perogies and poutine and drink a 24 to become fully integrated into society here.
Sounds like fun.
Wednesday 23rd June, 2004
So first of all a little update on my poor aching shoulder. It still hurts, not as bad, but its still there. I think it's going to take me a little while to get back into the climbing, which really sucks :( I really have an appreciation for the grief that Spe_dogg and his poor dislocated finger went through now. Lack of exercise is frustrating.
Being back at work is a little strange, probably because I'm going straight into the overnights. I had 1240 emails waiting for me, So many, in fact, that they broke my email client.
I don't have too much to say as I'm too tired right now. The only thing I would say is Hi LuiS! I will reply to your email, honest ;)
Wednesday 9th June, 2004
Are something that I don't have. I went out for a rollerblade with the Gini yesterday, it was a journey that was to end in doom for me (and entertainment for the Gini).
I was coming down a hill, right, lost my blance somewhat, right, so instead of hitting the road I figured it would be better to hit the grass, so I leaped over the gravel on the shoulder and ploughed into a field, shoulder first.
My shoulder hurts, it looks like it is about twice the size of my other shoulder (which kind of makes me look super buff from one side at least). The good news is that I have movement in most directions (I can't hold my arm up and across my chest, boo frickin hoo).
As I have mentioned, my Dad is here to visit. He helped me complete my awesome speaker setup. I am now the proud new parent of a pair of Athena S.5 speakers (normal bookshelf speakers that I am using as my surround sound speakers). Here is a picture:
We watched a movie last night, you know to test them out an all, the sound was fantastic. The movie sucked. (I would recommend AGAINST watching the movie 'Cube').
Wednesday 2nd June, 2004
Yep, it's almost that time of year again. This vacation I will spend economising, as my Crapalier has cost me $1200 in the last month. She's a beauty.
There probably won't be any time to do the myriad of things that I want to do with the web-site, but as they say "Life, she is a motherfucker". (Or something close to that anyway).
Later...
Thursday 27th May, 2004
(WARNING! This contains some very Canadian and work specific stuff!)
So I got one of those nice unsolicited calls tonight, this time it was regarding saving money on my long distance plan, it went a little like this, oh and BTW here is the key (m) = me (h) = her :
h: Can I speak to A Okroy please small note here, my phone book reference says 'A Okroy' and not my true, great name
m: Hello, 'A' speaking
h: I'm calling from Primus and I'd like to tell you about our great long distance plan
m: All hopefull about ending the conversation soon and shit Well actually, I already technically work for Primus and I can get a long distance plan through work
h: Ignoring what I just said Do you currently have a long distance plan?
m: Well actually as I just said, we recently just got bought out by Primus and I can get the plan you're talking about cheaper through work
h: But you don't currently have any plan set up with Primus
m: We just got bought out within the last month, have you heard of a company called Magma Communications?
h: Not really, it sounds kind of familiar I think. Can I tell you about our rates?
m: As I just said, we just got bought out, we're doing the employee discount thing right now so I'm not really interested
h: Ok thanks for your time etc etc
m: Not a problem at all, oh an if you get the time please check out magma.ca
h: Good evening
This should be a fun ride I think...
Friday 21st May, 2004
So I fixed a small bug in the recipe ratings page that caused the posting date to be appended to the rating date.
This might mean that the posted date of the recipe no longer chronologically matches when it was actually posted for a couple of recipes.
Oh yes, and I made a couple of changes to the Mono style sheet, it looks a little more like the one on my other site.
Saturday 15th May, 2004
Oh, and I got bored of Eve. As pretty as it looks, it lacks depth. Well I couldn't find any at any rate. This, in realistic terms, means nothing.
Saturday 15th May, 2004
It would seem that this year would be the year that a bunch of my favouritest bands ever decide to visit Canada eh...
Muse, well those that visit okroy.ca would know that I have missed out on Muse already. I just found out that they are touring with The Cure in July/August. Well the only problem is that the closest they'll get to me this time is Detroit, a highly dodgy city that beats the whole of Canada in its murders per year quota. Plus its a nine hour drive.
Next in line is Gomez. My dad is visiting me in three weeks, this is also the time that Gomez are visitating Ottawa. It wouldnt be prudent or even slightly fair to book tickets for this gig on the day after my dear old poperoo lands in Canada so no go there either. Or is it! It would appear that this fine group is playing in Taranna in August. I'll be there, buying me some tickets permitting.
The other band, and possibly the one that I would most anticipate watching (actually that's a lie, I've seen these guys before, I've never seen Muse live) are the Wildhearts. They are supporting the most shitty 'The Darkness' in Morrreeealll. The problem here being that I will be on my overnight shifteroo, no getting oot of that biatch.
So all in all, live musically, this year is almost going to be as much of a scam as other years. Damn I hope I get to see Gomez. That would be t3h p00pX0r5.
Monday 3rd May, 2004
I got rid of the Achieved this month section. I wasn't really achieving anything at all.
There are a couple of new recipes in the old recipe section, courtesy of Camion and Zutroy. I will be adding a little more functionality to the recipe section that allows a recipe to be edited by the original submitter. That will be along later :)
Wednesday 28th April, 2004
Me and the hipposaurus have recently set of on an expedition into Outer Space (to find another place). Here are some snapshots I took while traveling the trade routes:
Eve online is more fun than I thought it would be :)
Thursday 22nd April, 2004
Ahh, overnights are about to happen themselves upon me again. This means that I will get around to actually updating my site again :)
Joy all round for everyone!
Oh yes, and I finally got around to getting myself fixed up with some haircut action. My hair was starting to take on a personality of its own, it's a relief that I no longer have to wax philosophical with my own scalp.
Monday 12th April, 2004
Burgatron 2 - The child of Burgatron made an appearance at my abode this evening, I am honoured :)
For more details regarding the entity that is known as Burgatron please visit hipposaurus.com
Thursday 8th April, 2004
I have been told that I'm not allowed to complain about snow, even if its in April.
Josh is in Newfoundland right now (to be honest it's about time that place changed its name to Recentlyfoundland or Wefounditquiteawhileagobutcouldntcomeupwithagoodnewnameland) and the snow there is a little more extreme:
Tuesday 6th April, 2004
I suppose I got to learn to love 6 months of Winter a year if I want to stay in Canada.
It's just so freaking cold. I suppose it's my fault for buying some shiny new Rollerblades this week. (Actually thanks go out to the Gini for that one).
Saturday 20th March, 2004
(Ahem, in the northern hemisphere).
So my part of Canada is celebrating by providing 10CM snow today followed by 5mm rain. (I guess that makes approx 8 or so CM of slush then)
Sunday 14th March, 2004
I'm updating this page purely because I'm at work and I'm horribly bored. I don't even really have anything to say, but then again I rarely do.
I'm in the process of working on the gallery again. IE is a sonofabitch non-compliant POS browser, it's unusual to have stuff work properly in Mozilla but not properly in IE. But whatever, it's something I'll have to work on.
Monday 8th March, 2004
So. Authentication has been implimented in a couple of sections. It might seem like a pain in the arse, but due to the fact I had several forms that would allow posting to the database it is pretty much nescesary.
It only takes a couple of seconds to register, honest! Anyway, due to the fact that I added this, the comments section for recipies has been added to the bottom of each recipe.
Sunday 7th March, 2004
So authentication has now been implemented on the site. You can't really tell by looking, but trust me it's there.
Next step is to add that comments thingie to the recipes web page, thats definatly a matter of be-arsedness.
I prepared that curry on Thursday, to be honest it didnt look all that great (a brown sludge in fact), but man did it ever taste fucking great. I would heartily recommend it to any beginner curry maker, simple yet most tasty.
Thursday 4th March, 2004
So my overnights project this time is to add a comments section to the recipes database.
You'll have to login to post a comment on any of the reipes you have tried. Should be good methinks ;)
Monday 1st March, 2004
If you didn't notice, a kind chef added a whole bunch of most excellent curry recipes to my recipe web page. I'll be trying this on Thursday.
Hey, I might even take a picture for your viewing pleasure :)
Saturday 21st February, 2004
I have added some conversions to the recipe section. I will add more as I find them. (Weights and measurements, things of that nature).
When I finally travel back to Engerland I will be coming with the gift of measuring thingies.
Thursday 19th February, 2004
I have re-coded the "all recipes" page to fit in with the new deisgn.
Take a look, its in the recipes section.
Tuesday 17th February, 2004
I figured it out. How to centre images when just using xhtml and all of these div fellahs. This is for Kris more than anyone else :)
img {
border: 0px;
display: block;
margin: 0 auto;
}
Saturday 14th February, 2004
Who want's to visit Canada? Free room and board for mah peeps. No vacation for Al and the Gini this year that involves leaving Canada. All applications for visitation will be seriously considered. Get em in soon.
On a completely different note, I think that I will be applying to be a certified moose-shagger soon. That's it.
And on another completely different note (that Kris will hate me for), listen to French lounge music, the new Stereolab album is most .... .... .... French ;)
Friday 6th February, 2004
After my latest Windows re-install, and resulting uber stable system, it would appear that Outlook does not want to recognise the fact that it used to take care of addresses and phone numbers for me. Being the unprepared fool I am it would also appear that all non-digital copies I had of said phone numbers and addresses have disappeared.
This means that, if I had your telephone number, house address and email address then I most likely don't have them anymore. Drop me a line would you :)
Friday 6th February, 2004
More RAM! The lever of doom that caused the grief in the first place now seems to be fully functional.
Thursday 5th February, 2004
But I love her so. Well, actually I don't. But it's not really her fault. I suppose. She has some rusty old bits, her memory is failing. No, only one bank of her memory is failing and that is replaceable. I just wish it hadn't of failed in such a spectacular fashion, during a session of Neverwinter Nights. Oh well, I will grab an upgrade today and see how that goes.
Sunday 1st February, 2004
Thanks to a little tutorial here the site now has selectable styles. Not very good ones, but I'll work on that :)
Sunday 1st February, 2004
With a little help from Kris and a lot of buggering around fixing the layout (well actually re-creating it from scratch) I have fixed (I hope) the formatting problems with the site.
Could you please drop me a line if you have any problems? Please :)
Sunday 1st February, 2004
It looks like that I'm just about done integrating the recipe bit into the main bit. Suffice to say it works. Actually this is a lie, it only seems to work with Internet Explorer, the most lenient of all the browsers. In other browsers it looks like the grand arse. Buggah. I suppose it gives me something to do at a later point (a point that is hopefully not as stupidly late/early as 3:30 in the morning.)
Give her a try please, and report back to me if anything fucks up (which it inevitably will).
Yawn, g'night.
Friday 30th January, 2004
So I updated the rest of the code as well. I will eventually make a much better archive also
I have also re-installed gallery. There are a few new backgrounds for your perusing pleasure and I definatly plan to get some of those photos up that I've been promising for a wee while.
Friday 30th January, 2004
I have completely re-coded alyster.com (well the index page anyway
It now no longer uses tables, not one table. Oh the joy, this should also get rid of the double scroll bar effect that intermittantly happened with some browsers.
See, I knew you would be happy.
Sunday 25th January, 2004
Kris pointed out a little something that caused the screen to get uberwide, this should be fixed now...
I hope :)
Sunday 25th January, 2004
If anyone was fretting (and I know that SOMEONE must have been fretting), the transition of my website from one server to the other went just peachy. Thanks for asking ;)
Sunday 25th January, 2004
Ahh, such things that are happening. First of all I would like to congratulate my dearest brother in law, Ooh Ahh, on his new job, I greatly look forward to taking advantage of his 'out east' status. I've heard that the beer drinking is most good out there. In other news, my father will be visiting this great land of ours sometime in June.
Sunday 18th January, 2004
Because of the site moving to a different server the email whoojit is a little different.
If you actually use your alyster.com email you'll have to put the full email address and the password when you click on the webmail link.
Oh, I had to re-create the accounts, this means that I might have your password wrong, if you can't log in please drop me a line :)
Saturday 17th January, 2004
Moving to a different hosting package (with some nifty nice new stuff) so there may be a little downtime with email and the such.
Sunday 11th January, 2004
One of many interesting conversation snippits obtained from here.
IronChef Foicite: well, there's a lot of reasons
IronChef Foicite: i mean, roses only last like a couple weeks
IronChef Foicite: and that's if you leave them in water
IronChef Foicite: and they really only exist to be pretty
IronChef Foicite: so that's like saying
IronChef Foicite: "my love for you is transitory and based solely on your appearance"
IronChef Foicite: but a potato!
IronChef Foicite: potatos last for fucking ever, man
IronChef Foicite: in fact, not only will they not rot, they actually grow shit even if you just leave them in the sack
IronChef Foicite: that part alone makes it a good symbol
IronChef Foicite: but there's more!
IronChef Foicite: there are so many ways to enjoy a potato! you can even make a battery with it!
IronChef Foicite: and that's like saying "i have many ways in which I show my love for you"
IronChef Foicite: and potatos may be ugly, but they're still awesome
IronChef Foicite: so that's like saying "it doesn't matter at all what you look like, I'll still love you"
Sunday 4th January, 2004
Winter sucks. Actually, around here the winter, to date, has been almost tropical with the temperatures above zero most of the time. This is to change, rapidly. I was thinking of changing my yearly thermometer update with a link to the Weather Network instead. But you know, that just wouldn't be the same.
I need a toque!
Thursday 1st January, 2004
Ya hosers!
Sunday 28th December, 2003
I hope everyone had a great (X)-mas and will have an equally cool (or possibly much better) New Year.
To all my friends and family: Remember I love you all to bits and life would be much more boring without you ;)
Sunday 21st December, 2003
That's it. That's my new section. Things I have achieved this month. I'll eventually have an archive so I can see what I achieved historically.
To be honest more coding gubbins has gone into the above section than your first glance might make you assume. It's got sweet assed error checking and a time/date relativity function(TM).
Sunday 21st December, 2003
Or something. Ahh, another update that is fuelled only by my total boredom during my overnight shift. (And you're reading because you were fuelled by total boredom in whatever you were doing before you came here to read this). Ahhhhhh Zen. Oh fuck, I forgot Zen is soooo nineties. And so is saying things are sooooo (insert something here).
Well I hope you're enjoying your visit here today. To be honest the best piece of advice I can give you is to leave this hallowed page of mine and head over to Chez Hipposaurus and check out his tasty little new section. It promises a level of delicous anarchy that I couldn't even hope to emulate.
I will be adding a small 'plug in' to my site soon. It's not quite as enjoyable as Hippos addition but it'll at least keep me on my toes, or point out to me how worthless my existence is ;)
Right that's it for now...
Monday 1st December, 2003
Just in case anyone was curious:
Sunday 30th November, 2003
Then I guess I'd look like this :)
Sunday 30th November, 2003
I updated the recipe database to have a print preview function. That was fun and took all of 10 minutes to do. Meh, Sundays are so slow.
Saturday 22nd November, 2003
Man oh man. My accent is totally fucked up now. As part of my employment I get the joy of listening to a few of my calls every month, I did this yesterday. It was like a rollercoaster ride accross the atlantic. One second it sounded Yorkshire (ish) the next second (typically when I'm spouting a more Canadian phrase) it sounded like a bastardised mixture of Brian Glover and Byan Adams. Maybe I need speech therapy or something.
Tuesday 11th November, 2003
I want it. I'm hoping some kind of game fairy will leave it under my pillow so I can awaken to a morning of joy. I don't think that's going to happen though :(
Sunday 9th November, 2003
A catalogue of non-sleepingness. Being pushed, unwilling, into an overnight shift is somewhat akin to beating ones head with a nail filled bat. My sleep patterns are totally screwed.
Yesterday I was woken up after 4 hours of fitful sleep by some yippidy yip merchant testing out his Uber-Bass (TM) sound system, probably on his Pinto. It felt like it was being tested in my bedroom. Unfortunatly for me because the human ear has a hard time determining the direction that low frequency sound is coming from, I couldnt locate the G and put a sledgehammer through his sub-woofer.
I nearly fell asleep at the wheel on the drive home (Spencer gleefully told me this afternoon that thats why the majority of morning accidents occur). Today I was awoken by a large explosion, this was after 5 hours of similarly fitful sleep. Boo hoo.
I wonder what tomorrow will bring.
Thursday 30th October, 2003
It looks like I actually have high speed. It's nice and speedy. The only problem is that I've forgotten what the internet was for again. Hmm, something beginning with P?
Thursday 30th October, 2003
'They' say that Monday will be the day, zero hour if you will. It seems like a long time to wait. Umm, not quite as long as two years though, so that's not too shabby. Just stumbled by this Penny Arcade cartoon and it seemed quite fitting.
In other fun news: Me and the woman are off to Taranna tomorrow to see the most excellent Eddie Izzard in a cozy little downtown theatre. So I guess that's it for now :D
Tuesday 28th October, 2003
*Sniff* I think I now know the feeling a parent has when they see the face of thier new born child, it probably feels the same way as when I see this:
I just checked with Magma and have been told that the 3Mb service is available. I wonder how long it will take to get activated...
Monday 27th October, 2003
SO I went to a meeting today that included someone from Bell. She happily told us that high speed internet would be available to order from them in the next couple of days or so. It was meant to be available by now but they are working on a 'technical hitch'. So it looks like that within a couple of weeks I should be up and running with DSL. Yay.
Sunday 26th October, 2003
I really don't know how many people read my occasional updates, I hope it's quite a few of you. In all honesty I feel that latetly I haven't had time to do shit all, especially in terms of communicating with people outside of my immediate circle (ie. the North Gower crew). I'm putting a lot of hope that the promise of the aforementioned potentiality of super deluxe high speed internet will improve things communication wise, hopefully making up for my complete lack of any action in the voice communication section of things. Gonna stop here for now, high speed update on Monday :D
Saturday 18th October, 2003
Working on a Saturday should be banned, by law or something. On a Sunday as well. I should be drinking. Heavily
My insurance company decided to drop me this week, on mine and Ginis anniversary of all days. This is because of my minor driving conviction in August. They gave me two weeks to find other insurance then they're cutting me off, talk about fair-weather friends. I went to another broker to get quotes and they looked over my driving history. They basically told me that what my current insurer has done was pretty brutal and most other companies wouldn't drop me in the shit like that.
I actually got my full (homie) G licence on Friday, my driving test type person told me at the end of the test, as a side note, that she felt very comfortable and relaxed with my driving. Shame the Ford Focus station wagon driver didn't think that back in August too. Bah, I'm rambling.
In other news: The wonderfully tempting carrot of High Speed Internet (capitalised on purpose) has yet again been dangled in front of my wanting eyes. Apparently Bell (our monopolistic telephone provider) has set a date of 27th October to officially announce the availability of DSL in our wee village. We'll see... Anyway, I'll be going to the meeting where they make this announcement, I might get to heckle someone.
Monday 6th October, 2003
Just wanted to mention that I have made a couple of small changes to the recipe database. Go on, have a look. Put a recipe or two in :)
Thursday 2nd October, 2003
This is why:
Because I just spent three hours configuring a Winmodem to work in Linux. Three fucking hours. I consulted a quite a few help resources which assumed an level of Linux knowledge I wasn't even close to approaching. What is incredibly unfortunate about the whole incident (as I proudly write this update using Galleon, a browser for Gnome, I particulary like this browser as it echoes my Pirate Al past) is that I finally got the fucker working using my own solution.
So for all you snarky bastards writing 'so called' Linux how to's about 'so called' WinModems I have these words of wisdom: "Go fuck your momma!"
Wednesday 1st October, 2003
Ahh CNN. One of Americas most visited news websites. Their journalists are on the cutting edge of news, their stories are thought provoking and intelligent. For example this gem appeared on their site today:
I'm sure some obese Americans will be looking at making a class action suit against the country of Mexico for all of their culinary sins.
Sigh...
Monday 29th September, 2003
Hello. Not a lot going on right now to be honest. I figured I'd write an update because I hadn't done one for a while. But now, well. MEH.
Friday 19th September, 2003
So today is the day. A day of cherry red joy, Captain Al and the Good Ship 'The Larkian' can come out to play again, for today is National Talk Like a Pirate Day.
Aye! If I find me stapler in your berth, you scurvy knave, ye'll be hangin' from the yard arm this noon!
Monday 15th September, 2003
And now for that exciting thing I was talking about the other day.
Click here to visit the all new aLyStEr.com recipe database. It's a home for tried and tested recipes. This is actually a point that I need to address because I gave the recipe input form a rating system, and I don't think that I've rated any of the recipes I've entered below 7. This is mainly because the recipes that are there right now have been cookified by yours truly. I might trash the rating system altogether or maybe make it so it has a user rating instead.
This section of aLyStEr.com should really be considered a beta version. I have a few hundred things else I want to do with it. Pretty much all of it is database driven and because of that there's a few other things I need to implement. Whatever.
I would like it if a few of you would add your own recipes, if you want to do that drop me a line and I'll set you up with a username and password.
Yes, I really am bracing myself for the rush ;)
Sunday 14th September, 2003
TYRE!
Sunday 14th September, 2003
Yes I know...
I spelled brakes wrong... :D
Thursday 11th September, 2003
I spelled Gauge wrong...
Thursday 11th September, 2003
Just a small note to tell all of you fine folkies that I'm working on something new. Something big. Something so amazing it could quite literally blow your socks off.
Nothing really too interesting happened lately apart from what happened yesterday, ahhhh yesterday.
So I went to pick up my vehicle, you know the one that had to be repaired because it had a big hole in the fender and a large part of the bumper missing. There it was, all shiny and new looking. I was even impressed at the fact that it had been cleaned inside and out (something that must have been a fair challenge, it hadn't been done for at least 6 months). So I drive this new looking shiny mean machine out of the dealership, get as far as maybe 2 possibly 3 kilometres away and I notice smoke coming out of the back of my shiny new looking vehicle. I also noticed the temperature guage speeding merrily towards 'red death alert' setting. I pull over the car, turn it off and decide that the only thing I can do is drive it back to the dealership (you know with the heaters on full blast and all the windows down, or something). The fucking thing wouldn't start :(
So I had to take a small stroll to the bus station where el Ginio had the shiny new vehicle parked, getting many bemused stares from motorists on the way (I guess people don't walk long distances in Canada very often, definatly not during morning rush hour anyway).
So after getting the car towed back to the dealership it turned out that the water pump exploded or something. Another $400 on top of the $500 bill I had when I left earlier that day. A new car would have worked out cheaper.
I severely dislike that Cavalier now, here's a small service history (since I bought it two years ago):
3 wheel bearings (about 350 each)
the clutch and starter motor (1100)
the water pump (400)
and other stuff I would have had to do anyway:
all 4 tyres (400 or so) with 2 more due to be replaced at the end of October
All 4 breaks (I've forgotton what that cost)
So essentially we could have bought a new cavlier for the amount we've spent on the damned thing already. I suppose thats part of the reason why my new car is much newer than my old car was when I bought my old car. Or something.
Monday 1st September, 2003
So I've started production of a cheeky little Pinot Noir. This kit was slightly more expensive than the last one and it features roasted oak chips. It already smells a little better and that's after 1 week of fermentation.
This bad boy will be ready for consumption in mid-November. Something to make the winter a little more acceptable :)
Thursday 28th August, 2003
A $190 fine and 3 points.
Yeah, that's right...
Tuesday 26th August, 2003
Hmmm Alerolicious:
Wednesday 20th August, 2003
Right. So the first of a whole bunch of holiday photos. I've been to Niagara three times now. I thought it was about time I took a picture of it so I could remember it. Now I don't have to go back again ;)
This picture is pretty big, click on the image to see its true glory:
Tuesday 19th August, 2003
So, a small garden type update. I present you with a before and after shot.
Before:
After:
I have to say, they're much tastier after. What you see above is Fiery Hot Salsa. Trust me, this beast lives up to its name ;)
Tuesday 19th August, 2003
It just occured to me (after Miss Rock sent me a couple of holiday pictures in email) that I should post a gallery of pictures from that fateful time.
Maybe tonight, maybe tomorrow night. :D
Tuesday 12th August, 2003
For all those I have not contacted recently, I have a reason: Let's pretend the internet broke and I was unable to send any email. To be honest I'm going to use the age old excuse, I've been busy, really busy. Pickling season has arrived again at Le Maison D'Okroy and before that I was on vacation, you'd think that would allow me more access to computers in general but this was not so, I had a Kris glued to my PC :D
I had a lot of fun while not working (although I spent a week of my vacation with the wierdest illness in the world. The recovery from said illness was not helped by my consumption of alcohol, but what the hell I was on holiday ;) As you've seen from previous postings I had a little visitation around our wonderful province of Ontario. I now know for sure that Younge St smells like cheese and that Kieths Blond is my new favourite bier.
Fret ye not, I will be replying to some emails this week. Actually thinking of having another BBQ before summer runs out, so please, Stay Tuned...
Tuesday 29th July, 2003
So the vacation is going well, it's good to be off work, even better to be off work with the Wommin, Kris and Helen ;)
We went a travellin' in Ontario yesterday. Actually we had planned to go to Montreal but we cancelled at the last minute due to "promises of civil disobedience" from some nice people protesting the WTO meeting there.
We only went as far as Kingston but made some stops at Brockville (very nice) and Gananananaoquequeque (the very pit of hell). Gananananaoquequeque was summed up quite nicely by the following find:
I had a scone that could have been used as a lethal weapon and for fucks sake "Pear Green Tea (with artificial flavouring)", I asked for tea and got something that tasted like, well god knows what - no-one in their right minds uses pear as a flavouring for anything.
Anyway if you ever visit Kingston, Ontario I will pass on a recommendation made by Will, visit the Tir nan Og pub, it's quite excellent and makes the memories of Gananananaoquequeque tea rooms fade away.
Thursday 10th July, 2003
Once upon a time I remember apologizing to dial up modem users about the amount of pictures that I had in my posts. To be honest I'm pretty much the last person in the civilized world that uses dial up anymore (and according to the latest rumour even that could change within a month or so). Anyway here's the garden update I promised a few days back, I know you're all enthralled.
Tune in later for more excitement!
Thursday 10th July, 2003
These trousers used to fit me, snugly. Until I went on the NEWEST of all diet crazes, this is NOT a FAD! Lose weight and feel healthy on the fantastic EAT LESS plan!
To be honest the woman forced me to pose for this picture, I seem to be more concerned about what's down my trousers though. Could be a ferret ;)
Sunday 6th July, 2003
The woman enjoys wine too:
Sunday 6th July, 2003
Here is some booze I made recently.
Sunday 6th July, 2003
It's pretty exciting I know. Within the next 24 hours I plan on posting a picture of the work in progress of my wee vegetable patch. I must go climbing first though...
Saturday 5th July, 2003
That's it...
Friday 4th July, 2003
Emeny.... It's the only way that the word Emeny should be said wenst droonken...
Friday 4th July, 2003
I'm an unoriginal HO! I love it ;)
Apparently I should, oh god I can't even remember what I should. I was trying to explain to the Spencenyaa that 'Special' blend Whiskey is special only in the way that the special olympics are Special.
I'm going to hell, apparently it's warm, like the Carribean ;)
Thursday 3rd July, 2003
Ahh, I have just booked some tickets to go and see the incredibly funny Eddie Izzard in Toronto on the 31st of October. This should be a lot of fun :D
In other news: The mighty Hipposaurus now has a Questions and Answers forum. I highly suggest you go here click on the 'Ask the Hipposaurus' link and ask him a question.
Saturday 28th June, 2003
In my slightly inebriated state while posting the last message I think the wossname of the final paragraph is lost...
I think after the line "but North Americans have really fucked up the English language" I meant to write: Maybe she wanted to give some speech training...
Friday 27th June, 2003
That's right, I'm a chick magnet.
According to the Spencenyaa chicks just want me and I don't even know it. This revelation was revelated to me shortly after buying some yippidy yip climbing troosers at MEC, the lady at the cash (till) was apparenty trying to get into my shorts.
It's pretty sad that I'm so married that I didn't even realise this was the case, but then again the Spencenyaa could have been lying.
On the other hand there was that chick that said I had a very fuckable accent, not too sure what she meant by that, but North Americans have really fucked up the English language. I am a chick humidifier, it's a new term and it's copyrighted.
Thursday 19th June, 2003
The link of the day is provided by Kris
PowerGen Italy
Kris also provided the following information:
"Energy giant Powergen says it has no connection to the unfortunately named Italian website www.powergenitalia.com.
Rumours have been sweeping the internet that the website for Powergen Italia is part of the empire of the British firm.
But Powergen Italia is actually an Italian battery firm, which was unaware running its name together in its URL would prove amusing to English speakers."
Sunday 15th June, 2003
I have found that it isn't a great idea to answer any question in this great game. I mean other peoples questions, even if I was innocently getting myself another drink and wasn't paying attention to the play order. Richard Nixon was a bastard and his ghost came to haunt me last night, this much I can reveal.
Still I don't think I deserved to be called a jackass (although many of you may agree with the insult :P ). I suppose what I'm really trying to say is "Don't play Trivial Pursuit when you are drunk". There was this other game, some kind of card game where you didn't play with any cards lower than a 10. To be honest I didn't really understand what was going on, that's why we started playing Trivial Pursuit. I think I was euchred from the start.
Thursday 12th June, 2003
I wonder what they do here:
Tuesday 3rd June, 2003
This is wrong:
You'd think a multi-billion dollar computer company would provide network access faster than a 33.6 modem, wouldn't you?
Monday 2nd June, 2003
I updated the 404 error message so its colour scheme matches the rest of the site. That's pretty exciting isn't it?
I've also added a couple of links to the site in the external links section.
Oh yeah and in other news, the garden is planted, w00t. Twenty items have been planted, only one can survive.
Wednesday 21st May, 2003
Well, Maxtor actually came through for me this time and delivered a tasty 60GB new HDD in replacement for my 40GB drive
Now that I had to replace the power supply in my PC I've started to wonder if maybe the problem was that all the time. Hard drives do tend to start having problems after the PC has shut down unexpectedly a few hundred times :P
Tuesday 13th May, 2003
It's broken, AGAIN!
Maxtor are going to send me a new drive, hopefully this one won't break within two months :(
Friday 9th May, 2003
After a long period of time I am daring to put the message board back online.
Post a message or two, go on, you know you want to ;) The message board can be found here.
Thursday 8th May, 2003
Is no longer online. It was more of a test of my skillz.
I am currently implementing a new bulletin board (it's not quite ready yet).Soon people will be able to not post in there instead of not posting on the message board ;)
Sunday 4th May, 2003
Post all suggestions, abuse and general stuff in the alyster.com Guestbook
Friday 2nd May, 2003
Just thought I'd try out a different colour scheme for a change.
Does anyone like it?
Thursday 1st May, 2003
Well I didn't get around to posting any real photographs yet. For now I have added a couple more delicious backgrounds to the Gallery section.
Enjoy!
Monday 28th April, 2003
The rake in all of it's glory, modelled quite excellently by me ;)
Monday 28th April, 2003
I have added a new section to the web site, it makes it more exciting for me anyway. I'll post up a whole bunch of the digital camera pictures we've taken over the last few years when I get home, for now you can see some beautiful desktop backgrounds.
The gallery can be viewed here.
Saturday 26th April, 2003
I have been refunded for my rake.
I bought a new one, this one is red.
Joy!
Saturday 26th April, 2003
My rake snapped in half. This is probably the most exciting thing that has happened in the last week.
Wednesday 16th April, 2003
Thanks to some exhausting work on my behalf and some invaluable advice from HRH JB'Ness the 3rd I have managed to get this page formatted so I can easily update it using PHP and mySQL.
Joy of Joys!
Wednesday 16th April, 2003
Thursday 17th April, 2003
I got told off for making alyster.com the homepage for the Committee so it's back to the old format. Possibly I will make alyster.com an update page for my plants. For those who care.
Actually I might take some pictures of the herbs I am currently growing, won't that be exciting?
