Island Mike (My Antics Stronghold)

Tribute to Unsolved Mysteries: Is this poison ivy?

2011-07-17T13:38:00.000-07:00

In the past, poison ivy type rashes have been experienced by myself and others after visiting my cottage. Over time I began to fear certain plants and stayed away from them. I got less rashes. Here are some of the plants I would stay away from. If anyone knows what they are (poison ivy or otherwise), I'd be happy to know.
Here is the first suspect. Three pointy leaves on a vine, close to water.

Here is another view of the plant along with an additionally sinister looking fellow below him and to his right:

If you or anyone you know has any information regarding either of these two plants please contact me by commenting. Perhaps you can help solve a mystery. (PS: Robert Stack was awesomer in Airplane)

Tribute to One Flew Over the Coocoo's Nest.

2011-06-28T22:29:00.000-07:00

I could have made it less subtle, but I wanted to keep the focus on the product.

This movie is why "they call me chief". If you haven't seen it then you've done yourself an injustice.

Mmmmmm, Juicy Fruit.

Tributing Stuff (Part 13): Chicago Wins Stanley Cup

2010-06-09T20:23:00.002-07:00

Tonight the Chicago Blackhawks beat the Philidelphia Flyers 4-3 in overtime to win the stanley cup. The deciding goal was scored by Patrick Kane and was acknowledged about 30 seconds later, which made for one the most anticlimactic overtime Stanley Cup winning goals in NHL history. Honestly, this is about 3 degrees off the epitome of Timbit players ultimate dream scenario. In the ideal scenario the goal is scored on a penalty shot in OT of game 7 against your lifelong rival.

Seven months ago, who would have thought that The Chicago Blackhawks (pronounced Black-Hawks... you people have dirty minds) would have won the Stanley Cup, apart from Nostradamus that is? I have one work for you "Me". That's affirmative, last American Thanksgiving I happen to be visiting some family in the windy city and I made a bold statement: "This is the yaer for Chicago". A simple statement from a simple man, but you can't argue with razor sharp insight.

To celebrate the fulfillment of my epic prediction, I have decided to post some picture from that fateful trip.

Theatre lovers will recognize this shot. Actually anyone who watched Perfect Strangers probably recognizes it.

Note the last few seconds of the opening clip Perfect Strangers.

Here is a nice shot I took from beside the Wrigley Building.

My favorite quotes about Chicago.
This first quote is from Vince Vaughn. Vince is a big Chicago fan and you can tell if you watch his movies. You could have spotted him during the payoffs at the home games. The quote is from the movie Swingers. In the movie, Trent (Vince Vaughn) uses Roenick and the Blackhawks against his buddy and Gretzky's Kings on "NHL 94" for the Sega Genesis. Trent is dominating his friend when he says:

"Y'know, it's not so much me as Roenick; he's good!".

Here is the clip:

The second quote that I love is a baseball quote, but involves but involves more sophisticated cultural references than Vince Vaughn. I think it was a tour guide who told me this. (For those who don't know, Chicago's north side is rich white collar crowd and the south is your mainstream blue collar crowd. Madison avenue is the separator of the two sides and The Art Institute of Chicago is roughly at that same latitude. The Cubs generally draw fans from the North and the Sox from the South) So the tour guide tells me:

"If you live north of the Art Institute then you are a Cubs fan, if you have never been to the Art Institute, then you're a Sox fan".

To tribute that guide here is a pic from inside The Art Institute of Chicago. You may recognize it from a famous scene in the movie Ferris Buller's day off.

The scene in question:

Here is some abstract art at the Richard J. Daley Center, also known by its courtyard Daley Plaza. It is featured in at least one Blues Brothers movie but I could find any clips so make due with the pic.

Finally, here is a shot from my amazing accommodation at my first cousin once removed. He and his family live just outside of the downtown core in an amazing converted warehouse. The place is ridiculous but I will keep the shots of it to myself. This was my view from my bedroom: Standing 1,450 feet and 110 stories high, Willis Tower is the tallest building in the western hemisphere, but it will always be the Sears Tower to me.

Now before I start posting clips from Family Matters I'm going to end this blog post.

Also for those who haven't noticed, since my trip to Chicago the banner (wide picture at the top of my blog) is actually a shot from the trip. It is Millennium Park. I am in the reflection of the giant bean, if you use a little perspective and physics, you can figure out which one is me. A hint is that I took the shot.

Building an Ikea Tile Deck in 2 hours or less

2010-06-02T16:00:00.000-07:00

Ikea Deck Slideshow

Tracy Morgan Tribute (My 100th Blog entry)

2010-05-19T07:57:00.000-07:00

Tracy Morgan is as hilarious as he is awesome. 30 Rock would be nothing without him, nothing; except maybe a pretty decent show. I don't know who rights his lines but here are some from one single episode:

I slept on an old dog bed stuffed with wigs!
I watched a prostitute stab a clown
Our basketball hoop was a rib cage. A rib cage!
Oh, Lord, some guy with dreads electrocuted my fish!
A crackhead breastfeeding a rat.
A homeless man licking a Hot Pocket off the third rail of the G train!
I've seen a blind guy bite a police horse!
A puppy committed suicide after he saw our bathroom!
I once bit into a burrito and there was a child's shoe in it!
I've seen a hooker eat a tire!
The sewer people stole my skateboard!
The projects I lived in were named after Zachary Taylor, generally considered to be one of the worst presidents of all time!
I once saw a baby give another baby a tattoo! They were very drunk!
A pack of wild dogs took over and successfully ran a Wendy's!

You Remind Me Of The Babe: Jim Henson Tribute Night

2010-05-18T12:00:00.000-07:00

You remind me of the babe!
What babe?
The babe with the power!
What power?
The power of Voodoo!
Who do?
You do!
Do What?
Remind me of the babe!

I saw my baby crying hard as babes could cry... What could I do?...

Sunday night was a Jim Henson tribute night. Jim Henson had died 20 years earlier to the day and an underground theater in Toronto (186 Spadina Road) tributed the anniversary with a Jim Henson double header night. First they played The Muppets take Manhattan, then The Labyrinth with David Bowie.

Obviously it was amazing to see the Labyrinth on the big screen in an indy theater. It should also be obvious that all of the David Bowie crouch shots received an overly enthusiastic rise from crowd members of the female persuasion. Finally it goes without saying that Jennifer Connelly seems to have gotten a lot younger since the last time I saw this movie. But what was really cool (but less obvious), is that the show was introduced by one of Jim Henson's friends who helped him create Fraggle Rock. We got some inside stories about The Muppets, Fraggle Rock, The Labyrinth and other cool stuff that Jim did back in the day. Very cool! Here is a video of the Swedish Popcorn Chef... GOLD!

I also bootlegged the most memorable song of the movie for your viewing enjoyment.

Thanks to a certain friend of mine who I will refer to as Kat M, for years I was under the impression that she personally knew Jennifer Connelly. She failed to mention that it was not the Jennifer Connelly from the Labyrinth. I have been living a lie until embarrassingly recent times.

In another shout-out to another hard-core Labyrinth fan; Marc L. Do you know what this picture at the bottom is all about?

If you don't recognize what I am talking about, maybe this picture of The Revelstoke Train Museum will jog the memory.

Tributing Stuff (Part 12): OK GO

2010-05-14T06:43:00.000-07:00

This tribute goes out to the band OK GO. I have never really been a huge OK GO fan of their music. Its just kind of filler music really, no disrespect but I never think to download their songs after I hear them on the radio. This is not because of copyright protection, I just don't feel that their will ever be a moment where I'll think to myself "Hey, wouldn't it be great to hear that OK GO song right now?". Not that I hate all/any of their songs, I just don't see that moment happening.

What grabs this blogger's attention (as I type this, on my blog site - named Blogger - I am noticing that the spellcheck does not recognize the word "blogger"... is this what they mean when they speak of irony?) what they do around their music. Have you ever seen their homemade videos? That's where all their caché is hidden. They have the treadmill video for that otherwise annoying song Here We Go Again, and you have to admit that it was pretty cool. Here is a copy of the video since the real "official version" does not enable embedding (into my blog or any other site).

Does this look familiar to you? Maybe you are thinking: "Hey isn't that the same choreography my 10-12 year old sister, niece, daughter or grandmother use when her friends come over for that sleepovers?". You'd probably be right! But isn't it so much more entertaining when it is preformed by grown men who should normally be doing something more productive like working on a construction site, playing hockey or gambling?

The next video of the song "This Too Shall Pass" is the one that really caught my eye and made me think, (in my inside Rodney Dangerfield voice of course) "Hey, you guys are all-right! Now who wants to party?".

After Rodney's confetti disapears as mysteriously as it appeared, you probably start to wonder "Why is that video so much better than the last? The answer is simple: I love my elaborate Rube Goldberg machines. (BTW there used to be a video of one on display at the National Art Gallery in Ottawa which you could see for free if you go on Thrusdays between 5-8PM.) The song was better too but this was all about he Goldberg. So when I saw this video I wanted to see what else these OK GO fools may have in store. So I clicked on the related videos and came up with the second video for that song which includes a marching band. And who doesn't like marching band? In the words of Toronto mayor and cheap furniture pusher Mel Lastman "Nobody". Here is your marching band:

The next reason this band caught my attention is that they preformed "This Too Shall Pass" on one of my favorite fake news shows The Colbert Report. The reason this is kind of a big deal is that Colbert's format doesn't regularly include a musical piece. In fact the only other artist that preformed on the show and comes to mind is Willie Nelson (and Tobi Keith after a google search). I can't put those videos they are protected and get pulled.

Finally, the nail in the coffin for me was when I realized hat the Marching Band from the "this too shall pass" video was the Marching Band from the University of Notre Dame. Anyone who knows me would understand that from the ages of 14-16 about half of my wardrobe had some Fiighting Irish of Notre Dame logo on it. I can't think of any other sports team whose hat I ever wore either. Except for a red corduroy Chicago Blackhawks hat I bought in grade 5 at a Atom hockey tournament in Levis near Quebec City. But by grade 6 I had replaced it with my first Notre Dame hat. Fittingly the brand of the hat was called Starter, which was actually the top sports apparel brand at the time.

Even while writing this blog I found another cool video from this band, introducing Including my favorite k9s: Dogs! Here they are promoting this new YouTube feature called Musicians Wanted. This feature allow musicians to get paid when their YouTube videos get played. Isn't that amazing mon osti? It's another Festivus Miracle by OK GO (I now follow them on Twitter).

Finally here is a video of BadBoy owner turned mayor of the biggest city in Canada Mel Lastman. Yes, Canadian's have skeletons in their closets too.

Ottawa Bear Hug III - 2010

2010-05-07T12:00:00.000-07:00

Dear captive audience,
Bear Hug 3, Billy Madison Triscuit Cracker sceen, Guiness World Record, municipal food supply, Ottawa Bear Hug, Sens Foundation
Today was the 3rd Ottawa Bear Hug. I refer to this event a few posts ago when Billy Elliott donated some money to the charity. I participated because my dad is one of the organizers which deterministically implies that I am one of the volunteers :P. I took some photos and a video, the latter being much louder and more obnoxious than the former. I YouTubed it so you can all see what I mean. BTW I was at the "NOT cool person" post. That is to say; NOT the where the media, the sponsors, the Sens Foundation (including rising star Jesse Winchester) and other VIPs were. They were all up at the pedestrian bridge with all the food. I'm not saying that they ate the delicious Tim Horton's donuts. But I am saying that there were a lot less food in the afternoon than in the morning. What I am saying however is that those who I previously mentioned were the ones who ate them. I also don't want to hear how sorry they are because "sorry" doesn't put the delicious desserts into my stomach does it?

Also before I forget, hundreds of thousands of dollars were raised for charity and a new Guiness World Record may have been set.

I would like to thank everyone who helped make this event possible (present company included). And a special thanks to all our VIP who really made this event possible (despite allegedly demolishing the municipal food supply).

Update as of Jan 10th 2011:

Its official, the record was broken on that fateful day. So the Ottawa Bear Hug is now the biggest bear hug ever:

“I can see that your attempt was approved as a new Guinness World Record on 4 January and certificate has been sent to you already.”

Congratulations!

Aleksandr Vypirailenko,
Records Manager

Guinness World Records

Lost Marathon Final (Finale) Stretch: The Candidate

2010-05-04T09:21:00.000-07:00

I did it. I did what some people thought was impossible but more sophisticated people knew was just plain... I don't want to say "dumb"... stupid! What I did is I watched the "entire" 5 & 3/4 seasons of ABC's hit series Lost in a mega marathon crunched into 30 days. During this time I caught up on 110 episodes of the show in defiance of all logic. With episodes lasting 42-43 minutes, that's about 75-80 hours of genuine commercial-free network drama. Now, I'm not one to gloat, but I really took this thing to town. Devoting almost all my TV viewing efforts to this monumental task (NHL Playoffs being the exception), I caught up on almost 6 years of story line. Plus anyone who knows anything about Lost is aware that that story line is not straight, but is indeed looped, twisted and frayed.

During the first 3 seasons I was pretty intense. I analyzed things and came up with a bunch of theories and stuff as can be read in my piece entitled LOST - Season 1, 2 & 3 (Relationships, Characters and Plot) (which is just a run through of some of the ideas I had). From season 4 on, I really didn't try to come up with any new theories but just sat back and enjoyed the ride, occasionally eliminating a theory, but more often than not, confirming one. At this point my theory that they are in Hell was semi-confirmed by the character who is supposedly the devil. I don't consider anything confirmed until the show is over. Especially things that were stated by the one character you shouldn't trust.

Anyway, all theories will be confirmed or disproved over the next 3 weeks. As for me, tonight I will watch my first live episode! The episode is called "The Candidate" and according to ABC "Jack must decide whether or not to trust Locke after he is asked to follow through on a difficult task." I'm sorry, isn't that what happened in the first 110 episodes? At least they're consistent.

You know what? If it wasn't before, then this blog is now officially lame. I really need some new material or maybe some real writers...

Sleep tight, mates, in your quilted Chambray nightshirts.

Masdar Institute of Science and Technology (FREE)

2010-04-30T13:10:00.000-07:00

Are you, or is anyone you know considering a Masters degree in one of the following engineering disciplines?:

Electrical Power Engineering
Engineering Systems and Management
Information Technology
Materials Science and Engineering
Mechanical Engineering
Microsystems
Water and Environmental Engineering

Are you also interested in sustainable communities?
Are you really smart?
Would you rather not spend any money on your Masters?

If you have ever answered "Yes!" to anything in your life, I may have the perfect thing for you. If you have ever answered "Yes!" to the questions I just asked, then I definitely have the perfect thing for you: Consider a degree at the Masdar Institute of Science and Technology.

Masdar is a planned city in the near Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates. The city will be:

Emission Free
Zero Waste
Fulled completely by Renewable Energy

The MASDAR Institute is located at the center of the city. As they build their reputation the University is offering more than free tuition, paying for practically everything you need including your flight there. They are doing this through the The MASDAR Institute Graduate Scholarship (for all nationalities to study at Masdar Institute in Abu Dhabi)

Full scholarship is available to qualified talented students who meet its high admission standards which include appropriate TOEFL score, GRE and an excellent CGPA from a recognized university. A minimum CGPA of 3.0 (on a 4 point scale) or 2:1 in the British system, minimum TOEFL score of 577 (91 on the IBT) or academic IELTS (min 6.5), and a minimum GRE quantitative score of 700 are the basic requirements without which an applicant will most likely not be considered.

Students accepted into the Masdar Institute will be offered a full scholarship which includes the following:

100% tuition fee scholarship
Textbooks
Laptop
Medical Insurance
Housing
International students will receive reimbursement of travel expenses (economy class air-ticket) into Abu Dhabi and back home after completion of studies. Travel expenses (return economy class air-ticket) back to the student's home country at the end of the 1st year of studies will also be reimbursed.
Reimbursement of TOEFL and GRE exam fees (upon registration at Masdar Institute and submission of original receipts)
A competitive stipend per month (cost of living allowance).

The scholarship and benefits are subject to the student maintaining a minimum CGPA as determined by Masdar Institute of Science and Technology and satisfactory progress on their research.

Ottawa Senators: Brian Elliot

2010-04-18T15:53:00.000-07:00

Here are two Ottawa Senators videos that I filmed a couple months ago. I was on the Ottawa Senators bench during the beginning of a game against Boston (i think). Brian Elliot had been named Molson Cup player of the month (December 2009) and awarded $1000 which he was to donate to a charity. He didn't have any charity in mind so Nick Foligno suggested that he donate it to the Sens Foundation Bear Hug.

Short aside: Nick is the captain of The Bear Hug. The Bear Hug is a fundraiser that the Sens Foundation has adopted a few years back. Generally money is raised by high school students. The students raise funds door to door, then they come together on the day of the "hug" and attempt to beat a Guinness world record for largest bear hug ever. It was an organization called "The Force" that originally came up with the idea. Later they approached a group of people (mainly at St. Matthews high school, my dad included. They raised over $100,000 that year and they beat the Guinness record 5 117. Some Romanians came and beat that record so the Ottawa group tried it again raising $318 000, but failing to beat the record.

Anyway, they wanted to show Brian donating the money to the Foundation in a pre-game ceremony in from of all the fans and so my dad was asked to ceremonially accept it. He was also given two tickets to the game so I went along too. These videos are of me behind the Sens bench during the pre-game warm up. The first video is the national anthem which I enjoyed along with the likes of Pascal Leclaire. The second video is of Brian Elliott receiving an over-sized check from Molson then handing to my dad who accepts it on behalf of the Bear Hug.

LOST - Season 1, 2 & 3 (Relationships, Characters and Plot)

2010-04-18T09:41:00.000-07:00

A couple weeks ago on April 1st 2010, I decided that it is about time to start watching the ABC TV series phenomena known as LOST. I had been warned years ago that it was amazing but addictive, so I decided not to start watching until I know that the series is almost over. The two-hour series finale is scheduled to air on May 23 so that gave me over 2 and a half months to catch up and watch in suspense with everyone else. So far I am way ahead of schedule and have watched seasons 1, 2 & 3.

One thing that I was told about the show is that it has many layers to it. So apart from having complicated plots and twisted time-lines, the series is also packed with themes, literary and historical references as well as hidden plots and sub-plots. Knowing this when I began watching, I decided that I would dig into the details and try to identify themes, unravel plots and deduce the premises of the story. I would do this by attempting to identify references and allusions made throughout the show then research them to whatever depth I thought appropriate or interesting. The goal of all this is to be able to guess the plot and determine the premise on which the plot was imagined (I believe that the show was written with a premise in mind). The only rule I made for myself was to avoid reading any other material on Lost which could contain other peoples observations and theories. I wanted to be sure that everything I found I had done on my own.

Since the beginning, I have been successful at identifying references and predicting sub-plots. For example, the story seems to be loosely based on "Lord of the Flies". From people being stuck on an island, to wild boar, to a leader named Jack, to an unseen beast in the jungle; the parallels are numerous. So far however, the most meaningful references that I have found have come from Season 2 Episode 4 (Orientation). This is the episode during which Locke watches the orientation video left by DHARMA. This episode is important because it helped me validate one of my previous theories. The theory was not confirmed until about 40 episodes later towards the end of season 3. The most important clue from the Orientation episode is a book seen beside the Orientation video in the Swan hatch. This book is called "The Third Policeman". My theory is that this book is like an "Orientation" for TV viewing audience which foreshadows the entire series. It would be quite poetic wouldn't it? Anyway I researched the book and drew some interesting conclusions which served as the basis for my theories for the series. Here are some of the conclusions I came to:

1) There is a box on the island. This box contains anything you desire.
2) Characters must relive the suffering from their past.
3) Old laws do not apply (social law or scientific laws)
4) The Island is Hell (possibly Jack's personal Hell).
5) The main character is a healer and a killer. (probably Jack)

There are other clues in the book which predict:
- the Russian dolls (box in a box) which contained the diamonds (not necessarily diamonds)
- conflicts between Jack and Locke
- the time warp
- implosion of Swan Hatch

All of these seem to be coming true so I have begun to track certain things about the characters to figure out how it will all end. One of the most important things I feel should be kept track of is which of the characters killed someone before the flight. If they are actually in Hell this will probably matter. I made a chart to help store all this information.

If you click on this picture you can probably open it in a bigger window and be able to read it properly. I probably made some mistakes on this chart so feel free to leave comments. I also may have made some assumptions. One such assumption is that Jack was a killer in his former life. We know that he has often made choices that let some people live while others died. I believe that this is one of the most important traits about Jack; he makes life and death decisions (he will also always need to fix things). In my opinion the most critical moment in Jack's life is when he decides to try to save the lady with the crushed spine (his future wife). I believe that this moment is significant because there was another patient in the operating room who ended up dying. I think that other person is significant and that letting him/her die may be the reason that Jack is on the island (on in Hell, if there is a difference). But all that is just an unsubstantiated theory of mine based purely on intuition, which I am trying to fit into my other theories.

Also other literary references lead me to believe that the entire series may be a figment of Jack's imagination that takes place during the fraction of a second before he actually dies (possibly in the plane crash).

One last thing and this is a shout-out to Michael Johnson: In Season 2 Episode 21 (Two for the Road), Hurley tributes the scene from movie Say Anything where John Cusack hold ghetto blaster over his head playing Peter Gabriel music and the girl falls for him. Hurley wants to do the same thing with this awkward radio that Sayid build. Just thought that this was hilarious.

Tributing Stuff (Part 11): Tribute to the 30 Rock Tribute to Scotiabank Place and the Ottawa Senators

2010-03-31T08:47:00.000-07:00

Two of the best things in the sports and entertainment world... ok, in the entire known world, are the NBC series 30 Rock and the Ottawa Senators (at Scotiabank place). I think this goes without saying. Now what if those two things were combined into one mega-best thing? Has this question been keeping you up at night and haunting your dreams? Have no fear! Your dreaming days have come to an end!

In this 30 Rock scene, Danny had made a "psych-up" song for the Ottawa Senators which had been nominated for a Juno in the same category as Sir Dave Coulier (who must be the same Dave Coulier who played Joey Gladstone in Full House).

The catchy lyrics were:

“The crowd’s getting loud at Scotiabank Place!
Make a hockey lovin’ face at Scotiabank Place!”

The sad thing is that this is the caliber of "psych-up" music that they would actually play Scotiabank Place. 'Tis a sad day in Canadian sport "psych-up" song history when NBC writers can write "psych-up" songs at will, which are as good, if not better than the ones that Canadian our teams play.

One final thing: In the video of Danny while he is singing... look at his pants. Are they skin tight and beige? Or he simply not wearing pants? Why would you write that into the scene!?!?! This show is so ridiculous that even I can love it. Bless your tender heart 30 Rock, bless your rock-tender heart.

I think we should petition to get this song as our official psych-up song. If I could do that I would probably consider it my life's biggest - and shortest lived - accomplishment. A man can dream can't he?

The Internet? Bah!

2010-03-08T18:03:00.000-08:00

Here is a reminder of why you should not believe something just because someone says it with confidence or authority. Not even NewsWeek can predict the future. Enjoy!

The Internet? Bah!
Hype alert: Why cyberspace isn't, and will never be, nirvana
By Clifford Stoll | NEWSWEEK
From the magazine issue dated Feb 27, 1995

After two decades online, I'm perplexed. It's not that I haven't had a gas of a good time on the Internet. I've met great people and even caught a hacker or two. But today, I'm uneasy about this most trendy and oversold community. Visionaries see a future of telecommuting workers, interactive libraries and multimedia classrooms. They speak of electronic town meetings and virtual communities. Commerce and business will shift from offices and malls to networks and modems. And the freedom of digital networks will make government more democratic.

Baloney. Do our computer pundits lack all common sense? The truth in no online database will replace your daily newspaper, no CD-ROM can take the place of a competent teacher and no computer network will change the way government works.

Consider today's online world. The Usenet, a worldwide bulletin board, allows anyone to post messages across the nation. Your word gets out, leapfrogging editors and publishers. Every voice can be heard cheaply and instantly. The result? Every voice is heard. The cacophany more closely resembles citizens band radio, complete with handles, harrasment, and anonymous threats. When most everyone shouts, few listen. How about electronic publishing? Try reading a book on disc. At best, it's an unpleasant chore: the myopic glow of a clunky computer replaces the friendly pages of a book. And you can't tote that laptop to the beach. Yet Nicholas Negroponte, director of the MIT Media Lab, predicts that we'll soon buy books and newspapers straight over the Intenet. Uh, sure.

What the Internet hucksters won't tell you is tht the Internet is one big ocean of unedited data, without any pretense of completeness. Lacking editors, reviewers or critics, the Internet has become a wasteland of unfiltered data. You don't know what to ignore and what's worth reading. Logged onto the World Wide Web, I hunt for the date of the Battle of Trafalgar. Hundreds of files show up, and it takes 15 minutes to unravel them—one's a biography written by an eighth grader, the second is a computer game that doesn't work and the third is an image of a London monument. None answers my question, and my search is periodically interrupted by messages like, "Too many connectios, try again later."

Won't the Internet be useful in governing? Internet addicts clamor for government reports. But when Andy Spano ran for county executive in Westchester County, N.Y., he put every press release and position paper onto a bulletin board. In that affluent county, with plenty of computer companies, how many voters logged in? Fewer than 30. Not a good omen.
Point and click:
Then there are those pushing computers into schools. We're told that multimedia will make schoolwork easy and fun. Students will happily learn from animated characters while taught by expertly tailored software.Who needs teachers when you've got computer-aided education? Bah. These expensive toys are difficult to use in classrooms and require extensive teacher training. Sure, kids love videogames—but think of your own experience: can you recall even one educational filmstrip of decades past? I'll bet you remember the two or three great teachers who made a difference in your life.

Then there's cyberbusiness. We're promised instant catalog shopping—just point and click for great deals. We'll order airline tickets over the network, make restaurant reservations and negotiate sales contracts. Stores will become obselete. So how come my local mall does more business in an afternoon than the entire Internet handles in a month? Even if there were a trustworthy way to send money over the Internet—which there isn't—the network is missing a most essential ingredient of capitalism: salespeople.

What's missing from this electronic wonderland? Human contact. Discount the fawning techno-burble about virtual communities. Computers and networks isolate us from one another. A network chat line is a limp substitute for meeting friends over coffee. No interactive multimedia display comes close to the excitement of a live concert. And who'd prefer cybersex to the real thing? While the Internet beckons brightly, seductively flashing an icon of knowledge-as-power, this nonplace lures us to surrender our time on earth. A poor substitute it is, this virtual reality where frustration is legion and where—in the holy names of Education and Progress—important aspects of human interactions are relentlessly devalued.

STOLL is the author of "Silicon Snake Oil--Second Thoughts on the Information Highway," to be published by Doubleday in April.

© 1995

Thanks for that reality check Clifford Stall! Next thing you know, he'll be telling us that we CAN'T use LaserCats to travel through time to safe destroying the initial conditions which allowed LaserCats to even exist in the first place. You're not the boss of me NewsWeek writer Clifford Stall, you're not the boss of any of us!

Tributing stuff (Part 10): Tribute to Brasil's interest in Canadian Olympics

2010-03-02T09:41:00.000-08:00

This post is one that I commissioned myself to write in response to the many emails and messages that I have received from my amigos and amigas in Brasil, who were congratulating Canada in it's amazing Olympic victories, particularly the stand out win in hockey over the Americans.

I thought that I should reciprocate by summarizing how much these Olympics meant to Canadians and Canada as a nation. Although Canadians were reminded of the significance of the games to Canada every hour by the Canadian media, I am not sure how much of the positive propaganda proliferated beyond the boarders of Canadian media networks. So here is my review of what transpired over those 17 some days and why it these Olympics will be remembered as a true Canadian fairytale.

First, things got off to a bad start. Snow conditions were not great. Then tragedy struck and Greogian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili was killed in during a practice run. Backup plans for the snow were put into action and Nodar was honored during the opening ceremonies.
But then the ceremonies (although very cool) had some problems of their own. The first nations leaders had not arrived at their seats when it was time to introduce them and the governor general had arrived just minutes earlier, so that whole scene was awkward and unrehearsed. Then, for the grand finale of the ceremony - the lighting of the torches - one of the torches didn't come out of the floor, leaving Catriona Le May Doan without anything to light. Also the flames that were being carried by Catriona and the others apparently went out seconds later off camera. Don't get me wrong, the ceremonies were great, but the errors happened at the worst possible times.

Despite the less than perfect start, Canadians were really excited. Visitors and foreign Olympians were interviewed and commented on the unexpected energy and patriotism shown by the Canadians in Vancouver. These traits didn't really fit our "conservative and reserved" idiom which is typically defined us.

Then the games begun. Although Canada had won Gold in winter Olympics in the past, we had never done it on home soil. This was our jinx and there was an underlying fear it would continue to haunt us. Almost two days into the games the jinx was still on. Some "dreams of gold" were shattered and others downgraded to silver and bronze. But then, along came Alexandre Bilodeau who drew inspiration from his cerebral palsy sticken brother Frederic, and won the Gold in men's mogle freestyle skiing. The jinx was broken and Canada has something to celebrate.

Over the next few days our momentum kept building as we won medals here and there, but Canada's OTP - Own The Podium plan didn't seem to be working. But somehow, the nation didn't seem to care. We had our stage and we had our pride and medals - although great focus points - were only icing on the cake (which we also intended on eating).

Then on February 19th, Jon Montgomery wons gold in men's skeleton. Jon didn't really have a sad or particularly inspirational prelude to his performance. He was a just a hard working "Joe" who trained hard and won. But it was the prologue to his victory that captured Canadian's hearts: his patented victory stretch, his parade through the Olympic village with a pitcher of beer in his hand and his jump onto the top of the podium expressed what many Canadians wanted to see: A competitive, patriotic and emotional Canadian uninhibitedly celebrating his victory and his country. Canada had it's mascot.

Two days later Canada has another tragedy on its hands; Therese Rochette, mother of figure skater Joannie Rochette died only hours after arriving in Vancouver to see her daughter skate.
Joannie decided to continue skating earning the utmost respect of Canadian, competitors and views around the world.

In the meantime and over the next few days the hockey and curling competitions moved along. (For those who don't know, these are the blockbuster events of the games and there is a huge pressure on Canada to win both in the men's and women's). Curling was going as planed as was women's hockey but Canada's men are having a tough time in the hockey department. We almost lost to Switzerland (Switzerland!?!?) and then we actually lose to the USA which meant that we didn't qualify us for an automatic ticket to the quarter finals.

As the games progressed we still picked up some inspirational victories and we were subject to some crushing defeats, but the "Own The Podium" strategy is definitely in question. The USA took the lead in medal standings and it didn't look like Canada would even do better than the last Olympic games where we won 24 medals. But again the country didn't seem to care that much. The general public seemed to be fueled by it's own inner momentum.

But then along came the "TSN Turning Point" (TSN is a Canadian TV channel that only shows sports. Towards the end of a match TNS will declare a "TSN Turning Point". This is the moment in a game when the momentum shifted towards the eventual winner). The turning point according to me was February 24th. We had won a bronze medal in speed skating but the men's hockey team was playing an elimination game against the the Russians. Not only does Canada have a deep rivalry with Soviets (see 1972 Summit Series which was one of the defining moments in Canada's hockey history) but Russia also had Alexandre Ovechkin, arguably the best player in the world and one of my favorites. This was "do or die" for team Canada and the whole country was watching with excitement and nervousness. With very little suspense, our Canadian boys came out very strong and seemed to surprise the Russians and even some fans with their explosiveness and grit. The game was a 7-3 blowout victory for Canada. Ovechkin compared the Canadian players as "gorillas coming out of a cage". On that same night Canada took 3 more medals: a silver in Women's Relay Skating and both the gold and silver in the women's woman bobsled, totaling 4 medals for the day.

The next day (Feb 25th) the USA continued to dominate in the medals standing but Canada's women hockey team beat team USA for the gold. Then our new hero Joannie Rochette puts on an tearful and emotional preformance winning bronze.

February 26th was a day of mixed emotions for me. Although it probably topped the 24th in terms of accomplishments: Canada Hockey team won the elimination game vs. Slovakia; Our men take gold and bronze in short track skating as well as a gold in the relay; The women take silver in Curling (We totaled 4 medals!); but I was really hoping for the gold. It had really started to enjoy curling for the first time in my life while watching the women's teams. I was certain that they would beat Sweden. Our ladies took the loss in stride and with dignity so I felt a bit better.

The next day, February 27th Canada does the unthinkable. Winning 2 gold medals within minutes of each other: The first medal was our 11th which set a new Olympic record for "most golds won by host nation" then the second broke that record in record time. Next we won a bronze medal as a break while we waited for the much anticipated Gold medal game in men's curling. The game was exciting but our team was too strong and defeated Norway 6-3. This 3rd Gold medal of the day was huge! Not only did it break the record for "most golds won by host nation" for the third time that day, but it also tied the record for most golds won by any nation in any winter Olympic games. 4 medals and 3 of them gold, one Olympic record broken several times and another one tied. The fairly tale seem also complete.

Finally on February 28th, it was time for the event that hockey fans anticipate for 4 years: the gold medal game for men's hockey. The game was the last event of the Vancouver 2010 Olympic and Canada was watching. Half of the Canadian population watched the entire game and 80% watched at least some of it. Compare that to last years Superbowl which was the most watched event in US TV history which drew the attention of a mere 35% of the US population.

As for the game itself, both teams came out strong but it was Canada who scored first. Then Canada scored again. The US came back with a goal but it seemed that Canada would be able to hold them to a single goal. In the last two minutes however, the US pulled their goalie and put on the extra skater. The move paid off and the US scored with only seconds left. It felt like a moose kicking you in the stomach but it stunk even worse. The game went into "instant death" 4-on-4 overtime during which I must have gone through about 3 pairs of Snuggies. Finally on a second effort Iginla and Crosby connect and "Sid the Kid" Crosby (or as I like to call him: "Sidney the Kidney" Crosby) scores the game winning goal.

SIDE NOTE: For those who don't know. Sidney Crosby is a young Canadian who was the most anticipated player in hockey history since Wayne Gretzky. He was basically the new "Messiah" meant to renew interest in hockey in North America back in 2005 when the National Hockey League (NHL) was recovering from a player strike and was re-branding itself.

Anyway, the idea is that to some extent, Sidney Crosby represents the future of Canadian hockey (Alex Ovechkin is his Russian equivalent). That said, you can appreciate how symbolic it was that Sid scored one of the most important goals in Canadian hockey history. Naturally the country went crazy and the streets filled with people. That gold medal was not only revenge against the team that beat us in the preliminary round, but it also meant that Canada would now hold the record for most gold medals won by any country in any winter Olympics!

Finally it was time to end the games. The theme of the closing ceremonies was to make fun of ourselves. Whoever was in charge of the show certainly took advantage of the early mistakes in the opening ceremonies. The first thing they did was make fun of the torch that didn't work.
The rest of the show may remind my fellow collegues at Instituto Stela of my "Stereotype Busters" presentation which can been seem below. My presentation was obviously less amazing and instead of displaying pictures of great canadian comedians (like Michael J. Fox), the ceremonies showcased the real ones. (For all you Michael J. Fox fans out there, you may want to check out my Tribe to Alex P. Keaton.) Neil Young sang "Long May You Run" which as by far the most touching performance of the closing ceremonies, possibly outdoing K.D. Lang's haunting rendition of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah". Joannie Rochette was chosen to carry the flag and lead Canadian athletes in the ceremonies which was touching and she was later given the Vancouver 2010 Terry Fox Award along with Slovenian cross-country skier Petra Majdic who competed despite terrible injury and also won. The Terry Fox was intended to go to atheletes who embody the spirit of Terry Fox. (For non-Canadians, Terry Fox was a young Canadian who lost a leg to cancer and began a historic run across Canada in an effort to raise money and awareness for cancer. Terry died during his run but is considered one of the greatest Canadians of all time. Over half a billion dollars of cancer research funds has been raised in his name.)

The fairytale was now complete: We had confronted our past demons and defeated them with Alexandre Bilodeau's gold medal. We had found our spirit in Jon Montgomery. We had shown courage against adversity through Joannie Rochette. We had won the final battle against our closest rivals defeating the US. Finally to top it all off we concluded with some good old fashion self deprecating Canadian humor and celebrated by being serenaded by some of out great artists. Most importantly however, Canada was able to show it's pride and patriotism not only to the outside world, but to itself. Canada somehow found it's collective voice and as it turns out we have a beautiful one.

So I hope this helps non-Canadian readers understand how important these games where to Canada. Particularly, I hope this will help my amigos and amigas in Brasil, understand Canadian patriotism. It may also help explain my occasional over exuberance when it comes to my country. It is also something to consider for 2016 when the Summer games will come to Rio de Janeiro. This will be a chance for Brasil to define itself, come together as a nation and give the world a chance to fall in love with "The Brasilian Way".

Before I end this post and show you all the clips I was talking about, I would like to apologize to my regular readers for the change of pace from my normal meaningless yet hopefully entertaining ramblings.

"Stereotype Busters" was a presentation I put on in Brazil where I try to make fun of Canadians and how people see us. You can see most of the presentation below, minus my narrative (which was the best part in my not-so-humble opinion).

This is Neil Young singing "Long May You Run" in the closing ceremonies.

This is K.D. Lang singing "Hallelujah" in the opening ceremonies.

Tributing Stuff (Part 9): Tribute to Ambigram

2010-02-23T13:51:00.000-08:00

Made popular by Dan Brown's novel Angels and Demons, ambigrams are back in vogue after a few slumping centuries of being outside the spot (candle) light. As part 9 in my 397 part series "Tributing Stuff", I am tipping my hat to this freak of nature. Ambigrams are the "double joint" of the literary anatomy. The are mysterious and probably the result of black magic and or witchcraft which I may or may not be against depending on its current "tweetability". I have a TradeMark on that word so you can forget about using it George Stromboulompolobo..po... You know who you are!

Now I'm not saying that Ambigrams don't have a place in this world. Traveling circuses offer a great business model for this product of the underworld, right between the Siamese wolfmen and the Brearded women. I myself have a couple of these little cancers! But before I expose them to lethal doses of chemotherapy and radiation I thought I should share them with you children so that you have something worthwhile to point at while you eat your candy apple and cotton candy.

Be not frightened but do not approach the cage.

This ones Says "McNulty" written frontwards or backwards.

This one says Michael in one direction but turn it 180 degrees and it says McNulty, Behold:
Does this mean that I am a wizard? Of course not! Does it mean that I posses special powers? Probably. My point is that if you believe in something strong enough - no matter how impossible is many seem, you can easily end up in a straight-jacket within 3-4 months. Tops!

"Sleep tight mates, in your quilted Chambray nightshirts"

PS: If you want to make your own ambigrams simply solve THIS simple puzzle.

How to write a Dan Brown novel in about 22 easy steps

2010-02-22T19:02:00.000-08:00

So I just finished reading Dan Brown's latest book "The Lost Symbol". I read it because of how much I like Dan's previous books - Deception Point, Angels and Demons & The Da Vinci Code. The other reason I read it is because it was based on the Freemasons and based in the mysterious city of Washington D.C., the link between which I have been fascinated by for the past few years.

The book really is good, there is no two ways about it. Naturally, Dan just applied his usual formula. If you want to write your own bestselling Dan Brown style book just these simple steps and you've got a sure bet:

Always start the story with a real live fact or quote. Something to get the readers feeling that this story is based in truth.
Get the reader engaged very quickly by packing the first few chapters with action and drama.
The story should start in the evening, but watch out; time is running out!
As one of your leading men you should include at least one mild mannered Harvard professor named Robert Langdon. He should be claustrophobic to the point of fearing elevators. Put Robert into an elevator if you have the chance.
The female lead (who ends up sparking some sort of romantic connection with Robert) should be a close relative to a main character who was either put in great danger or killed in the first few pages.
Other characters should be ridiculously important people of power and influence, but nobody you ever heard of. Robert should be well acquainted with them by the end if they survive.
Robert should get pulled into some crazy chase (usually international) involving one or more of the most highly secretive of authorities (never the normal police).
Your readers should have a hard time figuring out who is on whose side (except for Robert and his female lead; they are on the same side which fuels romantic tension).
The heart of the story should include one or more of the following (usually 2 of them):
a) Recent scientific breakthrough
b) Occult societies
c) Religious secrets
The world (as we know it) is usually at stake.
There should be a bunch of puzzles & enigmas riddled with symbols and ancient history that only a highly educated symbologist (my spell check doesn't like that word) like Robert Langdon could possible solve. Sometimes his female lead has super unreal skills that are also essential to the plot.
People have to die.
Robert and your female lead should be constantly under pressure. You can't let your readers put down the book. This is key!
Lead your readers to believe that your story will be going in one direction and then go in the other. Repeat.
The reader should constantly be questioning why Robert isn't pocketing some of the cool stuff he runs into along the way.
At least once Robert's life should be put in great peril in a nightmarish claustrophobic scenario.
The story should come to a breathtaking culmination at which point the reader should realize who is good and who is bad.
The mastermind villain should turns out to be a fanatic idealist. He or she dies or is arrested.
Whatever the villain was trying to achieve (or find) ends up being something completely different than they thought. Usually simpler and less potent.
Usually only Langdon and a few others actually know the entire truth after all is said and done.
The reader should learn a valuable life lesson and gains a whole new outlook on life, religion, science or some occult society.
You can throw in some of your own ideas too it you want.

Originally I was going to write a review about the book, how it relates to popular conspiracy theories and I'll put up some links to related videos and fun stuff. Instead, I've been sidetracked by the Vancouver Olympic Women's Hockey then the Ice Skating (both won by Canada BTW). I promise I'll do a good job on the review at a later date and stir up my own conspiracy theory, but only if I have time, which I won't.

Canadian Olympic Flag

2010-02-19T21:04:00.000-08:00

Here is a flag that I invented for the Vancouver Olympics. I'm quite confident that I didn't violate any copyrights or anything so I'm feeling pretty good about myself right now.

Vancouver 2010 Olympics

2010-02-19T17:41:00.000-08:00

Here is everything you need to know about the current state of affairs at the Vancouver 2010 Olympics

&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt; &amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="http://www.vancouver2010.com/olympic-medals/" title="Vancouver 2010 Medals"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;View the vancouver2010.com medals' table&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;

Ice Hockey Schedule and Results
&amp;lt;br&amp;gt; &amp;lt;p&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href="http://www.vancouver2010.com/widgets/ih-schedule-widget/" title="Ice Hockey Schedule and Results"&amp;gt;Ice Hockey Schedule and Results&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;

Luge Schedule and Results
&amp;lt;br&amp;gt; &amp;lt;p&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href="http://www.vancouver2010.com/widgets/lg-schedule-widget/" title="Alpine Skiing Schedule and Results"&amp;gt;Luge Schedule and Results&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;

&amp;lt;br&amp;gt; &amp;lt;p&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href="http://www.vancouver2010.com/widgets/nc-schedule-widget/" title="Nordic Combined Schedule and Results"&amp;gt;Nordic Combined Schedule and Results&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;

&amp;lt;br&amp;gt; &amp;lt;p&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href="http://www.vancouver2010.com/widgets/st-schedule-widget/" title="Short Track Schedule and Results"&amp;gt;Short Track Schedule and Results&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;

&amp;lt;br&amp;gt; &amp;lt;p&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href="http://www.vancouver2010.com/widgets/sn-schedule-widget/" title="Skeleton Schedule and Results"&amp;gt;Skeleton Schedule and Results&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;

&amp;lt;br&amp;gt; &amp;lt;p&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href="http://www.vancouver2010.com/widgets/sj-schedule-widget/" title="Ski Jumping Schedule and Results"&amp;gt;Ski Jumping Schedule and Results&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;

&amp;lt;br&amp;gt; &amp;lt;p&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href="http://www.vancouver2010.com/widgets/sb-schedule-widget/" title="Snowboarding Schedule and Results"&amp;gt;Snowboarding Schedule and Results&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;

&amp;lt;br&amp;gt; &amp;lt;p&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href="http://www.vancouver2010.com/widgets/ss-schedule-widget/" title="Speed Skating Schedule and Results"&amp;gt;Speed Skating Schedule and Results&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;

&amp;lt;br&amp;gt; &amp;lt;p&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href="http://www.vancouver2010.com/widgets/as-schedule-widget/" title="Alpine Skiing Schedule and Results"&amp;gt;Alpine Skiing Schedule and Results&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;

&amp;lt;br&amp;gt; &amp;lt;p&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href="http://www.vancouver2010.com/widgets/bt-schedule-widget/" title="Biathlon Schedule and Results"&amp;gt;Biathlon Schedule and Results&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;

&amp;lt;br&amp;gt; &amp;lt;p&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href="http://www.vancouver2010.com/widgets/bs-schedule-widget/" title="Bobsleigh Schedule and Results"&amp;gt;Bobsleigh Schedule and Results&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;

&amp;lt;br&amp;gt; &amp;lt;p&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href="http://www.vancouver2010.com/widgets/cc-schedule-widget/" title="Cross Country Schedule and Results"&amp;gt;Cross Country Schedule and Results&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;

&amp;lt;br&amp;gt; &amp;lt;p&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href="http://www.vancouver2010.com/widgets/cu-schedule-widget/" title="Curling Schedule and Results"&amp;gt;Curling Schedule and Results&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;

&amp;lt;br&amp;gt; &amp;lt;p&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href="http://www.vancouver2010.com/widgets/fs-schedule-widget/" title="Figure Skating Schedule and Results"&amp;gt;Figure Skating Schedule and Results&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;

&amp;lt;br&amp;gt; &amp;lt;p&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href="http://www.vancouver2010.com/widgets/fr-schedule-widget/" title="Freestyle Skiing Schedule and Results"&amp;gt;Freestyle Skiing Schedule and Results&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;

Tribute to walking birds

2010-02-03T12:55:00.000-08:00

In times like these one must ask oneself: "Who deserves a tribute?" The answer has evaded many of our great leaders and senior officials. However, after months of introspective contemplation and the process of elimination, I have identified the one essential element of the universe left un-tributed - the self tribute having been done months ago (see Tribute to Beautiful but not till you finish reading this) - and that essential element is walking birds.

Although previously thought to be no more than ancient myth, recent publications have produced hard hitting facts proving beyond a reasonable doubt that the evidence of the ability of birds to walk is stronger than say, the misfitting of an arthritic man's glove. Classic examples of these publications include best selling author Herbert George Wells' little known gem "The War of the Worlds" as well as the animated adventure series "Duck Tails". Both publications were popularized when translated to video in which main characters were generally played by quacks.

Scientists, different kinds of scientists and Scientologists alike agree that recent publications hold compelling evidence of our delicious 2 legged friends' ability to strut. This high resolution video was recently uncovered may hold the truth about these flying felines(some detail may be lost by those not using HD monitors with cat-like response times):

For more exciting updates regarding the "development" of this hot story please click here after you are done reading my post.
K, this blog entry is getting longer than I originally planned so lets get right to the point. I found some bird footprints. Some of you may have already guessed that they are the eerily large ones in the picture at teh top of this post. You people would be wrong... if I was lying which i am not; so that makes you correct and a winner in your own hearts and minds. So I now have this evidence of birds walking on the snow of my mom's driveway. There were two of them and they were pretty big. They came from the back and walked up the driveway. They turned left to the neighbor's and went up to the front door. There they probably realized that they couldn't break through the door impenetrable handle technology without trained human hands, then turned back towards the driveway and out onto the streets. Whether they were responsible for the Johnson's sudden foreclosure or it was his crippling gambling addiction will remain a mystery for now. But one thing has become devastatingly clear: and this is that the theme song for Duck Tales animated adventure is a national treasure and should be guarded at all cost to human kind.

In all fairness I don't know what left those tracks in the snow on that fateful day, but I do know that I won't be going into the backyard EVER without my trusty Amazonian machete and at LEAST 3 cans of spinach.

Burning Down The House (but not for real)

2009-12-26T19:12:00.000-08:00

Ottawa December 26th 2009: Yesterday night (Christmas), my mom's neighbor's fire alarm was going off. The house was filled with smoke and 911 was called. Luckily it was just a ton of smoke from a smoldering fire in the fireplace. Nobody was home and there was no real damage. Lots of firetrucks though, so that was pretty cool. Another Festivus Miracle! Perhaps later we can do the "The Feats of Strength" or "The Airing Of Grievances".

Christmas, Christmas Hurry Fast

2009-12-24T19:01:00.000-08:00

OK sports fans, It's Xmas in less than 2 hours so I have to make this one short. Here are some pictures of the family Christmas tree with a brief explanation:
First off, here is what the tree looks like. This year for the first time in Mike History I somehow assumed the authority of what the tree's theme would be and had veto over what could be on the tree and what would not. Those who know me would not be surprised to learn that sentiment holds less than average value to me when compared to most. So I didn't care whose dying wish it was that this glass figurine be as our tree's angel: it didn't meet my colour scheme criteria, so it's out! My scheme was basically Red and silver only. I streached it to include gold and green as well. Why did everyone allow me this dictatorship? I could only think of two reasons. 1) I spoke with unwavering authority and confidence. 2) Everyone knew from previous experience that there was always the underlying threat that I could begin projectile launching decorations at the tree at the drop of a candy cane. Typically this practice of mine (and my accomplice sister), could suck the joy of of any tree decorating ceremony faster than Dracula could drain a hemophiliac on Aspirin. Anyway the tree passed inspection and here is what it looked like:

Another thing to note is that when it comes to ruining Xmas tree decorating I am somewhat of a quadrupal threat. Aside from throwing decorations into the tree, I also hide small pieces of laundry & Kleenex brand tissues in people's trees. This practice is my Hallmark calling card so that people know who ruined their holiday season. I have another trick where I take translucent Xmas bulbs and place them over the Xmas light bulbs. This is subttle but awesome. My last feat of strength is that I rebuild Crystal Palace every year in the depths of my own tree. Crystal Palace is a place that (I like to believe) a super villain would feel at home carrying out his or her earth-conquering duties in a stylish and relaxed setting. This year's was more discreet than most. Plot away Dr. Quail! Plot away!

Merry Christmas to all and to all a Merry Christmas.

Tribute to Time Lapse Videos

2009-12-19T08:45:00.000-08:00

I don't have much to say about this, but here is a time lapse video of the assembling of the rink at Fenway Park where the NHL's Winter Classic will take place in the new year. The Boston Bruins and Philadelphia Flyers will face off in the Winter Classic NHL hockey game on Jan. 1, 2010. If your fear of time lapse videos is not crippling then I highly recommend that you watch.

Tribute to German Class

2009-12-18T11:43:00.001-08:00

Today we are all going to celebrate one of the great "Wonders of My Three Years of German Class" in high school at École secondaire publique De La Salle. Although the wonders of this 3 year journey are many and densely spaced, this tongue-twister/song/poem has stuck with me for some time, and today I found the many missing verses of it that I never cared for. I share them with you all on this day.

The song is called "Ob er aber über Oberammergau" and pays tribute to Oberammergau which is a municipality in the district of Garmisch-Partenkirchen, in Bavaria, Germany. At least that's what it said on Wikipedia. Also featured in the song, is Oberammergau neighbouring town of Unterammergau.

Ob er aber über Oberammergau

Heut kommt der Hans zu mir,
Freut sich die Lies'
Ob er aber über Oberammergau,
Oder aber über Unterammergau.
Oder aber überhaupt net kommt,
Des ist net g'wiss.

Heut geht die Lies' mit mir
Zum Schützenfest.
Ob sie aber über Oberammergau,
Oder aber über Unterammergau
Oder aber überhaupt net geht,
Steht noch net fest.

Wenn die Uhr zwölfe schlagt
Geh'n wir nach Haus.
Ob wir aber über Oberammergau,
Oder aber über Unterammergau
Oder aber überhaupt net geh'n
Ist noch net 'raus.

Hans ißt den Schweizerkäs
Mit dem Gebiß.
Ob er'n aber über'n Oberkiefer kaut,
Oder aber über'n Unterkiefer kaut,
Oder aber überhaupt nicht kaut,
Ist nicht gewiß.

That was more than a mouthful and should never be preformed in front of a live studio audience, unlike the Cosby Show. I found this cautionary video on YouTube on how not to sing the song. This guy seems German and seems to be at some sort of German Beer Fest taking place between the months of September and and November. He's pretty close, but he's waaaaay off.

If you or your friends have come across any fun adventures featuring this poem I'd love for you to share them with somebody interested in them. That is all for now.

UPDATE:

This guy sings it way better but has a different accent than the one taught in my german class which this very blog is tributing:

Feliz Natal Stela

2009-12-10T10:58:00.000-08:00

Friends, family,... esteemed colleagues, great nations, random internet predators and... esteemed colleagues, behold: one of lost wonders of the internet. I bring forth to you today, a video of a dance of such calliber that only the eyes of the seven riches kings of Brasil are worthy of it; a dance that could only be created by the finest Business Intelligence team at Instituto Stela; it has no real name so the dramatic tension kind of fizzles out here.

This is the story of a dance that we all worked very hard on last year for Christmas. Admittedly, it took much hard work, practice and sacrifice as well as plenty of blood, sweat and tears (the tears were mostly Dhiogo who at first didn't care much for the music). But in the end, a tasteful dance blossomed and the fruits of our labors nourished the hungry stomachs of our empty souls. We had found our calling. The dance consumed us.

It was at this point that we decided that this dance was special and that it should never be preformed or even spoken of again. We all took a solemn oath that day that from that point on, we would all act as if the dance had never even existed, Fernando also insisted that we mention that the dance might be haunted. We all enthusiastically agreed with poor Fernando knowing full well that he just wanted attention. That was to be the end of the dance.

However, moments after swearing the most sacred oath to forever deny the dance's existence (and that maybe it was haunted), Marcio quietly mentioned that maybe it would be better to tour the land preforming our dance for all to see. This novel yet simple idea filled us with joy and hope. Marcos was so rapturous that squealed with glee so high pitched that it shattered the martini glasses that we were eating our Multigrain Cheerios out of. The Cheerios being part of our complete breakfasts. The sound also caused all the fire hydrants withing a kilometer to explode and 2 doves fell from the sky. We took this as a friendly omen that you should never break an oath; no matter how hastily you took it, or how many orphan children would be deprived of the most beautiful display of artistic effort ever to be preformed by a business intelligence unit.

Then and there, we took a second even more "most sacred" oath to never take nor break an oath again. Moments later just as Marcio was about to comment, Fernando and Dhiogo silenced him with a magical dance move they had been practicing with the EKP team during lunch hour. Then, as Marcos finished helping me bandage my bleeding nose (another casualty of the high-pitched expression of delight), we all returned to our cubicals to play Solitaire and Hearts and never was the dance preformed again.

Today my friends and foes, one year later, I bring to you long lost footage the forbidden dance which I probably never mention again due to certain "blood oaths" I allegedly made.

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

This dance was brought to you by JibJab, Office Max and the great tasted of Multigrain Cheerios: Theeeeeeeeeeere Great!

Understanding Climate Change

2009-10-30T13:34:00.000-07:00

Here is some software that Adriano, a friend of mine from Brazil, is working on. It can help evaluate the theoretical outcomes of various global CO2 policies. This would allow policy makers at United Nations Climat Change Conference - Copenhagen 2009 to quickly get an idea if their proposed policies are actually sustainable, or at least viable.

From the ISee website:

In this web seminar, instructor Chris Soderquist uses simple STELLA/iThink model to help you understand the basic concepts and systems principles driving climate change dynamics. Learn about the challenges we face, the changes we must adapt to and those we need to mitigate or avoid. Explore simulations developed by Climate Interactive that will be used at the upcoming Copehagen summit and see the future impact of worldwide policy decisions.

This webinar is the first session of a four-part web seminar series titled Modeling for Environmental Sustainability. All materials from this session are "open source" and available to share with as many people as you can!

JOIN LEAD TO WIN AND DRIVE MASSIVE INNOVATION IN CANADA’S CAPITAL REGION

2009-10-13T10:37:00.000-07:00

Here is a message on behalf of the Lead To Win program:

JOIN LEAD TO WIN AND DRIVE MASSIVE INNOVATION IN CANADA’S CAPITAL REGION

If you are serious about starting a profitable business in Canada’s
Capital region, we invite you to apply to the November session of the Lead
to Win program.

If accepted to the program, you must attend six-days of training scheduled
for November 3, 4 and 5 and November 23, 24 and 25 of 2009. Your company
will be expected to create at least six knowledge jobs within the next
three years.

The Lead to Win program is free to qualified applicants - no strings
attached, no small print, no surprises. Individuals from 50 organizations
are investing to make Lead to Win participants successful for the benefit
of the individual and our community. The objective is to create knowledge
jobs, retain technology talent, and attract direct investment.

To apply to Lead to Win, please complete and submit the application
available at www.leadtowin.ca

We are seeking talented individuals who are able and willing to create
technology-based businesses in Canada’s Capital Region. Each new business
must be designed to grow so it can employ at least six knowledge workers
in Canada’s Capital Region over the next three years.
Lead to Win has three phases. In the first phase, you apply online.
Qualified applicants will then be invited to meet with Lead to Win
leadership. Participants will be selected based on their experience,
commitment, and opportunity profile. In the second phase, you participate
in an intense six day training program where you will learn how to lever
business ecosystems, profitably serve attractive vertical markets, and the
key factors that contribute to the ultimate success of a fledgling
technology company. Upon completion of this second phase, you will be well
equipped, and encouraged, to launch your new technology businesses in the
National Capital Region. In the third phase, Lead to Win connects you to
strategic customers, revenue opportunities, and individuals, companies and
organizations that can provide requisite resources, including capital.

If you know of serious individuals who may benefit from Lead to Win,
please forward this email to them. Note that we are only looking for
serious applicants.

We look forward to meeting the next wave of the region’s technology
entrepreneurs on November 3!

If you need additional information over what is at www.leadtowin.ca,
please contact:

Ludovico Prattico, prattico-at-sympatico.ca
Michelle Iseman, michelle.iseman-at-vitesse.ca
Serge Lafontaine, slafontaine-at-arrow.com
Ian Graham, ian-at-thecodefactory.ca
Rowland Few, rfew-at-sce.carleton.ca
Tony Bailetti, Bailetti-at-sce.carleton.ca
Yannick Bouchard, bouchard.yannick-at-gatineau.ca

The MBA Oath - Coincidence

2009-10-01T12:06:00.000-07:00

Before I begin, let's get one thing straight. I don't subscribe to notions of determanistic futures, the concepts of fate or all the supernatural mumbo jumbo. I do, however believe that everything in the universe is connected, but that's only because our traditional naive understanding of Gravity tells us so. I also believe that there is much more to the physical world than imagine and much much more than we can visualize. But sometimes weird stuff happens, and it seems that this weird stuff happens much more often that it should... Statistically speaking of course. For instance when you are thinking about someone, then they call you on the phone. Or in more extreme circumstances; you are about to call someone, you pick up the phone and they are already there because they just dialed your number but your phone didn't even get a chance to ring yet. Well something like that happened today but in a much weirder way:

A few days ago I was chatting with a colleague of mine. Lets call him "Harley". So Harley tells me he is creating something called "The Great Canadian MBA Oath". The purpose of the oath is to increase integrity and accountability of MBAs (who will eventually be in command of the corporations that control our lives and the lives of our beloved children, friends and family and what you will). So, as it went, I tell him that he should talk to the Aspen Institute because they are into that sort of thing. I had talked to one of their depute directors a few weeks ago (lets call her Nancy) and sent an email introduction between her and Harley asking if anyone at Aspen would be interested in MBA oaths or oath related business. So Nancy replies to Harley referring him to a director at Aspen, who will be "henceforth" known as Rich.

Nothing happens for a day or so. I am wandering around on Twitter and find this guy who is suggesting some good CSR people to know about on Twitter. I decide to follow them reading each of their last tweets. Who would have guessed it? One of them just Tweeted about an MBA Oath just launched at Harvard Business School (HBS) by the 2009 graduating class! What a coincidence I though, so I read further. I then learn that the students had talked about this idea with a professor of theirs named David Garvin. David then referred the students to professors Rakesh Khurana and Nitin Nohria. It turned out that Rakesh Khurana and Nitin Nohria had already been working on an oath for MBAs with the World Economic Forum and ... guess who? That's right! The Aspen Institute! Wow another coincidence! Just then, my eye catches my gmail tab in Mozilla indicating that I just received a new email. I click over and read it and who is it from? None other then "Rich" from the Aspen Institute. Guess what Rich was sending? Nothing less than a copy of the Harvard Busines Review entitled "It's Time to Make Management a True Profession" by none other than Rakesh Khurana and Nitin Nohria. Now I'm not allowed to copy or post this document but let me tell you 2 things: It was about oaths and MBAs. That's enough coincidence for me for a while. But I am now quite curious about this MBA oath business as it is so closely related to CSR and corporate sustainability. Cheers for now.

The Green Ones have landed in Capital City

2009-09-30T11:26:00.000-07:00

I guess it's about time, but it's pretty cool to see them here. Just as I was pulling into the old driveway this morning they arrived: "The Green Ones are here!" That's right, if you are a resident in Ottawa you have probably received (or are about to receive) a Green Bin. The city is handing out some 220,000 of them. This means that once the program begins (Jan 2010) if you live in Ottawa you will be able to recycle almost all of your garbage. Between blue, black and green bins and the Take It Back program, Ottawa does pretty well when it comes to residential waste. Although with news that Plasco will only be able to turn an estimated 18% of waste into energy and not until 2011, our garbage problems are far from over. But separation of the various types of waste is it is a natural step towards a solution. "Divide and concur" or "divide and rule", are tried and true strategies to solutions ranging from politics to economics to algorithms. So dividing up waste will be the first step to making optimal use of it.

Anywho... getting back to the bins; you can put all sorts of crazy crap in there!: Food waste (including meats and bones: which makes the whole program worthwhile in my opinion cause otherwise it would just cannibalize everyones composting efforts.) yard waste and other items (including such feces as kitty litter, fireplase ash, paper plates, wax paper, sawdust and so-on and dryer lint and so-forth) I mean, it says so right on the sticker!

So I guess if we can all try to forget about the plastic bag scandal from the days of recycling past, Ottawa seems to be on the right track. Let's see how this all unfolds. Plus check out green bins trusty side kick beige bin, which is designed to hang from the inside of your cabinet door where garbages usually go. I predict a Batman-Robin or Hercules-Newton type of relationship will blossom in each of our homes between these two unlikeliest of heroes.

Can Nike and Wal-Mart save the Amazon?

2009-09-28T11:33:00.000-07:00

Here is an interesting topic of conversation for my friend Meg who is working in sustainability with organizations in the Brazilian Amazon:

----------------------------------------

An ambitious commitment by some of the world's largest companies not to buy beef or leather products from the Brazilian Amazon may falter if a strong monitoring system isn't put in place.
By Andrew Downie | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

Sao Paulo, Brazil - A recent decision by a group of multinational companies that include Nike, Adidas, and Timberland to boycott beef and leather products from the Brazilian Amazon -- the largest cattle-ranching area in the world -- might sound like a good way to reduce deforestation.

"These companies are ... telling their suppliers they expect to see zero deforestation or they will stop buying from them," says Tatiana Carvalho, an Amazon campaigner at Greenpeace, one of the moratorium's main coordinators. "That is a big step forward."

The shoemakers and the Brazilian subsidiaries of supermarkets Wal-Mart and Carrefour agreed that as of June 22, they would not purchase beef or leather from suppliers who cut down rainforest trees to open up new cattle pasture.

But without a strict monitoring and labeling system, the moratorium on beef products from the Brazilian Amazon could amount to little more than a publicity stunt, environmentalists warn. Brazil's beef producers' association has dismissed the moratorium as "meaningless."

A tracking system that clarifies where beef or leather has been produced is not yet in place, making it difficult for producers to know whether a steak or a piece of shoe leather came from deep in the Amazon or from grazing lands in the south of the country. When the European Union looked at farms' traceability procedures last year, it approved beef exports from only 1,376 of the country's estimated 5,000,000 cattle farms.

Leather is more problematic, since it is sold on the open commodities market and is even harder to trace.

Reassuring consumers

"[The moratorium] shows the industry is concerned and wants to assure the consumer that it is doing its part. But the criteria are difficult to implement, and, in the end, may be shown to have been ineffective," says Peter May, an assistant director at Friends of the Earth Brazil. "But for the time being, it may reassure consumers."

Some of the companies that have signed on acknowledge that they don't yet have enough information to guarantee they're not using products from the Amazon. Shoemakers Nike and Clarks both said they would give suppliers until 2010 to put full traceability procedures in place.

Many of the companies were prompted by a June report from Greenpeace that named and shamed supermarkets, shoe manufacturers, automakers, and other blue-chip companies whose "blind consumption of raw materials fuels deforestation and climate change."

They were also encouraged by a similar, albeit more limited, moratorium on soybeans that stopped traders from buying beans from recently deforested areas in the Amazon. The moratorium was judged a success and was extended for a fourth consecutive year in July.

Rainforest stampede

But beef is where real environmental gains can be made, since very little soy is grown in the Amazon. For years, cattle farmers have been selling their most productive pastures in the south to soybean and sugar-cane producers and using the cash to buy cheaper land in the Amazon, which is deforested and populated with cattle.

That practice, spurred by surging global demand for beef as incomes in countries such as India and China have risen, has led to a stampede into the rainforest.

Three of every 4 new additions to Brazil's cattle herd between 2003 and 2008 came in the Amazon, according to a 2008 Friends of the Earth report. The beef industry is one of the main drivers of deforestation and one of the world's main sources of greenhouse gases. Brazil boasts around 200 million cattle and is the world's biggest beef exporter.

Under Brazilian law, Amazonian farmers may clear just 20 percent of their land and must keep the rest as natural forest. But the law is rarely enforced. Today, around 17 percent of the Brazilian Amazon's original tree cover is gone.

----------------------------------------

The original post can be found here

What do you think the intentions of these companies are? Take the survey at the top left of this page!

Symbol Quest: Online Game from Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol (Spoiler Alert)

2009-09-25T11:39:00.000-07:00

This is what you get for reaching the 33rd degree of Symbol Quest . I'll post some help later for those "it's about the journey" people, but if you are strictly after the prize, this is your shortest path.

Here is word for word what Dan says. You never know what clues may be hidden in them:

"This is Dan Brown,
Congratulations on playing Symbol Quest and reaching the 33rd degree with a perfect score. I’ve just finished signing 33 first editions of the lost symbol which are locked in the vault, waiting to be sent out to the 33 different winners. The 33 first winning code breakers who call the secret phone numbers, encrypted on the book jacket, will receive this reward.
Good luck"

Tribute to San Jose!

2009-09-23T12:37:00.000-07:00

Today I pay tribute to Ottawa's brother from another mother: San Jose.
Ottawa and San Jose have a lot in common. We are both high-tech towns, we both have NHL teams that were born within a year of each other and there is a general consensus in both populations that opposes municipal funding of jukebox terrorism (i.e.: Queing up the same ridiculous song over and over on a jukebox.)
Recently the San Jose Sharks acquired Ottawa Senators star trigger man Dany Heatley. Dany had asked to leave at the end of 2008-2009 season stating that his game didn't fit with the new coach's system, but there has been speculation that there are other reasons which I will not get into because I propagate facts only! as you may have noticed with my Jukebox declaration. Dany; you will be missed but you really need to start prospecting for a new exit strategist.

One other honorable mention regarding Ottawa's Twin-Town is that this site has been getting lots of hits and tomfoolery from San Jose. This is good! I encourage city level incest. Actually I would encourage all readers from Jose-town to leave a comment after this post as a sign of brotherly-sisterly love. Also I would like to welcome Jonathan Cheechoo and Michalek, so long as they score lots of goals and are key player in the Sens lifelong ambition of publicly destroying and humiliating the Sharks at every possible opportunity. Peace and Love.

Facebook Update!

2009-07-20T13:50:00.000-07:00

Harley's case is now on the CBC as well.

Be mystified by his legal prowess!

Facebook attacked by fellow Fresh Founder

2009-07-17T11:52:00.000-07:00

That's right! Ottawa entrepreneurial powerhouse Fresh Founders (previously Young Entrepreneur's Club) member has made a big splash on the international social networking site scene. Fellow Fresh Founder member Harley Finkelstein has found some legal issues between Canadian privacy law, and Facebook policies. Privacy commissioner of Canada Jennifer Stoddart agrees and is ready to take action. Michael Geist commented on it too it gives that extra "this isn't just the government doing their this-technology-scares-us thing" boost.

Watch the video here: Harley on Global

You can also behold of this stunning visual:

Harley does lots of work to help answer the questions that young entrepreneurs have today when thinking about a digital media business.

Read more: AskHarley

Lead To Win in the press

2009-07-15T19:25:00.000-07:00

So the Lead To Win program is getting more and more press as time goes along. I'm lucky I got in through the first round because things are only gonna get tougher as more people know about it. I would have to say I recommend it, if you have the means (said in smug high society voice). The Ottawa Citizen did a piece called

Tough times, tough class

Led by a 'cranky professor,' the Lead to Win program gives would-be tech entrepreneurs the tools they need. Bert Hill reports.

You can read all about it yourself, cause I'm not about to baby-step you through it like Richard Dreyfuss would for Bill Murray. "He's sailing, he's sailing!"... That wasn't sailing. He was doing nothing and nobody even called him on it. Anyway here's the article:

http://www.ottawacitizen.com/business/Tough+times+tough+class/1791568/story.html

BTW for anyone from Stela reading this, who also went to one of my Content Management Interoperability Services "Show and Tells", one of the guys constantly quoted in the article is doing something that may involve this CMIS stuff.

Lead To Win

2009-07-01T10:28:00.000-07:00

Well, it's been an interesting journey. But it's only about to begin. I participated in the Lead To Win program. Here is their pitch:

If you are serious about starting a profitable tech-based business in Canada's Capital Region during the current economic situation, we invite you to apply to Lead to Win (LTW). Ontario’s Talent First Network is pleased to announce the launch of the Lead To Win program for laid-off or under-employed tech workers. The program is based upon a program of the same name that was delivered during the last economic downturn in 2002. Over half of the participants in the 2002 Lead to Win program created a new business in Canada’s Capital Region. These new businesses collectively created over 300 jobs and attracted over $90M in investment.

The program is no cakewalk! As a matter of fact, despite all the FREE great food and cake that they fed us during the program, not once were any of us invited to walk or even take a quick stroll across cake of any shape or form (no African dancing either... do your research).

After at least 3 Phases of filtering and improvements, I am proud to announce that my idea has come out on top. Of God-knows how many application 50 some opportunities made it into phase 1, 40 some make it to phase 2 and 30 some made it to phase 3. Of phase 3 participants 19 are rated Green (ready to go) and of them 7 opportunities have been rated Green by all it's assessors. My opportunity is one of those 7, which is cool I guess. I mean if your into that whole "being the cream of the crop" scene.

Anyway thought I'd just put that out there. That's one of the things I've been up to now that I'm back in the hemisphere. I did some other stuff but I can't remember it right now.

To learn more about the program, or to apply for it, visit their website: www.leadtowin.ca
Tell them I sent you. Unless your idea sucks, in which case I never heard of you and you never heard of me. No, like seriously who are you?

But in all honesty, this program is not made to filter people. The idea is to make better entrepreneurs out of us all and to make jobs. You will improve yourself or your idea drastically during the process guaranteed! I highly recommend the program and especially those who voluntarily put it together in true entrepreneurial style. I owe a lot to them and will be even further indebted as Phase III progresses. Actually I will take this moment to thank them and thank them in advance.

Here are some shots of the graduation: I am receiving my diplomat here from David Hudson:

Here I am celebrating with Tony Bailetti:

For those of you who know me best and know how I like to celebrate graduations: Yes, I did pull a Timon (from the Lion King) style celebration just before getting the diploma.

I'll probably write more about this soon but feel free to ask questions... My press secretary will be happy to address them.

More TV nostalgia

2009-06-11T09:45:00.000-07:00

Ok I couldn't resist: two blog posts back to back. See, I was afraid I was gonna forget about this one.

That's right... Dr. Snuggles. Oh, how his amazing adventures brightened our days and haunted even our wildest nightmares with all those talking trees and other unnatural paraphernalia. So I saw the little snipet (which I'm sure you all just enjoyed) and was pondering some of the things that you were probably all thinking too, like "What in the world was that animal wearing overalls?", "How does he expect that shuttle to survive re-entry?" and "No seriously! What is that f&*%ing thing? Its freaking the hell outta me!". But then something caught my attention. "Why doesn't this old geiser ever take that bag of a wife with him?". Then I understood. It was a hidden message. Dr.Snuggle flies up to the rainbow. The RAINBOW! Weird when you think about it. Plus he takes that little god-knows-what in the overalls with him. Kinda freaky really. Anyway, enjoy your distorted memories!

This piece of TV nostalgia has been brought to you but Island Mike.

Yesterday's Special

2009-06-11T08:51:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was not particularly special.
But I did clean out the bathtub using some pretty harsh chemicals. (You have to in this day and age with to fight the evil ever strengthening forces of THE ENVIRONMENT (and/or ALISTS)!!!
Anyway, after the battle, I noticed that there were a bunch of ants just hanging around this small part of the tub!? So I was all like: "Excus-ah me-ah mista ants! Whaaaats-ah matta yo moouuuth?", but they completely ignored my cleverly disguised Nicaraguan accent (thinly veiled by a poor man's Italian accent). Those ants did not move! It was weird. So I told them so. Didn't change a thing. So I gave one of them a "middle finger salute" catapult style. That... seemed to work. They all scattered and I concluded that the chlorine must have dazed them. So I guess the moral of the story is that those ants reminded me of the mannequin Jeff from that old TV show "Today's Special"! It also reminded me that I have a poor understanding of morals of stories. Man that Jeff was one hell of an idiot. I was 3 years old and I knew that most of his life's worries could be put to an end if he'd just put a strap on that damn hat.
In celebration of this epic tale, let us all enjoy a nutritious trip down memory lane with a side of badly constructed and confusing metaphors.

Goodbye Stela (will we ever meet again?)

2009-05-22T15:09:00.001-07:00

It may be a couple of months late, but here is the official "goodbye for now" to my co-workers at Instituto Stela. I tried to include pictures of as many people as I could but I obviously couldn't get everyone in. The "Goodbye Stranger" music is provided by Supertramp and is appropriate. This is non-negotiable.

PS this video is awesome so I don't want to hear any complaints, unless they're hilarious!

Tuesday Funny Stuff

2009-04-21T10:20:00.001-07:00

Here are some funny things I learned about today:

A Gaythering Storm from Jane Lynch

Also check out this link to K&K Mime.

And just when you thought it was a joke:

When I was a kid... or to sound even more old-man-like: Back in the good old days - when you could go to the corner store without worrying about getting hit by a bunch of global warmnings (warming & warnings) and a candy bar only cost a handful of nickels - things were hard enough: I always had trouble not laughing my head off in church when someone would sing the wrong line in a hymn or when they would ring one of those tiny bells right before communion. I feel sorry for all those kids of this generation. How are they supposed to act all solemn and churchy with a ridiculous clowns all over the place. Not that I think clowns are at all funny. I never laughed at a clown in my life. But I think that if you put a clown/mime in a church or any place of worship and have them dancing up and down it up all crazy-like, I would have no choice but to give into the hilarity and loose both my mind and control of my bladder. Good luck children of the new millennium, may your giant mime overlord take pity on your tiny souls.

Mesh Conference 2009 - Part 3

2009-04-08T10:37:00.000-07:00

Halfway through Day 2 of Mesh09 and I just got served the same dish I fed you all a few days ago. Looks like Karma doesn't have the same food temperature policy as revenge. This time I warn you: watching this video is a mild form of Rick Rolling.

Mesh Conference 2009 - Part 2

2009-04-07T19:32:00.000-07:00

Day 1 of the Mesh Conference 2009 is now over... Food was great, but I didn't take any pictures of the food cause my "Mike Cooks Meat" contract clearly states that although I don't actually cook the meat to be allowed to blog about it, I still need to be able to cook it. This food however was beyond my abilities at this point. But can you blame me!? I'M JUST A HUMAN BOY!!! I would recommend the caterer... I WOULD recommend the caterer, but I don't know who it was, so instead I will recommend some of my favorite music from my early high-school days. Particularly music by the band Moist. Whose lead singer was David Usher who happens to be a speaker here at Mesh Conference yet again.

I got a couple of shots of David seen here talking about something impressive I'm sure... but unfortunately I completely missed the beginning of this session, the the middle (taking these magnificent pictures) and the end (I was setting up my laptop to download them). Why am I at the conference again? Doesn't matter. I'm too busy reliving old memories while listening to the Moist song "Leave it alone" in the video above... which I think may just be a mashup of some Jake Gyllenhaal movie. Could this be the real video? I don't remember if this song even had a video. I wish I had a vast quantity of trivial information at my fingertips that I could tap into to gain such fulfilling knowledge. Here is David on stage with Mesh Founder Mark Evans.

So I do admit that I was late for class and although I don't have a note, I do have an excuse. I was busy time-vampiring keynote speaker and co-founder of Kiva (which I blogged about a couple time... s... and once again for blog action day) Jessica Jackley who - I recently learned - shared a mutual friend with me: the high priest of personal inspiration and life purpose Jullien Gordon, whose blog-link regularly hangs out in trendy spots (see the bottom of this page). Jessica can be seen in the picture below answering questions from an inquisitive audience member.

The inquisitive audience member (who experts in the audience-member industry commonly refer to as Allan Isfan founder of FaveQuest) can be seen even further below.

That's all for today.

Mesh Conference 2009 - Part 1

2009-04-07T06:06:00.000-07:00

The Mesh Conference is about to start. I hope I don't get any food poisoning this year. Note to self... avoid mysterious Thai Food restaurants in questionable neighborhoods :(

Family Ties meets Sauve Scholarship

2009-04-05T21:00:00.000-07:00

In life there are very few degrees of separation between people (or Kevin Bacon). The key is being aware of the relationships between people in some qualitative or quantitative way. Humans can only keep track of so many of this connections and relationships before they losing their meaning. In the book "The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference" (which can bee seen at the top of this page ... I have recommended it), Malcolm Gladwell explains how 150 people seems to be the maximum number of people who can maintain a community where everyone can keep track not only of everyone else, but also all the relationships between everyone. This was fascinating to me when I first read the book and I bring it up now only as an interesting segue to my real topic. You see one of my recent posts was a tribute to Alex Keaton, a character from a TV show I used to watch called Family Ties. Another post was one about the Jeanne Sauve Scholarship of which I am a finalist. Tonight I found out that there is a link between the two entries (besides both being on my blog). I found out that there are actually pretty close "Family Ties" between Jeanne Sauve and I. She was my grandfather's (the only one I ever knew) 2nd cousin. Making Jeanne Sauve my second cousin twice removed! Sounds far off? Perhaps it is: it basically means that her great grandparents were my great, great, great grandparents. However I just found out that she and my grandpa were very close as kids. Is that not ridiculous? Plus everyone in my family seemed to know about this but me! And I'm the one trying to apply for this scholarship! There is usually an element of disclosure involved. So here I am... disclosing. I am not supposed to contact them directly so instead I hereby make it public knowledge that I am related to Jeanne Sauve but was not aware of it at the time of my application and therefore included no indication of it in the application. Now I can sleep in good conscience.
As a conclusion, the universe (or Multiverse for all you quantum physicists out there) is a complex place full of unseen links and relationships. Be aware of them and you can experience things on different levels.

Mike Cooks Meat - Part 2 : Charlie's Chicken Factory

2009-04-03T11:56:00.001-07:00

Todays lunch meat was something I randomly decided to call "Charlie's Chicken" on behalf of nothing in particular. It was pretty good. Below it can be seen in it's natural habitat beside some broiled rosemary potatoes, red leaf lettuce and some non meat related items.

NB: I figure that potatoes are considered a distant cousin of the meat family as they (according to my negligible understanding of Darwin's theories) must have evolved from some very tasty rodents who buried themselves underground to escape the fire breathing robot turkeys (I'll teach you how they are related to the escargot family some other time). While underground, these starchy rodents and lost the use of their many, many eyes because of high toxicity soil levels cause by the Triassic Dinosaur's 3nd industrial revolution. Without their vision they tended to get disoriented and remained below the surface of the earth. Years went by till about 5000 years ago or so God came along and declared these mostly potato-based rodents "created" to appease the creationists who he would later create as an April fools prank against the Buddhists. I hope I haven't offended too many people with my lunch/history enlightening moment, because I can't afford any more arson attempts from the Knights of the Robot Turkey Templar. They are ruthless towards anyone who reveals their secrets. Only Seth Green and his thinly veiled "Robot Chicken" really know my pain.

Enjoy your chicken and beware the metal ones!

Welcome Home Tribute

2009-04-02T13:52:00.000-07:00

As part of my "Welcome Home" package. I just received this "Welcome Home Mike" Video:

Please watch it.

Now after watching it you are more confused than anything then you should:
1) spend more time on the internet
2) read this explanation

Consider yourself baptized.

Mike Cooks Meat - Part 1: Randolf Salmon in Canada

2009-04-01T14:34:00.000-07:00

Welcome back me! I'm back in Canada now; for all those who have been living under a Canadian Shield. BTW, does the shield still exist and has it begun filing for bankruptcy protection yet? I've been away quite a while, not sure what to expect.

Anyway, as I have the liberty of eating at home I have chosen to eat foods fit for only the 5 awesomest re-integrating Canadians in Ottawa. This unique set of circumstances will give way to Mike Cooks Meat. MCM is an ongoing, multi-part, online tribute to Steve Carell & The Daily Show's "Produce Pete" which used to be the center of my culinary/comedy universe.

On today's menu was my latest creation which I will call Randolf. Randolf is a Pan fried salmon steak. You can serve it with or without a side of patriotism. I personally serve my Randolf with a portion of unemployment and a dash of "where the hell is the sun? I want to go back to my southern paradise".

Here is a view of today's Randolf lunch:

And this is an artists rendition of what my Randolf may have looked like only seconds after I released my appetite at it.

No Randolf's where actually harmed in the creation of this rendition. Well, maybe one Randolf. Ok, I gobbled the F*&%ing thing... are you happy!? I stalked it like a social insurance recipient stalks the mailman. Then I pounced like hobo onto a moving freight train filled with restaurant garbage in easy tie glad bags. It was a glorious meal. In a rating system based on a scale of an undisclosed number of stars, I give it 3 1/2 thumbs up. I don't much like being boxed into closed paradigm rating systems anyway.

Recipe available upon commented request.

Tribute to Alex P. Keaton

2009-03-25T21:55:00.000-07:00

This is an extension to my “Tribute to beautiful” which was arguably influenced by my great admiration of Television’s Alex P. Keaton; a lovable, ambitious, egocentric, profit seeking character from the hit series Family Ties. Michael J. Fox’s portrayal of Alex was the personification of young corporate America in its rawest form during the 1980s (decade of greed) and was a positive inspiration to myself and all other profit minded kids of those days of Yore.

My “Tribute to beautiful” was inspired by a radio jingle that Alex wrote for himself. The tune, whose lyrics were simply “Alex Keaton, he’s so cute”, can be seen in an episode called Blues Brother from season 6 of Family Ties. The jingle cracked me up so bad that I remember it to this day, along with every other mundane detail of my life from 1985 on.

I’d also like to thank Wheelrchair for this episode reference.

Not being able to locate that actual clip, I will leave you with this tribute video:

Tribute to Cory "gory, story, allegory, montessori" Clouston

2009-03-24T20:49:00.000-07:00

I can't say I've been watching much hockey this year. But whatever was wrong with the Ottawa Sens has been apparently fixed by Sir Cory Clouston Kensington the 3rd of Binghamton. Czech out these facts:

	Games	Points	Points/Game
Before Cory	48	41	0.85
With Cory	24	33	1.38
Total	72	74	1.03

THAT my friends is what's known in the "biz" as a 61% improvement! Now I may not know much about hockey, sports, business, math or personal hygiene.

Go Sens Go!

Tribute to beautiful (My automontagery)

2009-03-20T00:08:00.000-07:00

With only one week left here in Florianopolis, I decided that it was about time to produce a musical montage to go over what has happened in the past 7 months. And "Yes" it has been that long. How have you all managed to make it this far? Anyway, with a bit more delay, here is a video that takes what everyone has been thinking and compresses it perfectly so as to fit nicely into a well timed montage format. Enjoy and remember; to show your love for something or someone, always use a music montage. I know I usually don't.

"If a picture is worth a thousand words and a movie is a series of hundreds or thousands or even hundreds of thousands of pictures, then a montage of dozens of movies must be worth at least 5 thousands of words. Plus if you add in some emotional Joe Cocker tear jerking music to the background, your montage can be worth millions! I made this one and will be getting it appraised at the "antique music montage roadshow"."

Mike

THE Hammock District

2009-03-01T15:55:00.000-08:00

This is my answer to Marc's "La Maison du Hamac" discovery; I took a little bus ride to Canasvieras and came across one of the island's Hammock districts. Although this little village is impressive, it pales in comparison to many of the Amazonian communities, where hammocks are used as the local currency.

PS: "Rede" means "Hammock".

So you're Canadian, eh?

2009-03-01T08:17:00.001-08:00

Here is a presentation I gave at Stela in my first few weeks to bust Brazilian Stereotypes about Canada and Canadians. To break the belief that Canadians are nice and culturally tolerant people, I filled the presentation with racism, cultural bias, secular overtones, prejudice, bigotry and aimless discrimination directed specifically at non-Canadians who do not identify with.

I hope that you find the presentation oppressive and morally bankrupt. :P

Oh! The hammock district !?

2009-02-27T13:38:00.000-08:00

Today all I have for you are some reminders of great moments in history courtesy of Marc Lemire.

First order of business is a picture Marc took from the distant land of Quebec City inspired by this Simpsons moment:

Hank: Uh, hi, Homer. What can I do for you?
Homer: Sir, I need to know where I can get some business hammocks.
Hank: Hammocks? My goodness, what an idea. Why didn't I think of that?
Hammocks! Homer, there's four places. There's the Hammock Hut,
that's on third.
Homer: Uh-huh.
Hank: There's Hammocks-R-Us, that's on third too. You got
Put-Your-Butt-There?
Homer: Mm-Hmm.
Hank: That's on third. Swing Low, Sweet Chariot... Matter of fact,
they're all in the same complex; it's the hammock complex on
third.
Homer: Oh, the hammock district.
Hank: That's right.

Now that I have established context here is the pic:

I also recommend that you check out my answer to this post where I explore the hammock district of Florianopolis, Brasil.

The second thing that Marc thought it would be mission critical to do today is to remind ourselves about U2’s 1993 hit “Lemon” from the Zooropa album. I came up with that idea 2 weeks ago but whatever…

BTW, My friend Meghan gave me a X-Mas hammock (as is clearly demonstrated by the xmas coloured fonts I used in Homer Simpson and Hank Scorpios' hammock related dialogue). How many xmas hammocks did Meghan give you Marc? ...
That's what I thought!

Enjoy your video everyone. But do it cause you want to, not cause some fat cat down at Capital Hill told you to. "PEACE!" (Andy Samberg style)

Mike... a Sauvé Scholars?

2009-02-04T11:32:00.000-08:00

Hey everyone!

A few months ago I applied for a Sauvé Scholarship. http://www.sauvescholars.org/en/

"The mission of the Jeanne Sauvé Foundation, sponsor of the SAUVÉ SCHOLARS PROGRAM, is to help prepare young adults of merit so that they can develop their potential and skills to be used towards making a difference and building a better future for the societies of tomorrow... The Foundation has chosen to implement this mission by gathering in Montreal a highly-talented and motivated group of post-graduate, or equivalent, young emerging leaders, to share an experience of inquiry, debate and reflection, to help advance their careers, intellectual capacity and, most importantly, leadership potential."

Basically I would have access to unlimited access to McGill University for 8 months. During this period scholars take an idea (which was part of our proposals) and work on it. I came up with an idea at Stela (my job in Brazil) for sustainable development software.

So far out of over 1000 applicants I am in the final 50. Only about 11-14 get the scholarship. Now I need:

1. Three letters of Recommendation – each must be sent directly from the referee to the Selection Committee either by (a) e-mail as a scanned document including signature, (b) fax or (c) in a sealed envelope (with the referee’s signature across the seal)
2. Official [with the official seal of the granting institution(s)] Academic Transcripts for all college or university level studies that you have completed or will have completed before June 30, 2009. Transcripts must be sent to the Selection Committee by the institution.
NB If your transcript is not in English or French, please ensure that a translation - in either language - accompanies each transcript.
3. Examples of your Leadership (attestations by third parties, media reports, etc.)
4. Copies of your Published Works (i.e. work in the public domain)
5. Medical Certificate

If you can think of a way to help, please contact me at mike.mcnulty@gmail.com. I have already identified a shortlist of recommendations that I would like to get and am contacting the people. #3 is the one that is easiest for people to help with.

Details about 3#:

"Candidates must submit evidence of actual leadership in one or more areas such as: advocacy, arts, civic engagement, community involvement, education, entrepreneurship, government, media and communications, research. Confirmation of a Candidate's leadership should be provided through third parties, for example: media reports, commentaries, testimonials, public and/or professional recognition, etc."

Characteristics that the selection committee will be looking for include:

Initiative
Motivation
Vision
Imagination
Demonstrated communication skills
Awareness of international and domestic issues
A strong desire to effect change

If you have any additional testimonials or records of me exhibiting leadership and any of these qualities please forward them to mike.mcnulty@gmail.com. If more form submitting them are required I'll let you all know ASAP.

Thanks for the support!

Two Baratas And A Toalete

2009-01-23T07:44:00.000-08:00

Last night I get up to use the banheiro, but as I turn on the light i notice a barata on the floor. He's obviously making painstaking efforts to be all nonchalant, like he's in an exclusive club and he knows he shouldn't be there but he's trying to fit in by talking to everybody as they walk by as he awkwardly half dances to the beat of the music. If you don't know what I'm talking about picture Cris Kattan or Will Farrell in the recurring "What is Love?" SNL skit that eventually turned into the unfortunate film "A Night at the Roxbury". How either of them ever got work after that is remarkable. Anyway this barata is not fooling me and I pull out my shoe and pull a move that Eddie Murphy's mom, Dr. Evils oriental assassin or Iraqi Journalists would all approve of. Now according to my spin doctor/attorney, I didn't actually kill him: All I did was "relieved him of his ability to continue living." But then on my way back to the banheiro I see a second and even bigger barata. This time I reach for my bug spray. But since I can't afford the prestigious "Bug-be-gone" I use the knock off and understandable less marketable "Bug-do-your-best-to-refrain-from-being-here" spray, which, incidentally, is also a client of my attorney. Then I put the second little guy out of my misery and dump the corps in the toalete. But as I'm doing this I hear a car go by and someone yodeling that time tested yelp that Goofy does every time he falls off a cliff. Don't act as if you don't know what I'm talking about either: Disney would use in any gravity induced crash scenario. But then nixt thing I know I wake up in my bed. Was it all a dream? Of course not, things that stupid are always real! The 2 not-as-alive-as-usual baratas in my toalete would agree.

BTW: I couldn't find the Goofy Yodel online but I found some guy with even more extra time than me who was also in search of it a couple years back. He gathered some occurrences of its use. Thanks Snitch:

Home on the Range - In Echo Mine when Junior falls off the cliff
A Goofy Movie
An Extremely Goofy Movie
The Three Musketeers - When Goofy falls out of the windmill
Hunchback of Notre Dame - As the soldiers fall after Quasimodo pulls the rope they were climbing.
The Rescuers When Orville falls backwards from the top of the New York building at the end of the film AND when Madame Medusa runs over Orville with her swamp-mobile trapping him inside.
Cinderella - When both the King and the Grand Duke fall from the chandelier.
Bedknobs & Broomsticks - heard during the soccer game when the king kicks the hyena.
Pete's Dragon - when Doctor Terminus is tied to the harpoon shot from a cannon.

Special note: To those who understood what I was alluding to with my title here is an extra layer of intrigue. In Portuguese the word "girl"can be translated to "garota" which sounds quite a bit like "barata". Don't puke your guts out!

Update: News Flash: Breaking Story: video correctly identifying the sound that I am referring to as "Goofy's Hollar" as per the Disney nomenclature. This video also identifies other times throughout history when use of the Goofy Hollar would have been appropriate.

Sleep tight, mates, in your quilted Chambray nightshirts!

Barack Obama Inaugural Address Speech

2009-01-21T07:28:00.000-08:00

So far, in my tireless efforts bringing you, my readers, unparalleled yet sometimes surpassed insight into my day-to-day, once-in-a-lifetime, amazing adventures, I have not had to define the boarders of the topics into which I delve. That said; it is time that I take a public stance and announce that as of now, I will be enforcing a policy that will insure that this blog will be completely non-partisan, non-political and non-partisan. Now I feel - and my sponsors will agree - that we are in a critical point in American and World politics which is worth documenting. So what better way to test my blog's new public stance than to ignore all political new and focus almost entirely on inaugural addresses? Yesterday the United States (the one below Canada) has made history and inaugurated a new president and according to reliable sources he is not white. I have to take their word for it because this site is like Stephen Colbert in that it does not see race, and that one of its ears is kind of crooked and it is a bit self conscious of it. Someone told me he was black, I don't know, I don't want to know. But if someone were to cough once if he were black and twice if he wasn't, I wouldn't mind. All politics aside, I think that this is a big win for the Democrats and will really help shake up and restructure the party. It will hopefully get the republicans rethinking their old ways as well. Here is the video you probably are came here to see:

Barack Obama Inaugural Address Speech (part 1)

Barack Obama Inaugural Address Speech (part 2)

Bono behind the Lincoln Memorial, then quick shot of him singing "Pride (In The Name of Love)" which is about Martin Luther King Jr:

Side thought: Why can't Canada get an Obama too? Maybe one slightly taller... and do you have anything in Native? See, now that could be cool! He could have all these buffalo that follow him around to all his speeches and stampede his opposition. And what if instead of traveling by the traditional bald eagle, he could travel in a private jet that is painted like an eagle, except that instead of yellow feet they could paint in some flames! And whenever he would make an appearance the drummer from Def Leppard would play a giant war drum. Roman candles would obviously also be used. Wake up Canada! If you guys can find the candidate, I'll take care of the rest! Together we can make Def Leppard matter in the world again. God bless you all and god bless roman candle which are cool.

Ratified Amendment: A special thanks to Jerzgirl for this honorable mention of this post. Def Leppard or Die!

Amazoning (Picture credits: Lisa Cyr & Meg Doiron)

2009-01-20T06:52:00.000-08:00

K, I've been putting it off for a while cause its a big job, but its finally time to start putting up some of my Xmas vacation pics. Pretty much all of them are about me AmazoningTM in one of the top places in the world that you can do it: The Amazon River and maybe the rainforest. I'm not sure if I was in THE AMAZON RAINFOREST but I know I wasn't in the Amazonas State while vacationing. Although I was only about 150kms away AND I did spend some time in an official Amazonas airport in Manaus. But I really don't know what the definition of an rainforest is at this moment (for those who want to know open this up in a separate window or tab never taking your eyes off my captivating scripture). According to this picture I may or may not have entered a real rainforest.

Despite my ambiguously defined triumph, I am confident that have conquered some sort of milestones in the process of this trip. Lets see how glorious my half baked adventure was. Now I often find that the most accurate way to document glorious adventures is by narrating them in a non-fictional manner. e.g.: by NOT drawing special attention to any one particularly handsome heroic yet metropolitinized figure, or by NOT inventing significant portions of the events that took place. However if a particularly handsome, witty and heroic figure was to play a pivotal role in the story I would consider it my duty to report on it during the tale. In a similar light, if for any reason I felt that it would be necessary to invent a significant portions of the events that took place, I don't see how I could not do so.

That said here is how the most-amazing-real-live-story-ever begins:

It was a very tense morning in Santarem. The smell of blood was still lingering in the air after the a long night psychological warefare and a hand to hand combat. I had risen to the occasion by defeating our enemies and had protected the clan all night from guerrilla forces and the constant threat of mutiny.
To restore peace and order I quickly learned to communicate with the local fauna who I placed in military control of the land while I continued on my journey.
Before long I had parted the Amazon and led my people to the promised land. However since I had already done all that parting work (which for me wasn't all that hard) I decided to build a small paradise in between both sides as an act of sheer Tomfoolery.

Bewildered by my own accomplishment and awesomeness I reflected for a brief moment captured in this timeless photo which will be remembered by all for eternity.

Later after having taken first prize in a light reflecting contest I pondered my nobel prize winning theory on the correlation between bicep power and epidermal pallor.

Here are 2 from one of my many international legions of fans. They recognized me and pleaded to be photographed with me. I agreed to this only because I knew that they were orphans and this would likely be the highlight of their confined lives. Incidentally, this photo was used as the cover for one of my Time Magazine "Man of the Century" awards.
I then proceeded to lead my people up to the top of the glorious heights atop the highest mountain of the Amazon, where it is appropriately customary to mock the camera by hissing at it, enticing it to engage in a photoshoot-off (which I won).

With my people in their Promised Land and away from any danger, including rays which can be found under only millimeters of sand or deadly sand ticks which can embed themselves in your friends toe or latch onto you for an extended period of time before being detected at the end of your journey... I begun a new quest and brought along 3 of my most trusted Generals:

The first army I encountered was a vicious and aggressive one, lead by some sort of half-man-half machine cyborg. Although their technology was advanced, it proved no match for my cunning. I unhesitatingly crashed the leaders robot by confronting it with a series of childlike paradoxes which it was not programed to deal with. But the victory was short lived as I had more nemesi to defeat.I then proceeded to either
1) Hunt down and destroy a small but powerful wizard who had ruled the land since the begining of recorded history.
OR
2) Discovered a the remains of a lost civilization which holds secrets that will one day save mankind.
As I proceeded journeying through the treacherous forest at record setting pace, I decided to build a small factory in the to give the locals a sustainable way of generating income. Upon return to the community I informed them of my recent achievements and that they were now the proud subjects of a new economy and would never again have to answer to an iron fisted dictator. (I guess decided to go down the "destruction of the powerful wizard" route)I then decided that, with this thriving new economic engine I created for them, the community would need a new source of food to accommodate their upscale lifestyle. So I devised a complicated patented maneuver that would allow one to catch a fish even under the driest of desert conditions.
It was at that point that I remembered a time tested proverb: "if you give a man a fish you can feed him for a day, if you trade a fish to a man in exchange for his boat, you can increase your stronghold on the fish market". I immediately executed the trade upon my return so that I may rule the new economy that I generously gave them, using one of my many iron fists.
This here is a picture of Kelly, a well known local damzel in distress who I easily freed from the likes of...
This man: An uptight international timbre mogul, know only as Sir Thomas Kensington the 3rd of Cheshire, son of King Bedevere. Thomas had been enjoying a reign of uninhibited terror on these people since the dawn of time through his Wall Street muscle and Capitol Hill political influence. However I found him unchallenging as a foe. After toying with his ego, I quickly defeated him and absorbed his vast empire.
This picture commemorates the great raising of my flag. As is customary when conquering a people, I always have their greatest warriors hold up my flag at a height of no less than 10 feet during the entire length of my invasion. I feel that this tradition - although inhumane and a complete invention of my own - is tradition nonetheless and must be continued without compromise. As the warrior was not regulation height I commissioned the community to build him stilts with the remainder of their firewood. Naturally they were happy to oblige to their new Overlord. However before leaving I decided that tradition is not very important anyway, so I had the warrior remain on the stilts holding up my flag at a height of no less than 10 feet FOREVER, just in case I should return (You can never be too careful in this type of situation). Also it wards off future conquerors who would surely recognize my trademark and cower away in fear and loneliness.
As a final act of defiance and dominance; I decided to climb the 10 tallest trees in the world. This picture was taken only seconds after I accomplished this seemingly impossible, yet for me; trivial task.
This concludes this chapter of my plausible tale which happened.

For more undeniable proof that this adventure took place visit this site and behold it in all its glory:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/borderlys

SNL - Digital Shorts

2009-01-15T08:19:00.000-08:00

Today my post is a tribute to Saturday Night Live's "Digital Shorts" which are constantly getting pulled offline cause of NBC's copyright enforcement policy. Enjoy!

Dog Lawyer:

Dick in a Box

Lazy Sunday (The Chronicles of Narnia):

Roy Rules:

Dear Sister:

Last but far from least; Business Meeting:

R: Mounted tiger head?
M: Longer lunch breaks?
R: Did you even prepare for this meeting?
M: No...

Sustainability intelligence: the future of enterprise software?

2009-01-08T11:21:00.001-08:00

This is a PowerPoint Presetation that I gave at Instituto Stela. It's about a product idea in for them in an emerging market that I am calling Sustainability Intelligence which is a mix of Business Intelligence and Sustainable Development. It's probably pretty hard to follow if I am not explaining it as you go through it... but it does have lots of fun pictures to keep you all entertained.

Instituto Stela S&T#008, Sustainability intelligence: the future of enterprise software?

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: line triple)

Best Christmas Card Ever!!!

2009-01-07T09:56:00.000-08:00

To bring you all this blog entry I am cutting through all my self imposed red tape. I find it urgent enough to completely bypass all my regular blog entry filtering and prioritizing bureaucracy so that you can witness pure CheenuisTM* (Cheese & Genius) at work... or maybe play. The art is credited to political powerhouse couple Marc and France and is being made available on account that A) It's hilarious and B) If you pay Canadian taxes, you probably helped fund it.

Enjoy...

*CheenuisTM is a registered TradeMark of Shamus Inc.

Please appreciate the fact that France doesn't play the mini guitar and that she seems to be playing the long lost soviet note "K sharp minor"(K should be backwards), that Marc never holds his coffee at chest level at back at home and that the fireplace seems to be pulled from a late 90s Eaton's Christmas catalogue. Also note the constant hand on the shoulder. The twinkle in Frances eye seems to have disappeared but that is likely just another Festivus Miracle.

Hope you all love this to your graves! Cause after all, isn't that what the spirit of Jesus Day is all about?

Stats and Sabotage!

2008-12-08T12:50:00.000-08:00

Hear yea, here yea! I declare this a dual purpose blog entry!

First purpose is a stat update:
As of last week this blog has had over 1300 hits from over 500 different users around the world: You should all be either very proud or very ashamed of yourselves depending on your personal standards. I prefer to remain neutral until I figure out what everyone else is doing. I then plan on jumping onto the most popular bandwagon so long as it meets my highest personal safety standards. I chose my personal safety standards using the bandwagon methodology as well.

Second item of maximum extreme importance:
I have hereby begun my self sabotage attack on none other than myself! The first barrage in my intricate and secretive strategy was today's ambush. By soliciting an alliance with Wagner who I hired as a covert propaganda ninja we managed to stage this photo which should ruin any of the victims professional integrity. This "divide and conquer" approach should cause his colleagues to ostracize him leaving him professionally isolated and vulnerable to the next phase of the strategy: subliminal psychological warfare. Stay tuned.
PS: My motives for this attack have not yet been determined.

Promise kept!

2008-12-05T10:14:00.000-08:00

As promised, finally took some footage of the famous figueira tree Florianopolis' centro (downtown). I ran out of batteries twice while filming this cause it's so big. Also cause I wasted all my batteries on 7 time F1 Champion Michael Schumacher and his faithful go kart (which died on him during the 2nd heat). Its probably a good thing that I ran out of power cause I probably would have kept walking around that tree in wonderment forever despite my fear of the street toughs who are also attracted to it's aura. My camera would have probably just looooooved that though. You see technically, walking around the tree 3 times with someone, engages you both in instant matrimony without the option for a prenup. That's just what my FujiFilm FinePix s1000 would have wanted. She's been after data bank account since day one. Maxing out my memory cards all the time. Begging me to take her to pictures of fancy restaurants... I am sick and tired of her free-uploading ways. I'm getting rid of her the first indecent pro-photo shoot I get.

Enjoy the video:

Here is a bronze plaque to commemorate the planting of the tree. As the enlightened of you already know; the bronze plaque will soon be accepted as the #1 indicator of historical importance known to man. I'm not sure where I read that but I think it was on a stone plaque somewhere. Anyway please take the time to stare at this picture in frustration. A rough translation conjured up by "google translate" and I is offered below.

From Figuiera Tree in Centro Florianopolis

Much has been written, in prose and verse, of our traditional fig tree. This majestic lush green canopy gives the "November 15" square more grace and beauty, always keeping it beautiful and splendid!

It was a summer morning, sunny and full of life in the month of February 1891, that the young fig, perhaps twenty years old, was removed from the garden of the matrix, and affectionately replanted here. (a chronical of Tolentino's major Alvaro de Souza)

Some more pics are provided below. The one right under this is going to be my blog header for a while. I took it using my panoramic setting. You like?

From Figuiera Tree in Centro Florianopolis

That's all for now.

Racey Sunday

2008-12-03T08:25:00.000-08:00

I'm gonna start this blog entry with a rhetorical question. You may submit your answers to me via my gmail account.

"Have YOU ever witnessed a go karting race featuring some of the worlds best known leaders like Michael Gorbachev, Barak Obama and Kofi Annan?"

The correct answer is no. I haven't either, but you have to admit that it would be pretty cool. Instead, this weekend, I settled for a go-karting race in Florianopolis which featured NASCAR's Jeff Gordon, F1's Felipe Massa, and his teammate, 7 time Formula 1 Champion Michael Schumacher. Not a bad line up. I mean they are no Jigme Thinley or Ivo Sanader but they do have a modest following in the underground go-karting world.

Anyway, I went on Saturday to see the qualifiers and that was all good and well. Got lots of sun (avoided a burn) and pictures. I ate this cool desert which rivals the Ottawa Beavertail. They are called churros. Churros are basically cylinder shaped pieces of deep fried (corn?) dough, filled with your choice of either caramel, milk chocolate or dark chocolate icing, rolled in cinnamon and sugar. The fact that it is brought to your seat completes the experience. I had 2 of them and immediately called a my gym's 24 hour toll free confession line. Here is an artists rendition of me enjoying one of these Lucifer Snacks TM at... lets say; an international go-karting championship featuring 7 time Formula 1 champion Michael Schumacher.

Sunday was the day of the race. An estimated 12,000 fans. Here are 3 of them:

For those interested in reading about the trivial parts of the race such as the outcome feel free to open this link in a new browser. You can read it once your done your second reading my blog. Now getting back to my antics: the race was preluded (thats right... I conjugated it) by some formalities. I YouTubed some video for all to see. Here are the racers lining up for the start of the 1st heat.

Coincidentally, famed tennis star Gustavo Kuerten came walking down the very street that the race was being held on! I took immediate advantage of the situation by filming the event.

Here is a podium shot of the overall winners. Rubens Barrichello is clearly giving me the "stink eye", that SOB bastard! Thinks he can champagne on my parade does he? What does he know anyway?

Post podium, the winners wasted wine as is tradition in the go-karting community. After this video all my pictures and videos are shot through a slightly blurry lens. I blame the media, but some argue that Lucas Di Grassi was the main culprit. Rubens Barrichello was also at the scene of the crime but if anything, the silent Felipe Massa was likely the massa-mind behind it all.

Here are the girls that were so kind as to hold umbrellas and signs for the racers with their names on them so that they remember the correct spelling.

After that shoot was over there was only one thing left to do: meet some local celebrities! Strategically, I decided to start at the municipal level, meeting Florianopolis Mayor Dario Elias Berger. Now if my memory serves him, our conversation went something like this:
Mike: Dear good sir Mayor, what a fine event you have provided for your constituency on this day, The Day of The Great Race!
Mayor: I could not agree with you more fair and simple peasant. The day was unblemished by any coups at any level of government.
Mike: You are correct sir. I would add that accusations of corruption are also at an all time low: a great cause for celebration!
Mayor: Another excellent observation kind minion of the land! I share your enthusiasm for our population containment strategies and wish you a long life of devotion to the flag! Be gone!

Now I can't remember all the details of the conversation, for example which parts were left in, which ones were left out, which ones were taken in or out of context or which ones were merely slanderous without basis. But if there one thing that I can assure you; its that this conversation may have taken place but it probably didn't.

After that the governor of the state of Santa Catarina had the pleasure of meeting me. Or at least the people around me.

Here are some more amazing pictures highlighting some of 7 time Formula 1 Champion Michael Schumacher's greatest achievements:

"Oh! 7 time Formula 1 Champion Michael Schumacher, what great honor won't be bestowed upon you?!"

Also, in an unexpected turn of events, it was declared that I had won the race. I was immediately granted irrevocable knighthood by the 5 richest kings of Brazil, which topped off my day nicely.

In between all the celebrities, action and volcanoes, there were some interludes where the go-karts would drive around the track for extended periods of time, which seemed to distract the crowd enough to avoid an uprising. I have some digital media recordings of that as well which will be saved for another time. It should be noted however that I did see 7 time Formula 1 Champion Michael Schumacher crash a go-kart into a wall of tires bounce off it pulling a fluid 360 and get right back into the race. I only have a short video of me laughing my ass off and then another of him with a bent fender. Again, I'm saving those for a slow news day.

Be gone!

The weekend that was rained out... and yet not?!

2008-12-01T11:43:00.000-08:00

As many of you may or may not be aware I had plans of going to Rio de Janeiro this weekend with Sonia who had been visiting me this past week. We canceled our trip to Rio mainly because of the weather has been so terrible in Rio (although they haven't had the mudslides that our state has). Anywho, I managed to salvage the weekend by taking advantage of some work related extra curricular activities. I have lots to write about so I will start with Firday night then write the rest as I have time.

Friday:

Replicating an ancient tradition at Stela, we have re-started playing Football on Fridays. Although their version of Football has none of the same rules that we are used to. It resembles something closer to a combination of soccer, theater and pretending to be an airplane.

12 or 13 of us participated and it was a lot of fun. We all met directly after work at the gas station where it is customary for football teams to drink their warm up round of beer before heading to the inside turf field (Similar to hockey "cerveja leagues" in Canada). We divided up some teams and proceeded to the kickoff. They are really terrible at this part and I think that I can really help them on strategy here. Anyway like I said, they pretty much play only with their feet, which is primarily why I draw the comparison to soccer.

I got the ball within about 2 minutes into the game. I ran for about 10 metres and proceeded to fall for no apparent reason. I explained to them that in Canada, when you play with a new group it is proper etiquette to fall flat on your face, (preferably scraping your knee) when first touching the ball. This, I explained is a sign of respect to the other players and their ancestors. I'm pretty sure that they appreciated my gesture and we continued to play but this time with a deeper understanding of our cultural differences.

We played for about an hour after which I was dead. I need to play some hockey to get my "wind" back. This is a good way to do it. Anyway that accounts for my Friday night. I went home and straight to be cause Saturday was a big day and only a lead up for Sunday (lots of video and pictures and celebrities).

Stay tuned!

Too much rain

2008-11-24T09:41:00.000-08:00

There has been WAY to much rain in Southern Brazil recently. I don't have any radio or TV but I hear that some areas are declaring "state of calamity" because of road washouts and stuff. Hasn't affected me except that at work there is no running water. We deal with it.

My placement in Brazil

2008-11-19T12:26:00.000-08:00

Many people have asked about my internship here in Brazil. I ended up creating this visual aid to help people understand who is funding me and what the process is. From a high level, this is my understanding:

Fishing Sunday

2008-11-12T10:04:00.000-08:00

This Sunday I woke up at about 4:45AM (my neighbors got home early from Floripa's Saturday night party culture), I waited till about 5:20 when my alarm went off then I got dressed, packed my sun lotion and bug spray and headed to the bus stop. The bus packed up pretty quickly as party goers piled in. I arrived at the bus station at 6:40 and got picked up by my trusty friends Nilda and Luciano. We left the city and headed to Luciano's Beach house for hours of fun; fishing for tiny anchovies. Here are some digital memories for you to cherish:

From Luciano & Nilda fishing

Later we decorated the Xmas tree.

From Luciano & Nilda fishing

This is the first time I've been fishing since cousin Billy and I caught those Muskies with the infamous Bill Craig.

From Muskie Fishing

Birthday Election Game Party Fun Night

2008-11-10T04:19:00.000-08:00

Last Tuesday was my first of many birthday-election-game-party-fun-nights. I turned 27 two weeks late, Obama got elected, the Republican Senators lost in Washington, the Democrat Senators won in Washington and the Ottawa Senators won against Washington in Ottawa. Unfortunately I was in Florianopolis at the time and missed the whole thing.

But luckily Marc was able to complete my clone surrogate stand-in so that I could take in the event. Good hustle Marc!

Here is a picture of my surrogate stand-in enjoying myself at the party. "Take it easy Surrogate Stand-in Mike! ... I have to work in the morning!".

Now I remember the party very well due to the extra effort we put in to develop a ToIP (Telepathy over Internet Protocol) platform so that I could read the mind of my Surrogate using my 10 Mtps (Mega thought per second) high speed connection. Luckily we implemented call waiting so that my surrogate stand-in could simultaneously defeat Viktor Korchnoi in an online chess match without missing a beat. Way to go Surrogate Stand-In Mike! Way to defend Mother Russia against that Western-sympathizing defector! When will they learn?: "The Ukraine not weak; the Ukraine strong! I crush your stupid game!". It should also be noted that "In Soviet Russia, Surrogate Stand-In Mike downloads from you!". (Using the new Telepathy over Internet Protocol)

Anyway, due to the success of ToIP, we are planning a new product which will implement Collective Conscience Conference Calls: Its all part of my Psychic Collaborative Suite set to come out just at the dawn of the age of Aquarius. I hope everyone will be there for the opening... Bring your crystals and dream catchers!

Thanks to everyone who took part in the Birthday Election Game Party Fun Night who, my technology training tells me, includes Pat, Phil, France, Marc, Surrogate Stand-In Mike and possibly a distracted Viktor Korchnoi.

This just in: Additional "generic birthday appreciation thank you" to Sean O'Leary who probably took the picture of us based on the fact that it seems to be taken from a height of about 6'4" plus a chair or so.

Past few weekends

2008-11-06T04:00:00.000-08:00

So I haven't posted anything for a while, but today I brought my camera to work and decided to download all my pictures from the past few weekends so that I can update everyone on whats been going on. I'll start with a couple weekends ago. This would have been about the weekend of my birthday. Two co-workers of mine graduated from their university program and a bunch of us went to the ceremony, reception lunch, and party that night. Here are some maximum extreme pictures:

Don't have any pictures from lunch but I can guarentee you that it was delicious and all you can eat buffet. BTW, in case I haven't mentioned it, buffets are huge here in Brazil... I'm talking HUGE! Some are all you can eat and others are pay per KG but either way is a good deal. After lunch it was raining something nasty so it was decided that the car battery should die. It did.

Later that night we all went to the party and stayed super late. There are a bunch of pictures of this somewhere but I can't find them anywhere. I'll post later I guess. Here is me and Dhiogo. He drove that night and some of us went to McDonald's that night. One thing that never ceases to amaze me is that no matter where you are in the world; McDees always makes you feel just as sick after you eat it.

The next weekend was just as rainy... I'm not quite sure exactly what I did that weekend but I can guarantee you this Madame: no much. Saturday night we did go to a bowling alley, ate some overpriced food then walked out cause one of the managers was being an ass. We went to the movies instead. Saw the Al Pacino & Robert Dinero movie. Was not bad... a rental. Afterwards we met some other friends who had seen the movie before us but had gone back home to Karaoke. We went and joined in on the Japanese inspired fun. I scored a 78% on a CCR song, an 83% on a duet of "With or Without you" and a whopping 91% on "Hotel California"! Whodathunkit? I'd also like to add a WHOOOOOOAAAAAAA!!! in honor of Al Pacino. Here is "House of Karaoke" (lil reference to the old House of Chung in Ottawa... now Peach Gardens.

Some of you may be axing yourselfs: "Hey, dat deres a preddy sweet house." You'd be absotively correct my slow witted, literacy challenged colleague! The girl who lives there is super nice and apparently a pro tennis player.

Finally, last weekend I went to a B-Day party at the trendiest rock club on the island... close to where I live... naturally. I attract such things. Here is a pic to satisfy your seemingly endless thirst for knowledge in the area of my personal life.

At this point I find it appropriate to inquire: "What is your fascination with my forbidden closet of mystery?"
The next day I went to a search for monkeys with my good friend Alessandro.
And if you must know... YES.. we found the elusive Jade Monkey... it was in the glove compartment. Also the maps and flashlight were there too... but NO.. we didn't take a picture of him... thats just what he would expect us do to...
Here are some more pics from that park where we (for the record) never saw the monkeys ;)

Monkeys where seen here:

Don't fool yourselves! If you think for one minute that the two layers of reenforced steel chain linked fence is keeping me safe at this moment, you'd be dead wrong... you may even be dead. This here is one tough character! This oversized rabbit from Rio is THE Frank "The Armoured Car" Hernandez: The meanest, most bad mannered mini mammal in the park. His fur has fleas the size of medium-to-large fleas!

And in the other corner, "The Alligator with No Conscience Nor Any Known Transmittable Diseases", approved by 4 out of 5 dentist: Ron!

I do have some footage of the a "Battle To The Death" between the 2 behemoths but due to the graphic nature of the footage, the fact my mainstream demographic is still in high-nightmare-occurrence range and to keep those meddling animal rights activists of my case while I am still on probation after that ostrich-quail cock fighting ring stint (god that was a good run while it lasted): I have decided to keep the footage offline. Plus I can't stand to see Alligators get decapitated like that. It's just gross. Damn that Frank is a real fighter. Cost me a fortune! I paid that bastard to take a dive, but Frank dives for nobody... NOBODY! Now I have that shylock The Jade Monkey on my back almost half the time!

Also I went to another rooftop party that night and nothing happened on Sunday, bye.

Microloan - Part 2

2008-10-31T13:39:00.000-07:00

Wow... in the time it took me to write that last blog the remaining $400 were raised! Good job everyone (knowing full well that nobody even had the chance to give any money)!

Here is a new "Entrepreneur of the week", a term I am considering renaming to something more accurate "Entrepreneur of the micro-minute" due to the speed and competitive nature of philanthropy in the world of Micro-financing.

Happy financing!

Microloan

2008-10-31T13:17:00.000-07:00

Hey all,

Happy Halloween, or Hallowe’en... apologies to all you Pagans out there... apologies all 'round!

Here is another follow up to poverty week cause apparently we didn't fix it completely a few weeks ago.

Here is my entrepreneur of the week. Guillermo Espinoza Martínez:

"The young man Guillermo Espinoza is married and has the responsibility of supporting his beloved family. His job is selling hardware in the municipality of Ciudad Sandino de Managua. It should be noted that when he began the business five years ago, he was only selling a few products, but as time passed, he succeeded in increasing the stock in the hardware store. Now he wishes to expand it further. He is seeking help from Ceprodel to obtain a loan to be used to buy hardware products and thus improve his business even more."

If you decide to sign up for Kiva, feel free to fund Guillermo and to join my "Sustainable Development Team".

New Visitors!

2008-10-20T07:09:00.000-07:00

This is a special post to regonize and welcome 2 new visitor to the blog.

First I got hits from Andorra which is a place that I haven't been to ever in my life but that I will likely see at some point since it's right between France and Spain two countries that I have been to many times and that I would revisit in a heartbeat. Next times mysterious Andorra person... next time!

Secondly I noticed a hit from South Bend Indiana. Been there 3 times, twice for games and once to visit the Mendoza B-School and MBA admissions officer. I thought it might be one of my cousins who visited the blog while going to a game but I doubt it cause the Fighting Irish were in Chapel Hill this weekend. On that note I would like to congratulate teh Irish so far this season for the big win against Michigan and those Ivey league wannabees at Stanford (I sooooo wish I could could get into that school!).

Anyway! Welcome newbees and come again. Tell all your friends if you enjoyed your stay. If you didn't enjoy it then just tell them that you did ;)

Mike

Older stuff

2008-10-17T06:11:00.000-07:00

Here are some pictures and videos from last weekend and some from longer ago that I haven't had a chance to put up till now.

This first video is from Praia Mole a beach close to my place; one of the nicest in Florianopolis. I have some decent footage of surfing but this one impressed me the most:

This is a picture from last Friday's dinner. We had a Brazilian BBQ. Basically a BBBQ consists of rolling some meat in seasoned sea salt, cooking it over a grill then removing most of the salt. The results are delicious... salty, but delicious. I eat BBBQ twice that week. Once for lunch and once for dinner. The meats vary from pork to beef, chicken and ox. Cuts or types of meat vary too from sausage to ribs to fillet mignon and even chicken heart. Chicken hearts are pretty good but sometimes the arteries are a bit long so you cut them off. The first time I heard of this I laughed my ass off cause you see this whole tray of little hearts and your like "Nahhh, those can't be... what the .. thats a lot of chickens!". Anyway, BBBQs are great and they even have indoor electric grills to do them on. Not the safest but soo good! Beside me in the picture you have Marlon and Gislaine (who may be moving to Ottawa) Luciano and Nilda (who hosted aaaand who you may recognize from previous episodes) .

Here is some food that I bought for R$6. (About $3.30 CDN at todays rate). The cookware and dinnerware behind came up to about $90 in all.

I usually eat lunch with some people from work at a State government building that has a "by the Kilo" cafeteria. On the days that there is something really good I will often pick up an extra helping for dinner. This dinner cost me less than $2.

The price of food in general varies a lot. You can easily pay well over $20CDN for a meal but I avoid those places like the plague. I would go bankrupt in about 45 seconds if I started living that life style. For instance, electronics and automobiles here are not cheap! Everything gets taxed heavily, especially if it was imported.

This frog was tiny. How the hell did it get up to the second floor window; and why was this such a desirable place to go... so much that he went so far out of his way to get there?

Thats all for now. Next post I will try to get some good pics and vids of this tree:

I saw it last weekend but didn't have my camera with me. It's downtown in this magical sweet little inner city park. I'm my favorite place on the island so far. The type of tree is the "Figueira". Fig tree I think. I saw may of them in Spain.

Blog Action Day

2008-10-15T06:15:00.000-07:00

So today is "Blog Action Day".
This is a day when bloggers around the world unite-and-write about poverty in order to raise awareness. Personally, I can't say that I an expert in poverty. I've been lucky enough to have never really experienced true poverty. That said, I'll give my two cents anyhow as part of the effort to raise awareness and knowing that two cents given from multiple sources can add up to worthwhile amounts. Which leads us to my first topic: Microfinancing.

I think that Microfinance can be best explained using infomercialism.

Infomercial for Microfinancer-2000-X already in progress :

Mike: "Many of you are saying to yourselves: Hey Mike, I've heard about Microfinancing, but I'm not really sure what it is. Micofinancing is basically the act of lending small amounts of money to the very poor, by institutions other than big banks."

Member of paid audience: "OK Mike, so that's what Microfinancing is, but why is it an important issue in today's turbulent times?"

Me: "Microfinancing is an important issue because it addresses one of the worlds pressing issues: Extreme Poverty. It does this by allowing money to reach entrepreneurs living in poor countries. Microcredits allow the entrepreneurs to start businesses, provide for their families and stimulate the local economy. They can place larger orders and take on larger projects and hire employees. Most importantly they avoid crippling interest rates that can often reach 100% per month in some countries."

Typical sales-person/host who asks basic naive questions: "That's all fair and well Mike, but why don't these entrepreneurs just borrow from banks?"

Me: "That's a fair and non-basic question Rob Lowe. The reason that the people who receive microfinancing cannot borrow from traditional banks is because they often cannot offer anything as collateral (such as a house, a building or title to land) which banks require when lending money. Even if they do have collateral it’s rarely enough to secure a loan large enough to be profitable for a typical bank."

Member of a visible minority: "If banks don't lend out the money then who does?".

Me: "Microfinancors vary from smaller private banks, non-profit groups and even people like you or me. The best part is that loans can come from multiple sources, so the risk is reduced!"

Grandmother: "Microfiancing seems complicated and I probably don't qualify... Not with my medical history."

Mike: "Not true, Microfinancing is easy to do and only takes a few minutes. There are no medical questions and best of all: The premiums never go up!"

Token blond, overly enthusiastic, soccer-mom type lady: "Wow, that sounds great. How can I Microfinance an third world entrepreneur right now?"

Mike: "You help end Extreme Poverty today by going to a site such as http://www.kiva.org/ and lending as little as one easy payment of $100?"

Rob Lowe: "Come on Mike! You can do better than that."

Mike: "All right Rob, how about this. For a limited time you can: Help end extreme poverty, reduce 3rd world dependence on foreign aid and for today only, as part of a special offer, you can also experience a sense of purpose! All for one easy payment of only $25!"

Rob Lowe: "Amazing Mike! Sign me up for Microfinancing today!".

Man that you never see: "Act Now! Dial toll-free http://www.kiva.org/ right now to fight Extreme Poverty. Usually around 90-100% money back guarantee. Shipping and handling charges do not apply. "

So that is microfinancing in a nutshell. Now that I am done promoting debt, it's time to bash it while trying not to sound like a complete hypocrite:

First off, debt is not a bad thing. In fact debt is an essential concept in today’s shaky economy (perhaps not tomorrows). The problem with debt is that it is often associated with interest, often high interest. Interest is a tool that for years has helped the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. It’s based on simple math but since people don’t care much for math, they usually get into financial trouble due to interest associated to debt.

If your financial life was a hike along a mountain, debt would be the grass just at the edge of the path that is often safe to step on in order to speed up your pace. However, once in a while, it gives out and sends you on a trip down a slippery slope that you may end up on for the rest of your hike (never reaching the top of the mountain). In this imagery, the Bank would be the hiker ahead of you that recommends that you walk on the grass in order to reach the top faster. They also insist on hold onto your backpack for you.

All that to say that I hate owing or being owed money so I pay things back as soon as I can and avoid borrowing completely. Emotionally I prefer to give something away then to lend it. But that’s just me.

I'll end this post by mentioning the current global economic crisis. There done. I think we hear enough about it from our propaganda machines. As much as I like the topic I’ll stay clear of it today just cause I just had a long talk about it last night with a co-worker and I don’t really want to go down that rabbit hole again. I want to keep this short and just say this:
1) A lot of people and organizations are making money and (more importantly) gaining power over the "Crisis".
2) Usually if you want to find out who is responsible for a problem you simple have to look towards who is profiting from it.
3) The Federal Reserve should be allowed operate in the way it does.

Thats all for my blog today. Thanks for reading and stay tuned to find out about a really cool tree I StumbledUpon in downtown Florianopolis last weekend.

Hazy Sunday: Preclude Chronnicles of Nilda and Luciano

2008-10-10T12:12:00.000-07:00

URGENT NOTE TO READER: This post is about events that took place a few hours before Chronnicles of Nilda and Luciano.

Its taken me a few days to sit down and document that fateless afternoon before Nilda, Luciano and I went on that ambitious adventure, but here are some pics and videos to remind me and show you what those events were and how they have helped shape the world as I know it.
This is a picture from a the boat launch on in the southern lagoon facing a highly desirable property:

Here are some tacky garden gnomes protraying the 7 dwarfs. Obviously these are the american version of the Dwarf. You can tell because with the weak Brazilian Dwarf exchange rate there are only 5 of them:

Local tagging:
http://lh4.ggpht.com/mike.mcnulty/SO-sr6ht_lI/AAAAAAAAAK8/W_y1hLNDL4E/s576/DSCF0120.jpg

Sidewalk Ceramics

Dog

Trees that (I strongly like to believe) are called the twisted sister. And who (I also like to believe) posses mystical powers, particularly the ability to forecast gum prices at the local gas station. Including brands such as Trident sugar freegum aaaaaaaand Wrigley's Spearmint:

This is the "Corridor of Inevitable Doom":

This is a typical building on this street:

Some nice foliage:
http://picasaweb.google.com/mike.mcnulty

A cozy little shit-pile:

Lets end this session with an educational video about Dogs in Lagoa da Conceicao:

Taschereau, Quebec

2008-10-07T15:48:00.000-07:00

Je voudrais dire in gros "Bonjour!" et "Merci" à celui ou celle qui a visité mon blog de Taschereau, Québec.

... En tous cas... j'dis ça d'même.

My other distinguished publications

2008-10-06T05:50:00.000-07:00

Click here to read about some previous adventures I've been on. I recommend this trip. Followers of the blog competed against each other in what was known only as "THE GAME". They would try to guess how many pastries I ate in each country. Points were awarded and fierce rivalries flourished, many of which are alive and strong to this day. That era however has pasted and we must look to the present to find what matters most. Which brings me to my next point: I want to be sure that you are all getting the most out of my blogs. I have some real cool features that you can use. Today I am promoting the "Traffic Map". Click on it and find out in real-time where other readers of the blog are coming from.

If you are unfamiliar with this picture then you are not using this feature enough. Click on the "Traffic Map" on the right sidebar regularly. Depending on what games I come up with next you may become involved in intense rivalries with some of these viewers. And it is always good practice to know where your enemies dwell.
That's all for now.

Hazy Sunday - Chronicle of Nilda and Luciano

2008-10-03T14:43:00.000-07:00

Due to popular demand, I went and did 2 of the things that you all voted for last weekend. First I went to dinner with Conrado, Andrea and Vanessa at Vanessa's amazing apartment... but it is a little know fact that I also went to the south part of the island with Nilda and Luciano on that fateful hazy Sunday afternoon. The goings-on of the day have been passed down from generation to generation, keep secret from the general public for days... Until now!

Here I am testing out my cameras EXTREME-ZOOM on the fog. It worked very well... The people in the picture were located in Africa.

Here we all are pretending not to fear the wrath of the evil ocean tide that stared us squarely in the back of our heads:

Here I am testing out my mad skilz:

And here are some scenic shots to appease the masses:

Afterward, as per my constant nagging and death threats, we all agreed to visit this cool restaurant called Bar do Arante. Its famous cause people leave notes all over the walls. Historians maintain that it all started when people wanted to leave notes for their friends, telling them where they were on the island that day so that they could meet. These days, more advanced technology, such as Telepathy over/IP (To/IP) and carrier pigeons, is available and the need for these notes is no longer there. The tradition, however, carries on... as do insurance implications regarding fire hazards.

Here we are smiling politely.

Here is one left by a left wing elitist:

I decided to leave one in the form of a passport, because I had never seen one in the form of a passport and wanted to see it.

You can look at this picture too if you'd like!

Dial this toll free number right away if you wish to receive a commemorative coin celebrating the hazy afternoon that Mike spent with Nilda and Luciano:

4

local callers can dial:

5

cell phone users can also text the letter "U" to the number 3. (US customers should dial 1 first then the number) standard charges will apply.

He could fit in your back pocket!

2008-09-30T14:09:00.000-07:00

This pic is so out of context but I couldn't resist!

Big in Japan... Europe...The US...

2008-09-30T11:00:00.000-07:00

Dear random blog reader. This is a post directed to you! It is widely known that I monitor my blog from time to time and today I noticed something strange. "Island Mike"'s readers are coming from all over the world. Up until today I could account for 90% of my readers but today I have no idea what happened! Where are you all coming from? Not that its a problem... come, bring your friends and their grandmother's son-in-law's pet hampster. I am just a curious guy and want to cater to my audience, I also want to know what tools or links are bringing all you people to my page. So if you don't mind, please leave a comment explaining who you are and/or how you found my page. e.g.: "My name is Foo Dog, I am from Area 51, NM. I clicked on a link from Google.com". I'd really appreciate the feedback. Thank for stopping by and stay classy San Diego!

Roof-Top party

2008-09-30T06:41:00.000-07:00

Congratulations to anyone who voted for me to go to dinner with Conrado, Vanessa and Andrea. Vanessa hosted a great roof-top dinner party in trendy downtown Florianopolis. We where as high up as the eagles (not local to the island) and we ate as would only the 4 highest ranking gorillas on a planet ruled by primates where the social status was governed by brute strength and humans did not have access to robotic arms... and androids were considered "non-primatic". Here are some remarkable pics of this magical evening:
Here is all the pre-dinner prep:

Here are all Vanessa's friends - featuring me:

This is the part after all the food and people is gone :(

Stay tuned to find out what else you made me do last weekend!

Crazy Sunday - The Chronicle of Sambaqui

2008-09-25T14:17:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone,
I've been busy lately as indicated by my lack of blog. Both past weekends I took picture and videos with intentions of writing blog, but ran short on time. Today I decided to catch up and post these picture and videos and explain the stories behind them. However this morning while minding my own business, I was subject to a most unfortunate case of loosing-of-all-my-videos-and-picture-that-I-had-taken-and-had-planned-to-blog-about. This is a problem that can strike a blogger at anytime and anywhere in the world. There have been report of such occurrences in as far away websites as www.blog.com (thats on third and main) www.bloggersRus.com (third and main as well) and www.blogSupremecyWorld.com (which is on 3rd and Main too) come to think of it they are all in the same complexe on 3rd and Main, which if I'm not mistaken is part of the blog district. Anyway, the point that I'm clearly making here is that this is an epidemic. Loosing-of-all-my-videos-and-picture-that-I-had-taken-and-had-planned-to-blog-about has taken more JPEGs in the month of September than in the entire year of 2006 and 2007 combined! Now that's no laughing matter.
All that to say that I have no picture to show you guys but only a lame text based story of 2500 words or less. Converted that comes to about 2.5 pictures.

First story is 2 Sundays ago I was about to go for an adventure "Around The Island with 40 Reais" (Reals in english - Brazilian currency). That adventure never happened. I got about 40 minutes into it and met a guy from work who was coming to my town with his wife for the afternoon. So we had a nice lunch and ended up walking around the market my town till dark. This was nice cause my adventure was a solution to the boredom resulting from of no media of any kind in my house. "Around The Island with 40 Reais" will have to be postponed till another boring day comes along.

This past Sunday I was less prepared for boredom so I just made my way to the bus terminal hoping that I would think of a cool place to go. I decided that I would visit the house in a town called Sambaqui in which I had planned to live (before I arrived). So I get on the bus and start making my way there. I get there in a 3 bus trip and no real problems. "Hey kids! There's Sambaqui!" I shouted as I drove through the town. I got out took the aforementioned pictures, had a pleasant ocean-side meal at a nice restaurant, and proceed to exit the area.
Note: Please listen to the music here as you read the rest of the tale. Chevy Chase and National Lampoon fans will know where I'm going with this...

So I had my nice meal and start walking out of town "Goodbye Sambaqui" I said as ran towards a bus. So I get on this bus which would eventually lead me back to one of the interemediate stations that I need to go through on my way home... but not before it does a circle and drives through Sambaqui again. "Goodbye Sambaqui... again" I said with a chuckle, but then the bus turns around and goes through Sambaqui before heading to the station. Once I was back at the station I get on my next bus which should lead me home. But I soon learn that that bus was not as advertised and proceed back into Sambaqui goes through it turns around, double through Sambaqui agin, takes a small road (almost getting stuck), going into the backwoods, driving by people riding horses, through a fair, turning around back through the fair, by the horsemen, doing quick Sambaqui in and out once again ("Hey kids there's Sambaqui!") but eventually landing back at the intermediate station again. By this time I had been leaving Sambaqui for about 2 and a half hours and was ready to never go back again. So I take a different colored bus that only goes on highways and eventually made it back, with nothing but photos and a leftover piece of fish from my early supper by the ocean which was now a distant and vague memory. But at least I can write about it and show the cool pics I took right? Wrong! That when Loosing-of-all-my-videos-and-picture-that-I-had-taken-and-had-planned-to-blog-about stikes the hardest: when the photos were hard to get. So instead I can only write and show you this video which I can now sympathize with and you can use to understand my Chevy Chase reference:

Inward bound

2008-09-12T15:32:00.000-07:00

Big news everyone: I just got my first known inbound link to my blog. I'm officially popular!
Extra! Extra! IISD Promotes Mike!
See the picture of my on that site? Those who watched a lot of sappy after school sitcoms during 80-90s you may remember the houses behind me in the picture... For those who don't remember let me refresh your memory.

That pic is also a little free promo I did for Google. They call thank me later...

I'm a Reflections amendent to be - and I'm hoping that they'll ratify me!

2008-09-12T07:42:00.001-07:00

"Reflections" refers to an email group that all us IISD interns use to keep in touch. I sent mine out early so I am taking this opportunity to amend it and share the valued content with those not blessed with the exclusive IISD privileges. Naturally, it will be presented in a fast paced, prime time network, political style interview.

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Now presenting Q&A with Lisa Cyr: In this exclusive interview, Lisa Cyr delves deep into the psyche of one of Brazil's least notorious super-civilian-immigrants; Island Mike.

Lisa: Eu, todo bem?
Mike: Tudo Bem, como vai? I actually knew that one! Portuguese lessons are practically paying for themselves!

Lisa: OK didn't ask for the life story...

Lisa: How are things up there in Florianapolis?
Mike: Things are fine. Why do you ask?

Lisa: Hows the Portuguese coming along?
Mike: Learning Portuguese is slow. I'm definately catching on though. Many people at the office speak some english and like to practice on me which is good for now cause I am still settling in and need to get things done. I started a language group this week where I exchange English for Portuguese on Wednesdays and French for Port on Tuesdays. I have found that French is very similar to Portuguese so it is helping me way more than my English.

Lisa: Are they slave drivers there too?
Mike: Yes. Please contact my consulate, embassy or local police at your earliest convenience. I am located in work farm 4 just north of the sweat shop district. I am gonna be very busy for sure. Everyone seems to have a different idea of what they want me to do but that will get ironed out shortly.

Lisa: Your update was a little short - how is everything? You liking it?
Mike: Everything is fine! What is wrong with you? Can't you let me live my life!?!!?

Lisa: Hows the city?
Mike: The city is nothing special but the island is. I live a walk away from multiple beaches which is sweet but puts me in the center of traffic during the weekends.

Lisa: The ladies?
Mike: There aren't many in my office but they are all very nice. But there seems to be a floor of supermodels somewhere in the building judging by some elevator rides.

Lisa: The weather?
Mike: The weather was good the first week and this past week has been rain rain and a little bit of cloud cover.... followed by rain.

Lisa: Well that just about wraps up this interview.

Mike: So... Am i getting those Pop Tarts now or will you be sending them to me via a priority courrier?

Lisa: There will be no Pop Tarts.

Mike: DAMN IT LISA WE HAD AN AGREEMENT!!!

Lisa: Security! Take care of this one!

Head Security Guard (to foot soldiers): Dismember the corpse and send the wife a ham.

Mike (to Lisa): You have the power to end this!

(plays out to the theme of Sanford and Son)

Send this interview out to 3 of your friends or live a life of love and prosperity.

Same phone different pile.

2008-09-11T14:47:00.000-07:00

For those of you who remember my old phone, this video will make sense. For those who don't remember: My old phone was a discount phone by Motorola that had one or two features including the ability to make phone calls on common cell phone networks... but not much else. One of it's selling features was that it used "throwback calculator screen technology" as I liked to all it. Remember those crappy screens with 8 digits and black on gray?

Well that's what my phone had except I had 12 digits (2 rows of 6... which is completely unreadable) and white-on-black text. Anyway, my new phone looks just like the old one (which looked great when turned off!) but has an LCD screen instead and is about 75% thicker. Behold:

StatMan

2008-09-09T10:33:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone!
Yesterday lots of people came to see the blog. That's good to see. As you may or may not know I actually keep track of how many people come to see what I am up to. People seem to like Mike's (& Dave's... our lawyers are working on this dispute) Disco Dryer video. As only a transparent dictator I like to share my census results with my population. Here is the history of the blog from day one of data collection:

As you may notice, yesterday was the most popular day in almost every way. The only stat that did not reach a record high yesderday was the "First time visitors to the site" statistic. We had 24 new visitor yesterday one short of the record 25 new visitors reached on the day one. "First time visitors" can be calculated by subtracting "returning visitors" from "unique visitors".
In related news, the disco dryer can also be used as an air condition in dry heat situations. As humidity levels reach 90-100 levels it will stop functioning as a dryer or air conditioner and merely be an 1960's style disco ball (before the technology had been perfected).

Inside the Instituto (sequel to "Crossing the Gulf")

2008-09-08T17:19:00.001-07:00

Here is an insider view of where I work (Instituto Stela)
This is the upstairs reception:

This is my humble workspace:

Here is the general work area:

Here is the lunch room, but I haven't needed it so far cause we have great lunch options. The place across the street is so close and very good for about 6-7 dollars/plate in a pay-by-the-kg style buffet. But a group of us want to save some Reals so we drive about 10 mins to the discount cafeteria which feeds us well for about $4 plate. Today I paid R$5.53 = $3.45CND which included a chocolate cake dessert. These are great options considering the quality of the food. It's cheaper than making a lunch!

And here is another glamor shot:

I'll take some more shots of outside the building (which is the nicest in the area) later.

Lazy Sunday - The Chronicle of the Laundry Solution

2008-09-08T07:53:00.000-07:00

Sunday night was not great as nothing useful was open, particularly the laundromat. I went to the grocery store instead (which never seem to close) and got what I believe is laundry detergent (there were picture of people enjoying towels and stuff on the cover). My gas at home was not turned on either so I talk to the landlord Eriba about it in one of our broken Portugese-English-signlanguage conversations. I think that we understood each other. I'll see if he really understood when I get back. Hopefully he won't be in the yard buning all my clothes in a gas fire while giving me the "thumbs-up?" looking for approval. BTW Thumbs up are HUUUUUGE here in Florianopolis!
Here is a video of me last night explaining my situation and demoing one of my solutions.

After making this video I remembered that I have shutters on my windows so I closed them to keep the light in then turned on my light for some extra drying power. Also the cold air of the night turned my window into a condenser/dehumidifier... My clothes where quite dry by morning ;)

New Apartment

2008-09-05T12:11:00.000-07:00

First off I want to shout out to Kels on account of here bday today.
OoooooooK... Moving onto other business, here is a map of where I am living now:

View Larger Map

As you can see I am much closer to the ocean-side beach and still very close to the lake. Here is a quick video of my temporary place. I recorded it yesterday.

Last night was my first stay here. There is much more wind here than the last place I stayed so it was a bit cold. But the "winter" will soon be over and the addition wind will come in handy.

Here is where I catch the bus:

and here is my view from the bus-stop:

Peace! We outta here! (Old SNL reference)

Out to lunch

2008-09-05T10:01:00.001-07:00

We went out to lunch again today (5th time this week!) I guess since lunch is the most important meal of the day and restaurants are relatively inexpensive compared to grocery store food, going out to lunch is not uncommon. We eat at a cafeteria style buffet today which is subsidized by the state. It was pretty good! Some of the guys went today. On the way back we discussed the motel industry and how it differs from that in North America.

First day on the job

2008-09-01T17:50:00.000-07:00

Before I forget, this is a picture that I stole from someones Facebook profile. It is from Lagoa Conceicao, the part of town that I am living in and plan to live in long term. Whenever people ask where I am staying and I answer Lagoa Conceicao they smile and roll their eyes as though to say "of course". It is the most desirable place to stay it seems or at least the hippest and we all know that I only live in the hippest of places. I also only drive the most fashionable geiroscope balanced scooters to go to places like work... They have a specific name but I can't remember it right now... but it doesn't matter as I only brought it up as a Segway to the story of my first day at work. I got up at about 7:30 even though I didn't start work until 10AM. Had my nice breakfast as usual and watched a little Brazilian TV before walking to the bus station. Luckily I got there at 9:24 cause even though I missed the 9:20 and the 9:33 never showed up, the 9:50 got me to work only 8 minutes late. Lesson learned, buses... not so reliable. Although it may have been a fluke: everyone seemed pretty pissed. Anyway work was great. I got loads of facetime with top management and they are all super nice! Secrataries are researching apartments for me in Lagoa. I met my supervisor and it seems that our incentives and goals for my internship are well alligned. I spent most of the day reading books on software companies and their busiess models (product vs services) which I would do on my freetime anyway then about 8 of us went out to a 3D movie of a U2 performance in Argentina. All in all a great first day. More updates will come once I get settled.

Sunday Bloody Sunday (minus the part about the blood)

2008-08-31T13:47:00.000-07:00

Just had my first weekend here in Floripa (affectionate term for Florianopolis). Sundays are very slow indeed here. I slept most of Saturday still jetlagged but started my day Sunday at 5:45AM without an alarm, ready to go. I wanted to makeup for Saturday when I slept in and took my time figuring out what I wanted to do and ended up going to Centro (downtown) just in time to see the street vendors closing up shop. So today I was determined to go somewhere early and go places. First thing I did was put on a P90X video; compliments of Joel Lemaire (deliberate shoutout... I hope he reads this or it will all be for nothing... NOTHING!!!). ANYWAYS, oups caps-lock... no time for backspace or to filter inner monologue... so I was doing the P90X and it was getting hard so I stopped after about 15 mins, but I felt good about doing it. Next I made some eggs and had some breakfast including milk from a box that was on a store shelf. WEIRD! but it wasn't so bad so I kept moving. Hand my shower and answered some emails and other online busines then headed out. I was approaching 8AM by that time. The streets were deserted! Then I realized that it was Sunday. So I walk to the bus station and try to figure out where I want to go. I had always concerned that I will not have time to get back before dark up until now (which is around 6pm this time of year), but this was not an issue as it was still very early. I decided to head north! Carnasvieras it is! I waited a while for the bus but that was not a problem... it seems to be the way of life here. The bus arrived around 8:45 and left around 9. I got to see a bunch of nice sceanery along the way and I got an idea of what traveling around the island is like. The part of town that I am in (Conceicao) is comparable to Wakefield for those Ottawa readers. Lots of waterfront on a big lake. Lots of relaxed people and an upperclass lifestyle compared to surrounding towns. So I take this bus right to the Carnasvieras bus terminal, but I don't see beach even though I know there is a big one here. So I start asking around for a map of the bus routes. They don't seem to exist. So that becomes my mission. I talk with a vendor for about 10-15 mins and learn very little as neither of us spoke each others language, but I did manage to find a bus that goes to Centro where i would have a better chance to find my map. So I go.... OK this is too much detail. lets take it up a notch or 2. I go to centro. I find signs with maps of the bus routes. I want to take pictures but left my camera at the Pousada. I see another person taking pictures of them. His name is Salvador and is he is a Catalonian on sabaticle from his engineering job in Barcelona. We talk and I find out he is looking for a pousada in Conceicao. I recommend mine and offer to show him where it is as I am dying to talk to someone who understands english. We take the bus back. He sees it, likes it and books it. We grab a quick bite at a local restaurant and head our separate ways. The waiter there is Californian and I get his contact info in case there is an opening in his building. I get on another bus and go to Barra de Lagoa. Nice spot! I hear another english voice. Its a surfer from Ireland named Vince. We discuss economics and travel for about 15 mins. We are both obviously tired but make an effort to keep the conversation going. He misses his stop then gets off. I then realize that I just did the entire circuit and am back where I started. No worries, I saw what I wanted to see and am now ready to go home. So I walk back and that brings us to now. It was a long day in retrospect but I didn't get much done. I will have to go back to Centro and take a pic of those maps and also I need to get a watch if my work doesn't give me a cell phone with a clock. That's all for now. Stay tuned.