Good Friday

Remember how my phone's charge socket was loose, and I had to rig up a system where I taped a pen to the tip of the charge cord and wrap a rubber band around the pen and the phone to apply consistent pressure so it would charge?

Well, recently the metal tab on the charger broke off. I went to a convenience store and got another charger. It worked exactly once, and the next time I had to charge it, the metal tip caved in. I figured that if I had to apply enough pressure that chargers broke after one use, my phone was basically done. My phone plan has a system that lets me get a new phone every two years for free, so I wanted mine to live another 9 months.

I bought another one and tried putting it in before crafting a new pressure system. The phone lit up and I dropped the charger in shock. I put it in again, and it worked. No elevated charge angling, no pen, no tape, no rubber bands. It just works, like a charger is supposed to. Completely baffling.

I came into Guelph yesterday for graphic facilitation training. It was a really cool day, lots of really practical and insightful concepts regarding images and communication.

I'd been planning on coming to Guelph the next day (today) for Easter, and it didn't seem practical to go back to Kitchener and then pay for a Greyhound ticket the next day and come back, but I had one meeting on Good Friday. As I was leaving, I got a message saying the meeting was canceled. Very fine timing for me.

But because of this, I didn't bring my computer, my phone charger, or anything. And because only that one specific charger works for my phone, that means my phone died and couldn't be recharged.

My neighbour told me that, in relation to my complaint that my phone won't pull up a keypad when making outgoing phone calls (but will for incoming phone calls, strangely), that I should take out the SIM card, turn it off and let it sit for 24 hours. This lets the phone reset itself. I said I couldn't conceive of 24 hours when I didn't need my phone.

But I'll be in Guelph for over 24 hours, my phone just died and I can't recharge it, so I guess we're going to see.

We had an ice storm in Guelph. Tree branches froze and fell from becoming too heavy to be supported. Roads blocked and power lines torn apart from falling branches. I was walking down the street and saw two branches in two instances fall from their trees. One did barricade a road and tear a power line. I saw this, went into the road and tried to move the branch. I could move but not lift it. If it had just been wood, I could have done, but there's a reason the tree couldn't hold it anymore, you know?

Then someone came out of his house, and someone out of their car, and someone out of the street, and together we moved the branch off the road. People came out to thank us too. It was a cool community moment.

Flytrap

I figured out how to get my DVD and VHS player working. The cord I had was just missing a jack. I got another one and it works now. I'm also willing to bet that I know how to get the tetris system running. It's got a section on the back labeled +AA. Since I haven't used it since early high school, I'm willing to bet the batteries are dead. It's fastened on by a screw, though. Apparently they hadn't developed that little plastic clip technology at that point.

I have a Venus flytrap growing kit! This is like a childhood dream come true! It has raised something of a strange question, though. I bought it without thinking of the implications of a fly-eating plant. People eat to live, so will the flytraps need to eat to live? And from there, does that mean they would need to eat flies to live. And from there, does that mean we need a fly problem to sustain the flytraps? I could probably find out, I haven't opened the kit yet.

Oh well, if that's the case I'll just set a bowl of rotting fruit next to it and my roommates will have to deal. I'm not letting anything get in the way of this, this is too important for me.

In a similar vein, they had a sunflower growing kit, which I scoffed at. You don't need a kit for sunflowers, just get a packet of seeds from the dollar store. I saw the sunflower kit and had expressed my indignation before seeing the flytraps. Could be the same situation, I wouldn't know. I've never seen flytrap seeds before.

And on that point, I'm looking forward to gardening this year. I've got my sunflower's seeds from last year and will try planting them. If I can manage it, it will be my first time growing something from something I've grown. There's a community garden nearby, which I think I'll rent a plot from.

I got swindled into buying a Canada Dry Black Cherry pop. I made the purchase based on the assumption that Canada Dry meant "ginger ale" because that's the only product I know of that company making, and I'd never seen a ginger ale fusion before. After the purchase, I looked at the ingredients and saw nothing to indicate ginger ale. And it tasted nothing like ginger ale either. It was just black cherry.

I walked by a truck's trailer today, through a parking lot. I walked by it without giving it much notice, glanced at it, saw the door was open with no one around, and that inside it was a mountain of skinned goats, staring at me with dead goat-eyes. Was just an interesting sight.

I'm going to Graphic Facilitation Training tomorrow. This will teach me how to act in the role of graphic facilitator during paths and maps sessions, which brings in a circle of friends to do a session that helps a person make a life plan. The graphic facilitator is in charge of illustrating the path or map.

Gamecube

Guelph's newspaper, the Guelph Mercury, has been discontinued. It is continuing as an online entity, but its presence in print is finished, with 90 staff positions cut. It's been our newspaper since 1867, making it 149 years old. I'm sad to see it go, even though I never paid much attention to it.  I've probably contributed to the death of print by getting most of my information online.

I went on my Twitter recently. I don't go on it much, and I've got it set to private, because the site seemed to tempt me to blurt out unconscious thoughts, and because it became more popular than this blog. But when I tried to Tweet, it said that they couldn't publish anything because I seemed like a robot, or something like that. Turns out, my account got hacked and somebody added like, 80 people to follow, usually with usernames in Arabic characters I can't read. I figured it out, and now I'm able to Tweet again to the few people I haven't blocked.

My brother gave me his old Nintendo Gamecube, along with 12 games. They are as follows:

-The Hobbit. A one-player platformer game, very true to the book This came out when the Lord of the Ring movies had just come out, along with a number of halfhearted games trying to get in on the trend. I'd thought The Hobbit would follow suit, but was pleasantly surprised. I've already finished it, just kept it for nostalgia.

-Mario Kart Double Dash. Each system generally gets a version of Mario Kart. The Gamecube's Double Dash distinguished itself by having two riders in one kart, one that steers and one that deploys items. This allowed for stat combinations between characters and a unique two-player mode where players can act cooperatively within one kart. The gimmick didn't live on in future incarnations, but it's always good to have a Mario Kart game for an easygoing multiplayer racer.

-Mario Golf, Toadstool Tour. Similar to Mario Kart, most systems have a Mario Golf. Good easygoing multiplayer fun. Don't think their system changes much between games, but there are updated characters and courses.

-Super Smash Bros Melee. Second game in the Smash Bros series. It's a collection of (mostly) Nintendo game characters from different series. Classic fighter.

-Wario Ware Inc. Chains of random "Micro Mini-Games" that demand simple tasks be completed in increasingly quick succession. Good multiplayer.

-Tales of Symphonia. An old Role Played Game Neither of us ever beat it, but started it multiple times. I appreciated it for its character building, especially through its function of being able to initiate conversation with party members in terrain outside of cutscenes, and speaking not just between individuals, but as a group. It gave it a slice-of-life feel and built group dynamics utside of dramatic or tense moments. Makes the characters more real and makes yoyu care about them more in the long run.

-Bloody Roar, Primal Fury. An anime fighting game. We got it before we really understood anime. The random way cutscenes were put together confused us to no end as to what thew storyline was supposed to be. revisiting it, it's hard to understand what we found confusing. Solid fighter where characters can alternate between human and human-animal hybrids called "Zoanthropes".

-Bomberman Generations. Bomberman used to be a classic series, but hasn't seemed to have kept up in recent time. Characters place bombs strategically to blow up bricks and ultimately other players. They excavate items to make their explosions more effective.

-Sonic Mega Collection. Sega and Nintendo were once lead rivals, but after Sega lost to Nintendo in the console wars, they kept going as a company and their games have been featured on Nintendo consoles. In Sonic Mega Collection, I've got the first 7 Sonic the Hedgehog games.

-The Legend of Zelda Collector's Edition.Classic Nintendo platformer series, it includes I, II, Ocarina of Time, and Majora's Mask.

-The Simpsons Road Rage. If you remember Crazy Taxi, this is the classic television show Simpsons take on it. Pick up citizens needing taxis, get them to their destinations fast as possible. There's a good multiplayer where each player tries to meet a certain amount of money first. Lots of good in-jokes between the citizens of Springfield and the geography. Surprisingly good gameplay for a spinoff game.

I also have a tetris system which I got in highschool which should hook up to the TV, but doesn't seem to have a power jack. Working on that.

So I have 12 games, but since Sonic Mega Collection is 7, and  Legend of Zelda Collector's Edition is 4, and including Tetris, that's actuallly 22 games. That's a satisfying number right there.

Birthday Brother

Last time I updated, I chose to speak of my new piggy banks, apparently because I thought they were more important than my brother's birthday. It was last Saturday, I went back to Guelph, and that's why I was commenting on the Greyhound station change. I got him a camera for his birthday.

Because he's my polar opposite astrologically, (Pisces happens on the opposite side of the year to Virgo) that means that I'm about twenty-six and a half. Halfway through the year to entering my late-twenties.

They say that the sign on the opposite side of the year to yourself will have the most difficult time adapting to you, but will give more opportunity to learn than any other on account of the difference. I can really see this with my brother. I feel quite opposite to him, and yet... We both have the same Myers Briggs results (INFP) and our Personality Dimensions test both have primary blue (empathetic) secondary green (inquisitive), tertiary orange (adventurous), and lastly gold (organized) although my green and blue are more close, and he has a bit more gold than me. So I feel like we're the opposite, but we score the same on these tests.

My coffee maker broke. I bought it for like, $9 once I finished my first year of student housing. It produced coffee for like, a year and a half, and so I believe it surpassed expectation. It lasted three moves. At one point, it's coffee pot broke and was replaced by the pot of a spare maker. Eventually, the fuse under the power switch stopped working, and that's what put it to rest.

So our maker broke, we realized my roommate had another one, we replaced it and then... it's coffee pot broke, almost inside the same day. The old coffee pot won't go inside the new maker, either. They've got a method including layering tinfoil to collect heat, but I find that cumbersome. I've been using instant.

In a similar vein, my lamp's on/off knob broke. Luckily for me, it was on when it broke. So I just have to plug or unplug my lamp if I want to see.

Recently, a computer beat the world's greatest Go player. Go is a board game with fairly simple rules, but intensely complicated strategies involved. The rules are to take turns placing pebbles on a board, and if one person's pieces are surrounded, they convert to the enemy's pieces.

For awhile, no computer program could stand against creative human intelligence. Then one day, a program was invented that could beat the world's greatest chess player, and we took a great loss. Humanity was angered, and practiced for revenge. We succeeded, but it was a temporary victory. Artificial intelligence came back again, took a win, and since then, chess has belonged to the computers.

Go was a game that artificial intelligence could never really figure out. Now that we have Go-playing robots, it's only a matter of time...

Piggy Banks

They changed the Greyhound bus terminal in Guelph from being a portable to being a part of the old Via Rail station. Five or six years ago, Guelph had a pretty solid Greyhound terminal, but they had to get rid of it in favour of building a new city bus terminal and boarding station. Before this, all the city buses would meet downtown, but they had no proper terminal. So it was just a shift in priorities from having a good inter-city system for a good intra-city one. Fair enough trade.

The portable was supposed to be a temporary arrangement until they could establish a better Greyhound station, but five years later they were still using the portable. After all this time, they finally make the change. And what do they do?

The Via Rail station is right next to the city bus terminal. So they just changed it to encompass the city and Greyhound buses as well. It's now "Guelph Central Station". They didn't have to build anything. Why did they change the location of the Greyhound terminal for five years, just to move it back to where it was, and use a building that was already there and used for transit? It seems like an incredibly simple solution.

Kitchener uses their Charles Street Terminal for both types of buses, so it's not like an original idea. Central Station is better than the portable anyway.

Guess what I have?

Piggy banks! I have limited free debit transactions, so I try to use cash as much as possible. Because of that, I produce a lot of change. And because I don't really use anything under a dollar, it collects quickly. Before this, I've just used a tupperware container, but these piggy banks are a huge step up aesthetically.

The large one is for quarters, nickels and dimes. The small one is for loonies and twonies. The smaller one is kind of the standard size for piggy banks, because they're generally made for children, and children are poor. But I'm a man, and I need a man-sized piggy bank.

They'r not the porcelain piggy banks you have to break to open. Both of these are stainless steal, you'd have to take a hammer to them. They've both got a plug on their underbelly, which you can open to get your coins. They don't follow the philosophy of forcing the collector to break the bank to receive their earnings, which makes a person think twice about committing to the action, and thus encourages free-spenders to save. This works for me, because I've no problem saving, these are just glorified tupperware containers.

You can kind of see me and my room in the reflection in this picture, ha.

When I brought these home, my neighbour was like, "What'd you get, Gryphon? A... uh... a piggy bank, eh? What... what you going to use that for?" And I was like "What do you think? I'm going to use it for its intended purpose of collecting coins" and she was like Ah... that's good".

I don't know, I guess she thought I was too hard-edged for a piggy bank. But when I showed my roommates, they were like "Aw, man, that's sick bro, where'd you get it?" And then we had a whole conversation about our preferred types of piggy banks.

In fact, every male in my age category that I've shown my piggy banks to has shown only appreciation.

Gyro

Remember how I bought a book from a guy on the street for $5, which looked to have been done with the intention of bypassing the need for a publisher? It was titled "Coryworld, a wacky and futuristic science fiction novella where children race and dance inside a simulator, except for two of them :)" I gave it to my mother. She finished it, and this was her review:

"I finally finished that weird book you got from a panhandler. It was a "futuristic novella" about some dude making a simulation for his sociology class, where he makes a bunch of kids grow up, partake in a weird ritual dance and race, and then just deletes everything.

There were some interesting ideas in it but nothing really unique and the ending seemed pointless"

I'm not phased. I'd buy another $5 book on the streets, although maybe not by Gap Yuet Bing Ding.

Hey, you know what a gyro is? It's a Greek pita wrap with meat carved from a vertical rotisserie, often served with vegetables, tzatziki and garlic sauce. It's heaven is what it is.

The Kitchener-Waterloo area has a lot of places that serve these. Often alongside falafel, shawarma, and sometimes donair.

Gyro, shawarma, and donair, to my understanding, are all similar in nature but come from different cultures. Despite them being fairly interchangeable, it's not uncommon in my area for gyro to mean beef, shawarma to mean chicken, and donair to mean beef with some twist on the gyro. Interesting to note, donair is a pretty Canada-specific spelling for the word doner kabob, which is the original term for pretty much the same product. It became established enough and consistently misspelled enough, to get a new standard spelling over here.

Then there's Falafel, which is a chick pea dumpling meat substitute. It's not uncommon for shawarma, gyro, donair, and falafel to be listed on the same menu without consideration to the restaurant's cultural background. Generally speaking, gyro is what you want, because it's carved straight from the split, and the chicken shawarma often uses pre-packaged meat.

But you can't order gyro, because it's correct pronunciation is "yee-ro" but it's common-use pronunciation is "jai-ro". So you have the option of sounding pretentious by using the obscure correct pronunciation, or ignorant by using the uninformed pronunciation.

There's no consensus on how to approach this. I've said "jai-ro" in the past in an attempt to seem humble, and I've been served, although I've had to cringe when my server pronounced it differently. I've tried the authentic pronunciation and have been served just as dispassionately. If nobody cares, I think I'm going to try and pronounce it correctly.

I recently found five pennies on the ground. I've really had good luck with pennies recently.