Damn You Steve Jobs

You're luck I have coffee
New Zealand has just adjusted its clocks to daylight savings time last weekend, and as I live here, I thought it might be a good idea to follow suit.  I'm such a wimp when it comes to peer pressure.

"All the cool kids are setting their clocks forward.  Are you chicken"
"I'll show you who's chicken.  I'll set my clock forward an hour and a half!"
Without going into the facts that study after study shows that due to daylight savings, productivity is lost, more accidents occur, and now a new study shows that it doesn't even save money on electricity anymore due to people running their AC for longer, let me just say that I hate daylight savings.  Worst idea ever!  Rest assured, I have been cursing Benjamin Frankiln's name on a daily basis.  True story!  I keep an American C-note in my wallet and swear at it daily.  Makes my boss look at me funny every day.  Well, that and the feather boa I wear to work.

So it is bad enough that because of daylight savings, we lose an hour of sleep, but due to a software glitch in the iPod software, over the last two nights I have lost an additional hour as well.

Kristie and I get up at 5:15 AM three weekdays a week to go for our morning runs (giggle...morning runs).  That in itself is hard enough to do.

"Hey Leo, its me, your iPod.  Listen, I know it is pitch black outside, and it is cold, rainy and windy, but what do you say to getting out of that warm bed and going for a run?"
"Ugh"

Anyway, to make matters worse, with daylight savings, we're now getting up at 4:15 AM.

"Hey Leo, I know it is pitch-"
"Shut up!!!!"

Ok, so now we get onto why Steve Jobs is now dead to me.  How many of you out there still have alarm clocks?  I'd bet many of you now use cell phones, computers, etc. to wake yourself up.  Well, I use my iPod.  But due to a glitch in the iPod's software, after we switched to daylight savings, the alarm of the built in alarm app is malfunctioning.  Instead of the alarm going off when scheduled, it goes off an hour early!  That's right, not only do we have to get up at an ungodly hour normally, now we've lost an hour of sleep, AND the alarm clock is ringing an hour earlier than it is suppose to!  That means for the last two mornings, we've been getting up at 3:15 AM in the freaking morning!  Yes I know that saying AM and "in the morning" are redundant; I'm operating on very little sleep here people!

What is strange about it is, the current time on the iPod clock itself read as 4:15 AM, but the alarm, which was happily chiming loudly, reads 5:15 AM.

"Leeeeeeeoooooooooooooo, its me, your iPod.  It is 5:15 AM!  Time to get up!"
"No it isn't!  It says right here it is only 4:15 AM!"
"Oh.  Sorry.  Never mind.  Love you!"
"*&#% You!"
This has happened the last couple of mornings.  The first time, I thought it was user error, but the next morning, after I fished the iPod out of the trash, I found that I had indeed set it properly.  Today I did a bit of Googsearch (Googsearch, a word coined by me, and is now trademarked) and found a blog posting that confirms that I'm not crazy...well, at least in this particular instance.

I took the advice written in the blog post and just set a single alarm rather than a repeating alarm, and then tested it.  From what I can see, it is working at the moment.  But if I get up at 4:15 AM tomorrow, I'm going to see how many flushes it will take before that thing goes down the drain.

Steve Jobs, you owe me two hours of sleep!

Engage

Shields Up!
I was doodling today on my Wacom (hey, I was alone and bored), and I came up with a character who looks a lot like Patrick Stewart.

I didn't mean to make the character look like Jean Luc Picard, but the character just took shape as such.  I don't think I'll include him in the book that I'm planning, but it kind of got my creative juices flowing.  Speaking of which, I'm thirsty.

If you look at the character, it kind of looks like he's going to cry.  I guess he just heard that Star Trek Next Gen. had been cancelled.

Current Work In Progress

At long last, I've found a few minutes tonight to work on one of my ideas for the book.

Buttons the Owl
I started working on buttons here two weekends ago and managed to complete the mask, beak and chest plumes.  Since then, today I managed to colour in the base colour of the owl and start the highlighting process (kind of looks like dandruff at the moment).

At this rate he might be complete by 2012.

I'm Not Really Lazy

11:41 Posted by leosaumure 0 comments
Lazy
I have no problem getting up a little early for some exercise.  I do have a problem getting up really early for some exercise!

Kristie and I get up at 5:30 in the morning, thee to four days of the week in order to go for a run.  We guzzle a half cup of coffee in order to get our heartbeat started, and then venture the cold, rain, wind, sun, whatever.  Even if we go to bed early (like 9:30 early), I still find it very difficult to get up that early in the morning.

Today was one of those days.  The alarm sounded and I laid in bed for about 30 seconds while the alarm chimed, thinking to myself: *Dammit, Dammit, Dammit*!  We got up, drank our coffee, went for the run, and I was faltering right off the bat.  It felt like Kristie was sprinting the entire run, even though I'm sure she wasn't running any faster than usual.  I was panting, huffing-and-puffing, and gasping for breath whenever I tried talking.

Even after the run, I felt horrible.  You know those times when you exercise and even if you didn't have the best energy, you are glad that you did it?  Not so much today!  Each time I get out of my chair at work, it takes effort to straighten my legs.  I look like an out-of-shape centenarian who just got kicked in the stomach.

Anyway, I just thought I would vent...sorry about the smell.

Where Does the Time Go? Seriously!

I just wanted to do a really quick blog post to say that although I've enjoyed the bump in income due to working four days a week now, I am seriously losing a lot of free time.  This is my first blog posting in ages, I haven't drawn in about two weeks, I haven't been taking many pictures lately, I just can't seem to get my leisure activities completed.

Walnut & Angus
Ok, I guess Kristie and I did manage to complete a project that we have been working on for her parents, which I can't talk about too much as they read this blog.  I suppose we did spend an amazing weekend out and about at the beach, and we did manage to watch a couple of videos on Saturday.

Fine, it appears that my leisure activity is alive and well, but I seem to have shifted my focus.  I would like to get back to drawing though.  I've had this one image that I've been working on for about a day, and it hasn't gone any further.  Hopefully tonight I can get in an hour or two before going to bed.


One of the flowers in our back yard.
Here is one picture that I managed to take today.

Holy Erratic Weather Batman

Today's weather was all over the map.  It started cloudy, then heavy rain, then blue sky, then heavy cloud cover again.

Make up your mind already!

Here's a few pics I took today.
Bubble Gum Tree
Tulips Starting to Bloom
Singing in the Shower
Large Sculpture

Nice Lazy Saturday

09:23 Posted by leosaumure 0 comments
Yesterday Kristie and I got up too early as the birds were chirping up a storm, thus making it very difficult to sleep.  We both still felt pretty tired, so we decided to forgo the morning coffees.

We didn't do too much as we were both feeling a bit bleary eyed.  We futzed around for a while, checking email, watching an episode of How I Met Your Mother, had a bowl of cereal; just keeping a low key approach to the day.

After about an hour or two, we started feeling the effects of the early morning and decided to go back to bed.  We read for a while and started feeling our eyelids getting heavy, so it was off to dreamland for a while.  We slept for about 2 hours and woke up feeling refreshed and ready to take on Saturday.  Granted there was only a little more than half of Saturday remaining, but we felt ready to take that on.

It wasn't exactly a bright sunny day yesterday, but it was dry and warm, so we thought we would take off to Queen Elisabeth Park on the Kapiti Coast for some off leash time with the dogs.  There was very little wind, the sun was trying to poke through the clouds and the dogs had a wonderful time at the beach.

Upon arriving at home, we read for a while longer and just rested until it was time to make dinner.  Dinner was something new.  We made a Ruby Red Beet Burger that we found on the Strawberry Pepper Blog.  We modified the recipe somewhat as we used egg as a binding agent, but because it is a vegan blog, they used gluten flour.  The burgers tasted fantastic, and were a total make again.

After dinner and dishes we sat down to watch our movie rental: Cinema Paradiso.  It is quite a long movie, so we're finishing it off today.

Here are a few pics we took at Queen Elisabeth Park.
Spring Is In The Air
I'd Vote For Her
Garbage Tree Or in NZ Rubbish Tree

Top Ten Influential Books

Kristie and I put together a list of our top ten, most influential Books.  Here, in no particular order, are mine:


Hounds of the Baskervilles - Aurthur Connan Doyle
Possessing Genius: The True Account of the Bizarre Odyssey of Einstein's Brain - Carolyn Abraham
A Brief History of Time - Stephen Hawking
A Wrinkle in Time - Madeleine L'Engle
E=MC2: A Biography of the Worlds Most Famous Equation - David Bodanis & Simon Singh
The Problem with Islam Today - Irshad Manji
The Odyssey - Homer
Death from the Skies: These are the Ways the World will End - Philip Plait
His Dark Materials Trillogy - Philip Pullman
The Ingenious Hidalgo Don Quixote of La Mancha - Miguel de Cervantes
Gulliver's Travels - Jonathan Swift

I'd be very interested to see all my Facebook friends and Buzz friends do the same.

Why Does This Interest Me?

Today, like every Monday, I cleaned house and did laundry, etc. while listening to my various favorite podcasts. I listen to a lot of technology podcasts, science podcasts, and of course skeptical podcasts.  One of my favorite podcasts, in the skeptical genre is Skeptically Speaking, which is also a weekly radio show that is run from CJSR in Edmonton.  As a quick side note, I didn't find out about this podcast until we had moved away from Edmonton.

Today I listened to part two of Nobel Prize Women in Science, which was an interview with author Sharon Bertsch McGrayne, who wrote a book about (duh) Nobel Prize Women in Science.  The interview(s) discuss a long history of many women in science who have both won the Nobel Prize as well as those who have not been as lucky, despite contributing immensely to science as we now know it.  As was true with part 1 of this interview, I was absolutely riveted by this interview, and my question is: Why?


As far as I know, I'm not a woman.  Although my misogynistic friends may disagree with this statement.  So I don't share any of the inequities that many of these women obviously faced throughout their professional careers, if not their entire lives.


I am a huge fan of science in general (in fact, I don't think I've read a fiction book in over three years) so maybe my fascination on this topic had more to do with learning about a large body of work that I never knew about; at least not as it applied to women.  Along these lines, I have also been developing an appreciation of history as well, so maybe this also explains why I am interested in this topic.


The final reason I can think of as to why I am so interested in this book, is the fact that I found the author, Sharon Bertsch McGrayne, had an unrestrained passion about this topic.  She sounded like she was absolutely aglow with her enthusiasm about these women!  She made the subject matter intesively interesting to me.  In the interview, she would discuss their pasts, their struggles, their personalities, etc.  It was really, really interesting.


For instance, for those of you who are science minded, did you know that Watson and Crick, the scientists who supposedly discovered the double-helix shape of DNA, actually stole it from Rosalind Franklin?  They were pretty unabashed about it too.  In interviews after the fact, they were basically unapologetic about the whole thing.


For whatever reason that I'm interested in this, I have found my next book to read!  Luckily there are two copies available at the library too!

The Dogs Killed A Mouse

Angus and Walnut killed a mouse last night.  Granted it was a toy, stuffed mouse, but still.

Poor little bastard never had a chance.