:: I love quoting Dr Smith from Lost In Space. But I am in pain, damn it. My right shoulder, really aggravating, need pain killers, reaching for the pills. Maybe this is a test from God. Can I survive like this until November 12, when my physiotherapy begins?

However, this related story is almost too much to take: the health care system in Alberta has been under siege for ten years, since Ralph Klein took power. For the first time, the evidence of how bad it is hit me today. I need an MRI on my left arm because of the nagging tennis elbow condition. It takes a while in Alberta to get an MRI unless to pay to do it privately - hundreds of dollars - which means if you're wealthy, you can jump the public queue. The government won't provide enough funding to allow for enough MRI facilities to reduce the long waiting lists.

In the mail today, I received notification of my MRI appointment: 11 June 2004. When I read the date, I couldn't help but smile at the irony: on June 11th, 2004, I'll be in Nashville TN, at the end of my annual professional conference. It takes months to get an MRI appointment, and the first available date I can get in, eight months from now, is during the ONLY event I have scheduled in my life that takes place out of town UNTIL that date.

:: Yesterday's release of The Looney Tunes Golden Collection, a 4-DVD set of 56 Warner Bros cartoons featuring Bugs, Daffy, Foghorn, Elmer, and the rest of the gang, has upset some die-hard fans because of the intentional exclusion of some of the all-time classics, such as What's Opera, Doc? , and One Froggy Evening. This title is on my wish list, but I have no idea when I'll get it. Read a review of the collection here and here.

:: Two days ago it was 55F/17C in Edmonton. Tonight there are a couple inches of snow on the ground, and the temperature is -3C. Such is life in Edmonton. A personal mantra of mine is, "every day after Hallowe'en in which we do not get permanent snow is a blessing from God." Maybe not this year. I suspect, however, that what we are receiving right now in amounts of white stuff will melt or sublimate in the next few days. Nonetheless, I forgot to remove my outside garden hose, so arrived home tonight and stuggled to get it off its rollup on the side of my house.

:: So Tim Horton's doughnuts aren't so fresh after all. Krispy Kreme, please come to Edmonton! (KK will be in Calgary next February.) Here's an interesting take on the story from Thunder Bay.

:: This afternoon, Heavy G and I ran through our forthcoming presentation on biblioblogs for GELA. I thought it went rather well, and I bow in Geoff's general direction for designing a great-looking visual style for the slides.

:: My right shoulder and arm were examined today by a doctor with a specialty in sports medicine. Turns out my shoulder is somewhat out of whack - can't give you much more of an explanation than that. My muscles, rotator cuff, and so on, are ok, but the shoulder blade is out of alignment, bulging a bit at my back. I will need physiotherapy. Unfortunately my first appointment is on November 12th, so in the meantime, I'm getting a massage and stocking up on pain killers.

:: Amazon.com announced last Thursday that it is making the full-text of ~120,000 books (>33,000,000 pages), searchable to its customers. The searching is done at the same level as a title or author search. So I took the book Moonwatcher's Memoir by Dan Richter, flipped it open to a random page (116), read the phrase "some Velcro slipping" in a sentence, typed that phrase into the Amazon search window, and boom, the first item retrieved was Richter's book, with a link to p116, where it found the phrase. What was interesting was how fast the results appeared, in less than five seconds. Given the size of the db, 33 million pages, never mind how many words, I was very impressed that it found the one book with the phrase so quickly. The search algorithm retrieved other books and pages with the words "some", "Velcro", and "slipping", but not the phrase itself.

However, I tried three times to retrieve the text of the page, and finally received a response; I suspect Amazon's servers are burning a lot of coal right now, trying to keep up with the new service. So to see the page that contained the phrase, I had to wait over 10 minutes. Once the page with the phrase you searched appears, you can browse two pages on either side of that page in the book.

This is an impressive feat on Amazon's part. Within my profession, a growing number of full-text databases exists, mostly of primary and secondary journal literature, along side a smaller number of databases which offer the full-texts of monographs, such as books24x7. None of the book dbs remotely approach the content of Amazon's 120,000 books. It's a unique feature that will no doubt increase sales. Amazon's customers now have another powerful search tool to retrieve books (and CDs, DVDs, etc) of interest to them while browsing and searching. The question is: how quickly will their competitors move to offer a similar feature to their web sites?

:: It's 17°C in the Big City, and I just returned from having coffee and reading the NYTimes Magazine. Wearing denim short pants and a t-shirt, I drove home with the window rolled down in my car. This is the last evening I'll be able to dress so casually and lightly for months to come - the temperature will begin dropping tomorrow until it reaches -21C on Sunday night. Cruel is a word that comes to mind. The forecast high for Hallowe'en is -11C, with light snow expected. Not fair, not fair at all, especially to the ghosts and goblins who will be out and about that night.

:: And people wonder why I'd like to live in NYC. ;-)

:: This is one of the funniest eBay entries I've ever read. This poor fellow's ex-wife left him with a few Beanie Babies, and he wanted to get rid of them to buy a few tools. Be sure to read down through the entry - it's a laugher! (From: Karlin.)

:: The Florida Marlins won the World Series, beating the NYYankees four games to two, preventing them from winning their 27th WS, and giving Ivan Rodriguez his first championship in thirteen seasons in MLB. Will Steinbrenner open the vaults and sign more power hitters and rock solid starters? Has baseball become way too predictable? While a Red Sox/Cubs WS would have capitivated the sporting world, this series was rather dull. I missed most of it, despite baseball being my favorite sport to watch on the tube. I cannot shed one tear for the Yankees.

:: I might have to buy this one. Triumph, The Insult Comic Dog, is releasing an album, Come Poop With Me. If you haven't seen any of Triumph's videos, check a few out at the Conan O'Brien site. Be sure to check the excerpts from Triumph at the Star Wars premiere, and his interview with Bon Jovi. (Unfortunately, the full videos are not available on the site).

Frank DiGiacomo writes about the forthcoming release, and of Triumph's creator, the protean Robert Smigel, in the New York Observer. Among many projects, Smigel is the creator of TV Funhouse, the cartoons featured every few weeks on SNL. Come Poop With Me is produced by Jimmy Vivino, the guitarist in O'Brien's band, The Max Weinberg Seven, and a member of The Fab Faux, who I saw perform in NYC last June. (Via: Derryl.)

:: My right shoulder is in considerable pain again. I don't know what's going on. I'll see a sports physician on Monday about my left tennis elbow condition, and ask him about my right shoulder as well.

:: I was at the Netspeed 2003 conference today in Edmonton, and attended a number of interesting sessions, including ones covering virtual reference services, and PDAs in the library. One of the keynote speakers, Ian Whitten, currently the iCore Visiting Professor at U Lethbridge, and Director of the NZ Digital Library at the University of Waikato in New Zealand, discussed Greenstone Digital Library Software, a suite of open-source software used to build and digitize library collections. During his engaging and at time hilarious talk, he showed us examples of digitized collections created with Greenstone, including this page on castration from Basic Husbandry Practices and Veterinary Care. (The foreword of the book states: "The manuals are based upon experiences documented through a series of intensive field work activities over a one-year period with a group of livestock small-holders living and working in Cavite province of the Philippines.")

Note the picture of the farmer tossing the animal testicles onto a roof of made of galvanized iron. This is an indigenous practice done on hot days, as the belief is that the testicles will dry up faster, and thus so will the wound to the animal.

The attentive crowd watching Ian, myself included, had just finished eating lunch at this point in time.

:: I've been playing around with Blogger sites again, ones I've created to keep myself familiar with how to set up an instant blog on that site. Among these sites is my original blog from July 2002. I need to maintain familiarity so that I might sound somewhat intelligent and coherent when G and I present blogging sessions in the not-too-distant future. As some of you might notice, I'm also experimenting with the font size and styles here as well.

:: Today is Take Back Your Time Day. This is something we could use in Canada too, if only to get people talking:

THE TIME IS NOW - TAKE BACK YOUR TIME DAY, OCTOBER 24, 2003

Seattle, WA— Americans are working too much, according to 85% of the 7800 Americans who participated in a recent CNN money.com poll. 4 in 5 Americans wish they had more time to spend with family, according to a poll commissioned by the Center for a New American Dream and half of all Americans even say they’d trade some of their pay for more time off. Their concerns are buttressed by the fact that barely half of all Americans took a week’s vacation this past summer, and that while millions of Americans have lost their jobs to the recession, many more are working longer hours and more mandatory overtime than ever.

“The evidence is clear – over work and over-scheduling are pressing, daily concerns for many Americans,” says John de Graaf, National Coordinator for Take Back Your Time Day, and editor of the new book, Take Back Your Time, just released by Berrett-Koehler Publishers. “We want people to know that the problem is not theirs alone, it is a national concern that needs to be addressed now.” Friday, October 24th is Take Back Your Time Day, a non-partisan educational initiative to address the problems of over work, over scheduling and what the organizers are calling “time poverty.” October 24th falls nine weeks before the end of the year, symbolizing the nine weeks—350 hours—more each year that Americans work compared to western Europeans.

From Anchorage, Alaska to Boston, Massachusetts, and from Washington D.C. to San Diego, thousands of Americans will gather at community centers, places of worship, union halls, museums, bookstores, and on university and college campuses to start a national conversation about how Americans can live more balanced lives. About a hundred communities throughout the United States will take part in the event.

“The interest we’ve received has been very encouraging. It’s crossed economic, political and cultural lines,” says Gretchen Burger, lead organizer of Take Back Your Time Day (www.timeday.org).

The campaign has won endorsements from labor unions, religious and family organizations (endorsers are listed on the Web site: www.timeday.org). Most recently, it’s been gaining endorsements from the political establishment.

Several cities, including Seattle and Duluth, Minnesota, and the governor of Michigan have officially proclaimed October 24th as Take Back Your Time Day. On September 8th, Resolution 210 (submitted by Senators Hatch and Alexander (R) and Kennedy and Dodd (D)), declaring October National Work and Family Month passed the U.S. Senate by unanimous consent, with the goal of “reducing the conflict between work and family.”

Organizers hope that Take Back Your Time Day will do for Americans’ overworked and stressed out lives what Earth Day did for the planet. They are asking each group that gathers on October 24th to send in their solutions, which will range from the personal to the political. They will also circulate a petition to present to all Presidential candidates to demonstrate the support for addressing these issues and call on them for action. They believe that Take Back Your Time Day has achieved sufficient momentum to continue and grow in the coming years.

“Take Back Your Time Day is not anti-work,” says Jeanette Watkins, founder of People for a Shorter Work Week and Take Back Your Time Day volunteer. “But American life has gotten way out of balance. Americans are working harder than ever as they are forced to sacrifice the things that really matter, like good health, active citizenship and time for their families, nature and the soul. We need to bring the balance back.”

Take Back Your Time Day is a project of the Center for Religion, Ethics and Social Policy at Cornell University, and is the first national initiative of the Simplicity Forum.
# # #

:: The last few days have been a bit of a blur. The weekend was a trip to Calgary, featuring visits with good friends, including one who just had her second baby a week ago today. On Saturday night, I attended a gathering of old friends from my 1971 high school class - you can see some of the photos here if you like.

I'm too busy at work for words. Heavy G and I are coauthoring (yet another) article on blogging, and are preparing a presentation on "biblioblogs" for GELA, on November 13. (Geoff will deny it, but I think he's doing most of the prep work, and I deal with my catholic guilt.) Otherwise work consists of putting out small fires everyday - lately, mostly to do with ordering much needed CSA standards for a mechanical engineering design project. My last big instruction session for 2003 is tomorrow afternoon. We are a couple weeks away from beginning our Winter 2004 instruction preparation.

Twice in the last three days I've misplaced my yet-to-be-paid-for hearing aid that I'm road testing. Each time I couldn't find it for hours. Now I'm leaving it in its case, otherwise it is causing me too much anxiety.

Oh, what's that? The World Series? Oh, right...The Yankees. Pardon me while I go back to sleep.

:: Dave Barry brilliantly summarizes recent baseball events, including the Cubs' loss to his beloved Marlins, the arrogance of the NYY, and the (potentionally boring) World Series, beginning tonight. Reluctantly, I'll pull for the Marlins - the lesser of two (boring) evils. (Via Derryl.)

:: It is a gorgeous sunny, fall day in Calgary. After two visits to Tim McKay, the best chiropractor on Planet Earth, my shoulder area is less painful, and my lower back feels fine. This morning I spent time with my dear friend Carole and her mom, and met her new, 5-day old angel, Grace Elizabeth. Later this afternoon I'm off for coffee with another friend, then a visit with my brother, Chris, and then on to my high school class Mini Reunion in the evening. Tomorrow morning it will be dim sum with - wait for it - another friend (it's nice to have a lot of friends in Calgary!), and then either a movie, or head back to Edmonton.

:: Bill Maher makes an interesting case for the hypocrisy surrounding Rush Limbaugh's addiction to pain killer medication and the ongoing drug wars in the USA.

:: In my youth, I was an avid Montreal Canadiens fan, I lived and died by their Cup wins and losses. I was also a huge baseball fan, the Minnesota Twins being my team of choice. I was thrilled when The Twins won the 1987 and 1991 WS, followed by the Blue Jays in 1992 and 1993.

In my later years, hockey has fallen considerably as a sports interest, although the Habs remain my team of choice. I've lived in Edmonton since 1978 but maintain no allegiance to the Oilers. Strikes, idiot owners and greedy players aside, I still love baseball.

The possibility of a Cubs/Red Sox World Series loomed large two days ago. Today it will be a Yankees/Marlins World Series. The Yankees have won 26 WS, 4 since 1996, the last in 2000. The Marlins have been in the league for 10 years, and won in 1997. The Cubs last won in 1908, the Red Sox in 1918. You tell me which series would have been more exciting.

I think, for the first time in years, I will pay little attention to the World Series next week. The Yankees, a team fueled by 180 million US in salaries, are becoming as predictable and boring as the Atlanta Braves. The Marlins?? Can you name one player on the team? Their fan support this year was pathetic, averaging under 17,000 per game. The word was that Fox Sports was hoping that at least one of the two sad sack teams made it to the WS, so as to assure a large TV audience for the games. Now with the NYY and Marlins, chances are the ratings will match last years' WS, the lowest in decades. The Yankees? It's like a broken record. You need a better position player? Well, buy the player. Combine deep pockets with great management and media revenue that does not get redistributed to poorer teams, and your team, in this case The Yankees, will be there every year.

It's no surprise that fans have turned away from the WS in recent years. The small market teams can't compete without the income. But more importantly, in the World Series, there are few, if any, surprises. Some of the players on the Yankees are entering their sixth WS in eight years. It would be cool to see players from other teams get their once. But the Yankees, as players, are not to be faulted - they won, they worked hard to get there, they deserve to be there. At the same time, don't fault the fans who are losing interest in the World Series each year because there are few surprises left for them.

:: Last night around 3:00 am, I woke with pain in my upper right arm, near the shoulder. It hasn't subsided. I'm heading to Calgary in 2 hours, and will stop for a chiropractic check on the way in. I hope the chiropractor can help. I don't know what's wrong. I may have been sleeping on it or something, but it sure hurts like hell.

:: Do you think you know your (somewhat obscure) album covers? Take this test.

:: ConsumerSearch is a portal site, linking readers to consumer product reviews. It also provides reviews of the reviews, as it were, ranking them "according to how well they identify the category's best products".

:: In Canada, our Thanksgiving is tomorrow, Oct 13. This year I will be celebrating and giving thanks among the company of some good friends. There was an interesting article in today's Edmonton Journal about the first Thanksgiving ceremony in North America. It took place in 1578 in the Canadian Arctic, 43 years before the so-called "first Thanksgiving in the New World" in 1621, in Massachusetts.

:: Tonight I do not feel well. My body feels a bit sore all over, and I'm more than a little tired. I've been working out and still eating well for the most part. My head hurts too. Time to boost the Cold-FX capsules, perhaps? This was also a day that included events about which I cannot write on this site, and that were quite draining. It is a lousy feeling to be helpless when long-term behaviour of a mean-spirited nature goes on and on, with malice of forethought.

:: I saw the movie Intolerable Cruelty tonight, and give it 7/10. I also saw School of Rock on Friday, and give it 8.5/10. It's fun to assign numbers to things.

:: Regarding Neil Postman, I was a day ahead of the news of his passing reaching at least one major internet site. The NYTimes published a lengthy obit today. Surprisingly, there is still no mention of his death on the NYU site.

:: Last August, I made mention of ManPop, a rock festival held in Winnipeg in what I thought was 1971. My friend in Minneapolis, Garth Danielson, sent a link to the 1970 Led Zeppelin tour list, and under August 29th, is the Man Pop Festival. So ManPop was in 1970, not 1971. Thanks for the correction, G.

:: I've made small progress with my workouts and nutrition program. I've tipped the scales down about four pounds since I turned up the intensity of the workouts a couple weeks ago, while continuing close monitoring of my food intake on a number of levels.

:: Remember Tears for Fears, and how they wanted to rule the world and shout, shout, let it all out? Principal members Curt Smith and Roland Orzabal are have reunited recently, after 13 years. After Smith left in 1990, Orzabal kept the name of band going, releasing a couple of albums in the 1990s under the TFF banner, but ostensibly those were solo albums. The band has signed with Arista to release a new album in Spring, 2004. The album will be called Everybody Loves A Happy Ending. (And this really isn't new news: here's an interview with Orzabal from July 15, 2003, that mentions the reunion (requires Real Player). More details here as well.

:: Among the many interviews given by Al Franken, here's an interesting one conducted by Steven Waldman, EiC of Beliefnet, a multi-faith web site of no particular religious affiliation. (From: Derryl.)

:: One of the interesting books I read this year is Amusing Ourselves To
Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business, by Neil Postman, a professor at the Department of Culture and Communication, Steinhardt School of Education, NYU, and a well known critic and analyst of media and pop culture and their effect and impact on society. Despite having been published in 1985, pre-Internet days, I found "Amusing" to be quite relevant in 2003. In the book, Postman discusses the impact of television on society, and believes that, as one reviewer put it, "TV teaches us to live a decontextualized life." Postman is the author of 17 books, including Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology, and The Disappearance of Childhood.

While driving home tonight, I was channel flipping on my car radio, and when I changed the station to the CBC program As It Happens, I realized I was listening to a segment of a speech Postman gave in Toronto a few years ago at a conference. I knew it was him because I recognized about what he was talking. When the segment ended, the announcer said that Postman passed away last week from lung cancer.

Here's the weird part: despite my best efforts, I can't find a single web site or news item on the Internet to verify this. Even Postman's departmental web pages make no mention of his passing, although I noticed that the faculty page from his department removed the hotlink from his mini-bio. I searched CNN and NYTimes - nothing. Yet on the As It Happens web site for today, Oct 7, 2003, you can hear the complete segment, a short tribute to Postman, and an extract from his keynote address at a May 1998 conference sponsored by the North American National Broadcasters Association. (Note the entry at the bottom of the page: "FTR-NEIL POSTMAN (MU) Duration: 00:03:06.") The program can be heard here, requiring Real Player (the file is a .ram file). The segment about Postman begins at 42:30 minutes, or so.

This is one of those mysteries of the Internet - for someone so well known in the media itself, that there would be no mention his passing anywhere on the web is, well, bizarre.

:: Ahnuld is the new governor of California. Happy Tuesday!

:: When Michael Moore's book, Stupid White Men, appeared in print after some post-Sept 11 delays, it shot to the top of the NYTimes Best Seller List, remained there for weeks, and was the best selling non-fiction book of 2002. Nonetheless, the NYTimes never published a review of the title (I've never found one on the web site, and a review never appeared in their book review section). Al Franken's new book, Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them, has been #1 on the list for five weeks, having been bumped to #2 this week by none other than Franken's drinking buddy and book cover subject, Bill O'Reilly. A review of Franken's book appeared recently, written by former NYT chief film critic, Janet Maslin. Oddly enough, Moore's new book, Dude, Where's My Country?, goes on sale tomorrow, and what do you find in the Times this morning? Well, hush my mouth - a review by Janet Maslin!

This fascinating observation suggests the NYTimes Best Seller list is revealing that, after perhaps a decade of domination by right wing authors, the playing field has been levelled by an equally successful number of writres from the left. I bought the Franken book on the weekend, it's next on my list of must reads. I hope to buy the Moore book later this month.

:: I had a strange run-in with a woman at the YMCA today. After my workout, I did a few stretches and such on the large mat, and when finished, proceeded to spray the area I was on with the cleanser found in bottles throughout the workout centre. However, there was no cloth, usually with each spray bottle, that I could use to wipe the mat afterwards. I looked to my right, where this woman was working out vigorously on the mat, and noticed two cloths. I stepped behind her (she was on her back) to grab one of the cloths, and she stopped and said to me, "that was really rude." I started to apologize, and she interrupted me, saying, "Get lost, and don't talk to me."

I was more nonplussed than anything, and mumbled a couple things under my breath. I was finished anyway, and left to go shower and get dressed.

A friend of mine has an expression she applies to people like this, and it goes something like, "Gee, who sh*t in your cornflakes this morning?" Yes, her reaction rattled me a bit - certainly I had no intention of being rude or getting in her way (which to me, I didn't do anyway.) Afterwards I thought of a witty retort, but at the time, just decided to walk away and leave things be. But to me, in her own way, she was the one who was rude.

Why do people react the way they do? We can never really know.

:: The first time I saw Jessica Owen (then known as Jessica Schoenberg) play was at a folk club in Edmonton in 1992. I was very impressed. At the time, I was playing guitar in a local band, and we decided to call Jessica to ask if she would open for us at an upcoming gig. She agreed, and we met sometime later at my office at the U of Alberta. Some months later, I was playing and jamming with her whenever I could, and eventually became her guitarist during the mid-90s (although to be honest, I chose to play with her as well - playing with her was too much fun to pass up!) In February 1994, we spent two cold nights at a recording studio in a house in St Albert, laying down 9 of 10 tracks for her first album, Sounds Like A Plan! In April of that year, we played to a full house at The Next Act to celebrate the release of the album, which was available on cassette only.

I was and remain very proud of the work we did on her first record. I realized afterwards that I had strong arranging skills that hadn't been utilized before, to that degree, anyway. So why am I telling you this? Jessica has a new web site, redesigned from scratch, and within you will find Jessica's Story, which includes mention of the album.

That's not all. I've had requests over the years from people who wanted to listen to my guitar playing online, and to date I've uploaded no tunes that featured me performing. Jessica has solved a bit of that for me by uploading three of the ten tunes from Sounds Like a Plan! One of those tunes is Heartbeat, which remains for me one of her most powerful and dynamic tunes ever, and one that I play from time to time when I play one of my acoustic guitars. (NOTE: You will need Windows Media Player to listen to the .mp3 files.)

If you want to hear my guitar. backing up one of the best singer/songwriters around, go to Jess's site and listen. When you're done, be good to yourself and support an incredible independent artist by buying her latest album, Ever So Slightly Rearranged. My (very objective) review might help you decide!

:: the pod bay door will be closed for a little while...but not too long. I've spent some time smoothing out the edges after the move to a new hosting service, and am going to take a couple of days off from blogging. I'm working a six-day week, and want to squeeze in some movies before they leave town. I can report that I'm starting to like the new workout routine suggested by the trainer I met with recently, and am feeling that I might be on the edge of some progress - good news all around. The tennis elbow condition in my left arm hasn't improved, so I may need an MRI. I'll learn more later this month when I meet with a sports physician again. The hearing aid jury is still deliberating - I have a few weeks to decide whether or not to purchase the Aero 211 AZ I'm using now.

This evening was particularly satisfying: I helped friends choose a starter electric guitar and amp for their daughter, who is rapidly becoming a good musician and songwriter at 15 years old. We were at Avenue Guitars, and studied two starter kits (amp and guitar), and settled on a Godin SD (black colour) and a Roland Cube 30 guitar amp. The guitar has a very sweet sound, and the amp has 8 guitar amp model channels. Everyone walked away happy, and now I want to borrow the new equipment and test it out!

I'll be back shortly. See you then.

:: Some kind soul has posted these pictures taken in Halifax, in the aftermath of Hurricane Juan.

:: Tim Berners-Lee is credited with inventing the world wide web in 1989. He shares his ideas of a more "intelligent" web in this interview from the BBC.

:: Spider Robinson asks, "Why are our imaginations retreating from science and space, and into fantasy?"