This year the holiday season has been a mixture of awesome and horrible stress.

The Goods:
-Crystal came home from London for her christmas break and I got to hang out with her a bit. She's got me starting up a WoW account so I'm fairly excited about that. We went to see the balconies with Lauren one night, had a couple nights in, went to see the Road. She even came to my impromptu party which ended up being just three of us.
-Lindsays on her break as well so we got to hang out. We are currently having a Doctor Who series one (new series one, with christopher eccleston) marathon. Went boxing day shopping, christmas shopping a couple weeks ago.
- I had two christmases this year, which was neat. My brothers family goes to his wifes for the holidays every second year, so we had a mini christmas last weekend. Brother got me the new Zelda DS game and the Frankie Manning biography, the two things I probably wanted most.
-A four day weekend is amazingly wonderful after months of 6 day weeks and many 12 hour days
-I'm debt free, but at the expense of my mutual fund

The Bads
-Because I've been so busy with work I was unable to find anything for my brother in time for christmas.
-Though christmas is over I still have so much to do for work. So much to catch up on, so much to sort out, so much to fix. The stress level isnt going anywhere, but the 6 day weeks are at least gone, or maybe just the 12 hour days.
-I'm having a real hard time dealing with the stress of my job right now. It is affecting my back, my head, my diet, and my over all mental wellbeing. I feel like I'm actually going crazy.
-My computer is right junked. I think it may just be a fan problem, but it's well old now and I'm looking for a new one. I still need to get this one fixed though so I can get a bunch of pictures and the such off it.
-Was hugely infatuated with a coworker, but he has left now and hopefully that will all go away and I can stop acting like a 16 year old girl with a crush.
-I keep frivolously spending on nerdy collectibles. I was able to keep myself from buying torchwood series one or doctor who series one at best buy though. Did buy myself two dunnys, a neil gaiman written batman trade, and trivial pursuit for wii.


The Weird
-I'm watching jessie's cats until she returns on the 28th. Amandas cats for a few days and another friends cats until the 1st. I'm the crazy cat watching lady
-I wanted to have a few people over for new years but my brother is trying convince me to stay at my folks for new years like usual.
-I'm working on a real list of things I'm going to try to do and change in my life for 2010. New decade, new start, that sort of things. I just hope I'll have the spirit to do it.

A week ago, Premier Dalton McGuinty announced that he would increase provincial funding for "rapid transit" from $200 million to $600 million. However, he also stated that he would not provide any more money to Ottawa for this purpose.

Unfortunately, as Ken Gray noted in his blog, this creates more questions than it does answers. However, it does make some facts very clear, and these facts are not good news for Ottawa City Council.

The most important issue is that a cap of $600 million on such a grant only makes sense if A) the federal government is willing to match the grant and B) the City is able to cover the rest of the cost. If the City had been able to keep the overall cost down to its original stated aim of $1.8 billion, then the City's share would have been a manageable $600 million, which would have caused only a minor ripple among ratepayers. However, the overall cost is now $2.1 billion and rising, which would leave local ratepayers on the hook for $900 million or more. It was for this reason that I complained back in late September that the LRT project as currently specified would prove to be a white elephant. Worse, that does not even consider the possibility that the federal government may try to back out. [If it does, however, it probably would wind up with a major embarrassment on its hands, and may annoy a great many voters here in Ontario. Even if I wish the federal government would do just that, so it would get the boot come next election, I rather doubt it would be so stupid as to hand another issue to the Opposition on a silver platter.]

Another issue is that the money being provided is earmarked for "rapid transit." As Ken Gray points out, this is not a very specific definition; it could be used for choices other than LRT or the planned tunnel through downtown. However, I do not agree with some of the following assessments that he makes.

I do agree that there are drawbacks to a bus tunnel and that the rising price of oil and fuel is one such drawback. However, there are also other drawbacks, such as the width required for the tunnel (which would be reduced if only railed vehicles used it) and the fact that ventilation for the tunnel would have to be far more complex if diesel-powered vehicles were allowed to go through. [As wysewisdom noted back in September, diesel power running through the tunnel would probably require large cooling towers to be installed at surface level in the downtown, which itself would become a clear show-stopper due to sheer cost as well as the land required.] While the width of the tunnel may be negotiable, these aforementioned ventilation requirements are a necessity due to safety considerations. The only way to avoid some of this is to require electric propulsion (i.e. trolleybuses and/or LRT) for all vehicles going through the tunnel.

I also disagree that buses would always be less efficient than LRT trains. I do feel that conventional diesel buses (even articulated ones) would be hard-pressed to do so, but I suspect that these limitations may not apply to trolleybuses. Furthermore, trolleybuses can avoid a well-known flaw of the existing articulated diesels (propulsion applied to only one axle) which has caused problems such as buses becoming stuck in snowdrifts. Electric hub motors can apply propulsion in a controlled fashion to each and every wheel (with no axle required); this would reduce the probability of skids as well as becoming stuck in snowdrifts.

In the long run, as Mr. Gray has pointed out, the tunnel itself may have to be reconsidered. Building a tunnel underneath the downtown will always be an expensive proposition, and increases in the cost of fuel may put the cost of digging the tunnel out of reach even if an LRT-only option is chosen. He predicts that the City Council will eventually bow to the inevitable and scrap the tunnel part of the scheme; I wish I could be so optimistic. The current City Council has a very poor track record of understanding what the word "boondoggle" means; the only way to get it to change is if enough voters started nagging them about this point.

Many people have objected to the idea of trolleybuses operating along the Transitway or elsewhere, partly due to the question of "unsightly overhead wires." Others have insisted that only LRT will solve the city's ongoing transit ills, as if it were a panacea of some kind. I don't agree with either of these assessments. It is noteworthy that City Council has already opted for the common-sense choice of building LRT with overhead wires in any case; just how are trolleybus overhead wires going to be more unsightly than the ones used for LRT? As a case in point, consider this picture of a streetcar line in Portland, Oregon (USA):

(For a clearer view, try here.)

Another point to remember is that other cities have had to delay or give up on LRT proposals entirely, due to financial reasons. At least one such city, Leeds in Britain, recovered by replacing its LRT plan with a planned trolleybus network instead. If the cost of the "rapid transit" plans for this city keep on rising out of reach, will we be able to afford LRT without leaving a massive debt load for future generations? If LRT and/or the tunnel are not financially feasible, would we be able to make similar choices? Or will we be stuck with diesel buses as before?

Inquiring minds would still like to know.

( Click for shitty peanut-gallery running commentary. For End of Time P1. Yeah, spoilers here. )

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Back to working on my TW XMAS special fic. Yes I am writing one. I am compelled and kidnapped, and I SHOULD NOT BE DOING THIS.

on holiday weekdays when the buses are on Saturday schedule, on routes where the bus goes to different places at a transit station depending on the day, which place does it go? for example, the 140 at billings goes upstairs on weekdays and downstairs on weekends, so I need to know where to wait.

INTERNET. Stockings are my favourite part of Xmas. It's leftover from being a little kid I guess, like the way Valentine's Day used to be my favourite holiday and I still like it even though I am a feminist. ANYWAY it's possible that Jesse had forgotten my love for stockings, so it was looking like I wasn't going to have one. I was being a very brave lady about this, I don't mind telling you.

HOWEVER HOWEVER HOWEVER, I didn't need to be so tough afterall, because when I came upstairs this morning, there was the HUGEST stocking I had EVER SEEN filled with amazing presents like a Dr Pepper Lip Smacker, a pretty pretty keychain, a hilarious duck-shaped soap dispenser, a million things that are chocolate, puppy stickers, fuzzy warm socks, crayons, a journal, and a Bitch magazine with the page containing a potentially triggering article about sexual assault folded over so I wouldn't get triggered.

THERE IS SO MUCH LOVE IN THIS WORLD THAT SOMETIMES IT JUST HURTS.

Thank you Santa. WHOEVER you are!!

It's two hours before midnight here, but as long as it's midnight in some places, I'm allowed to do this. My cards are arriving mangled my mailweevils, so to cheer myself up, I'm challenging the concept of "time." I am the boss of this advent. Christmas is thus "early."

The Torchwood Soundtrack Advent Calendar Completes! (explanation) MERRY CHRISTMAS DOWNLOAD Previous Downloads: Dec 16, Dec 17, Dec 18, Dec 19, Dec 20, Dec 21, Dec 22, Dec 23, Dec 24

It’s Christmas Eve. Christmas morn is almost upon us, the culmination of a holiday season that began shortly after Labor Day. It’s a great time of year for atheists.

Christmas as celebrated in America is a family holiday. It is a time to gather together with friends, family and loved ones. It is a time of eating, drinking, and merrymaking, diets be damned. It is a time to exchange gifts, especially to children.

In fact, if we’re honest, Christmas is mostly about children. We older ones experience the day vicariously through them, remembering our own Christmases past. If your Christmas tree is like mine, it’s decked with ornaments from the ages. There’s a special one we put on our very first tree together. There are Norwegian flags from her childhood, and an ornament in the shape of a pickle hiding amid the greenery as it did on her grandparents’ tree.

Christmas is a time of tradition, of history, of magic. When I was a kid, my parents would bring us kids on the subway to Boston Common to see the trees all covered with colored lights. We’d warm up with a cup of cocoa at Chock Full o’ Nuts (they put whipped cream on top!). Then we’d check out the animated windows of Jordan Marsh, and maybe even visit the Enchanted Village. There were other people dressed like Santa around Boston, but they were merely Santa’s helpers. Everyone knew that the Real Santa was in the Enchanted Village at Jordan Marsh.

Sooner or later, though, our childish minds would start to work things out. We’d compare what we knew of the world to what we were being told. Just how was Santa supposed to fit down our chimney, anyway? We didn’t have a fireplace. “He comes in through the front door.” But the front door is always locked before Dad goes to bed. “We leave it open for him,” I was told. In this neighborhood? Sooner or later, the pieces would fall together and we’d realize the deception. The adults would confess, a little nervously, and swear us in as the newest conspirators of the Magic Preservation Guild to keep the secret for our younger siblings. We’ll always remember that as the Christmas We Grew Up. (Sadly, we’ll always remember the next Christmas as the Christmas We Got Socks and Underwear. Growing up is a mixed blessing.)

That’s why I think this is a great time of year for atheists. There’s history and tradition and wonder, but there’s also a wink and a nod to those of us who’ve used our own reason to figure things out. Childish belief in magic is treasured, but it’s intended for little children. Any grownup who still insists on the reality of Santa is just creepy, and you probably don’t want to sit in his lap. Perhaps someday we’ll be able to say the same thing about other magical beliefs.

In the meantime, Happy Christmas to all! Just one thing: if you’re going out a-wassailing, leave the one-horse open sleigh at home, or bring a designated driver. You wouldn’t want to miss the fun next Christmas.

to any junior operators working trippers (aka express routes) this afternoon. remember, thers only two timepoints along the route, the begining point and finishing point. dont bother waiting ur time if ur early. yes, youll porbably finish ur trip 10+ mins early but u wont get into shit for doing so.

expresses are always fun to do on christmas eve during the afternoon- hardly anyone rides them!!!

if planning was smart, they would put expresses during the lunch hour wen all the civil servants get off work early. ohwell..

http://www.radiohead.com/deadairspace/index.php?c=532

hey-
i guess this time of year is a time for serious reflection and i have been doing a lot of that since coming back from copenhagen.
you know what has stunned me coming back is the anger you can taste in the air about this, everybody i meet wants to talk about it.. everyone is angry and despairing and i have tried to remain positive when i talk to them about it.. it has perhaps awakened something in the back of the mind of sane people throughout the world who perhaps naively assumed that something positive would come of these talks.
with such a strong reaction i hope perhaps that people are starting to join the dots and our unquestioning worship of an unlimited gluttonous carbon based economy could unravel in just enough time.
sane people in government, in the media, and on the streets are being shaken reluctantly from a dream looking at the children around them and are getting angrier than they have ever been before.
but this energy needs a constructive channel.

i have been trying to write something about my impressions of being there etc, but then Ben Stewart from Greenpeace happened to send me something he wrote on the last night which is so much better than anything i've done so far so i'll leave it to him for now

and wish you a heartfelt joyful christmas.

"The most progressive U.S. President in a generation comes to the most important international meeting since the Second World War and delivers a speech so devoid of substance that he might as well have made it on speakerphone from a beach in Hawaii. His aides argue in private that he had no choice, such is the opposition on Capitol Hill to any action that might challenge the dominance of fossil fuels in American life. And so the nation which put a man on the moon can’t summon the collective will to protect men and women back here on Earth from the consequences of an economic model and lifestyle choice that has taken on the mantel of a religion.
Then a Chinese Premier who is in the process of converting his Communist nation to that new faith (high-carbon consumer capitalism) takes such umbrage at Obama’s speech that he refuses to meet – refuses, in fact, to do much of anything beyond sulking in his hotel room, as if this were a teenager’s house party instead of a final effort to stave off the breakdown of our biosphere.
Late in the evening the two men meet and cobble together a collection of paragraphs which they call a ‘deal’, although in reality it has all the meaning and authority of a bus ticket, not that it stops them affixing their signatures to it with great solemnity. Obama’s team then briefs the travelling White House press pack – most of whom, it seems, understand about as much about global climate politics as our own lobby hacks know about baseball – and before we know it the New York Times and CNN are declaring the birth of a ‘meaningful’ accord.
Meanwhile a friend on an African delegation emails to say that he and many fellow members of the G77 block of developing countries are streaming into the corridors after a long discussion about the perilous state of the talks, only to see Obama on the television announcing that the world has a deal. It’s the first they’ve heard about it, and a few minutes later, as they examine the text, they realise very quickly that it effectively condemns their continent to a century of devastating temperature rises.
By now the European leaders – who know this thing is a farce but have to present it to their publics as progress – have their aides phoning the directors of civil society organisations spinning that the talks have been a success. A success? This deal crosses so many of the red lines laid out by Europe before this summit started that there are scarlet skid marks across the floor of the Bella Centre, and one honest European diplomat tells us this is a ‘shitty shitty deal.’
Quite.
This deal is beyond bad. It contains no legally binding targets and no indication of when or how they’ll come about. There isn’t even a declaration that the world will aim to keep global temperature rises below 2 degrees C – instead leaders merely ‘recognise the science’ behind that vital threshold, as if that were enough to prevent us crossing it. The only part of this deal anyone sane came close to welcoming was the $100bn global climate fund, but it’s now becoming apparent that even that’s largely made up of existing budgets, with no indication of how new money will be raised and distributed so poorer countries can go green and adapt to climate change.
Not all of our politicians deserve the opprobrium of a dismayed world. Our own Ed Miliband fought hard on no sleep for a better outcome, while President Lula of Brazil offered to financially assist other developing countries to cope with climate change and put a relatively bold carbon target on the table. But the EU didn’t move on its own commitment (one so weak we’d actually have to work hard not to meet it) while the United States offered nothing and China stood firm.
Before the talks began I was of the opinion that we would only know Copenhagen was a success when plans for new coal-fired power stations across the developed world were dropped. If the giant utilities saw in the outcome of Copenhagen an unmistakable sign that governments were now determined to act, and that coal plants this century would be too expensive to run under the regime agreed at this meeting, then this summit would have succeeded. Instead, as the details of the agreement emerged last night we received reports of Japanese opposition MPs popping champagne corks as they savoured the possible collapse of their new government’s carbon targets. It’s not just that we haven’t got to where we needed to be, we’ve actually ceded huge ground. There is nothing in this deal – nothing – that would persuade an energy utility that the era of dirty coal is over. And the implications for humanity of that simple fact are profound.
I know we greens are partial to hyperbole. We use language as a bludgeon to direct attention to the crisis we’re facing, and you’ll hear much more of it in the coming days and weeks. But really, it’s no exaggeration to describe the outcome of Copenhagen as an historic failure that will live in infamy. In a single day, in a single space, a spectacle was played out in front of a disbelieving audience of people who have read and understood the stark warnings of humanity’s greatest scientific minds - and what they witnessed was nothing less than the very worst instincts of our species articulated by the most powerful men who ever lived.
I will leave the last word to the late Kurt Vonnegut Jr., who would have given voice to the insanity of Copenhagen better than I ever could, and whose poem Requiem is perhaps appropriate at this moment: ‘When the last living thing, has died on account of us, how poetical it would be if Earth could say, in a voice floating up, perhaps from the floor of the Grand Canyon, “It is done. People did not like it here”.’


Thom

This is a companion page, to a post I made in the Doctor Who communities.
This time, it's various Star Trek books and stuff for download.
They're mainly Rapidshare files, however. But, good stuff all 'round! :)

I've been "obsessing" over the loss of two good friends. Each one broke my heart. Fortunately, I have two spare ventricles. My therapist believes that "Molly" used her Bipolarness to cover up her bad character. Others have expressed said opinion (no I didn't tell them what my therapist had said). All I want is for her to admit she was wrong. It'll never happen.

"Sharon" whom I had a six month relationship with, was having another relationship on the side. Actually, I was the guy on the side. It was my intuition that alerted me that something wasn't going right; but her kid happened to mention the other guy while I was drawing a house. "Oh, that looks like Tony's house" Who's Tony? "Mommy's boyfriend". In the end Sharon apologized for leading me on.

That sums up 2009. I'm going to make a webcomic thing and post it on my site.

I understand we're on a weird schedule this week, however if OCTranspo phone line, online, and the fact I caught the bus I was waiting for yesterday, leads me to believe that a bus is going to come at a certain time, I should not be waiting 40 minutes for a bus that comes every 20 mins (I finally gave up and took a different bus because I was frozen standing on the side of Strandherd with cars whipping up wind into my face).

The weather wasn't that bad between 4:30 and 5 *except for it being cold* for buses to just not show up, however, conspicuously "Out of Service" buses came by around the time the buses should have come, and let people off just past the stop.

So if drivers decided that since there's really only 4 stops between where I was and the end of their route (which is 1.3km, and a nice walk in nice weather, but impossible to walk in snow unless you want to walk down Strandherd Drive in the middle of rush hour since there's no sidewalks... which I do not), then that is NOT COOL.

So once again the city is offering free bus service on new years, but I wonder why they have never thought about giving the gift of free bus service to people who are trying to get to free dinners, friends or family ect. Also curious what drivers are told to do if someone doesn;t have the fare on X-mas. And what drivers on here plan on doing?

Today, I bonded individually with mum and dad and brother, and it was awesome. It's kinda shocking how normal it all feels now, and by that I mean REALLY normal, like everything's actually been worked out, not surface-normal. I can be such a worry-wart for no reason.

The Torchwood Soundtrack Advent Calendar Continues! (explanation) TODAY'S DOWNLOAD. Previous Downloads: Dec 16, Dec 17, Dec 18, Dec 19, Dec 20, Dec 21, Dec 22

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For January, V made the questionable decision of pairing plus-size model Crystal Renn with straight-size model Jacquelyn Jablonksi, in the same outfits.

Full story.

I don't know if it's beacuse if the same outfits/styling, because I'm not very good at identifying people, or because I'm a bit sleepy ... but I actually didn't notice at first that it was two different women pictured above. I think it's a really good illustration that most of this frou-fra about how open minded and great all these magazines are having about putting some "plus-sized" women in there is sort of daft.

Kate Harding has of course thought about this a lot. And she writes in this essay:

Let's not pretend this is some game-changing departure from the impossible beauty standards women's magazines usually promote, when it's only a very slight adjustment to them.

And it's true. The comparative photoshoot is meant to demonstrate that "fashion can flatter any figure" (emphasis mine). But what they mean is "Fashion can look more or less the same on people who have more or less the same proportions." They even include the measurements of the respective women:

Jacquelyn: 5 ft, 9 in; 32"/24"/34"
Crystal: 5 ft, 9 in; 36"/31"/41"

And, like, it's not that it doesn't matter at ALL. It does present a more attainable version of beauty, but it's nowhere NEAR the universally attainable version that it's being trumped up as.

What do you think?

Christianity is a syncretic religion. That is, it tries to combine different traditions and schools of thought as a means of reconciling disparate beliefs. For example, the Hebrew scriptures are quite emphatic about there being only one God, but that gave the early Christians problems when they tried to assert the divinity of Jesus. The answer: there is only one God, who is a trinity of persons, but only one God. Perfectly clear to the believer, perfect nonsense to the infidel.

We find the same merging of traditions when looking at other divine or semi-divine entities, such as angels. The Hebrew scriptures describes an angel as a messenger of God. Tradition added names, roles, and ranks. So we have Metatron, the Voice of God from the Talmudic tradition, an angel second in rank only to God himself. Christianity gave us Gabriel, who spoke to Mary and Mohammed. There’s Michael the Archangel, general of the hosts of heaven. And there’s Raphael, the healer, and Uriel whose role is unclear but you need four angels if you want to have one for each of the cardinal points of the compass.

When I was a Christian, I thought belief in angels was at best irrelevant; at worst idolatry. If you posit an omnimax God (omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient, omnibenevolent), helpers and henchmen are insignificant. If you worship angels, you’re contravening the First Commandment. In this, I was definitely in the minority. According to a Harris poll on religious belief, 68% of American adults believe in angels. (76% of Republicans believe in angels.)

Just in time for Christmas, with its Annunciating Angels and Hosanna-ing Hosts, comes a new study on the subject of angelic flight. According to Professor Roger S. Wotton, professor of biology at the University College of London, angels simply cannot fly. No way, no how, no can do.

Wotton looked at all available representations of angels, fairies, dragons, and putti (putti are those chubby little cherubs we find hovering about the fringes of much Christian art). Unlike birds, which are evolved reptiles whose forelimbs changed over the aeons into wings, angels are just humans with human skeletons and musculature. Bird wings are tacked on as an afterthought. There’s no supporting skeletal or muscular structure to support wings, and they are far too small to lift the weight of even a chubby cherub. Wotton’s essay can be found here, and it’s delightful.

Of course, it won’t persuade a single believer. Their faith is iron-clad and impervious to either science or humor. For the rest of us, it’s a fun holiday read. If angels do fly, after all, it’s because they take themselves lightly.

my website is alive again

pagmatic.com

As a link, as opposed to being imbedded, as some people can't see those.

Episode premieres Dec. 28!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OclaRDU0fNg&feature

If your transfer is balled up in your fist, I'm going to ask to see it. And I'll point out non-confrontationally that it is impossible for me to see it balled up in your fist, lady.

So save the attitude, save cutting me off and being snarky. I have no idea that you just got off another bus, nor do I care, 'cause really, you could have shown a balled up piece of paper to the other driver and he just didn't want to go through the hassle.

Just show your transfer clearly. That's all. It's not hard, nor am I being an asshole by asking to see it. Show it clearly and you can avoid all of this.

- This weekend was the one-year anniversary of my friend Barry's death.
+ There was a memorial gathering at his house, so his family wasn't alone on the anniversary.
+ I watched some of What Not To Wear today at work.
- They made over an adorable metal chick.
+ I have a van borrowed for a week!
- I seem to be getting car sick more lately.
- Parliament might get prorogued until after the effing Olympics.
+ I GOT A LIVING CHRISTMAS TREE IN A LITTLE POT OH MAN.
- Seriously FOUR TVs IN MY OFFICE.
+ One of them has Carole MacNeil on them right now. Mrowr.
+ Jesse is in Toronto recording his album right now.
- I miss him!
+ Work is sort of quiet this week.
- No one is around to write Media Advisories except me.