Palmer's World

Say goodbye to my little friend. Last month’s cell phone bill – $90. What the heck? Better watch my minutes. This month’s cell phone bill – $118. Time to ditch this thing. Sure, the cell phone is convenient, but so is having a little cash in your pocket going jing-a-ling-a-awwww yeah got enough to buy a new CD.

I supose I’ll keep the cell phone in hopes that I can use a pay as you go. Probably the smarter move, but will it cost more in the end? I suppose if I only use my cell phone in DIRE EMERGENCIES (aka, running late getting to the girlfriend’s) I can swing it, but can a man with a cell phone for 2 years deal with going backwards in technology? Yikes!

Kudos to Melissa and Mike for hosting a wicked Thanksgiving potluck yesterday. I’m turkeyed out. Seriously. I wanted to eat more and more and more, but the stomach had to call it quits. Dang. There’s always Christmas.

whathaveibeenwatchinglately: Lost! Lost is getting very cool. Alias…not so much. Alias has gone from my fave tv show to “Man, I have to waste my time with this because I’ve put some time and effort into watching the show this far.” In its defense, I felt this way both at the beginning of Season 3 & 4 and was pleasantly surprised at the end of the season.

So far, so good in terms of blogging. I find I enjoy it so far and I am not losing interest. Here’s some reasons that I feel blogging is great:

– I feel connected to you all. I’m not talking about the random people who stumble upon my Blog and don’t even know who I am. I’m talking about the family and friends I have reading this every day to see what the heck I’m up to. In a strange way, I feel that the more connected the world makes us (technological wonders) the more disconnected we become. E-Mail is light years ahead of the postal service…Instant Messenging has become the written form of the telephone. I feel that I don’t put enough effort into sending a quick email to people to give them an update on my life. If I choose to do so, I end up writing 1000s of words that intimidate the reader. They’re thinking “Oh man, I have to respond to that?!”. Forget it.
– I feel I have great stories. I feel that whenever an event happens in my life, I like to add flavour to it and perhaps embellish a little on the details. I make the events in my life grand! So I love the fact that this blog can be a document of my life. A snapshot of what is going through my head at the time and what is happening…in essence this may have become the extension of my Eurotrip 2005 journals that I kept while on the road. In my journals I not only wrote about what I was doing, but what I was feeling at the moment, or what music I was listening to. It gave me a perfect collection of the surroundings so I can remember exactly what I was doing at the time. I feel like the blog has become the new Doogie Howser M.Dium of having a diary. It’s great. Granted, no one in their right mind actually airs out their thoughts on work, friends, or other drama-creating machines that are in their life in fear of having inner thoughts becoming public. Imagine if someone wrote how they hated their boss and then one of their co-workers sent the link to them? Sweet Hammer of Thor!
– Vero pointed out in some research on blogs that people feel a bit of fame. They love it when they hear about a certain post on your blog, or if people leave comments. It indicates that whatever you’re doing is an event in someone else’s lives.

What are the drawbacks of a blog? So far, the only thing I can see is the fact that (once again) it may make people become more and more distant. People will tune into my blog and know everything that is going on, but will they bother phoning me to talk about the exact same topics? Probably not. Let’s be honest…I’m not the best for returning phone calls to begin with. (By the way Duncan, I’m not bringing Smashing Pumpkin pie to the potluck on Monday, so you can go ahead.) However, at the same time, it hasn’t been too bad. I learn about what others are doing and I can either leave a comment or send them an email asking them more about how they wired their stereo, or how they are making out with Lavalife.

I’m thankful for all of you in my life and now I feel a little more connected to you. It feels like I’m sending out a mass email to all my family and friends to let them know what’s going on in my head. Sometimes that’s all a person needs to know…how their friend is doing.

This post goes out to Carol whom I made a deal with to call every 22nd of the month since we felt that we drifted apart. I’ll admit that I haven’t done so in the past few months due to the purchase of the house and moving in and whatnot. The 22nd of October is a Saturday. Sweet. I’ll be calling you then Carol.

Happy Thanksgiving tout le monde. Eat a lot of turkey and have a drink.

Looks like I am not the only one pissed off at Sony/EMI

http://www.chartattack.com/damn/2005/10/0602.cfm

The time…April 12
The place…Paris France
The parking job…how the heck is this guy going to get out?

This is actually how people park in Paris. Philipp was telling me how bumpers are really used in Paris. They need to be if you think you’re going to get out of your parking spot!

I started going through some old stuff of mine last night along with Vero. Mom and Dad said that some of it was quite funny.

Well, the side-splitting moment came when we looked at my report card from Kindergarten and it stated that I had trouble with the balance beam and walking backwards.

Walking backwards? I never knew that this was part of the curriculum. What would happen if I ended up failing this portion of the class? Imagine if they tested you on how you skated! Good Lord, I would still be in Kindergarten to this day.

Hey, maybe this whole walking backwards thing has to do with my lack of athletic ability…

We had a great laugh at this comment and we decided to save the other Grades for later. We had our fill for one night.

In other news, am writing that exam in a few hours for the PM-03 Permanent position. Let’s see how that goes. I heard they have set us up with computers this time around which is great. Who writes by hand anymore?

whatwasIlisteningtothismorninginthecar: New Nickelback album. Pick this album up. It’s solid. Better than the past two albums and I really enjoyed the last one.

Not willing to give in and waste my time with EMI to listen my new CD (oh I will be contacting them…) on my iPod, I found a great program called isobuster which allows you to take a look at all the data on a CD, not just the files that Windows Explorer allows you to.

whatI’mlisteningtorightnow: The Entire New Album of Nickelback. Awww yeah.

I must admit I’m a little bummed right now since my dad left this morning. He has been here for the past five days which was great. I never really get a chance to hang out with my family like that anymore since we live so far away from each other. I’m sending some great thanks out to him for helping me out with the house over the past week. I would probably be working on the house until April 2007 if he didn’t come by. It’s a shame that I couldn’t spend more time with him during the day but some of us have to work and the vacation days are dwindling due to EuroTrip 2005. Hey, speaking of which, I finally managed to cut all photos down from 2200 photos to 1000 photos from my 5 week jaunt in Europe. I’m planning to start uploading them to the Internet soon so I’ll let you know when that’s done.

Next Up: Study for that PM-03 written exam on Thursday. Yikes! Essay due next Thursday in which I inconveniently (conveniently?) misplaced the list of topics to write about…and I have another written exam for a PM-04 position next week. Good thing the weekend is approaching. Oh yes, and I must not forget to boycott EMI.

So I just dropped by HMV to pick up the new Nickelback album and the dude at the counter says “Hey have you listened to Theory of a Deadman before?” I’m thinking “This guy is sharp. He knows that Theory of a Deadman are on Chad Kroeger’s record label.

Me: “Yeah, they’re really great. Their last album is probably my favourite of the year.”
Dude: “Oh really. Yeah I really like them. How about Nickelback? Are they any good?”
Me (not believing what I’m hearing): “Uh what?”
Dude: “Yeah, I don’t have any radio or anything so I don’t really know the new hit songs or anything.”
Me (with an incredulous look on my face): “Well, you should listen to them. They are top notch and you’ll like them if you like Theory.”

With that I walked out and asked myself the following questions:

1. Who hasn’t heard of Nickelback? I mean…they have had the #1 selling single in North America (if not the world…where’s my Communications book? I just read that stat yesterday) with “How You Remind Me”
2. What’s this guy working in a music store if a) He doesn’t listen to much music due to lack of a radio and b) He hasn’t heard of Nickelback. Wouldn’t that be one of the weeding out questions during the interview? “Who wrote some rocking tunes and evoke the devil sign spirit in us at a concert? Oh, and their albums all sound the same. “Uh…AC/DC?” Man alive! This guy shouldn’t working at the record store. Well…at the very least he will be around a lot of music now. Maybe that’s why he took the job.

Update: If you use iTunes/iPod to carry around your music and listen to it, don’t bother buying this disc. They have copy protection on it that prevents you from copying to iTunes. You will hear more from me as I will write a nice letter to EMI stating how they are screwing over fans who actually pay for the music. I suppose I should write to the band themself…but when does that ever work? The sad thing is that I doubt HMV will let me return the disc as soon as I have opened it. You can thank CD Burners for that policy. Granted, I am not against the policy. I’m just ticked that I can’t do whatever the heck I want with the music I’ve purchased. I’m pissed.

whatisnotplayinginmyfreakingipodrightnow: All the Right Reasons by Nickelback (should be labelled All the WRONG Reasons IMHO)

Lucas asked for some Guitar tablature sites I like to visit so I threw one up on the right hand side link section. He gave me a good idea that I should actually save a slew of tabs to the website so that if I’m on the road away from my lyrics, I can just pop onto the website and download the tabs I’m into. Mike and I have a GMail account set up for that sort of thing (along with some friendly highly legal MP3 trading so that we can learn each others songs). Lucas, your wish will soon come true…a full encyclopedia of Guitar Tabs pour toi. For now, check out the link I provided…it’s my fave site to check out.

iPlayingrightnowinmyears: Santa Monica by Theory of a Deadman

Weekend Recap: Dad showed up on Friday and we had a fish fry with Lynn, Sue, Mike, Vero and I. Man, that was a good feed.

Saturday, Maureen showed up via the bus and we toured the city buying various things for the house. Danny and Rebecca showed up at night to visit.

Sunday, Véro, Dad and myself went on a tour to the Antrim Flea Market (formerly of Stittsville fame). I was very impressed by it however I left a comic I bought on someone else’s table. I picked up a few CDs also. You cannot go wrong with used CD purchases nowadays…they are mostly from the 90s which is my favourite era of music. My cousin Shawn was talking about how the most influential music of your life is between the ages of 13 and 19 which kind of makes sense. Years ago I remember just sitting listening to the music, staring at the lyrics and memorizing every song. Now, if a new album of someone comes out (like Our Lady Peace), I listen to the album, realize it kicks ass, but don’t sit myself down for hours and hours absorbing it. This brings back a memory of when I first moved to Ottawa and Bert was talking about how some of his favourite albums are the ones he didn’t like at first. He had to learn to appreciate them. I agree with this wholeheartedly.

Conversation at the Antrim Flea Market:
Lemon-Stand Dude: Who’s Pedro?
Me: My friend down in Mexico.
Lemon-Stand Dude: What’s he running for?
Me: President.

Blogger Problems: Uh oh…something happening in Bloggerland has prevented me to put up this update right away. Is my miracle solution wearing thin already…