Not To Be Trusted With Knives

The Internet’s leading authority on radicalized geese

Jul
2

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Blogathon 2009 – Because Anything Worth Doing Is Worth Doing for 24 Hours Straight

Category: Blogathon Tags: , , , , , , , 18 Comments

Note: I’ve made this post “sticky” so it will stay at the top of my blog until Blogathon. Scroll down for my recent posts.

blog468x60

It’s official! I’ve signed up to stay up for 24 hours straight, publishing a blog posting every half hour.  And because I’ll be giving you all my bloggy goodness, you can give back by donating money to the charity of my choosing.

Since the  “Repay Dr. Beth’s Student Loans” Foundation1 doesn’t appear to be on the list of possible charities, the charity I have chosen is Options for Sexual Health:

Options for Sexual Health is a not-for-profit society meeting the reproductive and sexual health needs of British Columbians since 1961. We offer confidential, nonjudgmental clinical services, reliable contraceptive options, and comprehensive education and information, provided by well-trained professionals according to the highest standards.

Options has both clinics and education services and is a member organization in the Canadian Federation for Sexual Health and the International Planned Parenthood Federation.

Anyone3 who donates at least $20 to Options for Sexual Health through my Blogathon page before July 20, 2009 can request a topic that they’d like me to blog about – just drop a comment or send me an email.  Also, if anyone wants to write a guest posting – let me know2!

In addition, you better come up with a theme for me. I mean, I need a theme that will help me come up with 48 different ideas for postings that I can write without having to do research. Because I’m lazy like that. Otherwise, you are going get 48 postings about me me me! And then I’ll have to officially change the name of my blog to “Rampant Narcissism – All Me, All The Time!”

1And it appears that such a thing would be *strictly forbidden*.
2I will be emailing some of you directly to guilt trip you request that you write a guest posting for me. So you should probably just volunteer, it will be easier on both of us.
3Up to the first 48 people that is. And you can’t request anything that requires me to my do any research.

May
27

By

My First Tank o’ Gas

Category: Geekery, rampant consumerism Tags: , , , , , , , , , 5 Comments

So, I fill up my tank with gas for the first time yesterday! And, because I’m a nerd, I’m going to be keeping a spreadsheet to track my fuel economy.  Here’s what the numbers look like:

  • Distance driven:   414 km1
  • Volume of gas at fill-up: 26.1 L
  • Cost of fill-up: $30.13
  • Cost per km: 7 cents
  • Fuel economy: 6.3 L/100 km

So, this first tank of gas didn’t quite get the fuel economy listed on the smart website (which lists 5.4 L/100 km for combined city & highway driving).  But I’ll keep a running spreadsheet and let you know how things progress when I can average out a few tanks of gas.

Also, I just noticed this evening that my rear window is leaking window washer fluid (!), so it looks like I will need to call the dealer to have that looked at. Thank the FSM for warranty!

1I spoke to my dad yesterday and he proudly informed me that he’d put more than 2000 km on his new truck, which he got the same day I got my car. And I thought I’d driven a lot!

Apr
12

By

I Heart Gmail

Category: Geekery Tags: , , 8 Comments

I saw on the Gmail blog the other day that Gmail is 5 years old – they launched on April Fool’s Day 2004.  Which got me wondering – how long have I been on Gmail?  I know I was on pretty early, as my Uncle Michael, an early adopter if ever there was one, sent me an invite back when you could only get a Gmail account if someone invited you.  A quick look at my old Gmail account1 shows that I’ve been on Gmail since September 2004.  That’s a long freakin’ time.

Anyhoo, what I really wanted to write about are some of my favourite Gmail Labs features.  Gmail Labs, for those of you aren’t on Gmail2,  is a part of Gmail where they put experimental features – things that someone at Google thought “hey, it would be really cool if my Gmail could do X,” so they designed X and now your everyday average Gmail user can try it out.  I gather that once enough people have tried them out and all the bugs have been fixed, they will turn Gmail Labs features into just regular features of Gmail, although I’ve yet to see any Labs features rolled over to regular features.

So, yeah, after all that rambling intro3, here’s what I actually meant to write about: a list of my fav Gmail Labs features (and if you are already a Gmail Labs user, you’ve probably wasted your time reading up until this point as you probably already know all this. Sorry about that):

  • Superstars – In regular Gmail, you can put a yellow star next to a message to highlight it – maybe to remind yourself to respond to it later, or perhaps it’s about an event and you want to remember to go to it, or maybe it’s something you want to blog.  Superstars allows you add a whole whack of different icons – maybe you use a blue star to remind you to blog about that email, an orange question mark to remind you respond to the email, a green checkmark to remind you to print this email when you get home, etc.  I haven’t come up with a totally coherent system for using these yet, but blue star in my world means “blog this.” I have my priorities.
  • Sender Time Zone – gives you an indication of the time zone where the sender is from. So you don’t receive an email and decide to call the person, forgetting completely that it’s only 4 a.m. where they are4.
  • Send and Archive – one of the great things about Gmail is that all your conversations are threaded.  So when you reply to an email, your reply shows up directly under the original email. Back in the old days, you would have to send a reply, then you’d be returned to the inbox and you’d have to select the conversation and archive it. With S&A you can send and archive in one fell swoop click.  It sounds like a small thing, but it really, really makes it a lot easier to keep the old inbox down to a reasonable level.
  • Forgotten Attachment Detector – so, you know how you write an email that says “hey, here’s that document you wanted,” click send and then go “d’oh! I didn’t attach it!”  F.A.D. keeps you from doing that.  Basically, if you write into your email something to the effect of “see attached” or “yo, here’s the document you wanted” and then don’t attach anything, when you click send, it gives you a pop up message that says, “hey dumbass, you forgot to attach anything. Dumbass.”5 This feature rocks my world.
  • And my favourite of my favourites – although I’ve yet to have occasion to use it – Mail Goggles – you enable this feature before you go out for the evening to prevent you from drunk emailing when you get home.  Sure, you can type up that drunk email, but Mail Goggles won’t let you send it until you’ve answered some skill-testing (or should that be sobriety-testing?) mathematical questions.

Also, Gmail Labs wins extra points because you get to the Gmail Labs setting by clicking on a picture of an Erlenmeyer flask.

1As I got my first Gmail account with my then last name and so switched to a new email account when I went back to using Snow. Bah!
2You know who you are!
3Gimme a break. It’s a holiday.
4Everyone in Ontario who might call me should have this feature enabled.
5I may have paraphrased this.

Image credit: chenta on Flickr

Mar
11

By

I Am The Harbinger Of Mechanical Failure

Category: Geekery Tags: , 8 Comments

So, yeah, about me and my harbingering1 of mechanical failure.  It seems like everything mechanical around me is breaking!  If I enter a room, surely something mechanical will burst into flames.

Probably the most spectacular of my mechanical failures of late is that my fridge is dying a long, slow, drawn-out, and pathetic death.  Awhile ago, my fridge started making a really loud grinding noise, which seemed to be emanating from the freezer part of the fridge.  I didn’t think that could be a good sign, but I did what any sensible person would. That is to say: nothing.  Then one day I opened the freezer and discovered that everything in there was thawed.  The loaf of bread which had been frozen solid was mouldy!  Gross!  So I told my landlord and he suggested that I put anything that wasn’t ruined into their deep freezer and he’d have a look at it.  But as soon as I had most of the stuff out of my freezer the cooling kicked back in and the freezer was functioning again. Weird, I thought. Perhaps there was too much stuff in there and some thing was covering up some important vent or something. So I put my stuff back in the freezer, making sure that it wasn’t pushed all the way to the back. And all was well for a few weeks.  Until the other day, when I went in the freezer and, lo and behold, everything was thawed again.  And, my fridge wasn’t very cold either.  And here I’d been thinking that I needed to switch the brand of soy milk I use because my last two cartons had gone bad before their due date.  Um, yeah, that’s because they weren’t being kept cold!  And the fresh olives I’d had that had fermented and I’d thought “how weird, I didn’t think I’d had them that long” – yeah, suddenly that made sense!  And the cucumber that had prematurely gone mouldy2. Again, all my stuff went into the deep freezer and my landlord had a look3. Verdict: the fridge is old. Probably dying. So now they have to buy a new one and, in the meantime, all my frozen stuff is in their deep freezer and all the stuff from my fridge that needs to be kept properly cold4 in the freezer section of the fridge, which is just about as cold as a fridge should be.  How cold is it, exactly?  I don’t know, because my thermometer is also mysteriously not working! HARBINGER!

Yeah, I put my thermometer in my fridge to find out what the temperature is in there before I went to work the other day and when I came home it told me: 20 degrees Celsius. Um, yeah, it’s so not 20 degrees Celsius in there!  Things are cool, just not cold enough to keep them from spoiling. But I have no idea what the actual temperature is.  Odd.

Also on my list of recent mechanical issues:

  • my headphones: the left ear of my headphones stopping working and so I bought a new pair.  I decided to go with a different brand that I usually do, as my last few pairs had been this one particular model of Sony headphones, but they always stopped working after about a year, and I’d had enough.  So I bought a pair of Maxell ones. I was actually quite impressed with the sound quality – and volume5. And then they promptly busted. I was just talking them off one day and *crack* – the headband part just snapped in half.  So off I went to London Drugs to exchange them.  And they were fine for a few weeks and then *boom*, the cord pulls out of one of the ears.  So, yeah, I’m on my third set of these headphones in a month!
  • videoconferencing equipment: which I use every month with little or no problem suddenly had multiple problems on Monday that the technician, who always keeps the videoconferences running smoothly, could not figure out.  The PowerPoint would not connect to the screen. The audio for our London participant dropped out every 5-10 minutes and she would need to hang up, re-dial into the videoconference (meaning we had to listen to a super loud ring every 5-10 minutes of the 2.5 hr session!).  The telephone participant was booted out of the session completely.
  • bus: Anyone who takes Vancouver transit knows that the trolley buses come off their wires at least once per trip.  But yesterday something happened that I’ve never seen before.  I was trying to catch the #4 at UBC and somehow the cord that attaches to the pole of the trolley bus (that the driver uses to move the pole back onto the overhead wire when it comes off) was flipped over top the pole and the pole itself was caught on the overhead wires in such a way that no matter how much the driver pulled on the pole, hey couldn’t free it from its entanglement with the wire.  Which meant that the bus wasn’t going anywhere until someone could get there (presumably with a ladder) to fix it.  And the driver of the #4 behind this trapped bus was all “I’m not scheduled to leave for 10 minutes.”  I’m not sure why the second bus couldn’t have just traded schedules with the trapped bus and left at that time, then the trapped bus could leave, after being untrapped, on the 10 minutes later schedule6. But apparently this is not the way things work and so I took the #17 instead.
  • my workplace’s entire network: At work today, The Great Convexity 2.07 kept freezing up today.  And, as I am wont to do, I assumed that it was something I had done.  Like I had too many tabs open. Or because I was trying to play a CD while I worked.  Sure, I do these things all the time, but this time T.G.C.2.0 must be mad about it.  As it turns out, the entire network was acting up.  Everyone’s computers were freezing.  One of my coworkers lost an entire morning’s work.  And it wasn’t just my department, but the entire organization (which is pretty big).  Awesome.
  • and then, of course, there’s my watch.  I managed to find the missing time piece and it sort of stays in the wrist band most of the time.  But now the wrist band is slowly breaking and will probably split completely in two any day now.

1Yup, “harbingering” is a word. Dictionary says so.
2Yeah, apparently I wasn’t too good at picking up on hints, eh?
3He’s a retired electrician, so he actually does know what he’s doing.
4Like soymilk, eggs, cheese, tofu.
5The Sony ones were too quiet, even at max volume.
6Krista, if you are reading, perhaps you can explain to me why this isn’t an option. ‘cuz it makes sense to me!
7Which is what I call my computer at work.

Image credit: Do Not Set Self on Fire photo: Rick Lee on Flickr
Image credit: Fire Kills Children photo: Mr. Tickle on Flickr
P.S. Yeah, I realize that those photos don’t actually represent what I’m talking about in this blog posting. But I came across them in Flickr looking for appropriate photos and they were just too funny to pass up!

Jan
27

By

What Should I Put On My Homepage?

Category: Geekery Tags: , 2 Comments

I’m soliciting ideas of what I should put on my homepage here at drbethsnow.com.

Right now is says “Welcome to my new home at drbethsnow.com!” and has a couple of buttons (or widgets or whatever the heck you want to call those things).  But I feel like I really should have something of more substance there.  The question is: what?

Any thoughts?

Jan
25

By

Where Do You Read My Blog?

Category: Geekery Tags: , , 5 Comments

So, after movin’ on up to the self-hosted side, and spending far too much time picking (and then tweaking) a theme, I’m wondering how many people actually come to my blog itself to read my blog postings and how many people never even see my pretty shoe-embellished pages because they read it elsewhere.  Hence, a poll:

[poll id=”2″]

If you are reading this through either Facebook or an RSS feed, I think you need to come to my actual blog to participate in the poll.  Just go to http://www.nottobetrustedwithknives.com/blog/2009/01/25/reading-my-blog-pollreading-my-blog-poll/ and vote in the poll!

Jan
25

By

Welcome to my new site!

Category: Geekery Tags: , , , 8 Comments

So, I finally decided to take the plunge and self-host my blog.  I registered my domain ages ago and signed up for hosting last month, but hadn’t gotten around to actually diving into until today.  And, despite the fact that I probably should have spent the afternoon working on my lectures for next week, I decided I’d take a “short break” from that work to pick a theme and import my blog.  And, yeah, well now it’s past midnight, but isn’t my new blog site shiny?

After looking at all 566 themes in the WordPress theme directory, I decided to go with redtopia by Jeremy Clark.  But then I discovered that since my blog title (which is written in red) is so long, it partially covered the ugly red flower in the header for that theme.   And red on red is rather difficult to read.  Plus, the ugly red flower was, well, ugly.  So I removed it.  But then the header looked a little too plain, so I put in a picture of my face.  Because, really, who doesn’t want to look at a picture of my face?

Then I realized that the ugly red flowers were also in the footer, only they were much smaller than the one that was in the header; so small, in fact, that you couldn’t even tell they were flowers anymore – they just looked like ugly red blobs.  So I decided to cut them out and replace them with red shoes.  Because red shoes rock.  I searched on Flickr for a Creative Commons licensed photo that would allow me to modify/adapt a photo of red shoes and ended up finding this photo, in which the model is wearing a very fine pair of shoes, which can now be seen in the footer of my blog.  In the course of looking for a usable photo of red shoes, I also discovered that searching “red heels” on Flickr will provide you with a lot of photos of very scantily clad women (and in one case, a very scantily clad man [warning, that link is NSFW]) wearing red heels.   Just putting that out there, in case you are interested.

Mad props go to Kalev for his help getting me set up; specifically he found a server for us to use, installed WordPress.org on the server, then re-installed it when I told him I wanted the main page (drbethsnow.com) to use WordPress (not just the /blog subdirectory), made my too large of an xml file small enough to import so that all my old blog postings are now here, figured out why the text was so small (and the superscripts so messed up looking) in the theme and how to fix the CSS to make it look better and probably a bunch of other things that I forget.

Jan
24

By

Relocation, Relocation, Relocation

Category: Geekery Tags: , , , Leave a Comment

Just when y’all got comfortable reading me here in WordPress.com land, I’ve decided to pack up and move. To a new home of my very own at the aptly URL’d drbethsnow.com.

I’ve picked a pretty theme and then screwed around with a bit to make it even prettier. Why don’t you head on over there and let me know what you think?

Jan
21

By

I Think I Need A New Watch

Category: Geekery Tags: , , , , 5 Comments

I looked down at my wrist yesterday and this is what I saw:

IMG_4506 by you.

Seriously.

My watch has been coming apart for quite some time now, but it’s finally come to the point that the main part of my watch has fallen completely out and I have no idea where it is.  I could have lost it anywhere, really.  I think I will use the birthday money that my sister sent me to buy a new one. Maybe I’ll even get one of those fancy ones which I can use to control Marla.

I do know one thing for sure: my friend Alicia, with whom I go running, will be glad to see me get a new watch because my old one, with the strap all unattached like that, kept shutting the timer off when we were runing as the loose plastic of the strap would hit the timer’s off button. So when my watch was supposed to beep so that we’d know that we had done our 10 minutes of running and could take our 1 minute walk break, it just wouldn’t beep. And then we’d have a totally screwed up run schedule. So, yeah, a new watch is definitely in order.  Also in order, emailing Alicia to set up a running date, which we haven’t done since before the holidays… I think we only have a 100 days left to train for our half marathon. Eep!

Jan
12

By

101 in 1001 for my 1000th post

Category: 101 in 1001, Geekery Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 12 Comments

So, for my 1000th blog posting I wanted to do something special. And I decided that the something special would be a “101 things to do in 1001 days” list.  The first time I saw one of these was on Dave’s blog and I may or may not have soon after written a parody version called “102 things to do in 1,000,001 days” on a satire blog that may or may not have been removed from the Internet for possible libel issues. Anyway.

The idea behind this list is to come up with 101 things you want to do – things you’ve always meant to do but haven’t gotten around to,  things you want to challenge yourself to accomplish and, let’s be honest, a few things that sound good but you are pretty sure you’ll do so that you can gain the satisfaction of checking at least a few things off your list.  As well, it’s important that the goals are clearly defined/measurable (or, as we say in the Research Methods world – you need an “operational definition” of each) so that you know whether or not you’ve done it.  Props for this idea go to triplux, who appears to be the creator of this idea (or, at least, is the first Google hit for “101 in 1001”).

So, after much thinking and pondering and reflecting and considering and deliberating and contemplating and ruminating and reading the thesaurus, I have come up with the following 101 items that I intend to do in the next 1001 days:

  1. go to New York City
  2. leave the continent
  3. live above ground
  4. run another half marathon1 [accomplished: 3 May 2009]
  5. run the full marathon in Sacramento (i.e., the net downhill one!)
  6. assemble my last 7 years worth of photos into scrapbooks2
  7. give something a cool name (i.e., not just adding the letter “y” to the end of what the thing is a la “froggy” or “puppy”)[accomplished: by naming my car Zaphod Beeblebrox the Car. Also: named my new MacBookPro Chloe. I think I’m on a roll with this one. The secret – steal names from books & TV.
  8. get my blog onto WordPress.org [accomplished: 25 Jan2009]
  9. participate in a political campaign
  10. attend Women’s Campaign School
  11. conduct some kind of education research project
  12. conduct another systematic review for the Cochrane Collaboration
  13. publish a paper in a scholarly journal on the training program that I [used to] run [Completed. Sometime in 2011 – don’t actually know what the exact date was!] 
  14. write something creative (e.g., a story, a script or a poem)[Accomplished October 5, 2011]
  15. change a life [accomplished: Jan-Apr 2009, I taught a Research Methods course in which I required students to write a research proposal. One student did her proposal on a topic related to the place she volunteered at and after the final exam she told me that because she learned so much doing that project, she had become the expert at the place she volunteered at on that topic and they hired her for a summer job!]
  16. write a book [Actually, this is in progress! I can’t say more than that, though]
  17. teach a course at a college [Completed. Taught Stats 100 at the Justice Institute of BC; January to April 2011]
  18. ski at Whistler 3
  19. ski at Big White
  20. ski on Grouse Mountain
  21. learn to snowboard (or at least try it)
  22. go surfing & actually stay up on the board
  23. skate at GM Place[Accomplished: 8 February 2009 – Thanks for raising more than $150 for the Skate for A Cureskate at GM Place! fundraiser, I got to skate at GM Place!]
  24. coach a hockey team
  25. hike Black Task
  26. hike the West Coast Trail
  27. write a computer program[Accomplished: October 5, 2011
  28. start a business
  29. learn French (at least a little bit. Like more than just what’s on the cereal box)
  30. write a blog entry entitled Word to Your Moms, I Came to Drop Bombs4[Accomplished: 26 July 2009 – Done]
  31. read something by Salman Rushdie5[Note: I have acquired The Satanic Verses. One step closer to actualizing this item! w00t!] [Note 2: Read the first few pages of this book in December 2010. Wasn’t super excited by it, but I’ll push through][Note 3: It’s now July 2011 and I so have not pushed through]
  32. visit Macchu Picchu6
  33. for one week, go to bed at 9 and read non-work related books7
  34. read The Last Spike by Pierre Berton8 [Note: I own this book, courtesy of Sarah, so I’m one step closer to this one!] [Note 2: Started reading it on my flights to Toronto/back to Vancouver in December 2010 and so far I’m liking it!][Note 3: I have so dropped the ball on this one!]
  35. take pole dancing lessons. Like, a whole set of them, not just the intro class.
  36. beat my current record of 10 points in a hockey season (which I achieved on the Blazing Blades team in both the Winter 2007/08 and the Spring 2008 seasons)[Note: I ended the 2009/2010 season with a meager 6 points. But I have high hopes for the 2010/11 season and am even currently being courted to join a second team!)][Accomplished March 2011].
  37. teach the same course at UBC twice9 [Accomplished Sept-Dec 2009: taught the same course in the Winter ’09 term as I did in the Winter ’08 term. Then I taught it *again* in Winter 2010!]
  38. participate in the “365 Day Challenge”. This involves taking a self-portrait every day for 365 days and posting it to the 365 Day Flickr group. [Completed 21 June 2011: See here]
  39. make a list of 100 things that make me happy[Note: I’ve started this one, but I want to make a really genuine list, so I’m taking my time to come up with things that really, truly make me happy. So far I have 25 63 items on the list.][Accomplished 10 October 2011]
  40. buy a Smart Car[accomplished:15 May 2009. I honestly thought this one was going to be a long shot!]
  41. buy an iPhone[Accomplished: 6 November 2009!]
  42. skate on the Rideau Canal
  43. take Tod to a Vancouver Canucks game [Accomplished: 13 January 2009, Canucks vs. NJ Devils. Next time I should try to take him to a game when the Canucks win!]
  44. take Tod to a Vancouver Giants game
  45. go to a BC Lions game. [Accomplished: 3 October 2010]
  46. go to a Vancouver Canadians game
  47. see a Vancouver White Caps game[Accomplished 15 August 2009 – Alicia & Paul took Tod and I to a game! Then Alicia & Paul took me to another game in spring 2011!]
  48. start composting
  49. keep a plant alive for a whole month[Accomplished: June 2009 – note: it’s still alive a whole YEAR later, as of May 2010 Note 2: Sadly, the plant is no longer with us.]
  50. write in my journal every day for a month
  51. go kayaking
  52. camp at Joffre Lake
  53. visit Galiano Island
  54. visit Salt Spring Island
  55. visit Bowen Island
  56. save $500 in coins10 [In Progress: I have a lot of change in a jar. Not sure how much, but it’s got to be on its way to $500! Note: rolled it up and I have about $60. That’s not $500, but it’s also not nothing.]
  57. deposit that $500 worth of coins into my 40th birthday savings account [Note: this will be more difficult now that I will needs coins for the laundromat]
  58. write 10 friends real letters, on paper, with a pen and snail mail them[Accomplished October 8, 2011: #1 – letter to Kalev for his (belated) birthday, May 2010. #2 – Wrote a letter to Madeline, Jan 2011]. #3 – Wrote a letter to Dan, May 15, 2011. #4 – Wrote a letter to Sarah that I sent with her soy creamer voucher, July 25, 2011. #5 – Wrote a letter to Dan that I sent with his soy creamer voucher, July 25, 2011. (OK, I know these last two are lame, but they still count) #6-10+ – I mailed out 60 thank you cards for the Longest Game for CF and far more than 4 of them had very long notes in them, because there were so many people who provided me with so much support that I needed to thank them for. So that totally counts, as they were long enough to be letters and were written on paper with a pen and snail mailed!
  59. follow Canada’s Food Guide to Healthy Eating every day for 1 month11
  60. go to a Bikram yoga class [note: I went to a “hot yoga” class on 22 May 2009, but I don’t think it was officially “Bikram.” Plus, the place wasn’t really hot enough, imho. So, yeah, I haven’t done this one yet, but I’ve come close!] Went to TWO Moksha Yoga classes (or “practices” as they call them) in January 2010 (it was the place that wasn’t hot enough the first time I went, but was plenty hot enough these times! Then I did a month of hot yoga at West Coast Hot Yoga. So, yeah, I think I’ve got this one covered. Accomplished]
  61. go to a spa for a facial [Accomplished: 14 April 2009 at Heavenly Soul in Kerrisdale. I give it a resounding “meh.” Didn’t help that the stuff they used smelled very perfumey. I hate perfumey.]
  62. visit 5 new American states12[I went to Oregon in July/August 2011. So I 1/5th completed this one!]
  63. visit Newfoundland
  64. visit Nova Scotia
  65. visit New Brunswick [Accomplished:17 June 2009]
  66. visit the Yukon
  67. visit Nunavit
  68. do a 24 hr blogathon[Accomplished on: 26 July 2009]
  69. do 15 minutes of yoga every morning for a month
  70. sort through my many boxes of papers (most of which contain papers from my thesis), recycling the papers I don’t need and filing the ones I do need [Update: went through a lot of them when I moved in February 2010, but still have more to go through!]
  71. find out my credit rating [obtained a copy of my credit report – wondering if I really need get the credit rating, which costs money!]
  72. determine my net worth[In Progress: Sarah has given me a handy-dandy Excel spreadsheet to calculate this, but I need to figure out how I determine how much my car is “worth,” as well as how much money is in my pension in order to get a “net worth” value].[Accomplished – 2 January 2010.  I actually accomplished this a little while ago, but forgot to write it down here and don’t recall the actual date. I’ve been tracking it monthly and this is the month where I went from a negative net worth to a positive one. w00t!]
  73. buy a bike. Completed 16 July 2011.
  74. bike to work every day for two months [Note: now that I work in Surrey, this is very, very unlikely to happen!] [Note 2: now that I’m moving to Surrey, this is again a possibility!]
  75. record a cooking show (at least 5 episodes)
  76. publish said cooking show online
  77. participate in five research projects (as a subject/participant, not as a researcher)[Accomplished. 1 – Jan 23, 2009 – completed a study on sex & cognition that had something to do with dopamine (I think). I had to spit in a tube and play computer games; 2 – enrolled in a Pap smear study. TMI? 3 – May 19, 2010 – completed an online survey for a dissertation for a PhD candidate at ]; 4 – completed two surveys for research being conducted by a PhD candidate at http://sexresearchandthecity.com/ 5+ – I’ve participated in a bunch of surveys conducted to learn more about evaluators as well as one that was a needs assessment for evaluation workshops for Public Health leadership.
  78. sell counter top dishwasher on Craig’s List13[Accomplished: February 2010]
  79. see at least one Bard on the Beach performance14
  80. put up a Christmas tree and decorate it with chili peppers15[Note: I did put up a Christmas tree for 2009, but totally forgot about the chili peppers!] [Accomplished 27 November 2010]
  81. live blog something [Accomplished  22 September 2011].
  82. go to bed every night for a week with all the dishes cleaned [Note: I’ve managed to string 3 or 4 nights of this in a row, but still haven’t managed 7! Note 2- now that I have a dishwasher, this seems a lot less meaningful][Accomplished on Jan 5, 2011!]
  83. achieve inbox zero and maintain for one full week (where “maintain” = by the time I go to bed each night) [I haven’t actually done this yet, but I have a plan for it.  This plan, in fact] [Another update: I’m following the plan and go to bed most nights with my inbox at zero, but I haven’t actually counted them, so I’m not going to check this one of the list until I count them to make sure].[Accomplished on Jan 8, 2011!  w00t!]
  84. up my blog readership to an average of 200 readers a day16 [In Progress: I’m up to an average of 116 readers a day for 2009 (as of 24 June). I haven’t actually done anything to try to get more readers.  They just kinda showed up. Note 2: Now up to an average of 158 so far (as of July 13, 2011) in 2011!]. [Note on 10 October 2011. Fell short on this one. 2009 Average = 126 readers per day; 2010 Average = 122 readers per day; 2011 Average So Far = 161 readers]
  85. break my current record of 460 blog views in a day17 [Accomplished: 678 blog views on 26 Feb 2009. Then blew that out of the water with my July 2009 Blogathon – 1,181 views]
  86. write a blog posting about the Car Co-op18[Accomplished: 4 October 2011]
  87. go sky diving
  88. resurrect my teaching blog
  89. see the Dresdan Dolls in concert
  90. see Groove Coverage in concert
  91. see a show at Richard’s on Richards before it closes down – Update: FAIL! Dick’s on Dicks closed. I attended nothing there. I suck.
  92. devise some sort of proper back up system for my computer files[Accomplished: Signed up for Back Blaze on 15 July 2009. So not so much “accomplished” as “agreed to pay $5 per month for”]
  93. get my ring from my great Auntie Bernice re-sized to actually fit my finger
  94. buy a pair of brown dress pants19 [Accomplished:11 Feb 2009. Bought a pair from my friend, Jen, who had a pair she didn’t want anymore. Of course, I wanted to buy a pair to wear with my brown heels, which I now seem to have lost!]
  95. bake at least one thing per month for 12 months in a row, without baking the same thing two months in a row20[Dec 2009 – tonnes o’ Christmas baking; Jan 2010 – baked some Lava cakes (sure it was from a box, but it still counts!; Feb 2010 – Grandma’s potato cakes (never made those before!) (also made cornmeal muffins and banana chocolate chips muffins, but those are old standby recipes) Bollocks! I seem to have missed baking something in April!  And so it’s back to the drawing board.  May 2010 – peanut butter & chocolate squares from the Rebar cookbook], Gah! Missed June 2010! Do over! July 2010 – homemade granola, also bread (though I didn’t blog it ‘cuz it was a bit too dry. I baked better bread in August); Aug 2010 – bread pudding; Sept 2010 – Sin-Amen Buns; Oct 2010 – Cheese & Herb Bread & Spooky Halloween Eyeballs; Nov 2010 – chocolate peanut butter surprise cookies & brown sugar cookies; Dec 2010 – chocolate amaretto cheesecake and a tonne of Christmas baking; Jan 2011 – mocha cupcakes with mocha ganache and mascarpone cream; Feb 2011 – pineapple & bran muffins; April 2011 – ?, March 2011 – ?, May 2011 – apple bread, June 2011 – brownies (for my Hanky Panky party), July 2011 –
  96. go zip cording
  97. make homemade vegetarian marshmallows
  98. go on a polar bear swim[Accomplished: January 1, 2011!]
  99. recycle my old Sony Vaio desktop and my old Palm Pilot that are now just taking up space in my apartment! [Accomplished – Feb 2010, I brought them to Free Geek. Nothing like moving to motivate one to get rid of stuff!]
  100. scan all the photos from my pre-digital camera days
  101. publish a blog posting for each of the next 1001 days! [Note: this one is now impossible, given that I have missed some days of blogging, but I’m going to try to see if I can at least get 1001 blog postings in during this 1001 period, as some days I post more than one posting.][Note on 10 October 2011: I didn’t even managed to do 1001 postings – only 983, so I’m short by 18. And I’m too damn tired to write 18 postings today!}

 


 

 

 

 

End Date: Monday, October 10, 2011 (thank you dateandtime.com!)

Ya, this one is totally cheating, since I’m already training for another half. But it’s hard to think of 101 things!

Um, ya.  I have seven years worth of photos in boxes, waiting for scrapbooking.

Can you believe that, having lived in Vancouver for more than eight years, I’ve not yet skied Whistler?

This one is stolen from an homage to Dave’s 101 things in 1001 days list. He didn’t actually manage to do it, but I think I can. I think I can.

Also stolen from Dave’s list. I’ve been wanting to read something by Rushdie, so here’s an extra push.

This is the last one I’m stealing from Dave’s list. Promise.  Also, Dan said I should go there.

Stolen from Triplux.

Which Sarah’s been telling me to read since forever. And which she just gave me for Christmas, so if I fail to accomplish this one, well, that would just be sad.

I always seem to get a course for one term only.  I taught Nutritional Assessment last year as a sessional, but the department hired a new prof and he chose that as one of his courses to teach, so I don’t get to teach it this year. And then, this past term I taught another course as a sessional because the usual sessional needed a break from it for one term only, so I probably won’t get to teach it next year. Now I want some consistency!

Just because it would be difficult.

i.e., meet the recommended number of servings for each food group every day and consume no more than one unhealthy “other” food per week.

i.e., ones that I haven’t been to before. Or ones where I’ve only been to their airport/airport hotel (I’m looking at you Texas, Oregon and Arizona), if I actually go to somewhere other than the airport/airport hotel.

since it doesn’t fit in my kitchen. =(

I can’t believe I’ve lived in Vancouver for 8+ years and not once have I been to see Bard on the Beach. I like Shakespeare (I even have a minor in Drama that included a whole course in “Acting Shakespeare”). And I like beaches!

Inspired by the tree at the Mexican resort I stayed at this Christmas.

My 2008 average was 93 readers per day.

Which occurred on Friday, September 26, 2008 as a direct result of my list of the hottest players in the NHL

Which I have partly written and can’t seem to get around to finishing.

I’ve been trying to find a good pair of brown dress pants since forever! Hopefully I’ll find them in the next 1001 days.

Because I really enjoy baking and I never seem to do it anymore.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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