A Minor Entertainment Media Peeve

Watching some TV today I noticed something which seems new and a minor oddity. Just short of an irritation. The number of shows with the same actors. I don't mean one role ends and another starts but same. I don''t mean as guest stars, that I enjoy & it seems to make sense. I mean one actor having a major role in two or more shows at the same time. Probably never would have noticed if I didn't have a habit of noticing locations and recognizing where there they were shoot. A hangover from helping on so many shows while working and knowing locations most don't from do lots of work underground. The first person I read of doing this was Kirsten Kirik (hope I spelt that right) when she was Lana Lang on Smallville. The other was a teen show so I don't recall. Both of those were shoot in Vancouver. Logistics would not be to tough. These new shows though are one in Vancouver one in Toronto. Some in Calgary too I haven't noticed any Montreal but it only has a few streets I know by sight. Montreal has a lot of French style buildings and often passes for Paris or New Orleans. I spot the odd from Halifax or St Andrews New Brunswick. The Rockies I can usually tell exactly where on what mountain. At least time never changes them.

This new trend is interesting because unlike Kirsten shooting 2 shows in Vancouver these newer shows are shoot in cities 500 to 4000 miles apart. Not impossible but a touch odd. Likely odder I have been at so many of the set locations. My guess is it no more strange than pro sports teams playing in cities 1000's of miles apart on two days running. I suspect it may be part of the move to ensemble casts rather then two or 3 main characters perhaps twice that or even more.

Perhaps it is because most of these shows are shot in Canada. Movies are doing it too and if you rent the movie RED and watch the extras they point out that while US cities have a distinctive look Canadian Cities especially Toronto can look like almost any US city by simply changing neighbourhoods. Sometime by simply turning a corner. What we can't look like is the wilderness parts of the southern states.

As I said a personal observation but wondering if anyone else noticed? BTW I watch mainly Science fiction, crime shows ( most of those seem shoot in the US except breakout kings) and the odd comedy. Question for Tracey, why do most BBC shows now seem to be shoot in wales ( never been there but notice credits )

A brief note. While getting much better physically, I just got the best results on a physical in over 10 years ) mentally & emotionally I have been having a tough time a tend not to write then. Also my main Computer is in the shop and has been over a week. This was done on my laptop.

Rest in Peace Mister Whisker's

Yesterday I had to have my cat put down. A few weeks ago he began showing symptoms of something. First his bathroom then vomiting then off his food. Tried changing his food adding fiber worked for maybe a week. He soon went off his food. Long weekend prevented me from taking him Thursday evening when he really got worse. Vet said Liver of Kidney disease nothing I could have done no matter how early it was caught.

$400 I can't really afford right now including having him cremated and a cedar box for his ashes.

He was always a good cat. If such a thing can be said he was very polite. He never went outdoors. My daughter brought him to me when he was about 4 weeks. To young to leave his mom but she had just been run over by a transport truck. So Rocky was a big help and we managed to nurse him back to health.

I am not supposed to have a cat I am allergic to them and am not looking for another.

Still it hurt very much. He would have been 6 in September

Needless to say I am not taking this well emotionally. Blaming myself when I know I could not have done anything.

My religion believes in a number of levels of heaven. It also believes you can visit down but not up to see your loved ones. Hopefully he will visit me one day if he doesn't mind the heat. They also believe one can visit below those levels which would be considered heavens.

I choose the Road Less Travelled. Now Where The Hell Am I?

The weather is by contrast to lately very nice. It is about 5 out or for our American friends 40 degrees F. However for it to be that warm this early it is extremely overcast. It has been either raining or threatening to rain long enough I have passed through the migraine due to weather stage and as that takes about 5 days in total you get the idea. The dog gets walked his poop gets picked up I get a morning hot beverage, cider is popular right now and try to either read or watch TV.

I have been using a kindle I just got much more than I expected. It holds about 4 to 16 thousand books. ( I have over 70,000 in electronic form ) my reason for picking it over the other choices is it reads pdf files which include pictures or diagrams. Imagine trying to read say Grey's Anatomy without diagrams. To my surprise I use the laptop I picked up for Xmas to myself less than I expected however in defense Canadian winters suck ( no apology for that one they really do. The Eskimo's have over 100 words for snow and my Dad says he bets all of them are swear words ). I got it mainly as I hope to begin pushing the limits of my illness. Trying at least to travel. I have a week long visit to my Dad's set up for April. While there I have to overhaul his computers. It may require me to write a few programs to automatically handle maintenance functions.

Back to the topic. Looking back it seems in my life when there came a fork in life's path I usually choose the less traveled one. When people were war protesting I joined Cadets. The result was I got a lot of military training which stood me in good stead over the years. When jobs were plentiful I choose one that had bad working conditions but good security, benefits, pension plan etc. Result though I had basically no social life I was able to retire at 51. A good thing considering my illness. Had I not got this perhaps a different one would have come along.

However I do now or perhaps am at the stage in life where I look around and ask myself where there Hell am I and where do I want to go from here. Followed of course by OK what is the best path to get from here to there.

I pretty much always went to school during my working years. New technology required me to go to school to keep up. When I was advanced enough I found I took courses out of pure interest. I was 42 before I realized I had an ear for languages. Now thanks to technology I don't need to physically travel to study them. ( or a variety of other things which I have yet to choose ).

Some things I have done and don't want to do again. Some others I really enjoyed and would like to be able to take up again. Camping and Mountain Climbing for example.

As the Bard said " There are more things under heaven and earth Horatio than are dreamed of in your philosophy " or for Star Trek fans the Vulcan motto IDIC Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations.

Now to figure out where I am and where I would like to go from here. Suggestions for my "Bucket List" are welcome. Tracey lives near one item. Walk Hadrian's Wall. At age 12 my maternal Grandfather walked from Dundee to Glasgow in two days to find work. He found it possibly because doing that impressed his would be employers. Aside from the war he spent the rest of his work life in that field. The newspaper field though I understand in many different branches of the business. Even when he lived here in Canada it was working for what was at the time the counties largest paper and it remains out most respected paper.

Maybe I should learn cooking over something other than an open fire so I don't end up killing myself with self induced food poisoning.

btw Rocky's last blog entry shows up wrong on the side of the page it looks like the last one here. Happens because I accidentally posted my entry on his site. His is of course very different him being a much wiser creature. After all I don't think Dog is God spelt backwards is entirely coincidence.

I May be Losing what Little Mind I have Left

I really overslept yesterday. First I had a completely sleepless night the night before not getting to sleep till after 9AM ( I think it is a side effect of years on the night and afternoon shifts. Where I worked you didn't rotate but were on one steady so out of 29 years 22 were not day shift ) it hits once in a while and I have sleeping pills for those occasions. This time they didn't work.

Then I woke briefly at 5PM the dog woke me and I took him out, the local coffee shop was out so I had a hot chocolate then lay in front of the tv closed my eyes and next thing I know it is 8AM. So I took the dog out again got a Coffee and then wrote the blog for him. His is Warp Drive Canine Mind Unleashed and you should read it as this is a special one. However when I came to the computer this morning there was something odd. I had planned on downloading a few programs and was not able to yet last I was at the computer. When I sat down a few minutes ago they were all downloaded just waiting to moved to their new permanent locations. I have no history of sleepwalking but absolutely no memory of waking and doing so. Also it is not a real simple process. I checked the fridge as I almost used it as the bathroom when I woke groggy a couple days ago. ( I didn't came awake enough to realize what I was doing ). I did get myself a perrier water but I recall that I briefly woke up parched when it was pitch black out.

Anyway I hope you enjoy Rocky's Blog today.

Keeping on Track day Two

As most of you know I believe that while we may not have a choice about growing older ( I'm not sure about that completely ) but we can choose not to grow up. ( Millions of males agree with me just look at how we behave ) However, I also believe if we stop seeking after knowledge and trying to better ourselves we do start to age.

Tracey commented on her niece who is fluent in several languages, very impressive. I know one of the people who read this from Toronto and emails me rather than commenting to the world ( in many cases a good choice, ) is fluent in most of those languages. AS the writer lives in Toronto I should mention for readers who do live there while I lived there the board of Education offered courses at Central Technical School ( an excellent trades oriented school normally ) in 14 languages not common in High School. It is where I took my first Japanese course ( second year I and 4 other adults mistook a line in the course description and assumed intermediate meant difficulty level not second year of a 3 year course. There were only enough students registered for it to run it if no one dropped out. As none of the five of us needed to pass it having all graduated high school years earlier ( I think all five of us had at least one college diploma as well, one was a Doctor of Chinese Medicine ) we stayed and the teacher worked very hard to teach two years at once. Even in the Army I have never seen so dedicated an instructor. Also in the Colonade ( not sure how it is spelt ) on Bloor street on the second floor the Japan Foundation has an office and a Library free to the public ( or next to free ) run by the government of Japan which also puts on art exhibits etc and has a lending library. There are also two cultural center buildings ( quite large size of a typical mall ) where you can study anything Japanese from Origami to Karate to Sword fighting with the steel swords to Flower arranging or tea ceremony. If you are interested in something Japanese which they are not teaching at the time they will find a teacher and start to teach it even for just a few people. There is also a smaller version in Hamilton at 25 Hempstead Rd on the mountain ( I took language lessons there and took part in my first tea ceremony ).

The coffee is starting to kick in and a very mild headache on the rare side is fading an asprin should take care of the rest shortly. I am a little slow waking today. I do often get to bed late and as a result sleep late. An unfortunate effect of 21 years working either night or afternoon shift. In my near mindless ( or male you can decide ) state this morning I found myself having opened the fridge about to take a pee when I realized this was not the toilet. I have only done that a couple times in my life and never soiled the fridge. For some reason I wake with a bit of a jolt at that time.

Getting Back to Abnormal

Today has been my first day of feeling like myself since my brother's passing.

It has also been the first day of the year to hit 50 degrees F which may have a bit to do with it though it has been very windy.

Last night I went to sleep with a DVD with 45 hours of mp3 Japanese lessons on starting at the beginning. I think I feel asleep just into the second of the half hour lessons. I slept about 10 hours and when I woke it was at a level I had trouble following. So my plan ( if you read my resolutions you will know I am planning catching my Japanese back up to where it was and then advancing it ) is to again start at lesson one and increase by one lesson every second night. I also plan on doing a lesson of a level of Rosetta stone each day as well. I did all parts of the first lesson today and it was not easy. I scored a 97 but it was not a give away by any means. I may move on then review I haven't decided the best way to use it yet. The audio lessons are not terribly hard. Japanese has fewer sounds than English so with only two that are not in English it is not a hard language to learn to speak or understand. Writing it is another story, I am probably at a 6th grade speech level but only a 2nd or 3rd grade reading level. A nice side effect is the Chinese Kanji I can figure out the meanings of. No idea how to pronounce them but reading them is a bit like figuring the markings on pyramid walls. you know what the symbol means sort of and from the string of symbols you can get the meaning. One of the first I got to recognize was if a Chinese restaurant was licensed to serve booze. Not that I'm a drinker but the symbol sticks. I can also tell men's and ladies restrooms in oriental languages.

Also my bad cold is gone and I am back to working out. I may even go with twice the workouts I had planned. Two cardio workouts a day plus rotating body parts with weights. My one spare bedroom is a computer room, the other a gym and the treadmill in the living room is where I can run and watch TV at the same time.

From my time in the Forces I know the human body ( and even mine I rarely claim to be human. ) can handle and it is far more than most people would believe. Noticeable results should be at roughly the six week mark.

Wish me luck, guts, and determination.

1st Resolutions Revisit

Today is my Dad's 83rd Birthday so if your reading Happy Birthday Dad and I will be visiting as soon as I can make the needed practical arrangements. Transportation, Pet & House sitting etc. I am trying to do it in a way in which everyone comes out a winner or in which everyone benefits. So Far it looks very promising that it should happen before months end. As you know right at the moment we have just had one of the largest snowfalls in years. I will let you know all the details as soon as I have them.

Also kudo's to Jessica my Step-Daughter in whom I am very proud she just finished her second week back at college.

Resolutions. In the diet weight Blood Pressure, Sugar Levels, and Heart Rate all is going at least up to the resolutions for them. My treadmill got ate into by pretty bad hell blisters which have forced me to use it barefoot of late. I will use fabric bandages on the heels till the heels and new shoes are broken in as soon as the blisters are completely gone. ( the fabric bandages are less costly than mole skin and also I am forced to always have them on hand. Those who know me well know that I have the best stocked first kit around. I'm not going to change that.

Books Read, A Book of Mantras ( was an Xmas gift ), H Rider Haggard's novel "She", it is one I had read before kept recommending it to someone and wound up reading it again myself.One called Nature's Medicines, and I have been looking over some old texts and notebooks on electronics in preparation for getting back into it as a hobby. I'm thinking of taking up fishing again. I used to make all my own tackle etc with the exception of Rods and reels and made enough not only for myself but also for the eight other guys I fished with on a pretty regular basis. There was one lure I designed and had each of the other guys I went on an annual fishing trip with the legion ( branch other than my own ) that there were 25 or us and I gave each of them 4 on the annual trip to try out. The next year they all claimed the ones I had made them had done wonders and wanted more. I used up all the parts I had with me for the guys and also gave them all I had in my own box. I'm digressing here but only to note that I am thinking of adding making my own tackle to the current list.

I have started on the book of rules for myself and will post it here once it becomes enough of a list to warrant doing so. I am also carrying a book with a list of all my dvd's on me whenever I go out as I often see a bargain and pick it up only to find when I go to put it into the bookcase ( alphabetically ) that I have got it already. When I do so I give the extra one to someone I am pretty sure will enjoy it. It makes me happy to do it especially if the person in question has a limited amount of spending income.

Not bad overall as this is my first update which is only just over two weeks since I started them and I had and still plan on posting the updates every six weeks or so.

One more I am adding is I will be blogging more often. I am thinking of splitting my blogging by subject. I already sometimes write trying to see my Dog's point of view in "Warp Drive Canine Mind UnLeashed" My next article will likely be there as I am for the last few days thinking how much more Like Ladies & Gentlemen we would be if we more often behaved with what the more noble attributes of these noble beasts show without hesitation. My challenge will be in wording as some take umbrage at being compared to dogs even when it is to their most noble attributes.

Nightmares

Last night was a long sleep but nothing but Nightmares

Guess I am still not adjusting well to my brother's passing. Some of them of things happened when I was 9. 57 year old events coming back as nightmares. Don't know how many times I woke each time from a nightmare. None recent events most around twenty to thirty years ago but some like a few from childhood even older. Makes me wonder if we ever forget the things that bother us. They seem so much easier to remember than the good things.

Resolutions Sid Style

Resolutions & Things to Do 2011

1. Do 1 hour minimum cardio per day ( treadmill)

2. Do ½ hour minimum a day of resistance (gym)

3. Stock freezer, fridge, pantry

4. Eat better and track meals

5. Monitor Heart Rate, Blood Pressure, Pulse, Sugar, Weight also exercise level & amount.

6.Walk Rocky more

7. Study a minimum of 2 hours a day can be concurrent with another activity such as listening to tapes or watching Video.

8. Clean up organize & keep it that way.

9.Get Ethernet cable

10. Do anxiety & depression workbook

11. Dress better

12. Contact Family more

13. Sort, box, label and store stuff

14. Set Clocks start wearing a watch again

15. Mail Lily’s gift

16. Get TJ’s address and mail chess set

17. Visit Dad

18. Make flash cards for Japanese

19. Go through drawers organizing packing & labelling or discarding Donate discards Sally Anne or mental health

20. Use bike more weather permitting

21. Do will or make arrangements

22. Visit Jess & kids in summer if possible.

23. Look into getting license back

24. Start processes

25. Passport

26. Write a level of the Japanese Test

27. Do 1/3 hour non Japanese language work twice per week.

28. Improve credit rating.

29. Increase savings

30. Learn to sign

31. Do some small electronics projects

32. Read at least 1 book a week, keep a record of books read\

33. Work on a personal rule book

34. Loose at least 1 pound a week


The way I handle New Years Resolutions is this. I think about and write them down starting New Years Day. I have some rules the most important is they must be possible. I commence them the day AFTER my birthday. Being mid January that is not much of a problem. Reason for day after is it allows some form of celebration or surprise.

They are subject to modification, they are reviewed once a month and at that time new ones can be added completed ones removed from the list, ones that are partly on course or going faster than expected will be adjusted to reflect that.

Subsets can be added. For example #33 Write a personal rule book. Will once done have an a) which will be read the rules each day till memorized once memorized recite them aloud at least once each day. This is not talking to myself but developing a personal Mantra. Beats Ohm.

As people who read this generally know me. Perhaps not in person but in essence suggestions are welcome for the next update which will likely be the day before Groundhog day Feb 1st.

So far so good. My 1st day on the treadmill forced me to lay off it for a day. I had brand new sneakers so they were not broke in. Blisters resulted on the bottom of my feet and my heel. I lanced the ones on the bottom of my feet but had to give the heel a day to heal a bit. I am now going to be using a bandaid ( fabric ones ) to protect that spot even after the shoes are broken in. I know that spot gets rubbed the wrong way if anything does. Band-aid as it is cheaper then moleskin and equally effective. Perhaps more.

Also thank you for all the condolences on my Brother passing. I am finally adjusting to the fact.

George Arthur Brechin 18 Oct 1956 - 14 Dec 2010

It's almost impossible to write what is basically an obit for a younger brother you looked up to.

As some of you know while I try not to look down on anyone, I make a real effort to look at everyone as my equal. However there are some people I always looked up to. George was one of those people. Call them my personal heroes. Different people for different things. My Grandfather was my overall hero. My Dad for his ability to treat everyone fairly and never loose his self control. With George though he had terrific Academic skills it was his sense of Justice I always looked up to. One thing he would not tolerate was a bully. Mind you his method of dealing with a bully was normally to bully the bully so badly the bully would never dare bully again. If it was a physical bully though George was usually smaller he would use that to embarass the bully because though George never swung first ( and George would always make sure there were witness to that ) when the swinging stopped the bully would be unable to stand. For mental bullies George would trade insults till the other was in tears. I saw him do that with Grown men.

There were lots of things I admired about George but as I first said most was his sense of Justice.

His academics and problem solving abilities were great. If you have something electronic in your body controling something you probably owe what the device does to George as he was the one solved the problem of Electronic devices interfacing with human nerves. That was around 1981. He was the first Technologist to be published in a Medical Journal. He was published a few more times before he became effectively disabled. For the past 20 years or so he lived in near constant pain.

I truly miss him and the only consolation I have is that he no longer has to deal with the pain.

I have lost not only a brother but one my heroes.

The following will show a bit more about the type of man he was. I suggest you double click on the pictures so you can read the whole articles they are too small in the Blog photos.