The other day I was on my way home from work (at dusk) and I noticed that the outside lights on my house were unusually bright? I mean, I had purchased 40 watt smaller incandescent bulbs quite some time ago and all-of-a-sudden they were uber-bright? Upon further examination, they were new compact fluorescent bulbs, which I have in the interior of my house.

I happened to glance next door and noticed my neighbor had the same bulbs in her fixtures, so I figured that she was being nice and energy efficient and replaced mine as well. Mystery solved, or so I thought…

Later that night after it got dark, I happened to glance out my front window and look down the street to find that nearly every house had the exact same uber-bright energy efficient bulbs in their outdoor light fixtures.

Is there some sort of energy-star, replacing our light-bulbs? It’s a mystery I tell you, a mystery. I’m not upset or anything like that, I’m happy… who do I thank? Is this a good Samaritan or my tax dollars at work?

Just thought I’d blog about Karla’s spill last week. She was running down the stairs to catch me before I left to work (to tell me that Castro was not dead) and missed a stair and fell right on her tail bone.

She’s been laid up on the couch now for 3 days and a bit… huge bruise. Sorry guys… no pics 😀

You can catch Karla’s side of the story here if you’d like.

I can somewhat giggle about it now, but half an hour ago I was some upset. On the way into my house this afternoon, I tripped on the step and knocked my 12″ Powerbook G4 a bit on the step above. It was in my nice thick neoprene laptop bag and the bump wasn’t that hard, so I didn’t thing much of it. Tonight I went to work on a few things and found that my beautiful aluminum Apple case had a large bend in it, and there was also a few small ripples. 🙁

After freaking out for a second I shut off the machine and found that the top left corner of the laptop (about 1/3 of the machine) was in fact bent out about 1 cm. Yeah, so my computer now had a good curve to it, which made the battery not sit flush in the bottom.

I ended up carefully bending it back into position with careful pressure on the wound, and it’s now straighter than ever (it never did seem to sit flat before).

I was initially peeved about the aluminum actually bending, but I suppose with the -20 degrees Celsius weather today that a plastic PC laptop would have been destroyed. Gotta love Apple.

Well if you stumbled across this post because you were looking for the Simpsons TV show episode where Bart finds Mr. Burns’ $1000 bill, then they decide to go to England on vacation (which by the way is called The Regina Monologues) this isn’t it… sorry about your luck.

Karla and I are heading to the UK, and we are pretty dang excited about it. Neither of us has ever been to Europe before and we’re going for nearly three weeks and plan to see everything we possibly can see during our stay.

My sister moved to England about 3 months ago for a job opportunity, and since this is technically her first holiday season away from the family and on her own, I thought it would be a nice time to jump over the pond and pay her a visit. While we are there I plan to visit a few clients and colleagues as well, which I’ve previously never met in person before so that will be a nice adventure.

I plan to take copious amounts of pictures on my Canon Rebel XT while I’m there as well (Sidenote: On a new 4GB compact flash card that I just bought for $102.00CAD from TigerDirect… can you believe it? 4GB’s for $100! That’s sick… I paid more then that for my 64MB SD not too long ago) so prepare for a new vacations section in my photo album 🙂

If you know of any “must see” places… please feel free to suggest them. We have no solid plans at this point, but are just planning to travel as much as possible and take in everything we can.

A quick post today about a few letters: i.e. and e.g.

Have you ever felt imbecilic for using terms in sentences that you weren’t 100% sure of? I’ll admit, I’ve used “i.e.” and “e.g.” extensively throughout my life writing technical documents, teaching and even just in day to day blog posts I suppose. I’ll assume that I have used the terms correctly because no one has ever corrected my uses, but I never did know why I was writing “e.g.” in place of “Example”. Where did the G come from? I really never even questioned it before yesterday, to be honest.

This morning before I got into my work routine I needed to find out.

Well a quick search of the net turned up Yahoo Answers, which made me happy because someone else asked this question. It turns out that this is commonly misunderstood.

From my extensive research (ha), I’ve turned up the the following:

i.e. stands for id est, Latin for “that is”.

e.g. stands for exempli gratia, Latin for “for example”.

If you previously did not know this… you do now! Lucky you. If you did already know this… oh aren’t you a smarty pants, don’t think less of others who aren’t so linguistically savvy!

I awoke this morning to some terrible news… the world famous crocodile hunter, Steve Irwin, was killed while filming a TV series in Australia.

The official statement from crocodilehunter.com is as follows:

Media statement – 4 September 2006

Steve Irwin

At 11am today, the 4th September 2006, Steve Irwin was fatally wounded by a stingray barb to his heart whilst filming a sequence on Batt Reef off Port Douglas for his daughter’s new TV series. Emergency services were called from Cairns Rescue Base and met Croc One, Steve’s rescue vessel at Low Isle on the Great Barrier Reef. The Croc One crew performed constant CPR during the thirty minute dash to Low Isle, but the medical staff pronounced Steve dead at approx. 12 noon.

His producer and closest friend, John Stainton said on Croc One today, “The world has lost a great wildlife icon, a passionate conservationist and one of the proudest Dads on the planet. He died doing what he loves best and left this world in a happy and peaceful state of mind. Crocs Rule!”

This unfortunate accident leaves behind Steves loving wife Terri and his two small children, whom, from what I’ve read, were “the reason he was put on the Earth”. For a complete research resource on Steve Irwin, please see Wikipedias fantastic write-up.

The Crocodile Hunter can without hesitation be referred to as a staple TV series, one that is both timeless and entertaining for people of all ages. For years I have enjoyed watching Steve risk his behind in-front of the camera; his love of nature, wildlife and education was an inspiration to millions of people around the globe. He will be missed, may peace come to his family.

Crikey!