Business as usual...

With small portions of income finally filtering in from various seeded investments, my family and I are going into Christmas in relatively good condition. I have found though, in the past Christmas was not always a happy time. For some, the stress of not being able to provide for their family, by way of presents and or sobriety can be hell on earth. I have witnessed friends who sat in their apartments alone, and high on drugs Christmas eve. All because they felt they had nowhere to go. And I have also witnessed the miracle of birth on that very same eve. Christmas for me has become less of a religious holiday and more of a family strengthening session. As I grasp at straws I try to remember that when I get the long straw, inevitably someone out there ends up with the short one as there are only so many long straws available.

Friday on the way home from the treadmill room at Toronto's hospital, my mother and I joked and laughed to the trailer park boys interview on CBC radio. They are such a crude bunch but for me, it is comic relief that is much needed. As we turned onto the 427 highway and changed lanes, a small, sporty vehicle decided it wanted to be in pole position. Well no problem, I certainly was not in any rush, so I slowed down and let them in like any other polite driver from the west would do. Then, SNAP! the sound of a small but high velocity pebble hitting my windshield! I looked over 2/3rds to the right on the glass and there it was, glimmering in the sunshine. "OH SHIT!, Jody's Gonna lose her mind!" I yelled. The small pit in my windshield, sparkling in the daylight with spikes going off 4 different directions. It was small but I knew from the past that left unrepaired this little mishap would turn into a road map, and eventually lead to the replacement of the entire windshield.

$60.00 for the repair and an hour and a half later after chatting it up with the man from Dubai who repaired the windshield I was humbled once again at fate's doorstep. That 60 dollars had to leave my warm dry pocket to enter the cold cruel world but I feel now, that it could not have ended up in a better man's pocket. He'd only been in Canada for 3 years but boy oh boy did he have a great personality. A fine salesman he was, and a damn good windshield repair person too!
So I sit here tonight thinking that I did the right thing for my vehicle's maintainance and that I am satisfied with the days events.

Bah Humbug, the fat man is coming, the fat man is coming!

Linux Security Permissions.

Not much going on today, A hospital visit (regular appointment) and a bit of this and a bit of that... Well I woke up thinking this was going to be a regular morning. I had just installed the latest Ubuntu on a machine last night and got a couple users set up then I noticed something wrong.. Something seriously wrong... All of the users had access to each other's home directories. I believe this is true of all Ubuntu installs these days and I'm not quite sure why it's set up that way but here's how to clean it up a bit...
This was done in Linux Ubuntu...

I will assume that you are the owner of $home/user

I will also assume that you know how to open a Shell and enter some commands. The one we are going to use here is called CHMOD.

First a bit about how hexadecimal based file permissions work. The order of our three digit number XXX is;

Read =4
Write =2
eXecute =1

And the three XXX's are like USER/GROUP/WORLD permissions.

So to figure this out you simply add up your permissions. If you wanted to give full permissions you would add 4+2+1=7 therefore if you wanted to give everyone access to everything you would set your XXX to 777 but this would be insanity as your files would not last very long in a human world :)

I suggest you give user full permission so XXX looks like 7 groups should have read and write access so set that one to 5, remember read=4 + eXecute=1 so we got 5... your XXX now looks like 75X. So what about the rest of the world? well since some things like web pages need some sort of basic access to files we will set Read on the last bit so the now looks like 754.

So now you have files that you don't want other users to have access to in $home/user/MyPrivateFiles

The linux command to do this (REMEMBER TO SUDO or ROOT)

chmod -R 754 $home/user/MyPrivateFiles

the -R command will recursively go into each directory and modify the permissions of the files contained in MyPrivateFiles...

Hope that helps you secure your machine,
Cheers!

Photographic Coolness...

It's no secret that I love to take pictures. But more than that, I don't have an extremely expensive camera, heck I don't even have an SLR camera but I've learned to do some pretty cool tricks with a bit of Java scripting and some patient photographic techniques... This is a 360 degree panoramic shot taken from the corner of my street. Yeah yeah, I know it's a serious security issue if someone wants to kill me they will know where to find me but whatever I'll take care of that when it happens...

GO AHEAD, GRAB AND MOVE THE IMAGE WITH YOUR MOUSE!










Super cool eh?

That was done with an old 3.2 Megapixel camera last summer, now I've got a 7.2 Megapixel cam so You can bet I'll be doing this again soon...

Hope you could view it without a problem...

Glad to be a geek!

I have been using computers since I was 11 years old when my mother bought a used Commodore Vic 20 from a newspaper advertisement. Gawd, I can still remember plugging in the programs line by line from the computer magazing then saving them on audio cassette tapes. Previous to that I remember using the Commodore PET at the Computer Shop Of Calgary but didin't have one of my own. She couldn't afford the $300.00 or so it cost to buy it new but we were blessed with an amazing deal that allowed her to buy it for me. 24 years later I am thankful that I was introduced so early because tonight while listening to my daughter talk on the phone for the past two hours I realized just how much money I saved being a geek!

You see my daughter loves the phone. Like most 10 year old girls she found her love of the phone by talking to her cousin, who lives in Calgary where we came from. The four thousand kilometer journey takes her voice there and back in fractions of a second without a care. My daughter pays little attention to the technology that performs this amazing feat, and she certainly couldn't care less about how much it costs to talk for three hours at a time to her cousin.

Fortunately for me my geeky job brought me to a company that needed a VOIP system installed. It was here that I learned just how easy it was to actually deploy this technology. Their equipment cost them several thousands of dollars including all the wiring that was involved in setting it up from scratch. So I went home and started to do some thinking. Much to my surprise, all these fancy voip telephone systems are nothing more than a linux computer running some fancy software called "asterisk" the trick to having a cheap setup is to have a simple GUI to control the more complex PBX software itself. I found this software in a "FREE" form and couldn't be more pleased. There are a few free ones out there but this one could be set up by an ape so I was quite pleased since I am much like an ape myself.

If you are interested in setting up a system like this in your own home or small business you could drop me a line and I will do what I can to help you get started. It was as easy as building a computer out of old parts I had layin around, installing the PBX operating system on it, then buying an adapter by Linksys to integrate all the analog phones in my house. You can also purchase the more complicated feature rich IP phones for it but in a house why not use your regular telephones :)

So what does it cost me now?

Well my Bell line including the long distance we regularly received from Saskatchewan ran about 80 bucks per month. OUCH! the basic phone line without the long distance was around 30 bucks... OUCH!!!

Now with the new VOIP system, an initial cost of $10.00 to buy the phone number and then a monthly cost of $2.50 per month to maintain the phone number. The minutes are 2 cents per minute. so my daughter's three hour phone call costs me a whopping $3.60 My phone bill last month on voip was a whopping $11.36

That's in TOTAL, no other charges... what's included in this? well for starters I have FULL control over every service thinkable. call waiting, call forwarding etc. And because we still have the bell line integrated I will always have access to 911 dialing. Even if the bell line is disconnected they are required by law to still provide emergency 911 dialing. The voip company I use for purchasing minutes also has their own 911 service so either way I have two ways of getting help now. Additional features include "All phones" in my house are extensions now so I can call upstairs by dialing an internal extension etc... Valuable when you have a family of 6 living here we can communicate with each other easily...

More later, gotta check on dinner!

Turns out Dinner did not burn as my daughter had so veraciously warned me about but I have pretty much said all I need to say above... I will only add that you can take an IP phone or SOFTPHONE with you wherever you go and you can connect and make calls from your private PBX... Amazing technology and it's about time that the old ideas of telephony change...

Cheers!!!

BTW. Mom's doin' better today! I think she'll be ready for her appointments at the hospital on Tuesday! HOORAY!

Digital Ghosts from the past...

Something happened to me today, while I was minding my own business.. Something that I did not expect to happen... less than two months ago I lost a dear friend to Cancer, I'm sure we all know someone who got taken in by this horrible disease. Her and I had been friends for over a decade now, almost two in fact. We spent hours talking to one another online, I confided in her, things that you would only tell a friend that you trust 110%.

Anyhow, I had been having problems with my computer, had a 500gb hard drive fail and was backing up files onto several portable usb drives and recovering from the now defunct drive to preserve the tens of thousands of files I've collected over the years. Out of the blue and without warning there it was on my instant messenger. For only a fraction of a second I noticed she was online... W00t? First I had this extreme sense of excitement... I had a lot to say to my friend. Then only a second later my heart sunk to the bottom of my chest and I felt terrible as I realized that it was not her because she was gone.

It's not practical to keep users on your list that you know will never log on again but I can't find the strength to delete her. I'm not sure why her name popped up, perhaps her family booted her computer one last time while going through her estate, or perhaps it was just part of the bad computer day I've been having I dunno... But Isn't it a strange thought to still keep users on your computer including their email address after they have passed away? At what point do you choose to delete their contacts, or should you?

I'm truly stumped over this one and feel so sad that I can't just send an instant message to her to tell her that I miss her... Or perhaps I can... She may not get it, but it will make me feel better :)

If you have comments on this one I'd really be interested in reading them... What have you or would you have done in this situation?

Cheers!

Software alert...

It's no surprise to my friends that when I recommend software It's usually related to Linux in some way. I have several friends and family who follow my blog, mostly to get updates about my mother but occasionally just to see how Don's mental health is... hehehe I can be a bit nutty at times I guess. It's nice to just point people to my blog when they ask, so how's your mother doing? Saves me the headache of repeating, not to mention when I'm at the hospital with her when the time comes I'll be able to just update one place instead of many...

My mother by the way is on a heavy dose of Antibiotics and is at home trying to recover from a bacterial infection she has in her lungs. She was hoping to be at the exercise class today (Friday) but I felt she was not quite ready to return so she's going to take the weekend to recover.


Now on to this software I found, well actually it's a well designed python script called "SPECTO" Specto is a desktop application that will watch configurable events (such as website updates, emails, file and folder changes, system processes, etc) and then trigger notifications. For example, Specto can watch a website for updates (or a syndication feed, or an image, etc), and notify you when there is activity (otherwise, Specto will just stay out of the way). This changes the way you work, because you can be informed of events instead of having to look out for them.

So if your running Linux Ubuntu like I am you can drop to a shell window, and type in 'sudo apt-get install specto' the application will then show up under gnome in applications/accessories.

I will post some similar windows applications as I find them since I want to have this sort of thing for my windows laptop. I am waffling on removing windows and replacing it with Ubuntu because it runs XP pro super slow even though it's a 2.8Ghz HP with 1Ghz of ram but there is some video editing software that runs really well on that laptop that is windows only so I've still not decided yet if i'm going to reformat... Maybe I will set up Dual Boot and use ntfs3g to access my winders partition again...

Enjoy!

Leonardo Pisano and the golden spiral...

No, this is not the beginning of some Italian children's book... It's the topic for something that has been of interest to me for several years. Something that an acquaintance about 5 years ago brought to my attention and I haven't been able to shake it off my mind since.

Leonardo's nick name was "Fibonacci" and was born in 1170, that's not a typo, it's documented fact... Long time ago eh? Anyhow Fibonacci being the math nut that he was linking numbers to nature. When someone asked him "why do you care about the numbers?" he replied "Someday these numbers will unlock the secrets of nature and will explain why a drone bee does not have a father."

Interestingly enough, Fibonacci's numbers can explain the design of many things from the shape of a rose to the spiral on the inside of a sunflower. But can it explain why we have two hands, three sections per finger, 5 digits per hand and 8 fingers?

The fine details of this are explained at http://goldennumber.net/ I couldn't possibly do it justice, you'll have to explore that for yourself but know that math explains a whole lot more than just how many taxes you owe to the great Caesar :)

There is beauty in numbers...

There is a perfect law of proportion in nature, while it may look random, nothing at all is random...

In this series of numbers each term is the sum of the previous two terms as follows:

0

1

1

2

3

5

8

13

21

34

55

89

etc.

The division of any two adjacent numbers gives the amazing Golden number e.g.
34 / 55 = 0.618 or inversely 55 /34 = 1.618.

This is called the Fibonacci series and for a guy who wrote this so long ago he's pretty frickin' spot on... We should listen to our elders more often eh?

And now, I must share with you some of the beautiful results of this math since math itself is quite ugly by comparison;

And now you see why I can't seem to shake this from my mind... :)

Cheers!

They come, and they go!

Well here is an update on my mother... Seems that this support thing has really overtaken my life these days, busy as hell with appointments. More in fact than ever before, it's a full time job being a support person for a lung transplant patient and I'll now be searching for some supplemental income since it leaves very little room for me to work during the day anymore...

Dorothy's been having some noticeable trouble bringing her oxygen saturation back up to the 90's during exercise and when she's just walking along. So the obvious solution would be turn up her oxygen right? Well no, this doesn't work very well because you end up with a problem where by the CO2 does not exit the body well, you get pockets of CO2 in your lungs that don't exhale with your breath so inhaling is not effective because the pockets in your lungs are already full of stale air. Luckily she has a BiPap machine that she can rely on which gets this stale air out of her system. Anyhow, to make a long boring story short and to the point. At clinic today they decided that she will need to be on an extremely high dose of antibiotics 750Mg twice per day in fact for 10 days. They believe that after her last hospital stay there is a bacterial growth that just won't leave her lungs so they are going to obliterate it with toxic doses... :)

Asside from that we are finding the new support group that we are attending to be quite helpful and a source of knowledge. And to top it off someone from the group (Sue) had her surgery today and last word from a friend of hers was that she's doing quite well so we have our fingers crossed... Sue was one of the ones in group who really struggled like my mom so this will be a great relief for her and we are looking forward to seeing her in post therapy...

Close Call...

I've been busy, and so I did not blog about this very dark near miss my mother and I had with a tractor trailer on highway 410. I did not write about the day it happened and can never really be sure of what door number two may have presented had I opened it. That day in fact was Monday November 16th. I am thankful that my destiny did not include door number two since behind that door was certainly an ugly one.

Don, what the hell are you talking about just spit it out!

OK, so my mother and I were on our way to a 5:30pm meeting at the Toronto General Hospital. Going at our usual speed of 100km/hr down 410 it was moderately busy but traffic was flowing. In front of us and in the lane to the right was a tractor trailer going the same speed. In the blink of an eye I watched as a large metal part snapped off the belly of his trailer and fly into my lane, the part was roughly the size of a sewing machine and smashed into a dozen or so very dangerous fragments. In what felt like a split second I looked to the lane on my left and chose to make a dangerous lane change with only inches between me and the car in that lane. Had he been beside me I would not have had this option and would have had a large fragment go directly through my windshield. I know this because in the lane where I was only a split second ago I watched the large piece fly past my passenger side window and then as gravity pulled it to the ground it went into the grill of the vehicle that was behind me in that lane. Instantly I saw smoke in my rear view mirror and the car spin out of control landing fairly safely on the right shoulder approximately 200 meters ahead. I quickly made my way to that same shoulder, and watched as two more cars ran over the same material that influenced our sudden change in plans...

No one was hurt! I was thankful, and sharing a quick conversation with the man with serious damage to his vehicle I reflected on the geometry that would have rendered the inside of my vehicle a mass of flying glass and obvious bodily harm.

Anyone who knows me knows that I generally freak out in situations like these, but for some odd reason I was as calm as a duck pond on a warm windless day.

After inspecting my own vehicle and finding no damage, I gave the man my telephone number in case he needed a witness and was on my way...

The only other bad thing to happen that night was a parking ticket for being parked on gerrard avenue during rush hour. This I barely blinked at after nearly being killed... :)

Cheers!

Audio compression, lossy or not...

I had a nice little (m-n-kl) argument with someone in an online forum last night about MP3 technology. Let it be known that while I use MP3's in some instances I am not a big fan of the technology. My car, the Kia Rio5's built in MP3 capable radio does NOT support my favorite audio compression and so I am more than a bit upset.

OK, I"m no expert at this, and quite frankly my ears are no more suited to listening to the fine details in music as an elephant is to painting a great artistic masterpiece. But it wouldn't take a genius to notice that there is a distinct problem with the way MP3's store music. Oh sure, they give you a nice small file for storing the music on that new mp3 player you just purchased, but have you ever tried to listen to a great opera singer or Mozart for that matter in mp3 format?

Most of the MP3's available online these days were created by some teenager who's little paper 8 Ohm speakers sitting next to his computer sound like a transistor radio, so he/she had no idea that the actual result was something similar to a yak giving birth in a large hollow glass tube. HORRIBLE!!!

Eventually, we will use MP3's in a higher quality way, a better sounding 24-bit audio format that is not lossless. If anything we will move beyond today's common 16-bit audio.

There are other options though, I personally use the OGG format by a person named "Ogg Vorbis". Ogg Vorbis is a completely open, patent-free, professional audio encoding and streaming technology with all the benefits of Open Source.
And did you know that most common MP3 players today support this format but don't even advertise this capability on it's package? I sell products such as these for a living and get to test out a lot of cool hardware before it becomes common place in the market. One of the things I have noticed is that about 90% of the mp3 players that I've tested for companies silently supports OGG. I recently sold an Ipod nano like mp3 player to a fella in the states and I was surprised to know that it supported the format. And the playback of the 256Kbps test file I put on it was superb! Yet nowhere on it's packaging did it say that it supported OGG.

Lossy audio compressions such as MP3 will always have advantages such as small file size, but the standard MP3 that is in common use today causes me to stand firm on my decision that MP3's are terrible and I will avoid using them in a world where OGG, WMA and ACC are obviously better sounding alternatives that are supported by almost all MP3 players on the market. The trick really to a great audio file is in how much data is actually stored while balancing the file size. The smaller the file the more data loss there is resulting in noticeable deficiencies in the sound of the file.

Lets quickly consider the famous CDrom disk which replaced magnetic media such as the audio cassette tape. In this uncompressed or "RAW" format there is more data than your brain can process. If two sounds are almost the same frequency your brain will perceive them as the same sound. And more importantly when two sounds are completely different but one has a much higher volume your brain will only hear the louder one. Human hearing though is subject to a much more accurate mathematical model, we can only hear a very limited range of sounds and some sounds are more noticeable. This likely was forged into us during our evolution where the sounds of a running brook in the distance or the slight rustle of a brush could indicate danger. You could then, consider listening to music to be exercise for the mind's ear. The more you listen, the better you become at listening. Not withstanding obvious ear damage caused by environmental noise of course.


The bottom line folks, and I hate to make this so short and to the point. Don't waste your time on MP3's when there are so many other formats out there lossy and non lossy that work a lot better and don't massacre the sounds of Mozart, Debussy and the likes... :)

My Wurld, Not Urs...

What a cool age of tech we live in when our lives can be shared texutally and visually... I am taking advantage of the cool technology by Ustream, your system sends one stream from your webcam, then their monster servers can send to multiple places at once...

It's a fantastic thing :)

So not only do I have about two solid days of organizing to do in this office area, I had a power supply blow up so I'll be tearing apart a system later to pull the power supply from...

Cheers!

It's a geeks world DEC-029

BAH, the whole card won't show unless you right click it and choose to view image!

It's not often you meet people you can relate to when your just going about your daily business. OK let me rephrase that... It's not often "I" meet people I can relate too! I know they want to keep a low profile online, and so they should it's a crazy world out there with every technology opening up new security risks. So I thought this would be a simple way to let them know that I am talking about them and not the chicken lady in that crappy hospital cafeteria...

Anyhow the point I was going to make about these cards is that I remember as a small boy my brother and I would hang around the computer shop of Calgary. It is claimed to have been the first computer store in North America selling personal computers and it still exists today but only virtually online. I remember the Texas instruments with it's clunky voice module, and the Atari ST's. And without a doubt my favorite computer of that era the Amiga... But going back further in time I also remember my brother would bring home stacks and stacks of these yellow programming cards.. I distinctly remember they had a smell to them... Not sure why but after they ran through a punch machine I think maybe they picked up the smell from the process or something. Anyhow They made great card houses... much better than a deck of playing cards and they were fantastic book markers :) what a strange memory this has brought back to me. I often associate my memory with some smell or sound, I guess it's just the way I have learned to store things away in my 3.5 pounds of mush...

Ta Ta for now... got a lot of work to do at home this weekend.. Maybe I'll connect up the web cam and broadcast the enormous task of reorganizing my home office in real time :)

BAH HUMBUG! I have "King of spain" floating around in my brain.. Damn you Moxy Fruvous...

Cheers!

Business as usual...

Today was not spectacular by any means, this evening however, as cranky as I feel my health has improved...

The neighbor, a nice man from Trinidad has offered many a conversation to me. Over the fence and in the front yard during regular yard work. The man seems to be nice enough. And after three years I think I have come to know him as Dave. If that's not his real name it wouldn't surprise me, people just don't know their neighbors like they did when I was a kid. Anyhow to the meat of the story... We receive a knock at the front door, then the door bell. I quickly turn on the camera in the corner of my computer screen and since I'm all the way in my basement office I do not rush to answer the door, I figure my family will deal with it. So my daughter opens the door and a few moments later calls for me saying the neighbor wants to talk to me... The conversation goes something like this...

Me: Hey neighbor, how's it going?

Neighbor: (in a trinidad accent) Let me ask you sometin' is yer cat out and about these days?

Me: She did escape from us yesterday but otherwise she's been in for the past month.

Neighbor: Oh, ok well she's done it again, there's shit all over the side of our house...

Me: Ok, i'll come over and clean it up and bring the cat to show you which one is mine.

Neighbor: Thanks...

He then smiles and walks back to his house... Strange thing is, our litter box is full of cat poop and was changed less than a week prior.. so anyhow my son and I go over there, a little embarrassed and somewhat angry at the cat and we clean up what looks like a months worth of cat poop... So I show him the cat and he gives me a puzzled look and says he's seen her around but is not sure if that's the one doing it... Now that I've cleaned up the poop he begins to tell me he thinks it's the big fat Grey cat from accross the street...

BAH Humbug!!! I can understand the frustration as a home owner who doesn't even own a cat. We generally try to keep our cat indoors at all times and soon with the snow flying and the cold air outside, my cat will absolutely refuse to be outside. It's just the way she is...

The last thing I need is to have a cranky neighbor, hopefully he's satisfied with the steps I took to make him happy and to reassure him that I'm a responsible pet owner...

Well, I'm copying some music to my mother's MP3 player, better get back to it :)

OH, and before I forget, I added a link to my friend Kat Armstrong's website. It's not the usual canned blog, she's a prominent member of the geeks community and a good friend of Chris Pirillo from lockergnome.com He's the geeky fella from TechTV from a few years back now... You should visit Kat's website she's a heck of a human being... http://www.katarmstrong.com/

Cheers!

It ain't easy, bein' cheesy!

After barely making it to the support meeting, and having my mother's liquid oxygen tank fail just after the meeting. I have become worn out... It doesn't take a lot to totally stress me out and do me in for the day. I have done very little since getting home and I feel like I should go to bed. My wife however is at work still and so I am watching my kids... The little beggars have been told that they are not to go out this evening, I just don't feel like chasing them around the neighborhood when it's time to eat supper...

Last week was a stressful one, got two false alarm calls and collectively with exercise class and the false alarms I spent a total of 42 hours in the Toronto General Hospital. This is just simply too much time spent at a hospital unless you work there and they are paying you!

The meeting went just like any other support meeting does... People sitting in a circle describing the color of their underwear etc... Uhhhhh what the "F"? The color of your underwear? Well apparently it was a method of breaking the ice with people... I dunno, perhaps just short of having you kiss the person next to you it seems a bit of an odd party favor...

I'm just cranky I guess but my Celiac has flaired up and my tummy is the size of a fucking basketball today. Ingested some gluten and now I'm suffering
...

I'll muster up the strength to prepare a meal for my lovely wife, and when she gets home I am sure I'll be fast asleep... I am barely functioning right now and can't even really figure out why I'm blogging instead of napping on the couch. Oh yeah, that's right I have three kids to look after... Slipped my mind...

I'm also just a bit frustrated that a package I sent to Calgary a little over a week ago was sent back because Stupid Canada post had the tracking number wrong and the postal code was also wrong so the package came back to me... Shouldn't Canada post be the ones footing the bill? I mean REALLY...

Oh, and on a final note.. since I really don't have time these days to update my other two domains and the pages within them I have forwarded their alias to this blog. Advertisements are advertisements no matter where they are found right? So temporarily at least I don't expect to generate a whole lot of cash that way...

I need to go get some toothpicks to hold my eyes open, see you in my next blogging session...

Mockery, clowns N such...

Ok, so yesterday I spent a couple hours making a video for some close friends of mine who are fighting to change the Canadian laws that pertain to life sentencing for child molesters and murderers etc. After creating the video and uploading it to google I quickly realized that there may be some copy write issues as far as using the video that was created. When I read the software license agreement for the animating software it seemed to me that they did not grant the user the ability to remove the video from their domain and edit it in external software. Being the geek that I am I decided that this just wouldn't do and that I had to contact them so off to the email proggy I went and got the following reply to my request...
__________________________________________________
Hello Don,

Thank you for contacting Xtranormal support.

Yes. Absolutely. The movies you create are yours to use however you want, as long as the use is not commercial.

We do ask that you keep our post-roll and link to our site, but you can modify our clips in any editing or effects software you like.

We just want to get the word out about Xtranormal.

Happy Movie Making!

Regards,

Xtranormal

If you can type, you can make movies.

On Mon, Nov 10, 2008 at 5:24 PM, Don Millette <millettepc@sympatico.ca> wrote:

Is it ok to remix some of the video on the xtranormal site with external
software as long as there is a reference or link to the xtranormal
website included in the remixed video?

Thank you for your time...

--
Xtranormal

If you can type, you can make movies. �
____________________________________________________

Fair 'nuff eh?

So if your into making your own silly little animated movies I encourage you to visit the site... :) It can be fun making them say whatever you want them to say... Be creative, blow off some steam!
http://www.xtranormal.com

That's all for now, I have some relaxing to do, got a big day tomorrow including an 11am support group meeting for my mom...

Cheers!

When it rains, it pours...

My grandmother used to say it whenever things were not going the way she expected or hoped... Tonight I got word that my great Uncle Robert has been put on life support. He's in his 90's but we were close, he was someone I looked up to and has a humor much like my own... I really adore him... Then the straw that broke the camels back came... A 7 year old family pet Dragster passed away, had a cancerous tumor on his leg. We have known this for a while but who the heck can afford a thousand bucks for surgery on a lizard...

Tomorrow we will bury our beloved pet and make some phone calls about Uncle and move on with our lives as we always do...

Maybe I'll take an hour or so to do some photo shooting in Caledon tomorrow...

Bah Humbug,
When it rains, it pours!

Tweedle Dee, and Tweedle Dumb...

So here I sit again with my mother. This time the call came in at 1:45am. What the heck? two chances at a new life within a week? This can't purely be coincidence... I am starting to wonder if there is a divine plan... "Well of course there is dumb ass!!!" My mind quickly goes with the volition that we are not alone. It's a basic need, to know? that someone is in control of this massively chaotic world. Our creation is as real as we make it, if we choose to ignore all possibilities of an intelligently designed existence well then we are ignorant. And somehow I think the phrase "Ignorance is bliss" may apply here...

10:55am - The kind doctor rolls into our room and quickly but sensitively says "The surgery's canceled.. I'm very sorry but the donor had pneumonia..."

Oh well, you know what they say, "Third time's a charm!"

On November, 5th which was a Wednesday, the would be 94th birthday of my grandmother. Her son, Harold Smeltzer was granted day parole. Well I can't even begin to tell you how this alone stirred up a world of emotions for me. I have been drifting in and out of clear/foggy mind, constantly trying to rationalize what happened.

The family of the girl he murdered I feel close to, constantly in and out of conversation with them online. Wishing each other prayer and good will, and just generally trying to understand each other's situation as best as we can. They are angered by this latest news of his release. And rightfully so! I mean after 28 years they had to dredge up all that hurt again and not only face.. but literally sit a few feet from the monster who took their baby girl away... The monster they so fondly hate, is my uncle and childhood abuser. I just see so much hate in their eyes and while I wouldn't dare confront them on this I wonder if the anger is doing them more harm than good... I am not asking them to like him, no way in hell. In fact I can barely muster up an ounce of forgiveness in my own heart for the guy but I know that I have somewhat let go of what happened to me and it feels really good to know that he is no longer in control of my life. I fear however that as long as he can keep someone's heart so filled with hate that he has some level of control over them.

So to briefly recap my current stresses but not to dwell on them...

1) I am the main support person for my mother who is on a transplant list. The journey has thus far been much more intense than I had originally dreamed.


2) I have an uncle who, to say the least is in my opinion still a threat to society. I have just confirmed a rumor that I heard about the parole hearing itself. I have from a good source and someone who was at the hearing that the parole board asked Harold if he would be a threat to society if he is released. And while the words are not exact he said something to the effect of "some of the things he would have to do in order to not re-offend are things like avoid being around schools, not looking at porn and being careful of what he watches on tv" I mean HOLY CRAP people why didn't this set off alarm bells?

3) My employment situation for the past couple months has been bleak with the intense medical appointments and my current state of health.

4) within one year I have lost 3 people who were dear to me. Long time friend Marilyn Seeley (Cancer), My dear auntie Nadia Smeltzer (cancer), and my Grandmother whom I was also primary care giver for.

So what could I possibly be happy about then? what keeps me going? Well, plenty of things...

1) I have three Beautiful Healthy children for whom I absolutely adore and cherish... Their mischievous ways remind me every day that they are not only human, but intelligent and special to every last cell in their body!

2) A wife who, appears to the world to be every bit as quirky as I am, and for that I am super grateful since she is utterly the best match for me possible and also the most understanding wife on the planet. She has helped care for two of my blood relatives, put up with many family heartaches, and given selflessly to her children time and time again.

3) While I may complain to the world about the aches and pains associated with Celiac, I am a rather healthy individual. I mean so what if I have a "restricted" diet, I also had a complete physical not more than 4 months ago. Complete with a doctors finger up my ass and of all things a compliment on how healthy my prostate seems to be.

4) The crisp morning air, and the many many things I get to photograph each and every day. Each object or situation put there right in my path without exception so that I may notice it. I wonder how many things I didn't notice today...

5) Many friends from past and present who support me and don't need to understand every detail of my life, but who are there to pick me up when I'm feeling down and out...

I could go on all day you know... but those are some of the most important things to me...


Ohhhh, now I must go plug in my camera, I think I got some fantastic night shots of the CN tower, I'll post them to crackbook soon enough, perhaps after a lengthy nap! YAWWWWWWWN!

OK I came back, here's the one photo I took this morning that really excited me... it's beautiful! Was taken from inside the hospital, through the window BAH HUMBUG, but it turned out ok...

Cheers!

Words just couldn't find a place for me last night...

And so I wrote a poem...

_____________________________________________________________
SELFLESS

Your life was taken late last night,
And in your pain we saw some light,
A chance that only you could give,
A gift you gave so I could live.

I knew as long as I'm alive,
Your gift and I would surely thrive,
I'd hold your memory in my heart,
Your gift and I would never part.

I'd cherish it and make it mine,
Our souls forever intertwined,
The doctor said "we are delayed"
My worries start to be displayed.

Through many kinds of heroes voice,
One day you made a selfless choice,
The thought of dying isn't great,
But yet you still chose to donate.

They told me something wasn't right,
The surgery can't be tonight,
So while your family's hearts are sad,
I'll Honor both your Mom and Dad,

The choice you made was filled with love,
Your spirit now soars like a dove,
This time your gift was not for me,
This time just wasn't meant to be.

~Don Millette

_____________________________________________________________

Chronologically speaking;

5:00am - Jody and I awake to the sound of the phone ringing. I immediately know that this is not a usual phone call... Her voice softly speaking "Hello?, Yes she is here, just one moment..."

5:30am - Still in a bit of a stooper we grant each other some hugs and kisses at the door with the kids, my mom gasping for air as the anxiety and breathlessness catch up to her. Every 5 steps or so a 1 minute break to catch her breath.

6:15am - We arrive at the Toronto General Hospital. My mother, so worried about not having time to brush her teeth, asks me to get her purse for her where she has stashed away a bottle of water, a tooth brush and tooth paste... Go figure eh? I wheel her after that short interlude to the Emergency department. There are two other people waiting there and as per the instructions from the transplant coordinator we are to politely make our way to the front of the line and tell them that we are transplant recipients. The receptionist puts all other patients on hold and begins to ask us the questions etc... Then she phones up to the transplant wing and asks if they are expecting us. Send her up they said...

6:30am - We arrive in the transplant wing on the 7th floor and are greeted by Geoff with a G... He's a high spirited person, a perfect personality for a nurse as he makes us feel at home with his witty comments and obvious compassion. We are quite aware that it takes a HUGE team of people to make up a successful transplant team but this guy just stood out to us. Perhaps we just needed someone to latch on too, but no by the end of the 18 hour day I realized the special contribution this man made to this process. I will certainly be letting the hospital know how his nursing style helped us through a stressful time.

7:00am - A blood test and X-ray later Geoff comes in and explain to us that the surgery target is for 3pm that is when the OR room is booked. He also tells us that his shift is over and that he would see us later on. So as patients do, we thank him, and then we sit patiently. I surf the net through a slow dial-up connection on my laptop, chatting with friends and explaining to them what was going on. My mom sleeps nervously, waking at the drop of a pin.

12:00pm - A nurse comes in and explains some things to us about the anti rejection drugs my mom would be taking and the antibiotics course they would start her on. So a few minutes later she returns with three HUGE pills of cyclosporin and my mom chokes them down with a sip of water.

2:00pm - The day shift nurse comes in we were expecting her to start my mom on the antibiotics... But something was going on with the OR rooms, the nurse explains it's normal for the OR to be kind of backed up and that we should not worry. The surgery is not scheduled for 5:00pm.

4:00pm - Once again, we hear the news that there is a delay, at this point we can see the frustrations in the eyes of the nurses as they try to explain to us that it is OK. We were fortunate enough to have met up with a young person and their family who we knew from the previous four months of exercise classes. He had already had the surgery, and his mother and He were more than happy to let us know that they had delays too and that we should not worry. They too were a source of comfort to us as he is doing so well and they were so friendly to us.

5:30pm - They come in and start my mom on the Antibiotics they had previously mentioned. Saying that it looks like everything is a go for 6:00pm. Shortly after that the surgeon comes to visit and explain the procedure to my mom. Then just after that the Anesthesiologist comes in and talks with my mom about the drugs she is currently on and all her allergies etc. At this point as you can well imagine we are getting very excited. So we make some more phone calls to family in Montreal, Calgary and of course to home.. I tell my wife that she is going in a few minutes and let the kids and her speak to her... I could hear a little nervousness in my wife's voice, something I don't usually hear.

6:15 - A porter arrives, disconnects some stuff from the bed, removes the now finished antibiotics IV line from the side of the bed and then unlocks the bed in preparation to move forward. He says he will be back in just a moment to take her but... strangely he does not return.

6:30pm - The day shift nurse comes in and says she is not sure what happened and why they have not come to get her but assures us that if she was late the surgeon would phone down to shake things up. She makes a call to the OR room for us and returns with the news that it has been delayed again until 8:00pm Frustrated, I pace up and down the hallways and back and fourth through the room.

7:30pm - Geoff the original nurse, the one we found so amazing returns for his night shift. We are so thankful to see him again... That familiar smiling face that made us feel so good about being there. It is now obvious to Geoff that we are tired, frustrated and exhausted... Not to mention very hungry... He tells us that he will phone the OR and find out what's going on.

7:50pm - Geoff returns to install the special compression socks that will prevent blood clotting in my mom's legs during and after the surgery while she is laying in bed healing. Joking and making us laugh and giggle we begin to see some hope.

8:15pm - Geoff and someone from another department comes to the foot of our bed, both with obvious look of disappointment. The man explains that the donor was unsuitable and that they are very sorry but the surgery is cancelled...

Well, as you can see why I struggled last night to finish the blog that I told all my friends I would work on to keep them updated... It was a LONG frustrating night and the entire night I could think of very little other than the donor's family and how they must have suffered 10x more than we did...

So now we know what to expect, we met many fantastic people at the hospital. And we have put a new battery in the pager and are waiting once again for that ominous call for my mom to receive that new lease on life...

Delayed, but not forgotten...

So, the surgery was set for 3pm, the Nurse just came in and told us that it has been delayed for approximately 1 to 2 hours... They won't tell us why but we were told by some friends we made through the support group that they went through the same thing... It's all par for the course they said...

I am thankful for having my laptop and the ability to at least dial in on this bell sympatico dial up line... Without which I would go nuts... Anyone who knows me knows that I can't be very far from a keyboard or I become quite uncomfortable...

Speaking with my friends Gary and Sally in Calgary I am excited that they will try to come visit us at Christmas time... I've been life long friends with Gary and we've seen many a full moon together...

More later...

My thought are with you today!

We got the call, and Somewhere in this world, you had a terrible night... Perhaps you had a car accident, perhaps a heart attack, I can not be sure. They don't give me that kind of information... There is one thing I am absolutely sure of though. By signing your donor card, or by telling your family that you wanted to be a donor. Your amazing gift will in a few hours give someone a new chance at life, an extension that without "YOU" previously is not possible... You are a hero, and my family thanks you so much...

And I say;
The clock reads 6:00am, I hear a phone ringing and based on the time of night I realize quickly what it is... The moment my wife answered and replied to the unknown person "Yes she's here, one moment please..." I knew... I knew that it was the toronto General Hospital calling, and they had a gift for my mother... An amazing gift...

By the time we all arrive on the main floor of our house and I look at the clock I realize that with the time change it is in fact a couple of minutes after 5:00am not 6:00am as our bedroom clock had indicated. The stooper still with us all, we listen as my mother is asked the questions we were told to expect. Good morning Dorothy, how are you feeling today? etc etc... they ask you if you have been sick or are on antibiotics etc... flu/cold... it's a basic screening process that evaluates your suitability at the time of the call.

Well like everything else in our lives, this is all falling together one connection after another. It has all just been so amazing. Nothing short of a Miracle.

So now after a record timed 30 minute drive to the hospital with no traffic so early, Dorothy has had a few blood tests, a couple of xrays and is waiting in bed to hear from the transplant team. At this point on the other end the donor is being checked for suitability. As kind as someone is to donate their organs a surgeon ultimately must hold the lungs in his/her hand and decide if they will work for my mom...

If they do not work for my mom, and we are sent home... Then we will celebrate the fact that someone was so unselfish that they gave us a chance at this... Whoever you are, donor afar... You are a beautiful person, an unselfish person and for that we want to thank you!!!

That's all for now, i'll post another blog when we find out if she's getting the lungs today or not!