I think one of the first attention-getters was a Reader’s Digest article about the disaster, followed by the book Raise The Titanic by Clive Cussler. Over the years, my fascination bordered, at times, on obsession. I had a Titanic board game. I read every book I could get my hands on, fiction and non-fiction. I watched every film about it I could find, whether documentary or fantasy, drama or action.

The thing people forget – and I think the root of the fascination about the subject for my generation and the two preceding* – was the mystery. No one knew where Titanic was, exactly. The technology to find it didn’t exist. The technology to travel that deep in the ocean didn’t exist. Everything was based on anecdotal evidence – the stories of the survivors – and as it turns out, those stories weren’t always very accurate. They thought she lay holed but mostly intact on the seabed, and could someday be raised to become a floating museum and memorial.

How wrong they were.

The unravelling of the mystery was fascinating. I pored over those first photos in National Geographic, absorbing details like a sham-wow in an infomercial… this ship been a fascination for me for more than half of my young life, and here she was, laid out in front of me. Myth after myth was dispelled – she wasn’t intact, she’d broken up… she couldn’t be raised, at least not in the way fantasized about in fiction. The cold depths they thought preserve her, hadn’t – she wasn’t perfectly preserved or in stasis, Titanic was slowly dissolving, consumed by rusticles. Scientific analysis brought understanding of what actually happened to the great vessel, supporting some survivor reports of a great cracking sound which had often been discounted. Further analysis concluded that her steel was brittle, ultimately exacerbating the damage inflicted by the iceberg. Titanic was never unsinkable – she was a disaster waiting to happen.

Over my lifetime, the story has evolved from the remarkable myth of a lost ship which may never be found to a fully-explained tragedy with few mysteries remaining, subject of dozens of documentaries and films discussing almost every aspect of her short existence.

My generation is the last to see Titanic through the fog of mythology and uncertainty.

As my family commemorates the 100th anniversary of her sinking, Titanic isn’t a legend to my kids. It’s just a thing that happened a long time ago.

And that’s kind of sad.

Perhaps I need to find a way to bring the mythology back?

* To the people who were around when Titanic sank, it was an immense tragedy that got mixed in with the horrors of World War I and the flu pandemic and so many other terrible world events of the time. The generations born after it happened – the ones not directly affected – are the ones who elevated it to mythical levels.

It was about the fourth time she’d made that statement in the past couple of hours. Since we’d arrived to visit Mike at the hospital on Thursday evening, Jen seemed relieved to have someone different to talk to, so she just kept on talking. It was obvious she was trying hard to come to terms with what was happening to her husband, and being helpless to change it, wanted to do something – ANYTHING – to keep from succumbing to her sense of loss.

His turn for the worse, only a week before, had caught her completely unprepared. He’d been hospitalized since January 2nd, and had gone through radiation treatment. His condition appeared to be improving. He was undergoing physiotherapy to strengthen muscles ravaged by ionic radiation so he could walk again.  For the first time in months, it looked like he was going to be home, and soon. Jen thought they were past the worst of it, and although his life might be shortened, they’d still have a few years together.

But that didn’t happen.

Instead, she was dealing with the logistics of becoming a widow far before her time. A will. The paperwork. The arrangements. The disposition of belongings – the items that will become the treasured keepsakes for family and friends after Mike is gone – seemed to be foremost in her mind. Anything to keep her soul-crushing pain at manageable levels.

I was very fortunate. With gas prices the way they are we couldn’t afford to make the 600 km round trip, but in spite of her grief, Jen reached out and helped us out with money for gas. We debated waiting a day to make better arrangements, but in the end decided to leave that afternoon.

I was able to visit with Mike on Thursday while he was awake and lucid. I felt like an idiot because I was smiling - even though he was physically beaten down, I was so damn happy to see him it was irrepressible. The entire drive there, I worried that he wouldn’t even know we were there. But there it was – that glint of mischievous humour still danced in his eyes. He wasn’t in pain, he was just trapped in a failing body. And he was still Mike, proudly bearing the scars of his hard-fought battle. Maybe there was even a tiny bit of hope…

The next day we returned to the hospital, and he was worse. Overnight he’d gone from being able to speak to only making vaguely coherent single-word responses. He could still understand words spoken to him, but responding was nigh impossible. I took his hand, told him I loved him,  and spoke the last words I would ever speak to him, carefully chosen because of their meaning to us in our shared Trek-geekitude as well as their stand-alone definition:

“I have been, and always shall be, your friend.”

He moved his fingers and shifted his head. I left the room with a heavy heart.

We hugged Jen and went to the elevator to begin the long  journey home. While waiting, my wife asked what I’d said to Mike, because she couldn’t hear. When I told her, she said that from across the room, she saw his lips move saying “Me, too.” And she started to cry.

“Is that from Doctor Who?” she said as the tears streaked her cheeks.

I rolled my eyes in exasperation. She’s seen Wrath of Khan at least a half a dozen times.

“No, wait. I remember. Star Trek,” she corrected herself.

I smiled, trying to choke down the lump in my throat. She is, after all, only a Trekkie-by-marriage.

We returned home to our children and pets, speaking frequently of Mike and Jen and their struggle. How no matter how much my scientific and mathematical logical mind knew that the outcome was nearly inevitable even as far back as when he was diagnosed, and even in his current state, I couldn’t completely give up hope. That accepting any memorial item from Jen felt absolutely awful, because that meant acceptance that there was no hope. That even a 1 in 10,000 chance is still a chance. That I could only accept something if I told myself in my head that I would give it back to Mike as soon as he got out of that bed and went home.

There are always possibilities.

What stayed with me all weekend was how suddenly things had changed. Two weeks ago, Jen was so optimistic about his condition that I’d wondered if he’d be coming to visit this summer. We’d joked about sitting out front with our Medical Marijuana authorization paperwork, openly using our little vaporizers to taunt the douchebag ex-cop across the road. We’d talked about Star Trek Online, and I was excited to tell him about it going free-to-play so he could just show up any time without worrying about the expense. I thought of all the “gotta tell Mike later” things that I hadn’t been able to share yet.

We go through life taking things for granted – it’s human nature. Ever since we grew out of the stage in infancy where anything out of sight ceased to exist, we live our lives assuming that the buildings and furniture will be in the same place, and we’ll always have a chance to fix what went wrong or apologize for an inappropriate comment or even to say I love you. There’s always tomorrow to do that thing we put off today. If you’re feeling a little cranky or tired, don’t worry about it. Tomorrow, tomorrow… there are infinite tomorrows. Who cares if we skip the hugs and kisses, and write one off here and there as “just a bad day”…

Mike died on Monday morning.

There won’t be any more chances to play games. No more swapping in-jokes back and forth while our wives look at us and wonder what the hell we’re laughing at. There will be no more visits. Jen won’t hear him speak the words “I love you” aloud ever again. No more caresses. No more chances to make up for that time he did that thing that made her mad. No more…

Life is fragile and brief. It can be gone so quickly and unexpectedly that we can’t be prepared ahead of time. Even when we’re aware it’s being shortened, we still believe we’ll have more chances. A little more time. Another opportunity.

Let the people you love know how you feel. Let go of the ones you don’t need who cause you pain. Don’t skip an opportunity expecting it to come around later, and don’t take tomorrow for granted. Hug your children. Make love to your partner. Give – and receive – the gift of laughter whenever you can.

Don’t wait.

There are no throw-away days.

She’s eleven now.

She’s changing significantly. She’s growing up. In spite of her Aspie traits, she is becoming more responsible. She’s genuinely interested in more adult-oriented activities. Where in the past she’s actively avoided responsibility wherever and whenever she could, now she’s actively seeking it in many situations.

She still likes to do “kid stuff”. She still takes some things too far because she’s still a child at the core of her being (I actually hope she never loses that). But she isn’t a little girl any more.

I looked at my son, and the same thing is happening. He’s six – and yet, he WANTS to do chores. He wants to help out. He’s getting his mother to teach him how to do laundry because he sees it as a way he can assist with the house. He WANTS to do this.

I was suddenly overwhelmed with a flood of feelings about missed opportunities. All those things “normal” dads do with their kids, like playing catch and teaching them sports and games and running around having squirt-gun fights.

My kids are growing up, and I’m missing it.

AND I’VE BEEN RIGHT HERE THE WHOLE TIME.

I hate this illness.

This morning, when I powered it on, it did it again. No amount of battery pulling made any difference, it would just start and show the line-through-battery screen.

I have 5 bloody weeks left on my contract, and I will be damned if I am going to replace the phone. It doesn’t make sense to do so.

I assumed that the symbol showing on the screen was an indicator that there was no battery in the phone. Since the battery is virtually brand new (it and the trackball are the only things I have replaced in 3 years of ownership) and was holding a charge perfectly, I became concerned that something internal was wrong… maybe the OS was corrupted, or the contacts were bent. There is nothing visually wrong with the contacts, though… they are clean and in the positions they should be in. Unlike many BB users, I rarely do battery pulls, preferring instead to do the Ctrl-Alt-Del (well, Alt-RightShift-Del on the BB) to reboot it, so it isn’t like there has been a lot of wear-and-tear there. Still, I cleaned the connection areas with an eraser, made sure the contacts were up where they should be, poking them and lifting them with a toothpick.

Battery-with-a-line-through-it.

I’ve had 3 hours of sleep and had only noticed the phone problem because I woke up to pee. I’ve got a pounding migraine. I’m not firing on all cylinders – indeed, I’d call my condition substantially impaired right now. But, I turned on the computer and googled (and like an idiot, came here afterwards too).

The primary, most-recommended method to resolve this problem, according to BB forum users around the world?

Drop it.

Yes, hold the phone 3-4 feet off the floor, screen-side up, and drop it.

I’ve been protecting this phone and cherishing it for nigh on 3 years. On a couple of occasions, it has fallen off a 2-foot-high bedside table, or the windowsill in the bathroom, and I have nearly had heart failure every single time.

But like I said, substantially impaired. 5 weeks.

Nothing, really, to lose, if the phone is already dead.

So I held it up and dropped it.

Nothing changed.

I did it again.

And it works.

Percussive maintenance is a thing now.

We’ve wondered if it was something that could be passed along to the kids. We thought perhaps my daughter was a supertaster, too, as she sometimes decides that a food she liked “tastes funny” and won’t eat it again. It’s hard to tell, though, as she seems to have some very mild Aspie traits she’s inherited from her mother (the discussion of mild Asperger’s/Autism probably could take a year of posts, so I won’t elaborate at the moment). So – it could be that she tastes things more intensely. Or it could be that she just simply has an internal on/off switch for certain foods when the mood strikes her.

A friend bought me a bottle of vitamin water today. I’ve had it before. I’ve never liked it. This was a different brand, so I decided to try it.

It tastes awful. HORRIBLE. It tastes like chemicals. I’m sure it tastes like the urine of someone who takes a lot of medications… that will surely be confirmed if I am ever inclined to taste urine. I’d say it tastes like ass, but I am pretty sure ass tastes a LOT better than this.

It’s supposed to be some kind of strawberry-kiwi. I handed the bottle to She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed, and she took a sip and said, “It tastes just like strawberry-kiwi Kool-Aid.”

No. It unequivocally does NOT. Not to me!

So I asked my daughter to taste it. “Mmm… it IS just like Kool-Aid!”

So.

Now we know.

She’s not a supertaster.

I’ve loved playing The Sims for years, and I was delighted to find this social-networking version. I’ve been playing regularly since a few days after it went public. Sadly, as a “hard core” player, visiting many times a day has shown that many gameplay elements are severely broken.

As it’s a “social” game, you’re expected to share back-and-forth with your game “neighbours”. Unfortunately, the internal messaging/sharing system is severely broken. Your requests often won’t get to their recipients, and when they do your friends try responses frequently vanish. The game asks you to post your in-game milestones to your wall, yet it won’t let anyone CLAIM all the simoleons from those posts. There are situations where the integration with facebook’s messaging system causes the game to hang and other random crashes. Your sim’s condition completely unpredictable when you re-enter the game – I’ve left for 2 mins and found almost every stat red upon returning, while leaving for hours has left a virtually all-green sim. And I won’t even go into detail about the ridiculous real-money pricing on in-game items – to buy just a few of skill items, it costs more than it cost me to furnish my first real-life apartment! Considering there’s already sponsorship from Dunkin’ Donuts and other exceptional income opportunities from in-game product ads, EA is clearly being greedy, trying to make this a MAJOR cash cow (forget about the fact that it is an advertisement and gateway drug for their not-free-at-all-expansion-pack-ridden free-standing Sims games).

I don’t begrudge a business making money, but between the bugs and the outrageous SimCash store, I can’t endorse this at this time for anyone except those who may play for only a few minutes per week. Instead, buy The Sims 3 and ALL the expansions – it’ll be cheaper in the long run.

As in, WAY too much interest.

As in, lunging and jumping at the cage when they’re moving around, too much interest.

I decided that I was going to train her while she’s still young and, at least theoretically, trainable. In the past, I’ve trained cats with squirt bottles and various other methods (noisemakers like squeakers or cans filled with coins, putting things with undesirable smells/textures in locations cats aren’t allowed, etc) and it’s been only semi-effective, depending on the cat. This time, I decided I’d step the squirt bottle up a notch and about 3 weeks ago I bought a medium-sized squirt gun – the kind that pumps up, but not the huge version of that type that sends the kind wall of water that would destroy Japan.

We have a clicker that was given to us for training the dog, but it hasn’t been in proper use because we had only one, with too many people handling it – so of course, it’s been misplaced. Last week, I was in the pet store and found they had clickers for $1.49, so I bought two. This purchase was, you understand, for training the dog.

Now, in first 2 weeks after I got the squirt gun, I’d actually fired it at the cat twice. It’s never nearby when I catch her doing something she isn’t supposed to be, so she’s been getting away with a lot of stuff – including harassing the bird cage. I’d only actually HIT her with water once out of those two attempts.

After I got the clickers, I got a brilliant idea. Seriously, brilliant. Write it down. Go ahead, get a pencil… I’ll wait.

Got one? Paper, too?

Good.

I decided I would click the clicker 3 times when I caught the cat when she was up to mischief. Then, if she persisted, I would click it 3 times again followed by squirting water.

I spent 4 days lying in wait, squirt gun and clicker at the ready, waiting for her to violate the kitty-cat Geneva Convention so I could follow my Rules of Engagement for Anti-Social Feline Behaviour Modification or ASFeBeMo for short.

Screw that, ASFeBeMo is a fucking lame acronym.

Finally, on Monday, she was eyeball-riveted on the bird cage. Then she started winding up for one of those pounces – you know, where the cat wiggles its back end like a stripper waiting for you to slip an single into her G-string.

Not, you understand, that I’ve ever actually BEEN to see a stripper.

But I’ve heard stories.

And played Grand Theft Auto IV.

Anyway, I digress.

Kitty is twitching her booty. I grab the clicker, and click 3 times. She hesitates, briefly, looking behind her wondering what the sound was (and presumably checking for a dollar in her G-string). Then she turns back to the birds, coiling up the springs again.

I click 3 more times, and fire the squirt gun. I mostly missed, only grazing her ear, but the sound – the SOUND of that squirt gun is most impressive – the water comes out with a roaring-whistling noise so loud that you’d swear the end of Alderaan is nigh. The cat ran like her arse had been set on fire.

Phase One: SUCCESS!

The problem is, since Monday, she’s barely looked at the bird cage (when I’ve been watching). I mean, how can you have training if it doesn’t happen on a nearly-daily basis? How am I supposed to reinforce the message? And really, who DOESN’T love a shapely butt in a G-string?

But today, I got my big chance. My second kick at the can. Another shot at the brass ring. A waltz with the Big Kahuna. (Wait, wut?)

The cat caught sight of the birds. She climbed up on a box near their cage, and began readying her attack. I quickly and silently scooped up the squirt gun, carefully keeping it concealed, and made sure it was pumped up and ready. I reached out and picked up the clicker.

I clicked 3 times.

The cat froze, and looked around. She turned and looked back at the birds. And hightailed it like Rob Ford on Gay Pride Day.

I didn’t even get to the second 3 clicks, let alone actually letting slip the dogs of war.

I confess: I’m disappointed.

The day we brought them home, the kids chose names for their turtles. We hadn’t observed them at all, so knew nothing about their personalities – heck, we didn’t even know they really HAD personalities because our turtle knowledge was very rudimentary. We put them in a small fish tank with no filter and left them there until we could find something strong enough to support the large tank (even half full, a 33 gallon fish tank with only water in it will weigh in excess of 65kg/140lbs).

My daughter chose the larger of the two (it was about the size of a Canadian $2 coin – henceforth referred to as a Toonie†) and named her†† “Bubbles”. My son couldn’t decide on a name at first, but finally settled on “Splash E.” – not sure what the E is short for in his head.

A few days ago, we found (more like “reinforced with 2x4s”) something suitably sturdy to hold the tank, and I set about configuring Turtopia. I put in the large filter we received as part of the initial setup, and a small air pump and a shell-shaped air stone. I built them a land area of stones to bask under the lights and a sloping underwater bottom for them to explore and dig around in.

Now the air stone gurgles away all day long, and most of the day Bubbles the turtle will hover over it, bobbing to the surface and diving to the bottom over and over grabbing bubbles in her mouth. The other turtle mostly ignores it – 95% of the time, it’s Bubbles in the bubbles.

The tank is mostly silent. The filters are very quiet, turtles don’t make any vocal sounds, and other than the aforementioned air pump producing bubbles, you’d hear more noise in a tomb. Except when, periodically, one of the turtles starts thrashing around while swimming or diving off the rocks that make up their “shoreline”. The turtle the makes all the ruckus splashing about? Splash E.

I’ve been considering putting the kids in for James Randi’s One Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge, but I guess that’s only open to “celebrities” now.

†How the hell we got to spelling it “Toonie” I have no idea; the LOONIE or one dollar coin has a loon on it… the $2 coin looks absolutely nothing like it, and has no loon, and really should be spelled “Twonie” or something like that but I suppose that would lead to people pronouncing it twahn-ee or something because we’re kind of collectively stupid that way.

††We have no idea if they are boys or girls because they are too young to know, so we just call the girl’s turtle “her” and the boy’s turtle “him”.

Late yesterday, I decided to make a signature image for forums relating to Star Trek/STO.

I wanted to incorporate one of my ships, my captains, and so on and so forth to personalize it.

I took screenshots in-game and lifted the various components off their backgrounds, and merged the images together last night. It didn’t take that long. I added the text that I wanted, spending about 10 minutes trying out different fonts, finally settling on the one used for the Original Series titles. (I tried out TNG, DS9, various movie fonts, stuff that appeared onscreen in the shows, and about everything else Trek-ish I could think of).

All told, all that took maybe an hour and a half.

But I didn’t like it. I really didn’t have a space to put my in-game name or forum name short of making a frame around the pic or just randomly placing it in the image, which I didn’t think suited it. So I decided to use a sort of Star Trek computer interface (LCARS) to tie it together and give me text spaces.

So, before going to sleep, I tried to find a simplistic guide to creating LCARS – just how to place the colours, what formats and layouts the various shows used, and so on. I bookmarked a couple of pages, and resumed today when I was functional for the day. Then, the more I read, the more I wanted to be accurate.. and there was a lot of contradictory info out there. So I read, and searched, and searched and read…

I just finished this 15 minutes ago, after agonizing over every decision. I kept getting hung up on details and flaws. It is neither perfectionism nor OCD, as it isn’t really entirely right – I took some minor liberties, and it is far from perfect. I just wanted it to be sort-of right, and not have glaring inconsistencies with established designs. Yet, it has still taken me around 6 hours to do what should have been the EASY part when it only took 90 minutes to do the “hard” part.

And this, folks, is why I will never be a graphic designer.

We saw 4 films, which I would rate as follows:

1. Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides — 4/10
2. Thor — 8/10
3. No Strings Attached — 7/10
4. Paul — 9/10

I knew Pirates was probably going to be crappy. I’d heard around the web that in spite of its big box office numbers, it was just not that great… and it was all true. The pleasant surprise was No Strings Attached (which has sketchy numbers at Rotten Tomatoes) but turned out to be a funny romcom – even if it turned out formulaic in the end. I had actually said to SWMBO that I wished we could go home and catch a nap between Thor and Paul… and I am very glad we couldn’t! In retrospect, I wish we could have just showed up about 137 minutes late.

Obviously, these are just my opinions, and the critics don’t entirely agree… but screw those guys anyway. Paul was a lot like watching Spaced, which made it a win for me. So overall, I’d recommend seeing everything BUT Pirates (teehee… I said butt pirates), and you probably can skip No Strings if you don’t like sappy, because it starts out raunchy-funny but snaps back to the standard boy-meets-girl-loses-girl-gets-girl-again pattern.

But the best part of the mostly-enjoyable evening was the following two snippets of songs which appeared in the background of Strings and Paul, respectively:

A country cover of 99 Problems – which is BRILLIANT!

A bluegrassy version of the Cantina song from Star Wars.

I laughed out loud immediately when I heard both of them, but I spent a lot of time laughing at the direct sci-fi/geeky references in Paul.

When it comes out on DVD/Blu-Ray, it better have an Homage-O-Meter.

It wasn’t a mistake, I knew this would happen. I’ve been putting off the change for some time because I didn’t want to lose all the auto-generated bit.ly links and such, but it had to be done in order to accommodate a change I would like to make to navigation someday in the future.

I tried to work out a redirect method, but I’m not with it enough today to write the little script to handle it, so for now – there’s the search function if you want to find something specific. The other option is to manually edit the old URL which has /archive/yyyy-mm-dd/postname.php and make it /yyyy/mm/postname.php.

I’m not sorry. It’s very un-Canadian of me.

Just this:

Or this.

Or this.

Of course, Christians will cry out about being “persecuted” and that the actions of a small minority like Harold Camping and his followers should not reflect on the majority. Oh, Christians, we’re so sorry you’ve had it so bad since the Crusades didn’t turn out how you wanted.

So tell me again why we have campaigns for things like “Back to Sleep” when crib death happens in such a miniscule number of cases (Odds: 1000 to 1 against at least)? How many kids actually got hurt going down stairs in baby walkers – yet they were banned (Odds: 15000 to 1)? How many other minor, rare dangers do we make against the law, “just to be safe”?

I’m becoming more Hitchens-minded every day.

Religion.
Poisons.
Everything.

Living your life by a moral code accepted by millions isn’t a bad thing, as long as you understand that the moral code written in religious books comes from man and portions of it are obsolete. Living that code out of fear of punishment (or desire for rewards) from a magical sky wizard or wizards, however, is just plain foolish.

When it comes to parents harming or abandoning their children for religion, shouldn’t we do something about it?

After all (and I’ll use the most hated phrase I know from the fear-brokers of the world): THINK OF THE CHILDREN!

I’ve wanted one for ages. It isn’t trivia or a skill/knowledge thing; the question is:

“What kind of pizza would you cut with the Star Trek Enterprise Pizza Cutter?”

This is my answer:

It’s a random selection since it’s a “Sweepstakes” and not a best-answer thing, so it won’t matter that I spend a half an hour photoshopping a Romulan Bird of Pizza.

But hey… I had to enter. It was a moral imperative.

*EDIT*

I added to the above image to show the proper use of the product:

3 out of 5 have been defective.

All my life, in spite of taking very good care of my things, I have had a higher failure rate than average. If there is a faulty item on the shelf in a store, I seem to always be able to pick it at random. I’m not talking about clearance or open box items, either. I am talking about factory-sealed, unmolested, apparently untouched-by-human-hands-since-manufacture things.

Almost everything I have to return is something electrically powered. It’s like I have a dark little cloud floating over me… and the cloud is made of some kind of bizarre electromagnetic field powered by static electricity. The number of BRAND-NEW items I have had to take back to the store and exchange is ree-donk-you-luss.

Do I chalk this up to some kind of silly superstition? The wife has picked up on the trend, so when we are purchasing anything in the store, SHE selects the item and she takes it to the cash so that my “curse” doesn’t affect it. It’s to the point that when buying something, I will handle the display model, or the one the clerk takes out of the box, but I won’t buy that one – because I touched it, and now it’s cursed.

I’m sure it is strictly just a load of coincidences. I’m not, by nature, the kind of person who believes in fate or bad luck. I constantly look for scientific explanations for things; I’m a chronic analyzer. I feel like there is a rational and predictable cause of everything that happens, and there are patterns even in chaos.

Therefore, I’ve arrived at the conclusion that I’m a mutant with an intermittently-active, electricity-disrupting superpower that occasionally overloads or destroys things that have to be plugged in and/or run on batteries.

If only I could control it, it could come in very