(I'm back in the land of Poutine and Bagels, but I have yet to post my Dublin adventures. So, here it comes)

The first thing that happend on my trip to Dublin was my flight to Toronto (where I caught the Dublin connection) was late. The pilots tried to make up some time, because about half the flight was connecting in Toronto and lots of people had already missed connections. And they did ok, they made up about 15 minutes by doing the airplane equivalent of stepping on the gas. I had about an hour, so I wasn't too worried. Then we landed and sat on the tarmac for HALF AN HOUR because the ground crew was not ready. You want to know why Air Canada is always bankrupt? This is why. The plane was due an hour before. It's not like the planes just come sneaking in - people know that plane is going to land in exactly 12 minutes. But they don't send anybody out to attach that walkway thing to the plane. No, instead they let a bunch of other people miss their connections, and now Air Canada has to put them up in hotels, pay for their dinners, find them new flights, etc. Note to Wesjet: please add international flights ASAP. Thanks.

I actually did not miss my connection. But they did forget my luggage!

Anyway, a 6 hour flight to Dublin happened. Not super-exciting. The movies were crap - Miss Congeniality 2 and Star Trek: Wrath of Khan. I could not sleep, despite only having slept 2 hours the night before. I stared at the moving pictures instead. The problem was, I had an aisle seat. I can't sleep in the aisle seats. I need a vibrating window to rest my head against. Weird, no?

Then we landed. In Ireland. We passengers got out of the plane (hey! The ground crew was prepared for our arrival! How Novel!) and into a shuttle, which dropped us off beside a single-file concrete stairway on the side of a building. The line moved slowly. There were no signs indicating what the hell this line was for, or where it was taking us. There was only a number - 37. For all I knew, as each person stepped through the distant doorway at the top of the steps, they were smushed by a giant rubber mallet. I had to wait half an hour to find out. I was not smushed. It was just immigration. But let me tell you, few things will spawn more paranoid fantasies than standing in a line (or queue!) outside an anonymous concrete building labeled 37 in the airport of a foreign country in which you have just arrived after little to no sleep in the last 48 hours.

The best part was that over top of the immigration windows was a giant sign: WAY OUT. I think this is infinitely preferable to EXIT, and that Canada should switch over immediately.

After immigration was when I found out my bag was missing. They said it would be delivered the next day. I watched some other people throw hissy-fits and be very angry, as if the girls behind the counter would suddenly produce their bags if they looked huffy enough. I was too tired to care, so I did not bother with the hissy-fits. Instead I wandered around the airport for about half an hour looking for the WAY OUT .Tip: You have to go through either the 'red zone' or the 'green zone', depending on whether or not you have anything to declare. Ignore the fact that the red and green zones look like cocktail lounges. They are actually the exits (or way outs, as it were).

Then I wandered around the taxi / bus area for another half an hour looking for the shuttle into the city. I eventually found it. Tip: look for the girl with the weird ticket-printing thing hanging on her belt. Crowd around her with everyone else. When you are the second-to-next person who will get a ticket (according to her strange system for distributing tickets), she will get fed up and tell you all to form a queue. Go to the back and wait another 20 minutes for your ticket.

The bus was fun. A man from Ontario sat beside me and talked my ear off. Which was ok because it kept me awake. Then I got off the bus and wandered around for half an hour trying to find my hotel. Tip: in Dublin, there are no street signs. In some intersections, one of the buildings in the intersection will have the street name painted on the side. This seems to be a game for tourists - you get to walk around the whole intersection until you can see the street sign! Try it yourself!

Anyway, just as I found my hotel (which was not actually on Upper Abbey Street, despite it's address being 25 Upper Abbey Street. It was on a sidewalk that went between two blocks instead), I ran into the people I was staying with. Then I went inside and crashed.

When I woke up, we went out into Temple Bar. Temple Bar is two things. First, it is a really old bar in Dublin. I stepped inside it for about 30 seconds on another night. It is full of rowdy Irish teenagers, which would probably make it a fun place if you are not a sleep-deprived zombie. Temple Bar is also the name for the 6 blocks that surround the actual Temple Bar. Inevitably, any map of Dublin will have a big block labeled TEMPLE BAR. That's where the action is. We wandered around for a while, but there was a soccer game and things were getting a bit rowdy, so we went home and watched TV (sad, eh?)

On TV was Carlito's way, and commercials for free DVD pornography in the Sunday Sports Newspaper. The commercials came on a lot, so it seems like they really want you to buy the Sunday Sports Newspaper so you can get 4 hours of free adult DVD action to watch with your significant other to spice up your love life (At least, this is what they suggested in the commercial).

Then I tried to go to bed. This worked for a couple hours, until the drunken fights in the street at 4 am woke me up. Apparently Dublin lost the soccer game. I tried sleeping on the couch, but that didn't really work, so I just waited until it was time to go to the workshop. In the morning there were a lot of broken liquor bottles on the streets. There seemed to be special teams of people whose job it was to clean up the broken glass. This seemed not out-of-the-ordinary. Way to perpetuate a nationalstereotype, Ireland!

I was too nauseous to eat anything, so I went for Pepto-Bismol and coffee instead. The morning of the workshop went quickly. I ran back to the hotel but my bag had yet to arrive. Since I had not changed my clothes in 3 days, I bought some deoderant. Since my talk was in an hour and I kept zoning out, I bought a Red Bull.

Tip: If you have not really slept in three days, have barely eaten, and have already had two cups of coffee, do not buy a Red Bull.

I think that perhaps the best way to describe my condition was 'jittery mo-fo'. But I managed to give my talk without vomiting! High-Fives for not vomiting during your presentation! I don't really remember the rest of the workshop...

I tried to sleep for an hour but it didn't work. Then we went to the banquet. It was at a pub. There was lots of wine and beer. After that we went to a 'Chips' place at 3 am for chips. Which was pretty good. Then I went home and took a sleeping pill I got from a professor and slept for 6 hours.

I managed to make it to the workshop on time, despite the sleeping pill and utter exhaustion. There were lots of talks. Unfortunately I don't remember much of it. That was probably due to the sleepiness. There was one pair of speakers I kinda tore into (I, shall we say, disagreed with some of their statements). I felt kinda bad, so I talked to them afterwards, and I think I convinced them not to become my mortal enemies.

After the workshop we went out for dinner at a pub. Because I was trying to be frugal, I ordered the cheapest thing on the menu, which happend to be a "toastie". Which is an awesome name, IMO. Anyway it turned out to be basically a grilled cheese sandwich, with some bits of ham. But for some reason, it being called a "toastie" made it way more appealing. I also had a Kilkenny. The beer! In Ireland! Then I went back to the apartment and forced myself to stay awake until 11pm, at which point I promptly fell asleep and woke up 3 hours later.

(This actually was a pattern that persisted throughout the conference. I could not sleep for more than 3 hours. It was like I was always just taking a nap. Maddening!)

The next morning I was desparate for breakfast. I had noticed these stores on just about every corner called SPAR that looked like convenience stores. But convenience stores in Ireland are way more convenient when it comes to food - all the SPARs have a sort of deli / grill in the back. For breakfast they had all sorts of awesome stuff. That first day, I had two "Jambon"s, which were cheese and ham wrapped in pastry. And delicious!

(Again with the cheese and ham. They love the cheese and ham in Ireland...)

I cannot say enough good things about the SPAR stores. Mostly because they provided me with breakfast my entire trip. They also have all sorts of fresh fruit, fresh pastry, etc. I can no longer enter a 7-11 or Couche Tard (Quebec 7-11) without feeling like something is missing. It's like they replaced all the good with plastic packaging. Note to SPAR: open stores in Canada! Stat!

Anyway, after my SPAR discovery, I went to the Shape Modeling tutorial. It was pretty good. On the way there I actually managed to notice that Dublin is a gorgeous city. Just about every building has great stone architecture. It was awesome. It is a city where, if you took out the cars are replaced them with horses, they would not look out-of-place. I know it's not everyone's cup-of-tea, but I think it's fantastic.

The tutorial went all day, and then there was a welcome reception. The welcome reception was at Dublin City Hall. This building was fantastic, but I forgot my camera. Anyway, basically it was just a big room with marble columns, statues, etc. And waiters carrying bottles of wine who topped up your glass whenever you took a sip. These people were relentless. Oh, and there was no food. We thought there would be food, so we didn't eat. There was no food. There were some tasty hor d'ouerves but that was it. So, unlimited free-flowing wine, and no food. You can imagine the result.

Anyway, several hours later I ended up at a cafe with some awesome people from UBC and Northwestern (by way of South Africa). I had a weird pizza-like concoction (the menu said it was a pizza, anyway) and a Guiness. That was like my second Guinness ever, and I almost finished it! I felt pretty bad-ass. Unfortunately I didn't get to take a crack at a third, because all my companions wanted to go home. So I went back to the apartment and watched my roommates argue over their presentation (which they had to give the next morning). Inevitably I got dragged into it, because I am neurotic and prone to argumentation. Anyway, clearly everyone involved needed some sleep. It even happened, eventually! (for 3 hours)

The next morning I went down for another SPAR breakfast. The girl behind the counter said "Are you all right?". Now, I later learned that this is just what people say in Ireland when they are asking you what you want. They don't say "Can I help you" or "What do you want". They say "Are you all right?". (Actually it sounds more like "You a'right?", but it's hard to type an Irish accent). Anyway, I had not figured this out yet, so I took it as a "How are you?" type of thing. So I replied "I'm ok, how are you?". To which the girl replies "What?". As if I had just uttered something reprehensible. So I repeated myself. Then her co-worker says "Well, you don't hear that every day, now do you?" (again with Irish lilt). I was totally flummoxed. Apparently the sort of polite customer-service exchanges we have here in Canada do not exist in Ireland (or Europe in general, I was later told). Anyway the girl was a lot friendlier after that...

The rest of the day was a blur. Too sleepy. I skipped the afternoon sessions and tried to find Dublin castle, but I went the wrong way and found a nice park instead. Later I was told that Dublin castle was lame anyway. That was disappointing, I was hoping for a real castle. I have now been to two European cities that claim to have castles (Dublin and Nottingham), and both were let-downs. What's up with that, Europe? Where are all the good castles?

For a while there when I was wandering around I forgot I was not in Montreal, but instead on another continent. Which was kinda bizarre, but I was too tired at the time to really think about it. Is it the case that all big cities are essentially the same? It might be true.

I did some good schmoozing later in the afternoon, then went home for a nap. The nap didn't work though, because of the coffee. I went out for dinner w/ my roommates but I think I was probably a miserable bugger. I was too tired to be good company, I just wanted sleep. Which I got. For 3 hours.

There was another two days of conference that I don't really remember. There was an "Irish night" where they fed us great food and tiny glasses of Guinness. But really I was in zombie-mode and none of this was very much fun. I had good chats with some people but otherwise was not really coherent. My last day in Dublin I was supposed to go on a ghost tour with my roommates but I slept through it. I finally broke the 3-hour sleep barrier on my last night in Dublin.

Then I got up at 4 AM to fly home. Yes, I was up at this ungodly hour to catch a connecting flight through London to Montreal. I could have taken a flight from Dublin to Toronto, and then on to Montreal, at a reasonable hour. That would have made sense. But instead my travel agent decided that I should go through London because the London to Montreal flight "goes over the pole", and hence is "so much nicer". She was really quite insistent that I take this nicer flight over the pole. Naturally I had an aisle seat, making it completely irrelevant whether or not the flight was nicer.

So, up at 4 AM to catch a taxi to the airport. Or, that was the plan, but the moron at the front desk had forgotten to call the taxi. Then, when he did call, he gave really shitty directions to the dispatcher. The result was that we waited half an hour for the taxi. At this point I was ready to throttle the clerk. Luckily, Canadian Politeness dictated that I refrain from doing so. It seems like they consider Dublin to London more or less a domestic flight, so the 2-hour rule did not apply, so I wasn't even late. Heathrow was fun because I had to change terminals and go through security what felt like an inordinate number of times (actually I think it was 3). Then I was on a plane back to sunny Montreal. Sunny, hot, muggy, humid, sweltering Montreal.

And that, mes amis, is the end of the Dublin Story.

Well, I am back in Montreal. It was kind of hot and muggy last week, and today it is windy and pollen-y, so my allergies are going nuts. Fun times. Still, I am glad to be back.

There is lots of work I should be doing, but instead I have been messing around with my website. I added Google Ads on some of my 'RTFM' pages, like the gdb tutorial. I would be happy if the ads covered the cost of running my website (that is $15 a month). I get about 30k hits a month according to my webstats (although only 5k "visits"). Anyway I'm not super optimistic that this will actually produce any money. 30k hits is not a lot, and apparently a significant amount of that is to this page, which does not have any ads. I also added the Sketch-Based Modeling workshop presentation (with vidoes!) to my publications page, if there is anyone out there who is interested. No? I didn't think so...

Anyway, enough boring stuff. Montreal story time! Our new apartment is a bit too small for our stuff. We can manage I think, but the kitchen is tiny. So far it has been ok, but it's hard to do dishes. There is only a tiny counter. We 'created' additional counter space out of this huge wooden cutting board that AC has, but it's not really enough. And only one sink! The agony of one sink! You may not comprehend the despair this causes me when washing dishes. Oh, how I wish for a second sink...

(Do you call it a second sink? Or is like a second basin or something? I don't know. What I mean is those sinks that have two distinct water receptacles. IE, you can wash dishes in one, and rinse them in the other. That is what I desire...)

The other issue is water pressure. As in, there is none. Nada. Zip. Zilch. The shower-head that was installed when we got here would kind of trickle down on you. AC described it as "someone spitting on you from far away", which was pretty accurate. I upgraded the showerhead, the feeling is no longer "spitting from far away". It's now maybe "forced but unnecessary urination before a long car trip". You know. Sort of a steady-ish trickle with spurts of moderate force. Anyway, if anyone has an idea of what to do about low water pressure when you are on the top floor of a 50-year-old building, please e-mail me soon...

We are in a sort of not-spectacularly-affluent part of Montreal (the Concordia student ghetto). It is a decent place to live - rent is reasonable, close to amenities, etc. There is also a decent homeless population too. They seem to congregate on one sidestreet (Chomedey), which is convenient because then you know what street to avoid.

(Yes, I am a horrible person for avoiding the homeless people who consistently harass me for change and are sometimes very creepy. I agree completely. I'm sure that if you lived here you would stop and chat with them and invite them back to your house for tea, because you are a much better person than I).

Anyway, they don't stay entirely on Chomedey, some of them hang out on the stoop of my building or in this kind of courtyard place in the back. A few days ago, one of the women was back there with a guy who I think actually lives in the basement of the building across the alley. Anyway he was ranting and raving about how he prefers animals to people because they are more civil, etc. The homeless lady would try to get a word or two in, but he was having none of it. Later he was ranting about the beauty of hunting and shooting animals. This rant was somewhat amusing, but I was trying to work so it was also pretty annoying. The only respite was that there were occaisonal breaks in his rants which I enjoyed. Until I went into the kitchen to make an egg and saw that the dude and the homeless lady were making out.

Now, I'm not one of those people who is offended by PDAs (Public Displays of Affection). But I'm not super-comfortable with the explicit tongue-down-the-throat, gropy-gropy-hands action. If the crazy man and the homeless lady want to go at it, that's fine by me. But I don't want to watch. And, see, the issue is that it is impossible for me to stand at my stove and cook an egg without seeing the courtyard-mack-out in the corner of my eye. Yes, I can look away, but every once in a while I have to check the egg to make sure it has not rubberized. So, please, crazyman+homelesslady: find somewhere else to mack out and let me cook my egg in peace.

Yesterday we went out to Parc Jeanne-Mance to chill out and enjoy the outdoors. The pollen was absent then. It has only come to torture me today. Anyway, Jeanne-Mance is a pretty happening place on a Sunday. There is volleyball, baseball, soccer, crazy hippies pounding on drums, guys having fake medieval swordfights, etc. And at least one man combing his lustrous, shiny black coat of back-hair.

Now, I'm not saying back-hair is anything to be ashamed of. I'll probably have back-hair soon (just as soon as I grow some chest-hair). And I will certainly be too lazy to shave it off. But, please, do your combing indoors. He didn't have a mirror, so there is no way he knew what he was doing anyway. I can only assume that it was some kind of attempt at a mating ritual. Someone needs to explain to this misguided soul that public back-hair combing is not the way to meet the ladies. At least, definitely not anglophone ladies. I'm almost certain that holds for francophone ladies as well...

(AC pointed out that he may have just been scratching. But he was using a comb!! )

We wandered north to some trendy cafe, where I had cheese and tomato on toast for 6 bucks. It was probably good cheese, and it came with a pile of grass and sticks that AC tells me was a salad. But then I bought 6 bagels (from the bagelry that makes them! Not a grocery store! Bagelry! I may have just made that word up....) for 3 bucks, and even with the price of cream cheese those bagels are a way better deal. Trendy cafe, please reduce your prices.

Post-trendy-cafe-and-bagelry, we went back to Parc Jeanne-Mance to play some catch. This was ok until some stoned french kids showed up and sat in the bleachers. Then it was awesome. They started making screeching pterodactyl noises each time we threw the ball, and if one of us dropped it they burst out into hysterical laughter and practically fell off the benches. This might have annoyed some people, but I thought it was hilarious. They kept it up for probably 20 minutes, until AC decided she was done. We said goodbye to the pterodactyl specators and walked home.

Lots of people have asked me what I like about Montreal and why I wanted to move back. Perhaps this entry serves to illustrate. If you were to look back over my Calgary entries for the last year, there is not a lot of content. The only interesting bits were when I went out with my amigos, which is awesome but only happens once in a while (entirely my doing - I am not terribly outgoing and am a dull conversationalist until I'm good and trashed). In Montreal when I get bored I just go outside and walk around and observe a tiny bit of all the crazy shit that is happening in this city. This entertains me. It makes me happy. Happy is good. So Montreal is a good city for me. I definitely don't think it's a good city for everyone, but it works for me.

Plus more website updates!

I need a haircut. I'm up to at least mulletude 4...

Yesterday I went for a haircut. But I was running short of time, so I did not have time to go all the way across downtown to the dirty old Frenchmen who have a stack of playboys and ash trays in their chairs. (That's where I used to go). So I just went down the street, where there are about 5 or 6 places. I figured I could find something cheap. Unfortunately it was about 10am and they were all closed except one. I don't know exactly what it is called, but it is not the kind of place I would usually go. First of all, it has 'Salon' in the name. That should have put me off right then. But it was 30 degrees and like 60% humidity, and the place was air conditioned. So in I went.

I guess I was lucky because they weren't too busy, so I got in to see a "stylist" right away. That was my second warning. Stylists. I stick to "hairdressers", or maybe "barbers". Stylists are beyond my means. But I was desperate - I had way too much hair for 30 degrees, and it wasn't that expensive . So I sat down in Lawrence's chair.

Lawrence, apparently, has been a finalist in some sort of Canadian stylist competition for the last two years. Decked out in his striped t-shirt with holes cut out to make the shape of an anchor, and tight vinyl pants, he definitely looked the part of a competitive stylist. Anyway, he told me about the cruel, unfair world of stylist competitions, and how L'Oreal totally rigged it last year to make sure that their representative won. He also told me about how he wasn't going to use scissors on me, because they can give such a hard edge. Instead he used some sort of razor blade thingy, which would give my fine hair more texture and lightness, and let me do more things with it. I did inform Lawrence that I essentially never put any sort of goo in my hair, I just let it dry, but this did not seem to register as a possibility in his stylist universe. Then he proceeded to fill it up with "texturing cream" and show me what I could do with it. He sent me home - I walked quickly because I was mortified. But AC was not home to show, so I took some pictures, and she has insisted that I post them here so she can show her friends. Behold:

Frightened Bunny	Hollywood Bad-Boy	Mildy Constipated Frenchman

Blue Steel	Magnum

Despite that ridiculousness, the haircut itself is actually pretty good, even when I don't use texturing cream. I especially like the triangle sideburns (I have not shaved them off...yet).

I other news, I have made <pocket change> with Google AdSense in the last 3 days. I got all excited because I made <most of pocket change> yesterday alone. At that rate it would have covered the cost of my website and a night at the movies. But today I made <basically nothing>. So maybe it will still cover the cost of my website, but I think I'll have to give up the movie...

(Note: I edited this entry to remove the actual dollar figures. Apparently the AdWords terms of service say that I am not allowed to talk about what I made. BTW, please also do not bother clicking on my ads to "help me out", Google can tell and it won't count..)

Finally, if you want to check out some cool vector animation, and learn a little bit about the abomination that is "Trusted Computing", check out this site.

The air quality has been "Poor" for the last 3 days. It's all that pollution coming up from Ontario. Damn Ontario! And it's been (pardon my french) fucking hot. I pray for air conditioning...

First off, check out this Virgin Mary with Baby Jesus Cheeto at e-Bay. Awesome! The bidding is up to $5.50 - a total steal!

So a while back, when I was still in Calgary, this professor in the Interactions Lab came back from a trip to Japan with a bunch of treats. Japanese treats. He left them on the table in the lab, and then sent out an e-mail saying they were his favourite types of Japanese candy and we should all help ourselves.

Now, I've had some awesome Japanese candy before. Their sort of gummy-bear-type candies always have interesting flavors, much tastier then the standard 'red', 'orange', and 'green' flavors you get here. (Although they were always just round, so you lose out on the eating-small-creature aspect. Come on, I know you pretend you are a giant monster squashing tiny people. I'm not the only one...). They also have these little sort of pod-things, individual plastic containers with another kind of jelly candy floating in some juice. They are awesome. Not overly environmentally-friendly, but delicious!

I've had generally good experiences with treats from Japan. So I did not hesitate in taking one of the candies on the desk, which looked like this:

It came with it's own eating-utensil - a little stick wrapped in paper. You can just see it behind the little bag. The little bag was cute, some Japanese writing on there. Looks harmless, right? So I opened it up...

Ok now it got a little weird. I had noticed that the bag was more-or-less solid, so I figured it was going to be some kind of jelly candy. And it certainly was. But what kind of jelly...? Let's take a closer look.

Hrm. The jelly stuff is more or less clear, and kind of sticky. There seems to be some stringy stuff in there. And what is the brown part? At this point I was getting kind of sketched out. But I was determined to eat it...

It looked even less appetizing from the side. When I saw the juice leaking out onto the napkin I almost lost my nerve. But what is that brown stuff?

Oh, it's just beans. Beans??!??!! WTF?!??! This is supposed to be candy, Japan? Beans? I do not think beans qualify as candy. Not by a long shot. Anyway at this point I at least knew more-or-less what was in there. So, down the hatch...

That juicy wrapper was all that was left. Describing the texture is difficult. I guess you could imagine cold kidney beans in flavorless jelly, like if you took marmalade and removed all the flavor. Then add in some weird stringy stuff, like long strips of coconut. And, I don't know if you can tell from the picture, but that thing is pretty big. It was a mouthful. Maybe you are supposed to use the stick to cut it in half? Anyway it didn't actually taste that bad, it was kind of sweet. But the whole cold-bean texture was not it's selling point.

So, to summarize - Japan: candy should not include beans. Ok, I will acknowledge the existence of jelly beans. Jelly beans are acceptable. But kidney beans are not. No kidney beans in candy! Ok? Yes? Good.

Ireland, on the other hand. Ireland had great candy. You see, they are much closer to England, so they get a much wider range of Cadbury products. You might not know this if you are in Canada, but we hardly get any of the stuff that they get over there, as I discovered in Nottingham last year. They have all sorts of awesome chocalate bars.

I was at Dublin Airport waiting to fly to Heathrow and connect to my "nice flight over the pole", and I had a few euros left. I tried to put them into a pay-internet terminal, but it would not work, so it kept giving my money back. Then I found a free internet terminal about ten steps further down the corridor. You can pay a euro for five minutes, or you can use free internet. Which do you choose? Well I guess they know what they are doing, I would have paid a euro if it had worked. The free one worked though....

Anyway, so I had a few euros. I was kind of hungry. And I found a vending machine. A vending machine stacked with all sorts of cool chocalate bars you will never see in Canada. How to choose?!? This was my dilemma. I was running out of time (my flight was boarding), and then I saw "YORKIE". But then I looked closer and saw the universal "no" symbol over the bathroom-door-girl figure. Which was just too bizarre, so I bought that one. Check it out. It says "IT'S NOT FOR GIRLS!" and "DO NOT FEED THE BIRDS!". WTF is this about? England, can you explain this to me? Is it some kind of joke? I can't imagine something this politically incorrect ever showing up in Canada.

Anyway that's about it. Nothing much happening in Montreal. AC called me the other night because there was "A fire in a building down the street" and I should come check it out. So I went out to find her, expecting to see a burnt-out husk of a building. Turns out there was like a grease fire or something in one apartment. You couldn't even see any damage from the outside. But that has been my big event. I guess I also got pretty trashed last weekend at the Copacabana (after which we scored some fries at Monde-o-Frite (World-of-Fries) and then a final pitcher at Bifteck). These are dirty little Montreal bars. Not as awesome as Miami Bar, but some of our gang were anti-Miami bar. Which just doesn't make any sense.

Oh, and if you liked that sort of vector-graphics animation from last week, you might like this one too. It's a sort of paranoid-conspiracy-theory type thing. fun times!

You must look at this website right now: www.robertwesleybranch.com. Robert Wesley Branch, under the umbrella of Robert Wesley Branch Inspiredmedia Inc. Companies, provides personal coaching, in case you need some guidance. He also clearly has M4D FLA5H SK1LLZ and some sweet tunes as well.

I also invite you to check out the gangsta version of my site, courtesy of gizoogle.com. The page is entirely automatically generated, so please no hate mail.

Today there is a wind warning for Quebec - gusts up to 90 km/h. My building is shaking from time to time. Fun stuff. At least I don't have to go outside...

I have been sick for the last week or so. This provides little fodder for interesting updates, unless you want to hear about mucus. I didn't think so. I did get to run to the post office on Monday night, when my cold was the worst (measured scientifically, by calculating the number of containers filled with used kleenexes). I got an e-mail at about 7 pm from the computer science department graduate admin, asking where my NSERC application was, because it was due at noon. I had completely forgotten that I needed to mail a copy. So I printed it out and raced to the nearest post office, which closed at 7:30. Then I raced home and collapsed from exhaustion. Good times.

(They accepted my late application, so I didn't blow my chance at 3 years of reasonable goverment funding. Hurray!)

Not much else exciting. I watched a bunch of movies. I bought some cookies. I also sorted lots of my digital photos, which perhaps I will place on this website some time in the near future. You are bored by now, yes? AC has a friend who described things such as these posts (I refuse to refer to this as a "blog") as something like "glorifications of the mundane". Was he ever right...

Anyway, if you are a nerd like me, you might like this blog by Raymond Chen, one of the Microsoft guys responsible for maintaining backwards compatibility in Windows. They have gone through some absurd contortions to make sure that your DOS games from 1987 still run under windows XP (and many do, if you use compatibility mode). But there is some behind-the-scenes stuff that is just crazy. For example, when they started building Windows 3.0, testers discovered that the DOS version of SimCity would randomly crash. They traced it back to a problem where the programmers in SimCity were using memory after they free()'d it. Of course, any programmer today can (SHOULD!) be able tell you why this is insanely stupid, because in a multi-tasking OS once you free() memory anyone else can use it. But in DOS there is "no one else", so it was sort of OK to do. Hence, SimCity bug. So what did Microsoft do? They added a special mode to the memory manager that detects if you are running SimCity and makes it safe to use memory after you free()'d it. It's hard to believe. This strikes me as both heroic and ridiculous. Ridiculous, of course, because all that extra work just to support badly written third-party code? Ack. But I guess that's their business - selling you new operating systems that still run your old programs. And hence, the programmers who did this - backwards compatibility superheroes.

I understand this all too well. My ShapeShop program currently has no save/load. I have written a save/load, but if I release it, people might start to use it. Then they will have save files that they expect to load. So if I want to change how save/load works (which I undoubtedly will want to do, as I have barely tested it, etc), I either abandon those people (and really piss them off), or support older save formats. Conundrum! Anyway I'm not convinced that anyone actually downloads it, so I don't really worry about it these days...

It's update time, because I want to rant about the graphics industry. But first, the (irregular) dose of random shit.

You may have heard that the Kansas School Board is considering adding "Intelligent Design" to the science curriculum, and giving it equal billing with the theory of evolution. It's patently absurd. "Intelligent Design" is essentially the bible version of how to the world was created, but they dress it up by using the word "Creator" instead of "God", so they can claim that it works for any religion. Who are they kidding? Nobody.

Anyway, the school board is actually going for it, the vote for including it was 6-4. Scary. The argument is that alternative theories should get equal amounts of classtime, since none have been "proven". Of course, this ignores the fact that there is an overwhelming amount of evidence for one, and not the other. It also leaves a bit of a loophole. See, they are saying that alternative theories should get equal time. Any alternative theory.

Enter the new theory of where we came from: Flying Spaghetti Monster-ism.

This guy Bobby Henderson initially came up with Flying Spaghetti Monster-ism as a joke, but it has kind of taken off. You can find out all the details on this website, and there is a good entry over at wikipedia. Essentially, the universe was created by an invisible flying spaghetti monster. The best line from that article is this one:

Pastafarians are what the follows of FSM call themselves. They also believe that the number of natural disasters is inversely proportional to the number of pirates in the world, as shown by this graph. The FSM advocates are trying to get Flying Spaghetti Monster-ism on the Kansas science curriculum. The 4-person minority who lose the vote to include Intelligent Design have all said they will support FSM.

Not much exciting to report that doesn't involve someone elses website. I was still sick on the weekend, so I missed Oktoberfest sausages and some musical events. I did see a guy in a buff-spiderman costume blowing a hip-hop beat on a whistle. There was also a guy doing a puppet show with creepy puppets - they had clear glass beads for eyeballs and were making children cry. And some little bastards in the hotel across the street from my building threw a water balloon at me, but it missed. A few weeks ago someone threw down a phone book as I was walking by. I'm not sure if that one was aimed at me or not...

Ok, on to graphics rant. Today it was announced that AutoDesk is buying Alias. This is just depressing. There are three major 3D modeling packages - Discreet 3DSMax, Alias Maya, and SoftImage XSI. In my mind, Max and Maya are the better (and more popular) two packages. AutoDesk bought Discreet a few years ago, and now they have Alias as well. So now they own everything.

This is trouble for the 3D graphics industry. It's basically a fact that without competition, there is no innovation (god I hate that word), and now AutoDesk has no competition. Just one big happy family, pumping out new versions every year that have few new features but everyone upgrades to be compatible (At least, this is what happens with AutoCAD). If I go to find a job, I can work for AutoDesk, or.....AutoDesk. Or I guess be a video-game wage slave. It's just depressing.

And it makes me really wonder, is computer graphics where I want to be? Is there a future in it? I mean, I can see ways there could be a future in it, but it requires paradigm shifts in the way 3D modeling is done. Which might have happened in a competitive industry, where different companies are trying to get ahead. But why would AutoDesk introduce new techniques that compete with what they already have? It doesn't make business sense, and AutoDesk is all about business sense. The only hope is startups, but graphics startups are not doing well. The industry is too small to support many startup companies. And maybe that's the problem. The industry is just too small.

Dark days...

Now I am famous.

Hoetz also just showed me this website for some friends of mine who play hockey at the UofC. Their team is the MasterBladers...

This working from home business is tricky. There is perpetually something else that needs doing. Dishes, grocery shopping, returning videos, etc. Distractions abound. I feel sort of like a slacker. But I also know that most of the time at the university I was "slacking" as well. I was just slacking in the company of other people, instead of all by myself. And I went outside more. In any event, I now have a somewhat-clear idea of what I need to do for my next research paper. That is a good thing.

One of AC's school-buddies had us over for thanksgiving, which was nice. Even had turkey! That may sound un-impressive, but AC is a vegetarian so we don't have a lot of the turkey action around here. The event itself was OK, I made some small-talk until I had enough wine to be semi-comfortable. I think it is not helping that I mostly sit at home in silence these days. I'm trying to get out more. But anyway, there were some Australian exchange students there, and the conversation of Canadian vs Australian slang came up. Standard stuff, really, until we got to "dinking".

You know when you are riding a bike and someone else is standing on the rear wheels, or sitting on the seat while you stand, or I guess on the handlebars maybe. I'm under the impression that you will all understand this as "doubling". In Australia, that is called "dinking". If someone gives you a ride home that way, they have "dinked" you.

Perhaps you can see where this is going. Some choice phrases:

• <Australian Girl> "You can't just let anyone dink you. You've got to trust them"
  
• <Australian Girl> "He dinked me all the way home. That's like 5 miles! When someone dinks you for 5 miles, that means something!"
  
• <Random Guy > "I don't know if I'd be comfortable being dinked. I feel like I should be the one doing the dinking."

Comedy Gold! This went on for like 10 minutes. I was falling out of my chair. I wonder if they were putting us on...

Anyway, enough of that. Last Friday I went to an improv show with MikeP and his roommate. We saw the Without Anette troupe, and I have to say that it was not spectacular. Sometimes it was good. Mostly it was not. And beers were 6 bucks! And no pitchers! Highway robbery!

Anyway, post-improv we went to the Cock N' Bull for some reasonably-priced alcoholic beverages. Good times were had, and we scored some free foam moose antlers. Yes, you heard me - foam moose antlers. Totally made up for the improv. By the time we left, enough pitchers had been consumed that I forgot I was wearing mine. The next morning I realized why I had been getting all the strange looks:

Ok I'm going to work now. Now!

Ugh. I am sick again. Again! What is with the sickness? Go away, sick. Shoo!

As some of you may know, I was back in Calgary last week-ish. Actually Calgary and Nelson. Crazy last-minute flight to Calgary, and then an 11-hour overnight bus ride. I took a Gravol and slept the whole way. Nelson was OK, considering the circumstances. AC and I spent one night in a Yurt. Yes, a yurt. Her family has some land in the Slocan Valley, and on this land there is a Yurt. It's actually a pretty new yurt, built out of a yurt-kit. It is massive, as far as camping-like accomodations go. But apparently it was filled with spiders. I could not see them because my glasses were off, but I know they were there because AC trapped one under a candle and then told me not to put my glasses on. So, that was a bit creepy. But otherwise, we had a good yurt-time.

I went back to Calgary a few days before AC because I had some work to get done there. Got it done, more or less, so I won't be coming back later in November. Which is good because I can't afford it anyway! I went to Phoenix for lunch with the Calgary crew (sans Dr. Harvey, who was off in Costa Rica. Lucky bugger). It was OK. I put waaaay too much hotsauce on my noodles, which I paid for in various ways. You get the idea. I didn't really know how hot it was going to be, so I took a cue from the guy sitting next to me. What I overlooked was the fact that he prefers not to actually taste his food. Oops.

The return flight to Montreal was at 7 am, so we had to take a taxi (we public-transported everything on the way out). We had a ton of stuff with us, most of which still has not been unpacked. Our house is a mess. Anyway.

Apparently in Montreal the "good" halloween night was Friday. Unfortunately we did not go out Friday. So on Saturday, when we did go out, everyone was hung over and tired. AC went off with her people, and I went out with Bird to a house party. It was pretty laid-back, I didn't know many people there and it was definitely a "hang-out-with-your-friends" party. So not super-thrilling. There was a man dressed as a dead baby (wearing nothing but a diaper) dancing on the coffee table for a while. But it quieted-down after that. There was lots of free candy, so that was a score. I had purchased the Quebec 8% microbrew Maudite for the occaison, which used to be my favorite, but now it seems too nasty-tasting. I don't think I made it through more than half a bottle the whole night - I just switched when they got warm.

My other option for Halloween was to go bowling with Anand, MikeP and crew. Perhaps that would have been better. Apparently they ended up at a Topless Breakfast (NSFW) place in Hochelaga. I did not know that topless breakfast existed. Reading those reviews, it actually sounds pretty creepy. Then again, perhaps that's how it should be.

Last night (on the real Halloween), I almost went to see Rocky Horror Picture Show, but my cold got the best of me. Today I haven't left the house. This is not good.

I leave you with some entertainment...

I am currently sitting in the living room of a professor in St. Louis. There is a Cockatoo sitting on my shoulder nibbling on my cheek and saying "Hi Tea". I am supposed to say "Hi Tea" back. Oh, it just jumped off.

This was unexpected.

I just got back from Midgraph, the Midwestern Computer Graphics Conference. It was OK. The projector broke during my talk. I didn't get a whole lot of sleep. I discovered that people in the Midwest pronounce the word "decal" as "dee-cal", not "deckal". This was a major point of confusion. Luckily I discovered it before my talk, so I could clarify. Oh, and I was the only Canadian there. Stranded in the Midwest. It was flat. The people were nice. The beer was weak. This was to be expected, really...

The Cockatoo is laughing. I swear to god. Is it laughing at me? Maybe...

At the airport in Montreal I was "spot checked". They assured me it was random. But I definitely had a row on her form, just for me. And she asked for my passport and ticket. The people in front of me were not asked. I am not convinced that it was random. I was patted down by a large, burly man. I was asked to remove my shoes. They looked through my bag. Apparently I was not suspicious enough to warrant any sort of more intrusive, rubber-glove-involving search. Luckily.

The Cockatoo is talking to me again. It is perched behind me on the couch, saying "Hi Tea". At least it stopped laughing.

Anyway, this is my status. In St. Louis. Kind of sleepy. And being hit on by a Cockatoo.

Hi. It's been a while. Actually it feels like it has been a lot longer than it actually has. Seems like it was ages ago that I was at Midgraph. I am in all sorts of limbo, which probably has something to do with it. And I have also been coding like mad. In the last week or so I have implemented something like 6 different mesh parameterization algorithms. Parameterization Madness! Anyway it's done now. The whole reason for doing it was to be able to show that they aren't as good as mine. Seems kind of silly, really. I spent hours and hours and hours re-creating all this existing work, just to show that mine is better. I knew it was better before I started. But nobody would have believed me. Now they might. Frustrating? yes.

(When I say "better", I mean "better in a very specific way". Unfortunately things are rarely black-and-white when it comes to complicated computer graphics algorithms. And life, I suppose...)

I have been accumulating a list of anecdotes, links, etc (essentially crap) for you, my 7 readers. (I kid! according to google analytics, this page gets like 70 hits a day. w3wp!). So here we go:

Last week I was doing laundry at the laundromat. It was pouring rain so the place was empty except for me and the laundromat-lady (they also do drop-off, so there is always a person there). Anyway, we were both standing in front of the dryers waiting for stuff to finish. I happened to notice that something was sort of flickering in my dryer. So I looked closer. And what I saw was GIANT FLAMES SHOOTING OUT THE BACK OF THE DRYER. This is one of those big laundromat dryers, the kind where the door faces outwards, and your clothes spin in a big cylinder. The SHOOTING FLAMES were outside the cylinder, at the back of the machine. Now, I was somewhat concerned by this SHOOTING FLAMES business. But I could also immediately comprehend that it might just be how the dryer works. I mean, it has to get hot somehow, right? The SHOOTING FLAMES were pretty regular and were clearly not growing. There was no smoke or burning smell. But it also looked like the kind of flames that might shoot out of a burning engine...

Anyway, I stood there for a while watching it. I must have had a concerned look on my face, because I noticed that the laundromat-lady was watching me. So I pointed at the machine and said to her "Umm...there's fire in there...". To which she replied, "Yes, there is." and went back to work. So I guess she cleared that up...

( "There's fire in there" ?!?! Not my most eloquent moment.)

As a segue, I will provide you with this quote, taken from an article in the Manila Times:

Note to self: Never go to Manila. Will be arrested as terrorist upon landing.

I went out for coffee with AC on Thursday-ish. We were sitting at a small table in the Second Cup on University and Sherbrooke. She reaches for her backpack and hits my knee. Then she stops, knocks twice on my knee, and says "Knock Knock". So I say, "Who's there". And she replies, "How the hell should I know, It's your fucking patella!?". I just about fell out of my chair...

This is hilarious. One of these internet-famous web personality blogger people were totally burned by another blogger named "Madge" who was actually a drag queen. So now they say that people publising "jokes or satirical broadcasts" on the internet should label them as such, to prevent confusion. Choice quote:

Attention general internet populace: please mark all future humorous content with an appropriate label, or these whiners might miss the joke and throw a hissy-fit. These are the enlightened geniuses people leading the "Web 2.0 Revolution". Incidentally, this guy also thinks that One Blogger is worth Ten Votes. Sense of self-importance perhaps somewhat elevated? I think so. And his name is "Winer"!

Anyway, that's it for re-hashing other people's internet material. Unfortunately that leaves me with nothing else. I have been doing a lot of programming. I went out to Bar Elyssa with MikeP a few times. They have hookah's there, but I don't really enjoy the hookah-smoking. It tastes yicky, I think. I am also slowly gearing up for the applying-to-PhD-program business. It's like pulling teeth. Bit of a crisis, really. Oh well. Good day!

I just finished watching Stealth. Let's see - first there was the ridiculous plot. Ooh. Painful. First they have to blow up a buliding in downtown rangoon, and then two days later they are stopping nuclear warheads and SCUD launchers in China. Man, there is just crazy amounts of TERRORISM going on out there, isn't there? Something new every other day! (And come on - SCUD launcher?? What is this, 1991? Where is Saddam?). The acting was also brutal. I had high hopes for Jamie Foxx after Collateral. Sad. On the other hand, lots of stuff got blowed up. Hurray! There is also a whole other DVD just for special features, although I might have seen most of it at already at SIGGRAPH (they had like 5 sketches on this movie! criminy!).

If you are looking for a movie recommendation, I suggest He Died With A Felafel In His Hand. Despite the movie cover on that link, it was in English. Well, Australian actually. Your local blockbuster probably has it in the indie films section. The first half of the movie is hilarious, the best wacky-roommates story I have ever seen. Apparently it was based on this book, which I might have to try and find. But, be warned - it goes downhill in the second half. Well, it gets less funny, anyway. Tries to mix serious-ness in with the wacky roommates, which doesn't really work. Oh well.

In the crazy-nerd-insanity department, the XBox 360 came out yesterday. Apparently there are like 3000 of them for sale on e-Bay already. But there were actually a few for sale before yesterday, because Mountain Dew was giving them away before the offical release. This guy sold his for THREE THOUSAND DOLLARS. Note that the retail price is $399. THREE THOUSAND DOLLARS. The person who paid that had the privilege of playing an XBox 360 a single day before everyone else - unless, of course, you went into a Wal-mart and played the one that has been on display for a month. A year from now, will he look back and think, "Man, that extra $2600 was sure worth it, for that extra 24 hours of XBox 360 excitement...". Actually, knowing some video game fanatics, he just might.

Some nerds at Stanford have built a digital camera that lets you change the focus in the picture after you have taken it. Insanely cool.

On Monday I went to a talk by Brian Greene of The Elegant Universe fame. I highly recommend the book, I found it much clearer than Stephen Hawking's physics-for-the-layman books. This might be because there are a lot more words and explanation in The Elegant Universe. It seems like Hawking's books just have nice pictures, but not much to back them up. Anyway, the talks (I actually went to two). The first one was the "Scientific Lecture", which was like most invited talks at conferences. High-level overview followed by some future research directions, sprinke in some occaisonal technical jargon or equations, a dash of humor, and there you go. It was good but the room at McGill was entirely too small, I was crowded with about 20 people on a landing at the top of some stairs at the back of the lecture hall. At least I had a wall to lean against.

The second talk was the "Public Lecture". It was in a much bigger room. MikeP and I got there early enough for seats, but by the time he started the place was packed again. And then things got weird. See, during the Scientific Lecture, Dr. Greene sounded just like a normal guy. You could tell he had a real passion for physics, but otherwise he seemed pretty chill. However, during the Public Lecture he totally went William Shatner on us. All sorts of...dramatic pauses...and..."fabric...of the COSMOS..." type stuff. It was too over-the-top for me. He was much funnier, and it clearly would have been a great talk if I hadn't read his book and just wanted to be entertained. He handled the questions at the end like a champ, even when somebody asked "How do you know all this physics stuff isn't just wrong. I mean, why do you have to go from wood to atoms. Why can't the wood just come from a tree?". Seriously. He managed to turn that into an intelligent-sounding question which he then answered. The man is a magician, as far as I'm concerned. But, I was kind of sleepy, and I have to admit, the jokes were not enough to keep me from nodding off near the end. Sorry, Brian Greene. I tried.

Actually I just got back from another public-lecture type event, at the Societe des arts technologiques. There was a SIGGRAPH Montreal event, about the "demo-scene" (you can ask me over beer sometime if you really want to know) and about some cartoon-drawing software. The demoscene part seemed like it was really funny, but it was in French so I could only laugh when the comedy came through on the slides (I cannot really read French either, but I can often decipher it). The cartoon part was pretty boring - don't get me wrong, the software looked fantastic, but I am not about to go drawing cartoons. I should have just left. Everyone else bailed on me, so I was there alone, in a room full of people getting the French jokes. Sometimes the cultural divide is particularly glaring. Makes me want to hide.

The "=" key on my keyboard is sticking. Generally that means it has a sesame seed under it. You would think keyboard designers would take sesame-seed bagels into account when deciding how big to make the spaces under the keys. Either keep the sesame seeds out, or make the space big enough that when I blow on the keyboard they will come out! I swear, I have to get out the tweezers and tiny screwdrivers at least once a week to fish out bloody sesame seeds. Angst!

(Give up bagels, you say? Or switch to plain? You must be joking...)

That is all I have to say. Apparently my social life is public lectures. Sad, I know. There is a comic book convention on the weekend! Oh god, kill me now...

Here is a little public service announcement for all you Albertans. Apparently Safeway has recalled a bunch of ground beef due to possible E. Coli contamination.

If you are thinking, "Hey, what's a little E. Coli among friends?", well, think again. I got E. Coli from an under-cooked hamburger a few years ago. In fact, it was Safeway ground beef then, too. Yes, the under-cooked-ness was totally my fault. I was cooking on the BBQ in the dark, and then watching a movie in the dark, and since the outside was so charred I assumed the inside would be OK. Yes. stupid. Therefore, E. Coli. The effects were not pleasant. I assure you, the thing they mention in that link, right after "abdominal pain" - that does happen. Oh yea. Big time. And excruciating. I had to produce a "sample" for the doctor - also a fun time. Ask me over beer someday. I promise it will be amusing. I spent that week (yes - week) on the couch, mostly unconcious due to the gravol and antiboitics. When I was awake I ate popsicles exclusively. Solid food wasn't worth the trouble.

So, enjoy your burgers!

In other grocery-store-related news, the place we shop at near my house is being renovated. It is a small store (inevitable, since it is right in the middle of a busy downtown street). Hence, they don't have a lot of space to work with - there is not even a parking lot. So they are just boarding off parts of the store and randomly re-distributing the displaced goods, and then do the construction. But, the construction is not "upgrade the deli", it is "swap the deli and the bakery and every single fscking aisle". Basically, once a week the store is entirely re-organized. This is driving me insane. I run out to get some salsa and I spend 15 minutes wandering the aisles looking for its new home. Rage. Aisle Rage. Grocery Store Rage.

I will also share this link with you. It is the second paragraph that I found noteworthy. Boys, be glad you are not a wild llama. Very, very glad.

Ahhh, procrastination. My old friend. How are you today? Excellent. Let's get down to not-work then, yes? Ok.

My Montreal social life has been surprisingly active lately. Well, mostly it's been AC's social life, but she takes me with. We had dinner with a friend of her family who was here for the big climate conference event. We had breakfast with an old frield from the Banff Centre, and one of the founders of SoftImage. We had dinner and DAB with some of her baseball people. We went to a birthday party. And I bailed on another dinner party. Action-packed. And hangovers. Oh the hangovers...

I also have been out to comedy shows - twice! Theatre Ste Catherine is actually run by some guy from Calgary (at least, that's what MikeP tells me). On Friday nights at 11 they have the "Balls Out" variety show, which is sort of a mix of skits, improv, and musical guest. Two of the troupe are the guys from FUBAR (also a Calgary production), but they don't really do the FUBAR stuff (much to the chagrin of some of mes amis). The show two weeks ago was brilliant. They did this thing with mousetraps and blindfolds...words will not do it justice. Last weeks show was not quite as good, but still worth the $8. This week is a double-header christmas special. Exciting...

Have you seen the penguin movie yet? Rent it.

When I'm not out being a social butterfly, I am at home trying to write a paper. It is like pulling teeth. I'm just so not into it. Maybe I should take a break. Only, what would I do? I finished reading The System of the World, the last volume of Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle. It was very good. But now it's over and I miss it. What happens to Waterhouse now, Neal Stephenson? Inquiring minds want to know.

I have also been applying for PhD's at various universities. I get to do fun stuff like write research proposals, etc. More teeth-pulling. Oh, and trying to round up reference letters from professors in Calgary is fun too. The standard procedure is to stand at said professors door with the form until he or she fills it in. Hard to do from several thousand km away. I am reduced to nagging e-mails, or my preferred alternative, just not doing anything and hoping it works out. My NSERC application has made it to the national competition, so I do have some hope in hell of having funding. At least one set of fingers is crossed.

You may have noticed that for a few days there I had a little Firefox button over on the right. I have resisted the Firefox switch for some time (I was a dedicated Mozilla user), but now Firefox has the <canvas> widget. Mozilla does not. Hence, I made the switch. Turns out Firefox has lots of other nice stuff too, like automatic downloading of most plugins, little handy extensions, etc. I just got so excited that I had to put up a download button. (Not really - I was getting paid a dollar for each of you who downloaded it. But nobody did. Pity). Anyway if you are sick of Internet Explorer viruses, try Firefox. It blocks popups automatically. You will like it.

It is most definitely time for a caffeinated beverage...