Randomization

Cities. Towns. Villages. Bunches of people and buildings. Settlements are a common part of humanity. Whether it's a forest of buildings like New York, a small encampment in the Amazon or just a couple of mostly abandoned houses in the middle of Canada, everyone knows what they are. In ancient days they were the heads of government. Powerful city states that would also offer protection and leadership to those around. One could argue that we need to move closer to this. Maybe less taxes to the Federal and provincial governments and more to the cities, but everything comes with its own problems. Your current city is always something you have to be proud of. When I lived in Weyburn, you always made fun of Estevan and thumbed your nose at the surrounding towns. In Regina, I cheered for the Pats and hoped Saskatoon would always loose. Now that I live in the Saskatoon area, I cheer for the Blades now and hide all my Pats merch.  Another thing is to have the city flag. Warmans is just the ...

The wife and I spent three days up at Tobin Lake this past weekend. Mom and Dad bought us a two night stay at one of the Geodesic Domes for Christmas. The first picture in the link, with the bed, is the one we stayed in. It's about double the size of the other two. It's split into the half with the window wall that is the bedroom, then kind of a common area on the other half. Above that half is also a balcony with two beds. It's only good for kids as I had to crawl to get to the second bed just to check it all out. The only cooking comes from a BBQ outside. And a fire pit I guess, but there's a fire ban on right now. Besides that there is a small gazebo so you can seal yourself off from the mosquitos. Of which there were plenty. The whole thing is powered by solar that feeds a power pack. We left the fan running all day on our second day and it died about an hour after bed time. So, we suffered. The first day we got there it was an oven inside. It has hardwood floors a...

The Dyson Sphere. A large spherical structure built around a star to completely enclose and capture all energy from that star. It was proposed in 1960 by Freeman Dyson, a physicist. Since then, people have modified the idea into a swarm and other stuff. The main problem with a structure circling a object with gravity is that if even one molecule gets closer than the others, the gravity increases which causes it to have more gravity pulling it and before long you have part of you sphere in the sun. Another problem with a Dyson Sphere, is that it is still bound to the star. What happens if the star is at the end of it's life? No Hydrogen left to fuse, just death. Then everything dies and the sphere becomes a dead husk, if it survives the expansion and everything else of the stars end of life. But, what if instead of building a Dyson Sphere around a star, we built a star inside of a Dyson Sphere. Make it into a giant ship that travels from star to star, stealing hydrogen. It can expel...

Everything is awful, or so some people would have you believe. I like to read a general overview of the news each day to just keep a rough idea of what's going on. I don't read too many articles, just mostly headlines or quick summaries, so I know my news knowledge isn't the best, but I have a wide enough variety of right vs. left headlines in my list that I often see the same headline written in opposite ways. I take this as a decent indication that I'm getting the rough idea. I mostly don't read a lot of articles because I don't need to read the same article about Trump doing something illegal, Scott Moe complaining about the federal government or Justin Trudeau banging Katie Perry day after day. I know these things are happening. If it's a cool, interesting story, like the Onion taking control of Info Wars, I'll read it! This brings me back to something I've discussed way more than I should on this blog though: Wanting a change and not knowing how...

What's this? A bonus post? Yup. Since I forgot when I was in Calgary, I'm making it up to y'all. Money is tough these days. America is doing a good job of ruining the world economy and food is getting more expensive. We like to buy some Canadian Rye bread and it is almost 7 bucks a loaf now. I could make bread for cheaper than that. So, I have. The last time I made bread was when I worked at the Weyburn Inn. Brace yourself for this one, Pilot. That was over TWENTY YEARS AGO. Jesus Christ, how time flies. So, I got stuff together a couple weeks ago, got out our existing Pyrex bread pan and bought a new metal one. I started mixing and then realized I didn't have enough flour. No matter. We had almond flour and the recipe says I could use that and just use a little less. No worries. I had already mixed the first bunch of wheat flour in, I'd just finish with the almond. Might taste weird, but I was sure it would be fine. The whole time I mixed, my brain just kept saying...

It was George Carlin. That's who I wanted to blog about after Pilot blogged about Strombo. I had just watched a couple of his stand up routines. One was a VERY old one from probably the 60's or 70's. He looked in his early 30's and was hardly recognizable. It was good stuff. Nothing special, but he had some solid jokes and I found it funny, Then I watched one of his ones from the 90's. Most people have seen clips, but I had never sat down and watched a special. I wasn't very impressed. Someone commented generally on Reddit that if the crowd is just clapping and cheering, then it isn't really comedy. They aren't laughing. And yeah, good point, but who cares? If people are enjoying the show, that's all that matters. I think if I had been at one of his shows in the 90's I would have cheered with everyone else. Nowadays though, it was a little meh. He got uncomfortably close to the line with some of his comments, but didn't cross so I'm OK wi...

So, this must have been posted then. There's no way I could have set the post time back, unless I had a time machine! WEEEEOOOOOOO!!!! Oh no! I killed a fly in my trip back to last Friday and now my parents are mailmen! But, seriously, sorry for missing last Friday. I was hanging out with my sister, Soulfood, in Calgary where we had gone since the daughter and wife were playing roller derby. It was a good time and I stayed away from the track most of it to hang with my sister. Belle ended up breaking her skates on Sunday during the last game and was super gutted. She then won a $250 gift certificate to buy new ones as she was voted tournament MVP. Talk about emotional whiplash. For her anyway. My emotions are an always simmering and uncomfortable feeling similar to love but with more farts. Soulfood and I swung by the Calgary farmers market at one point so she could grab herself lunch and while we were waiting I was looking at the stall across from the food one. It was a dude that ...