I had a great day. Work was depressing, however we finished at 3pm, again, similar to last friday. And similar to last friday, I called my sister's house, hoping to drop by and see what was going on. My sister's father-in-law answered, they were babysitting and he wasn't sure when anyone else was coming home. I thought "what the heck" and went and bonded a bit with my inlaws and my wee nephew. It was fun, then we had dinner: inlaws, their friend, my 2 sisters, and my brother in law. It was some knid of crazy lamb dish but it was good.

The end.

went to the santa claus I mean st. patrick's day parade... there were lots of other things besides Irish cultural things in it... I got there a bit late so it seemed pretty short. And yeah santa I mean St. patrick was the last thing in the parade.

after that, because it seemed really short, I had time to join my sister and her friend and my brother in lunch, we went to some funky asian fusion cuisine place. I tried a bite of my sister's pad thai, and realized that even non-takeout pad thai is maybe too spicy for me. I had tofu and asparagus and some other veggies and it was good. and not that spicy.  Zanta made an appearance outside the restaurant window, and the staff quickly lowered the blinds.

I had a Sewing Circle kind of evening with my aunt. She made me dinner, I helped her assemble a baby carriage cover for her soon-to-be-born first grandchild. It took awhile, so we discussed everything under the sun, so it was very bonding. She makes excellent dinner so it was cool. She is my Aunt Martha Stewart. When we were kids, there was always the danger of us breaking something at her house, because she has everything Just So.

man... the Domain Name Registry of Canada burns me up. (also the Domain Name Registry of America)

I created and maintain a web page for this lady. I got an email from her that she sent money to the Domain Name Registry of Canada, presumably because they sent her a letter that her dotcom is about to expire. It will soon. However, I have it hosted with Netfirms, and there is a lock on it so that no one else can renew it. So they complained that there is a lock on it, and she said "well can you refund my money" and they sent back a kind of "we can host for this amount, this many gig of download" etc. and so she emailed me, "help".

I called their customer service and said how it was a misunderstanding, could they refund her money? They said "who are you WTF" and I told them I am the webmaster and they said they'd email the lady to confirm that she wanted this, they didn't want to deal really with me. Fair enough. So I told her what email to expect, that it SHOULD be offering to refund her money. We'll see!

Basically they want to provide hosting. But how they do it, is to send you a snailmail letter, saying that you need to renew your whoever.com, and that you should really do it with them. The person 1) thinks that this is Internic, and that their whoever.com is in jeopardy, and sends them a cheque 2) thinks that they are actually the hosts, whereas they aren't yet, and the person will then switch over hosting to them. Then they offer cheap hosting. WTF?
What a fucking scam.

As promised, my acoustic cover version of Perfect Way.

Please excuse the general mistakes and quality... improvement will have to wait until the blister is gone from my thumb. But the main point was the fun of the thing, so that might indeed be the final version LMAO

perfectway2007-03-11-21-37-38.mp3

I've learned a lot about how I don't really need to use a capo anymore, ever, if only I can get those barred chords a bit better higher up on the neck. :P

weirdo covers

I'm trying to learn Scritti Politti's "Perfect Way" on acoustic guitar. It's quite an effed up little song, with its crazy harmonic structure. But I hadn't bothered to lift it till now, for some reason, though I love Scritti Politti. For example, the chorus is in Bb, which for my crap guitar skills, is kind of an alien key altogether, I have figured out to play it high on the neck, with my crap barred chord skills that can't help but improve through such abuse. The verse and whatever are in F#, which means that my C chord will improve which it should really anytime soon. I'm awesome at A and E and D, but I was already so who cares about that. I'm suspicious that while composing that song, someone just played a bunch of chords, cause I can't see how F# and Bb relate together at all, except to bend my mind out of shape, which is why I like it. As much as I love 3 chord song music, it's nice to take my crappy guitar skills out for a real highway ride, instead of still trying to practice parallel parking for 234897987 hours. Not to mention how crazy harmonic patterns look so different on a guitar fretboard, I'm more likely to remember them, as opposed to a piano keyboard, where my fingers slip into grooves worn down long ago.

I'll try to post an audio file if I can manage to get it to not hurt my ears.

more pavee lackeen, my entertaining brother

I had an awesome day. Pavee Lackeen was amazing. It was shot as though following the family around during their daily activities, which included the kid getting booted out of school for fighting, visiting her brother in jail, gas-sniffing, shoplifting, and filling the kettle for tea, from a tap near the side of a road. Her mom was illiterate. It wasn't playing on your emotions, it was just pretty stark. The family is part of the Irish population who were booted off their land I dunno how many years ago, maybe 100, 200? I don't know, and have been living on the side of the road ever since. They tend not to get an education, and they don't work as much as they hustle for a living. Ireland's social services are trying to get them housing, and so forth, but this family's mom was getting hung up on not living in the neighborhood she wanted, etc. (I had to switch high schools and move around a lot as a kid, so I had no sympathy for them on that part!) Anyhow it was really good and my mom and dad enjoyed it. One dude sounded EXACTLY like a guy from Newfoundland would.

A bonus was that my brother showed up and saw it with us. He had gotten my email about it, but I had already shut off my cell phone so was unaware that he was going to hang out with us.

After the movie, my parents took off for their long trip home, but my brother and I went to Chinatown to eat dinner. Now THAT was hilarious, because he speaks Mandarin, and here's what happened: I got entranced by a store that sells, among other things, stone pigs, so I went in and bought one, because my chinese horoscope sign is the boar, and this is the year of the boar, so I need all the luck I can get, the lucky money I got last year didn't work, etc. etc. etc. While I was paying, my brother demonstrated his Mandarin speaking skills to a surprised fellow near the cash register, and some conversation ensued about whatever, I caught "Toronto" and "Ireland" - I know some cities and countries in Cantonese. When asked about his language skills, he was explaining to them that we were Irish, and then that Ireland had its own language, though we don't speak it. My brother told me the guy was likely a native Cantonese speaker, because he'd start in Cantonese by mistake and switch to Mandarin. The conversation looked lively enough, but there was some confusion on this fellow's part - my brother told him "my wife is Taiwanese" then the dude asked my brother if I was his wife. I wanted to try out my Cantonese skills on them but all I could remember was "yao mo gao shooah" which isn't polite - "do you know what you're DOING?" Besides I think that and being able to count to 10 don't matter much beside a dude who speaks the whole language.

Then we went to a restaurant that my brother and his wife go to. It was Northern Chinese cuisine, and our server was a chatty Mandarin speaking lady. She was also entertained by my brother's Mandarin skills. They engaged in quite a bit of conversation, and Ireland came up again. She said I was pretty, then later, that I looked French. He was explaining at some point that he had gone to McMaster, and I chimed in with "Hoymingdon" which is Cantonese for Hamilton (where McMaster U is) and she quickly told me how you would pronounce Hamilton in Mandarin (it escapes me at the moment) and I think they proceeded to make fun of Hamilton but I don't know that for a fact. Our food was good, I had some tofu that was deep fried and had some sauce on it. We had corn soup (seemed easy to make, chicken stock, eggs dropped in, corn, green onions) and we ordered too much food but some was stuff my brother wanted me to try, so you only live once, eh? I had tofu once that was deep fried with a coating like spicy fries, I like tofu.

Going to Chinatown with my brother is like going there with a special passport into a different world.

pavee lackeen

I'm going to see Pavee Lackeen with my parents... my dad grew up in Ireland and he's familiar with the Traveller community - or "tinkers" as they were called. I saw it in eye magazine, my dad is all excited about seeing it, he was "where did you find out about it?" etc. etc. I'm excited that my dad is excited! He's not much one for movies or getting out.

another link

OMG I just read that 2nd link and I want to cry. "No, I wouldn't want to live in Venice. Eight euro for a cup of tea. I couldn't wait to come home."