So, I picked a hard one.  I’m going to give up meat for lent this year.  Should be a challenge.  I’m not an animal sympathizer or anything like that, but I do have to admit there are undeniable health benefits to not eating meat, so it’ll be good for me.

Tonights dinner will be easy to adapt, I had planned a chicken salad.  I’ll just leave out the chicken and I’m good to go.  Tomorrow I’m eating out, so I’m sure I can find somewhere that serves a veggie burger in London.

Then Friday I haven’t planned yet…we’ll see what I can come up with!

I told myself I wasn’t going to compromise and I haven’t been living up to that.  Trying to figure out what to do after we move has seen me trying to figure out which compromise to make, and I told myself I was done with that this year.

I’ve got lots of options, none of them sound particularly exciting.  Moving to London meant I didn’t have to drive 30 minutes to and from work every day.  Being forced back to Beamsville means a small town with very few opportunities, but I said no compromises.

The opportunity with Mastermind is a step down from where I am now, means adds a 45 minute commute and isn’t really something I’m particularly passionate about.  I’m just selling something that someone else has picked out, it’s not got that excitement of being able to do something special.  Taking that sounds like a compromise to me, and I’m not doing that.

My old boss at Build-a-Bear texted me to let me know that I’m always welcome back there, which is really nice.  I loved the job and the people, but on the flip-side I’m pretty sure all she can offer me is part-time work.  And a 45 minute commute for part-time work seems like a compromise too.

But I did love that job.  Both are kid focused, but Build-a-Bear had something special.  I’m not a particularly materialistic person, I don’t get overly excited about physical objects.  I believe that if you’re creative enough you can have fun with anything and we don’t really need most of the stuff people are selling us.

Build-a-bear is probably the only retail job you can have where you’re not focused on the stuff you’re selling, but on the fun of the interaction instead.  I can’t think of another place where that’s true.  With that said, I’m pretty sure that means I’ve just eliminated retail from my list of choices for the future.

My friend Karl has been telling me for years that I should apply with the company he works for.  I finally did that.  He works at a company that makes point-of-sale software for jewellery stores.  This might be OK.  I’ve done tech support, I’ve done programming and I’ve done sales.  This is a small enough company that there would probably be room for me to work in all 3 areas.

I decided against programming because I thought I wouldn’t get enough interaction with people and that I’d be stuck in front of a desk all day every day.  I was always good at it, but I transferred out of it before I even had a first job placement at school.  I’ve done tech support before and I was good at it.  I didn’t like having to argue with people about warranties I had no control over though, and I don’t think that’d really come up much with this company.

And they’ve sent Karl out to conventions to sell and demo the software, so clearly I’ll still get to be out and interact with people.  Plus I can still put my retail experience to good use by being able to relate to what the customers are dealing with.

I turned my back on a career in computers once out of fear of being chained to a desk all day.  I think it’s time to give it a real chance.  So, my plan is to try and pursue a job in IT with a small company, or writing my own programs.  I can collect EI for about a year, since moving to follow a spouse is considered a valid reason to leave a job.

If this job with the company Karl works for doesn’t end up being offered to me, I’ll have time to find something else, or start writing phone & tablet apps that I can sell in one of the two app stores and make some money that way.  That’d be nice because then I could be my own boss.

You know what, that doesn’t sound half-bad either.  Start writing my own apps to sell in an app store. If it doesn’t work out enough to become a stable income then I’ll find whatever kind of job their is in Beamsville (even if it’s just washing floors) to make ends meet.

I think I have a plan now.  This is the first time since September where I feel like I have a plan that I’ll be happy with.  A friend posted a little while ago about how we tell others how to treat us based on what we’re willing to accept, and I’ve been accepting far too much that I’ve not been happy with.

It’s time for me to take things in a different direction.  It’s past new years now, and I haven’t been living my resolution, but change always takes time to get right.

So, I have a few resolutions, but they can all be boiled down to basically one thing, I’m going to accept fewer compromises this year.  I made a few last year that didn’t work out how I hoped they would.  This year, I’m not going to accept something that’s “alright for now, and leading to what I really want”, and I’m going to just do what I want to do.

Life’s too short to keep postponing things until later.

Of course, I’m referring to this, for my shoes:  (I don’t know what you’re thinking of, perv)

So anyways, I did my first ever in the snow run tonight.  I went about 10km and it went really well.

The spikey things for my shoes worked as I hoped, I had no slips and falls at all.  In fact, I felt just as stable as if I was running on concrete without any snow, slush or ice.  It was fantastic.

I bundled up, I put on my running tights (the tops and bottoms), running shorts and a t-shirt, my sweatpants, a sweatshirt, a hat, mitts, one pair of socks, my regular running shoes and the stretchy rubber with spikes on it.  I was plenty warm enough (although if I wasn’t working up a sweat that might have been a different story).

The only complaint I have about the run was the puddles.  I stepped in a few of them, which of course got my feet soaking wet, which is not fun to run in.  They weren’t cold for long though, but I’m not really sure what to do about it.  If I put bags in my shoes, or buy waterproof running shoes I’m going to end up with a sauna in there anyways with no way for the sweat to escape.  I’m thinking I’ll just have to endure that.

I found the books to be a very interesting tale, if a slow one.  The first book took a painfully long time to get moving, but it’s really required setup for the second and third.  So much happens at the beginning of the first book that seems disjointed and unnecessary, but once you get sucked in it really holds on.

Of the books, I believe the second was the best, but what’s really getting me isn’t the books so much right now, it’s trying to decide whether or not I really want to go see the movie that’s coming out soon.  The books were pretty brutal, and with David Fincher directing you can be the movie’s going to be too.

I’m normally really into dark and gritty movies, and maybe this is old age mellowing me out a little bit, but I don’t want to watch the scenes that are described in the book.  I can identify with the characters and understand the tale perfectly well reading the book, I don’t want to see the multiple rape scenes from the book being portrayed on the big screen.

But then again, it does have what seems to be an amazing soundtrack.  Nine Inch Nails and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs teaming up to do a Led Zepplin cover?  HELL YES!

Anyhow, I probably will see the movie at some point.  The original sweedish book was called “Men who hate women”, and like I said there are many scenes that really drive that title home.  The books do tell a compelling story and I would recommend them, but bear in mind that it takes a while to get going.

The reviews of the movie are all saying it’s fantastic, but really graphic and that kinda scares me.  I understand the story well enough at this point, that I think I can do without seeing what they’re talking about on the big screen.

Besides, the first book isn’t the best on in the series.  It’s more of a “getting to know you” book where you meet the cast and then you spend the next two books really discovering what made them the way they are, which is what I found to be the most interesting.

I thought that maybe next year instead of celebrating Christmas we could pick a different winter celebration like Hannukah, Eid or Kwanzaa and celebrate that instead.  Then the year after we could pick a different one and just cycle through them every few years.

I thought it might help give our kids an appreciation for other cultures and to expose them to different ways of celebrating.  Help make them more well rounded people.  Sara thinks we’d offend people doing that.

What do you think, oh vast, anonymous internet?

This kinda proves that a show about  ”Hard News” and “Straight Talk” is really just about trolling.  Seems strange that this guy gets a show on TV, and somehow finds an audience.

But anyhow, I understand why the protesters are angry.  When you get out of high school, you get told that you need more education to do any job more than flipping burgers, so you take on a mountain of debt, graduate from college or university and the only job you can find is still flipping burgers, but now you have to do it beneath a mountain of debt.

It’s funny, in the interview he asks someone if he thinks he’s above working for McDonalds, and the man responds that he feels McDonalds exploits people.  Ezra then turns that into a racism thing somehow.  There have been many lawsuits filed against McDonalds for some of it’s practices, taking a moral stance against the company should be an option if that’s what you believe in, but if you’re burried in a mountain of debt, you’re could be forced to sacrifice your beliefs and take a job supporting a company you feel is doing evil.  I’m not saying that I feel McDonalds is doing evil, just that I believe that if you think they are, you should have other options about where to work and eat.

I pick on McDonalds specifically, but I think it’s bigger than that.  People are coming out of high school and universities hoping to change the world.  They’re seeing systemic problems and wanting to contribute to solving them.  But, then they get jobs that aren’t satisfying.

One of the protesters questioned went to school to be a graphics designer.  He got a job as a graphics designer and spends his days putting warning labels on video game boxes.  He wanted to make a difference in the world and feels like he’s wasting his time with what he does.  I can understand that.

I think that the big problem is that people look to their jobs to be the place where they change the world.  I think realistically speaking, for most people, you take a job to pay the bills and you try to change the world on your own time.

I guess that’s the big problem, people go to school to find a job where they think they’ll make a difference and change the world, but with very few exceptions, that’s not what you do at work.  I think the big problem is all the mixed signals and different expectations that people have.

I don’t know how to resolve this any better than anyone else really, I don’t think there really is a good fix.  The protesters don’t seem to have one.  I don’t have one.  But I certainly don’t see any need to make fun of them for trying to make a difference.  Or any need to brandish them as freeloaders.  They’re trying to fix the problems they see.  The government isn’t fixing it, businesses aren’t fixing it, the banks aren’t fixing it, the schools aren’t fixing it.  Nobody is fixing this.

That was an amazing episode.  Up until this one, this season hadn’t been doing too much for me, but this one….it just took me right back to the end of season 4.

There is so much going on.  So much, just wow….this is what great TV is all about.

The scene, where Brother Sam tells Dexter that he wants Dexter to deliver a message to the man who gunned him down.  Only, with all earnestness, he tells Dexter that he forgives him.  He goes on to say that he doesn’t trust anyone else with this message.

He wants Dexter, the bay harbour butcher, to deliver a message of forgiveness.  Then, there is the scene where one of the “doomsday” killers goes to visit his sister at the daycare she works at.  He meets with children who are painting pictures of who they want to be when they grow up.

And this is a man, who’s working with a religious nutcase, murdering people because he believes that god wants him to do it in order to bring about the apocalypse.  And they’re talking to him about what they want to be when they grow up.  It juxtaposes a man who’s trying to make the world end, against someone who has nothing but hope for the future.

And in the end, Dexter does, as he always has done.  He murders Sams killer.  And all of a sudden, Rudy is back.  In Dexters mind at least.  Rudy is Dexters brother.  They were separated after they watched their mother being murdered in front of them.

Dexter found his family, and his father, who gave him hope, and taught him only to kill other killers, offering some kind of redemption.  Rudy instead found despair and hopelessness going in and out of institutions before finally murdering prostitutes and trying to convince Dexter to murder his own sister, who Dexter really does love, though he’ll never admit it.

And now, Rudy has come back to Dexter, after Dexter tried to forgive Sams killer.  He did try.  But, Nick just threw it back in his face, and Dexter killed him in a rage.  Killing in a rage is a bit more unusual for Dexter, but it’s not unheard of.  But, after, Rudy has made a return into Dexters mind….as he should.

It takes me back to the end of Season 4.  Dexter had hope, until he found his wife murdered in the bathtub.  He had hope, he was going to make a run at not being a serial killer.  Then he found his wife dead.  In this episode, he made an attempt at forgiveness.  He wanted to do right by Sam, and forgive Nick.  He didn’t do it though, and now he has to face the fact that he’s become more hopeless, more like Rudy, than he really wants to be.

This season just went from mediocre, to amazing in one episode.

Seriously, I bought this to play with Haylee tonight, I thought I’d be able to teach her something about electricity.  Well, I remember the basics from science class in high school, and this toy is recommended for ages 8 and up, so I figured they’d make it fairly easy.

I remembered what happened with experiment #1 & #2, and I felt like I was teaching my daughter something.  They were pretty basic, you hook up the batteries, a switch and a light bulb in a series and let them go.  For #2, you just replace the light bulb with a small fan and you’re set.

I got to explain that electricity needs to flow out one end of the battery and back into the other in order for anything to work, and that when you flip the switch, you’re opening up the circuit, so the electricity can’t flow anymore, and the light goes off.  Then I removed the switch, and showed her in more obvious ways what I meant by taking one of the jumper cables instead and connecting and reconnecting it where the switch used to be.

Then we got to experiment #3.  Hooking it up and making it work was really easy, assemble as pictured and it works the way it says it does.  But trying to make sense of how it works…..I spent nearly 2 hours doing research, and I’m still not really sure I get it!

So, energy flows from positive to negative.  So, if we hook this up, then turn the switch on, the power starts by splitting off in 3 ways, one to power the speaker, which then goes back into the U1, another to the WC (this is a sound sensitive switch), and one directly into the U1.  Then it goes from the U1 back to the battery completing the circuit.

So, in order to explain what is happening with this setup, and why it works, I think I need to figure out what’s happening inside this big box labelled U1.  So, I start flipping through the book for an explanation what’s going on, so that we can make this a learning experience instead of just an exercise in following directions.  Here’s the explanation from the manual:

But now, this labelling system confused me.  If this diagram is correct, I’m connecting the negative terminal on the battery to the negative terminal on the U1, and also the positive to the positive.  I thought we weren’t supposed to do that?  I thought you connect negative to positive, so that the output from one goes to the input on the other.

At this point I’m pulling out my google-fu to try and figure this out.  It doesn’t make sense to me anymore.  Furthermore, the diagram doesn’t really explain what’s happening in the U1 at all.

When I first flip the switch, it plays its song to the end, then stops.  Then, if I trigger the WC (by clapping loudly) it plays it again.  I’m kinda guessing at what’s happening inside the U1, but I’m not really sure if this is right, and it would be nice if I got an actual explanation so that I could tell Haylee what’s happening.

I figure that what’s happening is this (assuming the main switch is on):

I’ve got 3 parallel circuits, one always-on that connects straight to the U1, one that connects to the speaker and one that connects to the WC switch and then into the U1.  Somehow, when you turn this thing on, the power triggers the WC, and the U1 then knows to close the circuit coming from the speaker and allow the music to play.

Then, when the song is done, the U1 opens the circuit from the speaker and turns the speaker off.  Then, when you trigger the WC, for a brief second the U1 gets power from this other connection and re-closes the connection from the speaker and allows the music to play again.

But of course, most of this is guesswork since they don’t actually tell you what’s happening inside the U1.  I’d like to teach Haylee what’s going on, but I don’t want to teach her junk science either, and I’m worried my guess might be wrong.

I really wish they would explain this stuff in the manual so that I could explain it to Haylee.  Right now, she’s not really gaining any understanding, she’s just following directions and making stuff happen.  I’d really like for her to know why things are happening.

And this is what I wrote:

To:

Chris Bentley, MPP

8-11 Base Line Road East
London, ON

N6C 5Z8

From:

<<address removed>>

October 26, 2011

Dear Mr Bentley,

I’m writing to you, to encourage action, and to show my support for the proposed changes to the sexual education curriculum that were abandoned in the spring of 2010. I feel that now, more than ever these changes are important, not only for the education of our children, but also for their safety.

We’ve all heard the stories in the news recently about teen suicides, and heard of the “it gets better” campaign that is made to inspire hope in gay teens.  What inspired me to write, was a call to action by none other than a comedian, Rick Mercer.  His rant aired today, and really brought it into perspective for me.

Children are killing themselves because adults are failing to protect them from torment by other children.  He really drove home the point that as adults, we’re safe.  We know better than to torment people over their sexual orientation.  And there are protections available for the situations that are an exception to that.

My hope, is that with better sexual education, where we discuss these things and make children comfortable with them before they become issues that they can bully each other about, that it can prevent much of that bullying.

I’m a believer that people won’t fight against things once they understand them to be harmless, but that something mysterious and different will often appear to be a threat when it really isn’t.  My hope is that some of the homophobia teens are using to bully each other is one such case and that talking about it in school will help to prevent much of the torment.

Mr Bentley, I have two children, a 7 year old girl named Haylee and a 3 year old son named Jackson.  They’re wonderfully intelligent, friendly, honest children.  When Haylee hits puberty, if she comes home and tells me that she has a crush on another girl, I want to be able to encourage her to ask that girl out on a date.  The same is true if Jackson develops a crush on a boy.

Asking someone out for the first time is a nerve racking experience that is difficult enough when you’re in puberty.  I want to be able to encourage my children in that unwaveringly.  If I’m concerned about their safety, I won’t be able to do that.

Rick said in his show last night “It’s no longer good enough for us to tell kids who are different that it’s going to get better. We have to make it better now, that’s every single one of us. Every teacher, every student, every adult has to step up to the plate.”

                This is me stepping up to the plate, the only way I know how.  You’re in a position to put this legislation back into the provincial parliament and make a real difference in this issue.  Please, step up to the plate and help protect our children.

Sincerely,

Michael White

I’m not sure what else to do, but it’s a start.