My name is Eric, and I am a youtube subscribaholic

Since creating a youtube account at the end of October 2006, and subsequently had Big Brother track my every move, I've apparently viewed 10,872 videos.

When I try and find the average video length, I get articles from 2006 stating the average is about 2 minutes, but I think things have boomed a bit since then (and I know I've watched a few multi-part epic length shows) so let's assume the average video length I watch is 3 minutes.

I've watched 22.5 days of youtube.

Serendipitous fact of awesomeness: According to dayssince today marks exactly 1000 days since I joined youtube. (which makes the math to calculate percentages oh so convenient!)

When I first calculated (with a 4 minute average) I got a full month's worth of video watching. Halfway through calling the addictions hotline, I thought of things that could be artificially boosting this number:

1. I am subscribed to 34 youtube channels (only a handful of which update often) and I like to check the main page of youtube to see what's new. I also obsessively like to keep my "What's New" list clean - and often videos I've already watched pop back onto the list. I click the video and then hit the home page to see my freshly cleaned list.

2. Some channels post a long clip as well as edited clips (ie: Jimmy Kimmel's opening monologues also have sketches and highlights from the monologue) so when I watch the full video, I don't need to watch the shorter bits. So of course, click-Home-clean page!

3. The World Series of poker. I didn't really want to watch all the interviews with all the winners of all the events, nor did I really need the daily chip count updates, so I just clicked them away.

5. Kiernan wants to watch videos. And another video. And the pink video. And that one. And...

6. Pomplamoose and Garfunkel and Oates. Because you can't just watch once. Except wait, that's not artificially boosting anything since I'm actually watching. And by that I mean I'm watching them again right now that now I've linked to them.

So this probably reduces things by at least a quarter, right? Only two weeks worth of my life spent in front of youtube? So from now on: A Cluttered What's New page is not a big deal, and I'll check back in 100 days and see if 2.25% of my days are still spent watching videos.

Quick calculation: 2.25% of 24 hours = 32 minutes a day... hold on, does sound about right? Crap...

Brain, meet afternoon wall

The Multiple Birth Families Association needs to work out a partnership with Starbucks - I want to show our MBFA membership card and get a free espresso shot in my white mocha.

BBS - Blacklisted BS? :)

The day after my TATTLENET post, I was in fact at the top of the list of searches for TATTLENET or TATTLEAWARD... apparently bragging about such a feat in the title of the blog post causes some sort of anti-spam filter which removed the search completely from the list... I suppose this is to prevent cornering the search market on queries for "albino cows" in order to sell their own brand of cow paint.

I wonder if a name change of the post would in fact reinstate me. Or if that post has been permanently banned... luckily my blog itself still turns up on the following important google searches (according to my analytics)...


Apparently that's someone's full name, as searches have occurred multiple times with both in the past few weeks.


Replace CULLEN with any of the IKEA products listed in this post and you get at least half of the search terms used. What do you people need reviews for? This is IKEA? Are there bad IKEA reviews?


Note to self: Compose followup post on the ongoing adventures with chunky. Include diagrams.


Little did M.A. Horn realize his publication would reach the masses in this way, and hopefully these searchers did not follow his instructions.


Okay then.


Wow. Please leave my blog and take your produce with you.


You're definitely looking in the wrong place.

Family dining!

I met up with some friends who I haven't seen in a while in a bar and grill all the way across town. It's comforting to know that there a change station in the men's washroom if I ever think to take Kiernan or the twins to "Philthy McNasty's".

Time flies like a banana

Apparently I've been blogging for a full year.

Google is fast

It's third from the bottom on page 2, but still...

Successful peanut butter use

On April 1st, 1993, the following Calvin and Hobbes comic was published:

(Calvin is looking aghast into a jar of peanut butter)
Calvin: Aaugh! The peanut butter is ruined! You're supposed to scoop one half straight down and then dig out the other side from the bottom, so part of the top remains undisturbed until the very end!
Calvin's mom (perplexed): What on earth for?
Calvin (as if this should be completely obvious): It's a ritual! You have to keep the top of the peanut butter smooth!
Calvin's mom: Maybe you should make your own sandwiches.
Calvin: If you can't control your peanut butter, you can't expect to control your life. Did you cut the bread diagonally?

As I've been the only peanut butter eater in the house for the past 27 weeks, I was able to successfully coat my bagel (for the first time in almost 15 years) with the smooth surface of the last of a small jar of peanut butter! Now to tackle a new challenge: a large jar... OF CHUNKY!

Dissolving parliament...

Canadian politics has never made much sense to me until seeing this view from across the pond: Scary Go Round by John Allison -- It's all so clear now!

Six months until three kids under three...

I've been told that the jump from having one child to having two children is about the same as a jump from one to two hundred. From two to three, however, is apparently not as tough. So we're just skipping the big jump and going straight to three kids - smooth sailing all the way, right?

Breakfast memories

Perkins, the breakfast-options-served-all-day family restaurant, used to have a menu item that I used to regularly order years ago, and I just don't know why it's gone.

French. Toasted. Cinnamon Rolls.

That's right, two cinnamon rolls, sliced edgewise, egg battered, and sprinkled with powdered sugar.

After one of the slices, you couldn't wait for more.

After two, your belly felt almost full, but the taste drew you onward.

After the third, your stomach cried no more! no more! oh, wait, there's only one more? okay, that's not so bad! while your arteries screamed either in shock or joy.

After the fourth you swore you'd stick to the normal breakfasts next time, knowing full well that wasn't going to happen.

Okay, I can understand why it's gone from the Canadian menu, but I can't believe the US hasn't got them any longer... ah well, I guess I could always make my own next time we buy a dozen Cinnabons..

mm, buzzy...

This morning I seem to have been too tired to remember to drink my coffee at work, as I have just discovered my thermos is F-U-L-L-Full... Woohoo! It's safe to say I won't be yearning for a nap this afternoon!

We have to ban Daylight Savings

Like he says, it is so logical!

Way too many "the tide has turned" puns though...

Googling "Ray Nagin pun" does not get the obvious one... Am I the only one who thought the New Orleans mayor's last name was pronounced n'again?

Horrific

So yesterday my wife sent me the report of the man decapitating a fellow passenger on a bus.

I found another news story on the subject at the Winnipeg Free Press.

This morning I read another article at cbc.ca

Same happening, same general details, three different pieces reporting facts.

Then this pops onto my radar: An article on an Indian news site: Bus passenger beheaded in Canada, cannibalism feared.

Really? No mention was made anywhere else (I researched further at Reuters / National Post / CNN / FOX news) about how the attacker "reportedly cut the victim's body into many pieces and cannibalised it" -- Did someone actually think "Hey, this story just isn't awful enough, I'm going to kick it up a notch!"

Is it okay to (reportedly) make shit up as long as you put the words "reportedly" in front of it?

I can't even give them weird amounts anymore to mess with them....

I saw something at the McDonald's drive-through window that disturbed me.

Searching on Google, I couldn't find any reference to it, but it led me to this...

Do you know why McDonald's employees can't calculate change in their heads? It probably doesn't help that when I handed the guy at the first window my money, he typed in the amount I gave him, then extended his arm up to a metal tube which poured out the correct change into his hand.

What? WHAT? My wife suggested it saved money due to idiots who can't calculate change properly, but maybe if they had the opportunity to practice their basic addition and subtraction they'd be able to move on to greater things... other than McDonald's management, anyway.

Curse you American Cola!

So back in my college (learning and later teaching) days my (non-alcoholic) drink of choice was (parenthesised clarification) Cherry Coke. Then came the new Vanilla Cherry Coke, which I did not like. Conveniently and tastily, an alternative was provided in the form of Lime Coke. Of course, in all of Ottawa, the only place I could find Lime Coke was in the drink machines at the college - every other store scoffed at me, telling me it was only available in Diet form.

Fast forward to last month, when my mother crossed the border to the States and smuggled back my requested sweet, sweet ambrosia, she also brought back tales of at least a dozen flavours of Coke.

As she was going back under the fence a few weeks later, she asked if I wanted anything else. I requested "Go, and bring forth abundantly Coke if fruitful (of Cherry and Lime)" (Guaranisis, 9:17). They didn't seem to have lime so I got a case of Cherry and more liquid crimson yummy

As it turns out, Cherry Coke bottled in the States tastes nothing like Cherry Coke produced in Canada. It's kinda odd that artificial cherry flavour could be made to taste even less like cherries. It makes me wonder whether they've screwed up the simple act of stealing half of Sprite's syrup for their Lime Coke recipe...

Fun fact: When I worked for Transport Canada in the department which provided the emergency response line for chemical spills, some of the longest, most complex documents I got to process were the procedures to follow should a tanker leak syrup for use in soft drinks.

"... like the Adobe Suite... and Bejeweled... and backups of my YouTube haxx0ring vlog..."

A man sits in a car, his attache case open - but no, it's not an attache case, but a laptop! And not just any laptop - "more sophisticated technology than the average hacker with a few thousand dollars and the address of the nearest Computer City could buy" -- we're talking password AND fingerprint recognition, folks! AND it can access the Internet through a mobile phone no larger than a deck of cards!

Days later, an attractive (is there any other kind?) female hacker hunches over her desktop computer (with a MasterPiece Surge Protector between the PC and the monitor, no less!) tapping her way into the "dee-oh-dee" databases. Oh, did I mention she's in the middle of the Mojave Desert under a tarp? Yeah, she is. Her companion, who was until recently unconscious, glances at her setup and asks "How many megabytes?"

"Not mega. Giga. Ten gigabytes."

"You need all that space?"

"Some of the programs I use are pretty damn complex. They fill up a lot of space."

Oh, how I love finding technical jargon in books written in the 90s...

side note: has Dean Koontz written any books that didn't have a dog as a primary or secondary character?

Scenes from a Wedding part 2

The ceremony was long. And in French. So needless to say, I looked around at the church's architecture, thinking hey, I totally modelled buttresses like that in Maya in my 3D classes... also, I tried to figure out the large mural which sat at the front of the church.

Jesus was front and centre, arms upraised. Dozens of circles of varying sizes and designs were in spread across the canvas to the left and right of him. I wondered what the circles represented, as there were no two alike.

Hey, wait a minute... I leaned over to Lara and whispered "Right by Jesus' right elbow - isn't that the symbol for the Eye of Jupiter from Battlestar Galactica?"

Soon my eyes located another familiarity. The concentric circles near the other elbow: "Hey, if the middle circle was squished, that's the eye of Sauron!"

At the far right was a circle with a curving crisscross pattern, causing the illusion that it was spherical. There was a circle in the upper left hemisphere... okay, really now, did the artists draw a Death Star on purpose?

I hope they show up well in the photos...

Scenes from a Wedding

Key notes for future wedding DJs:

1. The microphone is attached to an amplifier, which "amplifies" your voice. If the mic cuts out and everyone can still hear you then it's likely you don't need yell so loudly into it.

2. Pumping up the bass is a excellent idea. Pumping up the bass and treble is not. If the music causes the Shania Twain CD to skip, re-evaluate your equalization and/or choice of speakers.

3. The smoke machines are not necessary during the first slow dance.

4. Don't be afraid to spend money bulking up your CD collection. The "Super Ultimate DJ Party Mix" you purchased for $1.88 in the Walmart Bin is so affordable because "I Like to Move it" is actually by Reel 2 Real and not "DJ Shabba Pierre".

Dr. McDrama to O.R.2, STAT!

Working in a hospital (or a wing attached to a hospital, whatever) reminds me daily that it's exactly like working episodes of Grey's Anatomy.

I can't walk down the hallways without seeing attractive doctors in dramatic exchanges about life and death and love (with everyone sitting in the waiting room nearby not seeming to notice this is going on, of course, despite the high volume level of the speeches). Today there was repeated announcements over the PA of a Code Red (fire) in an O.R., and how the elevators should be avoided. I couldn't help thinking that there were two interns someone was ironically quipping that the fire was in the elevator they were currently having an illicit makeout session in.

I haven't heard anyone being called McDreamy or McSteamy (or Burke, surprisingly enough), but since I'm in the 5% minority of males in my workplace, that just means chances are high that it's me.

Why else would the ladies stop talking when I walk in the lunch room? I mean, other than the fact that yesterday the words uttered as I opened the door were "bikini line electrolysis"...