Hello global warming

It's been sunny and around 30 degrees C for about 3-4 weeks now. Apparently unusually warm, unusually long for Calgary. In Sweden it's been raining since May.

Miscellaneous

There is green stuff coming out of the trees, the grass that has always been yellow starts taking another colour and the mercury is approaching 20 degrees C. Can this be spring? Probably best to wait until after the May long weekend before proclaiming that.

The house now only has one dog. Lady got her final rest this Friday. Lately she didn't want to eat very much, she had problems walking and her kidneys were bad. Her time had come but that didn't help the landlord J from feeling a bit low. Lady was half german sheperd and half greyhound. Can't help to wonder how that happened.

Hurting IT bands suck.

Getting a new room mate. I wore down one Dutch guy. Next in line is a Chinese post doc.

Click here. Close to pornography.

Calgary Transit

The bus and C-train drivers started a work-to-rule campaign today to get some momentum in the talks regarding the unions contract (which they have been lacking since June 2006). Since Calgary Transit will need to hire about 200 drivers during 2007 one might suspect that no overtime might affect them. Then, how do they go about informing their customers about possible disturbances? Well, not at all seemingly. Their webpage, which could be a good channel for informatio, says nothing about the conflict. They still have a thing or two to learn about public transport on this continent.

Excursion in Bimboland

This is the next part in the series where [cmh] explores various entertainment establishments. To celebrate that the speedskating season is over a party was arranged at the infamous night club Cowboys in Calgary. My speedskating dutch roommate had been kind enough to get me a ticket. Country music, St. Patrick's Day, speedskaters, students and bimbos made for a somewhat bizarre mix. Probably I'm not exactly the kind of customer Cowboys are aiming for, I'm too old and elitistic, one should be young and ready to paaaarty. However, it was not as bad as I had thought. One detail I'm not quite sure what I think of was the fact that most of the bar staff were siliconbased females with very small skirts. The oldest sales trick in the book?

I hope that the next issue on the agenda for bar and restaurant employees after banning smoking will be the soundlevel. I would not like to work five days a week in such an audio environment. Staff in countrybars ought to get extra pay due to the especially nasty noise the are exposed to.

Some figures:
No. of Dutchmen: >10
No. of Norwegians: >10
No. of physicists: >1
No. of three-time-olympic champions: >0
No. of fake breasts: >10

Road rage

Road rage, where people (Americans) after being treated unfairly by their fellow road users blow their top and shoot them, is a well known phenomenon. After spending a whole analyzing data I kind of wonder why one so seldom hear about computer rage. People going nuts from their computer not doing what they want it to or crashing for the millionth time ought to be fairly common. Among frustrated office clerks all revved up on caffeine in tiny cubicles the consequences could become severe. Maybe we should be glad that the Americans tend to keep their guns in the glove compartment rather than in the office drawer. Staplers make less damage.