E.Jim Shannon

Yeesh, Thursday

2008-06-06T02:33:00.002-06:00

Sleep didn’t come very well for me Wednesday night/Thursday morning and I ended sleeping late. We Didn’t get our pay cheque’s last night, some difficulty with the courier but we are assured they will be here today.

So because my team won the Stanley Cup game the other day, I won the pool. Or my share of it: $35. I got $10 out of that today from JT.

I got a call from Audrey’s books saying 3 of my “Mission Earth” books came in. Anne says I can have the pool money and my bonuses.

Police Air 1 is out there trying to catch the bad guys. I can hear the chopper doing it's thing. Early this morning City police were out here in the back and this concerned my wife. She put on her hous coat about 4am and went to take a look out front and some crack head had bashed the inside lobby door in. Police cars were out in the front. Something was going on.

Anyway Bloggers, that’s all for now

e. Jim

I got out of here

2008-06-04T14:41:00.001-06:00

not needing to shut the place down as Anne went out for a bottle run. I got to the train platform as there was no train yet but one was coming on it’s way. I boarded the last car and read some more. Maybe 2 pages. Possibly 4 so far this evening. I had a slow start to the shift. On the bonus sheet, I’ve got $15. No credit card sales? I had about $300 at break. It was a slow night doing multi files all night. I got 1 credit card sale. Anne called in the 2nd half and I got another credit card sale. That’s half of what I qualify for. I got Greg’s attention and all the credit cards I got 16 last week, all went through ok. Most likely what happened because I took Saturday off Rob accidentally Rob “forgot” my credit card bonus this week. He’ll correct it again for next week so they’ll show up next week. Typical. Moe and I made up and were friends again. That’s good. He said he’d look into the missing credit card thing for me. So next week, I should have 12 more credit card sales for this week plus the 16 from last week. That’s $56 plus this week when this Stanley Cup playoff finally ends that’s another $35. That’s $91. I can use that towards my external hard drive. I walked across the parkade and down to my train. There was J, the other East Indian fellow that said hello to me. Nice fellow. He’s living in Clairview now and in a 2 bedroom Condo forking out $1300 month to rent. And Anne’s complaining about our $815?

Of course as we got on out of the tunnel and passing by Richards place, I was mindful of the event 29 years ago. Funny, by the end of the week Ellen broke up with me. The week after that was Sherwood park Medieval days.

I boarded my bus at 9:40pm and I was home as Anne was cleaning in the apartment. Everything is right with the world. Other then what she has to do tomorrow.

Over the last week the Weather Pixie has been turned off. They say they are having troubles with their hosting company. I hope they will be back online soon. It’s a nice service.
My 56th Birthday will be August 21st this year on a Thursday night. My wife wants to replace the money she used from my income tax return and add a bit more to get me a PS3 as a birthday present. Also, Summerslam this year is August 17th. Hopefully I’ll have the pay per view and a Rosebowl Pizza. And a PS3. That’s a nice birthday present.

Some 12 hours later: I didn't go to bed this morning. I was kind of stressed out over my wife’s mammogram today. She returned moments ago. She said it wasn't as bad as it sounded. No worse then taking ones blood pressure. She knows what to expect for next time.
So tonight it's do or die for the Pens. I hope they win tonight and force a game 7, if they do then I get to watch the Stanley Cup game Saturday night. That'd be great. Let's go Pens. It doesn't matter what teams are in the playoffs. It's excellent hockey.

I decided not to go to Lodge Thursday as I want to go to our annual Lodge BBQ on Sunday. I've never been to one of these before. I also want to put a full work week in as well while I can.
I‘m enjoying a nice first coffee here today. Speaking of, which it‘s Tim Horton’s Camp Day today and I think I‘ll go get myself a nice medium size coffee and a donut. This is one charity I really feel good about supporting. Among others but this one is kind of special.

It’s a beautiful sunny spring afternoon. Anne‘s going to her job at her usual time, rent‘s paid up and bills are taken care of. Now if the Pens win tonight I‘ll be able to watch the Stanley Cup game on Saturday.

Anyway Bloggers, that’s all for now

e. Jim

I left out

2008-06-03T14:06:00.000-06:00

of here at 4pm and caught the train. I think the train driver is playing games with me because he can see late arrivals coming up the escalator from his rear view mirror. So if I turn to catch the last car, he’ll shut the doors and take off. But if I go right off the escalator a few feet away he’ll wait. Yesterday on the commute into work, I tested out this theory and went for the car right off the escalator. I noticed he hung around and didn’t leave right away but allowed others to catch the last car. This afternoon, I’m going to attempt to catch the last car, see what happens.

I got my seat and cracked open my book, Ps. Just slightly past the halfway mark. I’m most likely going to get into the 2nd part as soon as I complete reading this. “Judas Unchained.” Another monster book at 1,008 pages. I should have Ps, completed b the end of this month. I hope. “JU” by the end of September. The that’s it for huge books for awhile.

So far I’ve read:

1.) The New Space Opera
2.) Undertow
3.) Solar winds
4.) Night Train to Rigel
5.) Pandora’s Star
I hope to read next:
6.) Judas Unchained
7.) Helix
8.) Fast Forward
9.)
10.)

I hope to read 10 books this year. I read about 1/6th of what I actually buy. Three out of those 10 books were short story collections. Most likely the last 2 books will be Fantasy because I haven’t read any Fantasy this year. I’m eyeing on my shelf a Forgotten Realm’s omnibus trilogy but it’s a huge book and after Fast forward, I think I’m going to get right into this series.
Now if I had a security guard Job I could certainly read a lot more. In theory that is.
So, last night I got into work a little bit early as the shift was just winding down. Nobody said anything to me but in Moe’s kick off he said something about missing Saturdays etc. I told JT Pittsburg was going to win tonight. He said something like “they look like they have nothing left in the tank,” I had a pretty good night, pulling in a couple of credit card sales. I called Audrey’s books asking if they could stop the Vanguard order but he said if I continue to cancel book orders they might request a deposit on future orders. Good point. Let em go. I don’t need to continue with them. I ordered the 4 EverQuest novels and 4 of the Warcraft novels. And some others but they weren’t available. The first 3 Stardoc series were in by S.L. Viel. I ordered those. I continued on with my work. At break Anne called and we had a talk. With half an hour to go in the shift, I was flying, pulling in sales left and right. One caller updated me on the game, going into OT, tied at 3. I knew it. I called Audrey’s back and some of the book series I had to say no to because they were broken series. I ordered the 2 EverQuest books because they were stand alones. I ordered the first 4 Warcraft books and the 3 Stardoc books. So far at Audrey’s I’ve got 16 books on order. I’m still waiting for the Jack Vance books. A lot of these books won’t come in all at once. I’ve got 2 of the Star Trek books there. At American pricing, I may as well take advantage, right? I doubt even Amazon books are US pricing.

I ended up with a pretty good night pulling in 4 credit cards and $485 for top total. I doubt I’ll get the $15 bonus from last week. If all credit cards kick in from last week I’ll have $32 from credit card sales plus $15 for $47. If I get $47, then great. Now watch because Rob uses me as a yardstick he’s going to say something like, “In order to qualify for your credit card bonus you must be hear for all your shifts.” That’s the next water down in this credit card thing. He already watered it down by saying we need 12 for part time and 20 for full time to qualify. The 2nd water down will be based on attendance. And that will probably be announced this month sometime. He likes making it harder and harder for people to get bonuses around here. This is a good job. It’s fun and easy to do and for the 4 hours I put in, I’m half expecting the bottom to fall out at anytime. I’ve been on the gravy train for the last several years.

I was glad to get out of the office. I hadn’t got a lot of cans or bottles along home with me except for what Lucianne gave me. He’s been extolling the virtues of Ebay for awhile now and apparently they are safe and secure. He says so is Amazon and most likely cheaper then Audrey’s with free shipping. Yeah but still at Canadian pricing. I got the train home, ever mindful on my way past the old five oaks location and the party we had afterwards upon our return from Vancouver 29 years ago. We didn’t have our big celebration until Tuesday night of that year. I recall light rain in the evening.

Tonight it’s off to work and I’ll put my 4 hours in. No hockey book ordering or anything like that. It’s just 4 hours in and out.

Anyway Bloggers, that’s all for now

e. Jim

I did a lot of

2008-06-02T13:45:00.001-06:00

JFK research Sunday. This is not a site for JFK assassination research. See "mission statement" in photo block. I found the address of the Oak Cliff Library Oswald would have attended but the Police dispatcher reports give the 500 block of Jefferson but the library was at Marsalis and Jefferson. If the Oak Cliff Library Oswald went to was indeed at M&J then Oswald (if that was him that killed Tippit) Oswald was heading to one place and one place only: Jack Ruby’s apartment. There is the story that Jack mailed photographs of Dallas Police cars to Traficanti in Chicago I think the story goes and apparently had a car built for the sole purpose of transporting it to Dallas to transport Oswald? But I think that story like James K Andrew's is a bit far fetched.

I really wanted to go in for this morning but I’m lazy and tired. Besides nobody cares if I’m there at work or not. Just as well. Anyway, it’s almost time for bed.

Almost all day I’ve been doing JFK research. I’ve got back a few replies about the James K Andrew’s thread. I’m inclined to discount his story. O also think I narrowed down the Oak Cliff public library for 1963 as it was apparently on Marsalis and Jefferson. This was one of LHO’s regular haunts in Oak Cliff in 1963. Yet if he was somehow mixed up in the Tippit shooting to place him at 10th & Patton what was he doing there if not going to the Library? He’s in the opposite direction if the theater factors into this part of the case. He’s way off base. That leads to only one possible conclusion. But I’m not ready to admit that yet. I also posted on JFK Lancer a post about Troy Lee Davis. Husband of Virginia Davis.

I wanted to go into work early for this morning but I don’t know. I think I’ll just go into my regular hours. One thing I’ve got to do for today is to stop the order for those Vanguard Star Trek books. I want the Warcraft EverQuest novels over and above the Star Trek books.
Speaking about posting and such, I’ve got a thread on Edmonton Connect about Edmonton Photo’s for downtown Edmonton from 1975-1980. I would prefer aerial photos for the area of where I work.

Also while doing JFK research yesterday it dawned on me to check the New Westminster Library telephone book for 1974-75 for tax businesses along Carnarvon street. This would get me the name of the income tax business that was living on top of. I’ve got a 1948 image of the Bench and Gavel building and it looks like nothing like it did in 1974-5. But I need access to telephone books for those years.

Some 12 hours later: A really nice looking day out there. I got about half a dz responses to the Edmonton photo’s. A really old one which looks like it’s from the 1940’s and one from the era I need but to far East for my use. Some good resources as well. Anne kind of wants me to stay home tonight. We have our rent money, she just need to go to the office and take care of that before she goes to work. What with me missing Saturday and all I can’t realistically justify missing 2 days off even though my wife has to go in for that mammogram tomorrow.

I had a lousy sleep over night. I ended up at 5am to do the cbi thing. I’m no worse for wear. Tonight could be the Stanley Cup game and I have $70 bucks riding on this thing. Greg and I agreed we’d split the difference anyway. Also, Raw is on tonight in the aftermath of No Way out. So I don’t mind going to work. Greg will pay me tomorrow if the Red Wings win the Cup tonight.
I got up about 5am like I said and did the cbi thing only to read more from Ps. It’s really getting good at this point. Speaking of, which I just passed the halfway point of the book. Also tonight, I need to call Audrey’s. If I can cancel those Vanguard books I will for the Warcraft ones. Get the early Warcraft books before they go out of print while I can.

Anyway Bloggers, that’s all for now

e. Jim

hey, it's a new month

2008-06-01T13:56:00.001-06:00

and the lilacs are still in bloom. Meteorologists are calling for rain for most of next week, I love it when it’s raining and the lilacs are in bloom.

It would be about this time Richard and I would be in Vancouver 29 years ago attending SCA classes with our packed luggage and our booty. Our hots (I can’t recall her family’s last name but her name was Kelly) provided us with breakfast and we went to the SCA classes on siege warfare or something. I took notes and was attentive as much as I could be. Richard and I barely caught our bus leaving the greyhound bus station with a few minutes to spare. I think he wanted to remain there. He was kind of into Kelly. She might have been the same age as Ellen and by now Kelly would be in her early 40’s. I got to thinking as I got up out of bed about 20 minutes ago, if Richard ever looked her up and if they got together when he settled in the Kitsilano area of West Vancouver in 1983? Funny, I’d only thought about this now.

On tap for today: See if any enquiries as to my JFK newsgroup community came through on my James K Andrews topic. Check my blog rounds, have brunch, download that Open Source program mentioned yesterday, do some more reading on PS. I’ve just reached the halfway part of the novel. I want to do some piano stuff as well.

Right now, I’m onto my first coffee. Mostly cloudy out there with some sunny breaks.

Tomorrow, I hope the Wings burry the Pens and end this playoff round. Before the game began yesterday Ron MacLean had a sit down chat with Gary Bettman about the stat of the NHL. Interesting. I came in around the middle of the interview so I didn’t hear him say anything about Canadian NHL expansion. Especially now with our dollar on par with the US.
Canadian NHL expansion isn’t even on life support anymore. I would love to see: Winnipeg, Hamilton and Quebec City get franchises. Even Seattle and Portland to make it 35 teams. Lets be done with hockey so we can get on with the draft and the trades and the rest of summer.
Tomorrow I go into work. I’m almost inclined to go in for Monday morning just so I can stay home and watch the Stanley Cup game and all this week do mornings. I can always do an evening shift if Rob wants to send me home because my totals are low. Or the afternoon shift. Maybe tomorrow, I’ll go in for the morning shift.

I knew stat counter was down on my Blogger account and now it's down on my website. Most likely undergoing maintenance. Weather Pixie has been down all week same over at Blogger. Strange.

Anyway Bloggers, that’s all for now

e. Jim

I locked everything up

2008-05-31T22:30:00.000-06:00

out of here heading into work but I missed my bus and I got to the train and the train took off as soon as I pressed the button to open the doors. That’s the 2nd time this week. I got to work late but that’s ok. Again Moe’s taking the silent treatment pretty hard. Not that I haven’t made an effort. I’m off for an unschedualed Saturday and you know what, I don’t give a damn. I had a good night sitting with JT. I ended up with $385 on the night and a couple of credit card sales. I won’t get the $15 team credit card bonus because I’m off today. Other then my insulin in the morning, I’m sleeping in.

I got a small collection of bottles and cans after leaving the office I headed out to Audrey’s and got my only Star Trek book. I tried to order the Hall Spacejock books but the postage is going to kill me. I already have The Demon Princes books on order and they as omnibus books and the postage on those will kill me even more when they come in. We checked the Bard’s Tale books and unfortunately they are all out of print. I ended up ordering instead The first 3 Star Trek Vanguard series. They are not the original characters or anything but the books are in the same Universe. I’m also going to collect my Star Wars (books) again, less the Young Jedi Knights series. Actually, I’m going to forgo the Vanguard series for Timothy Zahn’s Star Wars: Thrawn Omnibus instead. I tried ordering Star Trek Enterprise but the series is partially out of print.
I had a nice quiet train ride to Clairview and Anne called again as I just got on the bus. I wanted to do some reading but no such luck. I got home did my admin stuff and Anne called saying she put the rent money in the bank. The first month since we got married that we didn’t have the $300 allowance. This helped pay for half our rent. That’s gone. But we’re okay. We both have jobs and getting by. Also we have $300 sitting here stored away for next month.

Blogging for me was a washout yesterday. I ended up doing some JFK research. I’m researching James A Andrew. This fellow tells a story of how a JD Tippit (moments before the policeman was killed) moved his Police car ahead of Andrew's car to block him off. Tippit ran out of his car holding up his hand looked in the front of Andrew's car through the glass and in the back seat and proceeded to get back in his car and move about his business. Whatever that was. Odd how this fellow wasn’t called to testify before the WC. Andrew said he recognized Tippit's name plate on his uniform. Even odd still how come nobody eve asked what kind of car Andrew drove? Odd even still was the location of this incident. If we knew what kind of car Andrew had at the time, this might have given us some insite as to the finale moments of JD Tippit's life. That would have given us a clue as to why Tippit pulled over this car above any others. I wonder if the newsgroup knows anything?

I don’t think I’ll take the pill over night. I’m tired enough as it is. I’ll save that for tonight and I’m going to head into bed as soon as I can.

Another book series I’m considering is the Everquest and Warcraft books. I've played Everquest about 5 years ago and really enjoyed it. Warcraft looks good but the characters look a little cartoony for me.

Twelve hours later: Anne gave me that pill about 3:45am and I took it after all. I went to bed and after 3am listened to a bit of George and Richard Hoagland. Good stuff. The space shuttle is supposed to launch today at 5:02pm EDT. They were talking about that today. This current module is named KIBO and the payload fills up the entire shuttle bay. It’s the size of a school bus.

On tap for today, I’m working on CH a bit and some more research on James Anderson and other stuff. I need to call Audrey’s books to cancel an order for another one instead.
I woke up about 5:30am to do the cbi thing and stumbled back to bed. At 6pm I’m watching game #4 of the Wings/Pens game. Of course a Pens victory. The Stanley Cup series is so predictable.

Anyway Bloggers, that’s all for now

e. Jim

Another Thursday

2008-05-29T22:52:00.000-06:00

Relic Hunter was pretty good this afternoon. I had some trouble locking the place up getting all the cats inside. Anne forgot to make me a lunch but I think she didn’t have time. I got outside with a brief wait. I catch the bus just after 4pm. This way I avoid all the kids getting off school. Weather wise it was a bit on the humid side of things this afternoon. I got in and scooped up my end dialer. Rob was a bit shaken up because his Son had his Ipod stolen right from his desk. Lucianne keeps asking me if I called the Dentist from the number he gave me. I got some bottles and cans. I thought I’d be the bigger man and kind of come to Moe and carry on like nothing happened asking him if he would make an announcement about the Ipod incident but he just gave me a dry cold stare of contempt and walked away. I got to get out of that place. Kick off. I had a pretty good start with Winnipeg ASB and no credit card sales. JT and Sundeep weren’t there. Anne called me at break and had a decent total at break. I collected more cans and bottles.

After the brake I began to get credit cards. I got 3 on the night for my 12+ Actually 14 on the week, so if any of them kick out, it gives me a cushion and there’s always Friday night to get a few more. But if the $15 bonus from credit cards comes into play and the $28 in credit card bonuses, that should be $43 in bonuses, so far but because I’m taking Saturday off Rob might not pay me. The thing is, Once you collect 30 credit cards, that becomes $4, which could be $120 in bonuses. Some of those guys are getting $800 pay cheque’s for one week! Of course they’re like getting $11/hour but they are working like 62 hours/week, clearing $5-600/week. That’s like working every shift/day. Crazy but they’re getting a lot of crap from Rob in the process. Getting those credit cards sales isn’t easy.

I was glad to get out of there 9am and had a bit of a ride with Smarky to Central and a seat by myself back. There was a concert there at Rexal of some kind. It’ll show on the news. If I get $20 for my allowance, then great. I’ll have enough for the festive board for Lodge next week. I met the Security guard Moe on the bus at Clairview on the way home. The clouds were just beautiful this evening, covered in dark gold and blue backgrounds. Moe said he’d get me an application from the guard company tomorrow. I’m just thinking, what I’d like to do is work, Monday-Friday at Xl, but afternoons only and do the security guard job evenings. This way I still keep Xl and my weekly pay cheque. Anyway, that’s all right now. I’ll most likely edit this post before work.

Anyway Bloggers, that’s all for now

e. Jim

I'm considering

2008-05-29T01:39:00.003-06:00

using my Blogger account more often. So this was posted from earlier. Blogger has some nice features missing from Geeklog.

Leaving out the apartment yesterday afternoon I felt pretty good. I brought my list of books I want to order from Audrey’s. The 4 “Hal Spacejock” books. I like ordering 3 books at a time. My book ordering guy tells me that Amazon is pretty good indicator for finding what if any books are in print.

I got my dialer at work and Darrel sit with me. I didn’t say a word to Moe. I just ignored him. I had a pretty good Wednesday night pulling in 4 credit card sales. Love it. I had a couple of near misses but I got 11 so far out of the 12 I need to qualify. 12+ would be better. I had a good night getting updates on the game. I got a bunch of bottles and cans as well. We won the credit card sales bonus for the night. $15 each. I’ll have almost $40 bucks.

I had a nice relaxing train ride home getting in about 9:40pm.
Anne made me hotdogs and fries for lunch and I have a sleep time tea here I’m nursing on. Hopefully this will help put me to sleep.

While listening to Coast George read an excerpt from the “Director” (I can’t recall what the official title was ) of CERN’s Large Hadron Collider or LHC. In a press release the Director said the world doesn’t have to worry about the world coming to an end or anything like that. George said that the LHC will be turned in next month. In June? Wow. That’s when I got to check online this afternoon, to see of there’s a countdown clock of some kind. Sure enough, there is and it’s 40 days, 8 hours away as of this writing that means, Sunday July 9th. Most likely the first couple of attempts won’t provide any Earth shacking news. But with the LHC Physicists hope to have the right tool to locate the Higgs boson partial which theorists hope will provide missing links in the Standard Model of physics and could explain how other elementary particles acquire properties such as mass. Out of the LHC as if that isn’t exciting enough, Physicists hope to be able to create mini-black holes that lasts for micro of seconds and even wormholes. There are some interesting spin off applications of the LHC, such as The Grid that will make the Internet 1,000 times more faster. The Grid should come on line in about the fall of this year but I doubt we’ll be able to use it right away.

The Pen’s of course won their game #3 at home. No kidding. The next game is on Saturday. I’m getting $20 bucks for my allowance. Plus the $15 COH, That’ll give me $35 and I can get all 3 of the Star Trek books, Friday after work. During lunch Anne suggested I take Saturday off. Damn that’s a good idea. I hadn’t had a Saturday off in like 10 weeks. I’ll go in Friday afternoon and work the afternoon shift and the evening shift. Go pick up my 3 books and I’ve got the weekend off.

My wife is going in for a mammogram test on Tuesday and we’re a little worried about the results. Hopefully the next day they will be favorable for her.
Currently on Coast: UFO Special From 11pm-1a PT, researcher & filmmaker James Fox updates his latest work investigating French ufology. He'll be joined by a surprise witness. From 12a-2a, author Richard Dolan discusses UFO secrecy and confrontations. Should be a pretty good show.

I’m kind of excited about CERN’s LHC when it comes online and what physicists hope to find. Now I’m not a Physicist but I still find the topic interesting. That’s be awesome if they discover the Higg’s boson right away or often referred to as the Higg’s Field (HF). Would the HF rip a hole in the Space-time? Stephen Hawkings doesn’t think physicists will find the HF. We’ll know after 39 days.

Anyway Bloggers, that’s all for now

e. Jim

Website back up

2007-11-05T14:34:00.000-07:00

okay first my website goes down as of Thursday. I’ve got Blogger as a back up at least. Then as I was going to Blog something about 20 after midnight this morning, the power goes off in the apartment. Not all of it. We’re left with the fridge working and a hall outlet. We got the extension cords out and rigged the bedroom fan to work and a radio. The power was being shut down all over the place, off and on all night, so this could go at anytime. The problem is underground. So, Anne rigged up cables and extensions and we’ve got the TV working. We also have the computer and Internet up and running as well. For now. Epcor (Edmonton Utilities) is working on the problem.

At least I have my website up and running that’s good news. Markus thinks it’s a mistake on their end. Watch the shitheads will blame it on “global warming” or some such nonsense.

I didn’t get much writing done on the weekend but as long as my computer works, I’ll get some done this afternoon. I hope. Now it’s time to Blog this and put the entry on my Blogger site as well. So the madness resumes over at my website. You know where it is. Just Google:

E. Jim Shannon

Anyway, that’s all for now

e. Jim

Late Saturday,early Sunday

2007-11-04T00:03:00.000-06:00

After supper I fooled around with YouTube and I even got a bit of writing in.

Now it begins. Yes, we’ve got snow. But I think this round it’s not going to stay on the ground. The stay on the ground snow I predict we’ll hit this November 11th, which is 2 Sunday’s from now.

Well, the Oilers lost last night and the Eskimo’s lost in Hamilton today closing out their last regular season game. They lost 19-21. It was close but as usual, no cigar.
Okay, I got a bit of writing done this evening. I ended up doing 2 scenes. About 2,500 words more or less. I’ll get up to scene #70 sometime Sunday.

About my website. I’m not to worried about losing the website if the damage done is to severe. I feel bad about all the work I put into it going down the drain but I haven’t lost all those posts because those posts are all part of my ongoing diary anyway, so nothing was really lost except the work that went into all of this. Markus’s hard work at the menu’s and just as that was getting off the ground this happens.

If we end up losing everything I’m still staying with Markus. I’m going to start fresh if we do and start a basic site. If he’s giving up on all of this for other reasons then I’ve got 2 choices. I can go to Mark and work with his OS hosting if it’s still up and running now that I have a sure fire way to pay mark using Western Union. Or and I might just work it this way and go for Google Pages as my website and linked to Blogger for the Blog. I’ll figure out something.

Anyway, that’s all for now

e. Jim

The rest of Saturday

2007-11-03T19:07:00.000-06:00

I didn’t leave myself a lot of room to get out of here just before 9am and even though it was a bit on the cooler side this morning I managed to have a brief wait for my bus and was on the train and into work about 9:20am and my breakfast sandwich ordered and at my dialer at 9:30am. We did three campaigns today, MM, AES and CFB all at once so we had to watch our list names. It got a bit tricky but I think I got top total at around $470 and a $20 credit card.
So far no word from Audrey’s about the stand alone Julie E. Czerneda book. The book covers on my right Blogger side bar need to be updated. I’m done with those books. What with our dollar passing the US dollar books here in Canada are going to be taking a price drop. The book I’m reading now: “Camouflage” By Joe Haldeman when I bought it October 2006 cost me $10.99. That same book today will cost me $7.99. The difference is 60% of my lunch at Taco Bell.

There’s no new progress on my website woes. Markus says they want to identify the problem and provide a patch. I think there’s a kind of a ricochet program out there that sends these kinds of scripts back to their sender so it infects their source as well. The only thing is, this malicious code might be sent from an unsuspected terminal and we wouldn’t want an innocent victim to go through what we’re going through. I mean all you do is trace the ISP number and file charges with local Law enforcement. All it means is once the problem is solved a better encryption protocol needs to be installed. They know what they’re doing. In the meantime I hope my website readers will find my Blogger blog and head over there.

So tonight we change the clocks back. We lose an hour of daylight. Right now it’s about 90% dusk out there. Winter (for me at least) officially begins at Daylight Savings time because we lose an hour of light. Same in the Spring when we gain an hour of Standard time the 2nd Sunday in March. Spring is in March.

I had a bit of a nap about 4pm for an hour. It was more or less just a rest and when I finally got to sleep Anne calls me. She’s been working since 11am-5pm. She had to go up the block to Wallmart for a few things.

I did a bsl reading jut now and I’m sitting at 6.8, which isn’t too bad.

Before I had my nap I came across something on YouTube by Joe Strummer called “The future is unwritten.” it basically in terms of film and recollection by our narrators (can’t recall their names) of the life, times and legacy of Joe Strummer. It’s in 4 parts and was pretty good. To me Joe Strummer and The Clash brought back that excitement of Rock n’ roll I had yet to experience again. The music is timeless. I’d say my favorite Clash song of all time is “Death or Glory.” DJ’s today couldn’t give it airplay because of one of the lines from the song, “He who fucks Nuns will later join the church.” As much as I dislike Rap, it’s amazing it gets any airplay at all with the fuck this and nigger that, holy geese.

Tonight I’m back to work on F. Because I’m working the extra hours this week, progress on F will be slow. Maybe 1 scene/day. I still hope to have F done by the end of this month. Once the story mechanics are worked out and the novel more or less fixed comes the creative prose. The stuff that makes the reader go, wow. Right now I’m checking my cause and effect.
Anne’s making me a Saturday night hamburger and fries. No Oiler game on this weekend. Maybe the Oil Kings play, I’m not sure.
Anyway, that’s all for now

e. Jim

Hi all

2007-11-03T07:52:00.000-06:00

I'm back on Blogger for a few days. My website is down. For my regular readers that have been visiting the official E. Jim Shannon site, I apologize for any inconvenience. Someone has been deleting domain names from my hosts account. Scary. This just happened this last Friday so they are currently trying to fix the problem.

That's all for now

e. Jim

Computers

2007-07-31T01:07:00.000-06:00

This picture I just took shows my new set up.

I hope it's a good shot

The W/98 computer the one that crashed recently is the tall white tower on the left. My Xp is the black case on the right. That yellow cable is the one I just dug up.

back and forth

2007-07-25T13:34:00.000-06:00

Lets see if this works.

The image uploading is clean and easy in Blogger.

but you can see here that the image is blurry and out of focus.

I've got to learn how to fix this

I hope

Back on Bloger for awhile

2007-07-15T20:15:00.000-06:00

I've been having computer trouble lately and I've been trying to get a hold of Markus.

The main problem being is although I know my website password, I don't remember my user name. The trouble began last Monday morning July 9th. While working away my screen went blank. Set up began and then scan disk. It took me twenty minutes to get onto my desktop so I could send the last blog entry. I've got all my work on that computer. F, and lots of diary logs as well. Not to mention hoards of photos. I want that stuff back, especially my Word files. So I looked in the phone book to find a PC service that comes to the door. I found the Geek guys and called them at work last Monday night and booked a service call for just this last Friday. Friday the 13th. One guy came by and were all very professional. He suggested he take the computer back to the shop and they'd do a diagnostic there for $45 bucks. Ok, I can live with that. I should call them in 3 days. Wednesday sounds about right.

So that same afternon about an hour before I had to leave for work with my wife's reluctant aproval, I purged my Xp computer and started everything again. Lots of data was lost but I wasn't going to spend $100 to preserve the data when I'm attempting to do that anyway. Within thirty minutes I had my Xp desktop recoverd. WhenI came back that night I and yesterday I managed to oget almost everything else set up. Except Outlook Express. So now I have a Gmail account.

I'm hoping I can salvage my email contacts and hopefully get my website up and going again asap. in other words, I'm working on it folks. So Markus, if you ever get a chance to see this please leave a comment. The previous Gmail account doesn't work.

That's all for now.

e. Jim

2006-11-28T11:29:00.000-07:00

This is not an official resignation or anything and I still will use my Blogger account a couple of times/month but for the most part my new daily Blog and all Blog activity will be here:
Or here at E.Jim Shannon.com it just makes more sense to have everything at one location.

To all of you that have read this blog and have posted comments, I thank you. See you at the new site..

e.Jim

2006-11-27T18:13:00.000-07:00

we braved
the cold weather and walked down to Clairview, very cold out there. After a bit of a wait we had a cold walk to the office and inside upstairs. We didn’t get to see my Doctor until about 40 min later and I had

drops in my eyes he made some scans and I have the yag booked for Jan 10^th which is on a Wednesday. I could have had it this Wednesday but it was too late. My vision should be about the same until then. It’s a day in day out kind of thing and he’s going to do both eyes at the same time.

So we braved the elements again and stepped outside and headed to Tim Horton’s and got a coffee. The train came by right away and after a brief wait inside the bus shelter at Clairview our bus came by and I got off the stop just behind Future Shop. I didn’t have enough for the David Byrne CD I wanted but next time. I checked on the memory card readers, $30 bucks. Good to know. I checked on their laptops and they’ve got some nice systems up and running for just under a grand. Beauties. Then I thought to ask tech support about the current state of my Compaq and he said bring it, they’ll scan for hard drive damages if they can salvage anything they’ll do it for $40 bucks. So, I’ll save this $20 and if I get another one this Friday, I’ll take the machine in and get it serviced if the tech guy can save all my files then great, what a relief, What I could really use then is a KV switch so I can hook up booth computers. Use the W98 machine for writing and the Xp machine for research. But as for the laptop I wont be ready to by until this time next year.

e. Jim

2006-11-27T12:28:00.000-07:00

My vision
is progressively becoming more and more hazy but that’s why I’m going over to see my Doctor today anyway. Most likely to give me a yag orientation and finale yag scans. I’d like to go in for it today but I don’t suspect it’s going to happen until next week about this time.

Having my first coffee of the day here.

Currently it’s –23/33. That’s cold. Last year, our winter never really hit us until after January. Even then we hadn’t got up to –20 during the day like it is now. It’s supposed to warm up but then we got that windchill, so even a –3 could have a windchill making it feel like –12* and that’s cold enough as it is. I think we’re in for a couple of days of Chinooks next month but for the most part, this winter kind of reminds me of back in 1979.

Anne and I are going out to brave the cold winter in a couple of hours. I’m going to wake her at 1pm so we can get ready to leave out of here at 2pm. I want to be in that office at 2:35pm. I’ve got some anxiety over this stage of my vision woes. I wish I could stay inside all afternoon but I’ve got to get this thing done.

Last night I worked some more on the extension scenes for “F” and I like what I got, some good stuff developing there. I completed the middle. Now I’m going onto the end. I’m also going to use some tricks I learned from Bickham and Swain, I’ve got 112 scenes and the work should be 144k. I’ll be in full writing mode Jan first. I’m also excited about the next novel project after this one. “MF” But I’ll probably finish “F” about the end of March. Then I should have “MF” outlined out by the time I finish “F” and I’ll start “MF” right after “F”, “MF” will have about the same number of scenes and if all goes well, I’ll be in the 2^nd rewrite stage when “MF” is done. “MF” should be completed by about the end of June. I’m going to do about 2 more drafts of “F” and the ms both “F” and “MF” should be ready to market by this time next year. Nut I’m going to write a few short stories as well and send them out. Last time I looked “Crosshairs” had over 125 views. I don’t know what the number of views is now or even if the story is still up on the site.

But that’s all for now..

e.Jim

2006-11-26T16:04:00.000-07:00

Wow.
Add the gravel pill and the lack of sleep I’ve had the night before and the past couple of days, I slept for 11,5 hours. I recall going to bed at 1am right after Hogan’s Heroes. I might have stayed up to listen to Coast and it looked like Art had a pretty good show going on. By 1:30am I was asleep, I woke up at about 7:10am to do the cbi thing and in bed about 7:25am or so. I think part of the reason why I’m not sleeping well is because I’m not putting in a full day of work. Because I had all the sleep from the night before I’ll have trouble getting sleep overnight.

Last night I was spending so much time on the Fantastic fiction site I forgot about my TNA wrestling. I only realized this as I was watching the news. Shit. I was so involved preparing a special book order for Audrey’s I forgot the time. Other then specialty books on writing; Audrey’s doesn’t carry a good selection of SF books. Not like Chapters and even then their selection is small. I placed a special order on Peter F Hamilton’s “Judas unchained” and that won’t be out until the spring. For all the food it does me, I might as well special order from Chapters but I’m going to special order from Audrey’s and by my books at Chapters.

Not much on my plate for today. I’m feeling the gravel pill still in me working away. I’ll probably work on “F” some more and flesh out the main characters. There are some ideas I need to work on and the story subplots. I’ll tinker around again on my website. I added a topic “My Favorite Science fiction Villains.” Last night. I’m going to add another list on heroes soon.

Anne made us a nice brunch now she’s got a huge clean up ahead of her there. Also, if I can keep up the new work schedule I’ll have enough to qualify for the company medical plan. By the end if March if not sooner I’ll have enough to qualify. What I’d like to do for April is get my rotting teeth out and get dentures installed so I’ll have a decent summer without eye problems and teeth problems.

This weekend in Alberta has been the PC leadership election to see who will replace Ralph Kline. Nothing has been decided yet because in order for there to be a winner, the winner must have 50% of the vote. At the moment when the polls closed at 7pm last night, the front-runner had 30%. Jim Dinning is the front-runner but in all the 35+ years or so the Conservatives have been in power the PC membership has only elected 3 Premiers from Northern Alberta. Usually in these things one of the other members will through their support over to the leader or their favorite. So lets say the 2^nd place winner doesn’t like the 1^st place winner will put their support over to the 3^rd place winner so the 1^st place guy doesn’t get in. So far there are 3 winners in the first ballot and the 2^nd ballot is next weekend. In order to vote all you need is a PC membership card and they’re $5 bucks each. I’ll probably go buy a membership card just to vote for an Edmonton/Northern Alberta based Premier.

Anyhow, that’s all for now..

e.Jim

2006-11-25T08:30:00.000-07:00

okay, I
done all my cbi and shower.. I just got to pack my thing sup and get my coffee before I’m ready to head out the door. I don’t mind heading out to work this morning. I went to bed about 3am and I got up at a bit after 7am, so I had a good 4 hours sleep. I’m okay to go for the day. I think what I’ll do because Anne needs the bus pass to do her thing this afternoon, is I’ll go over to Audrey’s see if they have what I’m looking for and then down to Money mart. I want to check on some banking services but that’s another story. Then I’ll come home.

Early this morning I figured out how to add Amazon book images to my sidebar. I think I might place it over by the other side of the main page because that side is getting to busy. I already have “currently reading” and coming up next. Since I took out the wip bars it seems like “Books I recommend” should be on the other side. “Or recommended reading.” I also want to have a recommended listening as well.

Anyway, it’s –23/31 out there. So I’m not looking forward to that 10 min wait or so in the cold. That’s the only thing I’m not looking forward to doing this morning but once that bus comes by, then fine. I’ll go over to Tim’s get the staff donuts and then I’ll get myself a breakfast sandwich walk across that frozen parking lot and into that warm office for 4 hours. Then I’ll do my stuff after work and come home for a couple of hours of sleep while Anne is out doing her thing.

Oh the Oilers won as well last night, 5-1. Good job guys.

Don't think I'll have enough time to move this over to my website this morning. Later when I come home and grab some sleep.

That’s all for now.

e.Jim

2006-11-24T14:09:00.000-07:00

I was
in bed by 3an but I couldn’t sleep of course, so I got up for a bit and worked on “F” some more and some website stuff. I think it was around 5am I finally went to bed after I did the cbi thing. I had a similar sleep experience as yesterday. I got up around noon and slowly made my way to the couch. I was dead tired. So I slept a bit on the couch for half an hour and that helped substantively.

Having my first coffee of the day. It’s a good one.

So, this afternoon I’m going onto work and I’ll be listening to the Oiler/Chicago game on the radio. JT usually puts it on and it’s a short 3.5 hour shift. After that, I’m considering heading up to Chapters again to see if
They have the sequel to Pandora’s star in stock. If not my alternative is Julie Czerneda. They’ve got book 1-2 of the Species Imperative series there. It’s easier to get to Audrey’s and I don’t have to be standing out in the cold waiting for a Chapters bus. I think I’ll go to Audrey’s tonight instead.

Speaking of the weather it’s currently –19/32. The windchill is bitter mostly because it’s a clear day out there making it even colder. I’m not dreading that early morning wait for the bus in the morning when I have to go in. I’ll be wearing my gloves for sure.

So that’s about all for me today.

e. Jim

2006-11-23T12:58:00.000-07:00

I stayed up
listening to the whole Coast show last night and after that I did the cbi thing and went back to bed. Again I’ve been up making hourly trips to the bathroom. I think this is a prostrate thing going on. So, I’m trying to not drink anything today but I need a coffee. Maybe that should be nothing to drink after 9pm.

Not much going on this afternoon. Its pretty cold out there –17/20 and we got some snow over night as well and the weekend we’re going to get a few days over –20. I haven’t seen –20 yet during the middle of the day but it’s coming.

My first coffee of the day, ok, I’m trying to read Neal Asher’s Gridlinked but I find reading anything like a novel, tough until I get this vision cleared up. To read email and websites I need reading glasses but to write in my diary and see the letters on the keyboard is okay. Well even the keyboard letters look a bit blurry. I’m typing this in Comic Sans MS 12, which is almost like bold without being bold. I can see all right to get around but for work most names on the screen I need these reading glasses on and they’re hard on the eyes as it is. Anyway that’s about it for me for today.

e,Jim

2006-11-22T12:47:00.000-07:00

I tried
to access the JFK newsgroup again, but the news server blocks me out allowing me to read posts only. I’ve been down this road before.

Yeesh, I didn’t get to bed until 3am and I had trouble sleeping. It was 4 am and I figured I’d get up and fool around online for a while and read some of my blogs. Catch up on that reading. The cause of my sleep troubles mainly was all that extra sleep from the day before and a couple of cups of coffee at the office where I work last night. I finally ended up in bed after I did the cbi thing, which was about 5:30am.

When Anne and I were at the specialist’s office Monday the receptionist was sending me back to my Doctor. I heard her say book a Yag, which is the laser surgery they do. They wanted to book me in for Thursday but I was missing time from work. Now I don’t know if this is just a follow u from the last time so he can continue the pre-yag work. He most likely has to take some readings to set things up etc. I could have the yag in his office as early as Monday’s visit or as late as next month. It’s hard to tell with these kinds of things.

I’m up earlier then usual for the, can’t sleep thing mainly. But I’m onto my first coffee of the day. Not that I need it but I’m enjoying it.

I still haven’t tried to call Compaq tech support yet as to how to get my other system back. I think it’s lost. What bugs me about it is I have a years worth of diaries and some stories and other stuff online including the reworking of NW plus almost 100 or so photo’s mostly of cats and home life. All of those are gone as well. I’m never going to get a Compaq again. The best computers to buy are the ones a friend builds for you if you don’t know how to do it yourself at least in my experience. That is if you don’t mind spending a bit of money on the operating system and the components. Your, not going to be saving much money because if your friend is building a computer from scratch for you, chances are he’s doing this out of his business. Also, chances are he has a volume license on his operating system. What this means is that you will get a recovery disk. Of course all of this is in some cases. My problem was I didn’t back up when I should have. Next computer I get, I’m going to make sure it’s fast and the clerk shows me how to back up step by step.

Another cold day out there here in Edmonton. Right now it’s –17* out there, More like –17/-20 the other number on the right of the temperature reading is the dew point, opposite to the humidex reading in the summer. How hot it feels. In this case, it’s how cold it feels. Similar to windchill, so when I write –17/20, it means the temperature is –17 degrees Celsius but it feels more like –20. I don’t care what the temperature reads. I care how it feels. Right now its –17/20 out there. I think this has been the coldest day of the season. Tonight when I came home it’s going to be a lot. Even going to work a lot colder then it is now.

Also, last night I began the character sketches for some of the main characters in “F”. I should have them fleshed out by the end of the month. I hope to be writing the rough draft by Jan 1^st if all goes well. I should have the rough draft completed by the end of March. It’ll be done when it’s done is all I can say. And as that work is being written, of course I’ll be designing characters for my space-opera series but this is a long-term project.

Well, the Oilers won last night, 2-1. Good stuff, they beat the Flames and ended their winning streak. That’s a good thing. The Oilers play Chicago on Friday night and don’t play again until the 28^th. Anyhow, that’s about it from me today.

e.Jim

2006-11-21T11:59:00.000-07:00

Still reeling

from the best possible outcome from yesterday’s doctor appointment with the specialist. It feels real good knowing that I don’t have MD and there is no diabetic damage to the retina.. Before the year s out I’ll have my vision restored and back to normal.

Last night I was in bed by 1:30am. I slept and barely heard Anne come in. I clocked her coming into bed just before 3am. I passed out and slept until 7am. So I got 6.5 hours from that. I stayed up a bit after the CBI thing and worked a bit more on “F” and reading a bit more on Marshal. I need a book on subplots. I know what they are and their purpose I just don’t know how many per viewpoint characters. Is a VP character it’s own subplot? Is that all a VP character is for is to advance the subplot? I don’t think so. I tinkered around with this for a while and about 7:40am I went back to bed and slept until 11:20am. That’s another 3 hours 20 min. So I’d say about 10 hours al in all, to make up for yesterday.

Not much on my plate today. I’ll be tinkering around with “F” and then Anne and I will go into work and JT and I will be listening to the Oilers at Recall Place Hockey game. They are hosting Calgary tonight and the Flames have been on a 7 game winning streak now. The Oilers are sitting at 21 points on the season and 4 points away from Calgary under the play off cut. So any night the Oilers play Calgary is an important night. And the City will be adding extra cars onto the trains as well. Wuu whoo.

Pardon me here if I get into the philosophical rant/mode here but over the weekend we’ve had 2 murders by knife stabbing and the same guy that looked like he stabbed one guy in a Whyte Ave bar stopped a truck at an intersection pulled the drive’s door opened it and stabbed him and drove off in his truck. Then there was another tragic stabbing of a 17 year old having a private birthday party at a community hall and 4 knife-packing teens killed the kid and took off. There was another stabbing in the City as well over the weekend. These make it Edmonton’s 34^th homicide of the year. What’s gotten into this City anyhow? Just about every weekend someone is getting killed. I know what the problem is. One common denominator is responsible for it all.

But I’ll leave it at that.

e.Jim

2006-11-20T22:26:00.000-07:00

Raw wasn’t
bad tonight. I think the best match was the ladder match for the Intercontinental Championship. Jeff Hardy won that one but what a match. On a scale from 1-10 I’d rate Raw tonight about a 6. Not great but not bad either.

Anne got short changed $15 bucks at the Petsmart store and recovered it abd came back with our Pizza just at the time of HGWT. After Pizza I had a 2 hours power nap. I needed it badly. So, I’m good to go tonight.

One thing that has been lacking since my vision problems over the last few months has been reading time. I’d like to spend at least an hour/day reading books. When my vision clears up Ii hope to be doing just that. I figure if I can read 100 pages/week, that’s not bad. I can read 1 book/month. What with my writing and other items/work etc, that’s not bad.

But the best news is my vision is ok. It’s not 20/20 because of my right eye, but having the posterior capsular haze thingy is the best possible news that could happen for me. And if this is just a Doctors office visit then I could have the laser surgery done next week but I think it’s a hospital visit and I have 2 more visits to work with including next week. But at least my vision can be restored to its post cataract surgery phase. And that’s splendid news.

e.Jim